Skip to main content

Advertisement

Advertisement

The OPEN 2015: Reality bites in China and Tanjong Pagar

SINGAPORE — The Singapore International Festival Of Arts is still a couple of months away, but its pre-festival spread The OPEN has already begun tackling its Post-Empires theme, kicking off with two contrasting works that ponder the future via the present.

Follow TODAY on WhatsApp

SINGAPORE — The Singapore International Festival Of Arts is still a couple of months away, but its pre-festival spread The OPEN has already begun tackling its Post-Empires theme, kicking off with two contrasting works that ponder the future via the present.

For the second straight year, The OPEN has launched with a hard-hitting exhibition. If last year had the photo and video showcase Faces And Phases, where activist artist Zanele Muholi peeled away the good vibes of South Africa’s Rainbow Nation image and examined the violence done against gays and lesbians, Chinese photographer Lu Guang’s The Price Of Neglect, which is up at DECK, challenges us to confront the other side of China’s current economic boom.

You’ve been warned: It’s a rather depressing and distressing exhibition, which kicks off with two small series: One looks at the 2010 Dalian Bay oil spill, one of the worst in the country’s history, while another chronicles the lives of the people who live in an “AIDS village”. Due to poverty, villagers had resorted to selling blood for food, and the absence of proper health procedures has had disastrous results: 45 per cent of its 3,800 population is infected with either HIV or AIDS.

The third, and biggest, series goes macro: A wide-ranging photo essay on the effects of industrial and economic development on the environment and the underprivileged. The reckless dumping of industrial sewage and strip-mining have led to haze, which in turn have led to so-called “cancer villages”. In one of these villages that Lu visits in Shanxi Province, children with birth defects are regularly abandoned. Elsewhere, he presents areas ravaged by mining — what looks like some massive land art project where huge land depressions dot grasslands was, in fact, the result of an insatiable hunger for raw material.

And in the series’ ultimate example of absurdity, there’s an image featuring sculptures of sheep and other livestock against the backdrop of smoke-belching factory chimneys. In a bid to maintain the bucolic image of Holingol City, with its famous prairies, 120 of these fake animals were put up.

There’s nothing complicated about The Price Of Neglect — it is old school photo-journalism and activism at its finest and most honest (his work has drawn government attention to these issues). Lu, who was a factory worker before picking up the camera and later on receiving a few prestigious accolades such as becoming a 2013 Prince Claus Laureate, strips to the bone contemporary China’s ongoing problems.

If the photographic image is used to highlight harsh realities in Lu’s show, virtual images are used to create and re-create multiple realities over at the former Tanjong Pagar Railway Station.

Where sculptures of sheep “augment” the ravaged countryside in China, the infinitely more lighthearted interactive art project 15 Stations uses augmented reality technology in this (currently) abandoned space in Singapore.

Using a downloadable augmented reality app, one wanders around the station and see the place come to life on a smartphone or tablet. The project’s creator Noorlinah Mohamed, together with Christopher Fok and NTU students, has fashioned three routes visitors can explore at their own pace. The stories and anecdotes range from the station’s place in Singapore’s history to poignant relationships revolving around the station and in relation to its employees, to “what if” moments pertaining to the place’s future. The quality of the app’s segments are uneven, but there are delightful moments (of trains floating to the sky, a Daily Prophet-like “newspaper” straight out of the Harry Potter films) and historically valuable nuggets too (footage of the final train trip from the station in 2011, audio interviews, and photographs of the station back in the day). “Memories get soaked up by old places,” a line goes in one of the videos. And indeed, this railway station — at least the parts that are open to the public, which, unfortunately doesn’t include the old hotel housed on the second floor — oozes with memory.

The twist, however, is the fact that 15 Stations is, of course, an augmented reality work. And this virtual-ness speaks volumes — wandering around the shell of a site, one is reminded of the constant presence of absence. Except for these traces of memories you carry around on your gadget, there is nothing and no one left inside this railway station. Until you realise, standing right there, that’s not really the case.

***

Lu Guang’s The Price Of Neglect runs until July 4 at DECK, 120A Prinsep Street. An artist talk will be held on Saturday, 5pm, in Mandarin with English translation.

15 Stations runs until July 4, noon to 10pm, at the former Tanjong Pagar Railway Station. (Limited tablets are available at the site or you can download the app on your own smartphones or tablets.)

Admission to both via The OPEN Pass from SISTIC or single entry tickets at the venues. For details on opening times, tickets and other events, visit http://sifa.sg/theopen/ or http://www.facebook.com/sifa.sg

Read more of the latest in

Advertisement

Advertisement

Stay in the know. Anytime. Anywhere.

Subscribe to get daily news updates, insights and must reads delivered straight to your inbox.

By clicking subscribe, I agree for my personal data to be used to send me TODAY newsletters, promotional offers and for research and analysis.