Shopping at Sim Lim Square? Take your arty-farty friend along for a surprise

SINGAPORE — The writing has been on the wall: The 32-year-old Sim Lim Square is trying for an en-bloc sale and the tenants in this love-it-or-hate-it electronic goods mall are already changing as fast as the technology powering the gadgets they sell.

Into this shifting mix comes an unlikely group of nomads with their own cutting-edge enterprise — four young visual artists who are taking up residence for three weeks in the time-worn building in Rochor, as part of the Singapore Art Week.

They and their experimental activities are already getting curious looks from the business community and shoppers there, as they “set up shop” earlier this week at two units on the sixth floor.

The artists — Singaporeans Weixin Quek Chong, 30, and Johann Yamin, 24, South Korean Eom Jeongwon, 27, and Taiwanese Ko Tzu-An, 32 — were each given a S$1,000 material fee.

Of this, S$700 will have to be spent on products or services in the mall to produce their artwork in the space they occupy.

The residency, supported and funded by the National Arts Council, is an initiative of art collective Inter-Mission. The Singaporean artists were selected through an open call last September that drew 26 submissions, while Ms Ko and Ms Eom were invited by Inter-Mission, a group of four Singaporean artists whose interests are on technology in art.

Starting Saturday (Jan 12) when their studio in Sim Lim Square will be open to the public, the chosen artists will have to clock in daily between noon and 6pm until Jan 27. They will be working on their projects, doing presentations, holding guided tours and so on, in a bid to get visitors and onlookers to find some connection between art and technology.

Their works, being made up of materials sourced on site, will pay tribute in part to the mall, even if they may be bewildering or bizarre to some.

Ms Ko, a performance artist known for her “robot-for-hire” act at Kampong Glam, told TODAY that she will be doing a social experiment to discuss the ideas of price and value. She will have a virtual currency called “robot coin” with a S$700 circulation that can only be used in Sim Lim Square.

She plans to advertise this currency by reprising her robot persona on the first floor of the mall using posters and flags. Vendors and shoppers may buy in by exchanging electronic parts or other items they think a robot will need to function better.

Most of the time, Ms Ko’s robot persona will be stationed in the artists’ sixth-floor studio which, incidentally, is also being used to store disused cryptocurrency mining rigs.

There, she will be the teller of her own “bank” and tweaking rates to the “robot coin” as in real-life cryptocurrencies.

Having found out that Sim Lim Square has a reputation for housing errant and law-breaking retailers, the Taiwanese is now interested to observe how people might react to her currency. “People might think it is a scam,” Ms Ko quipped.

A SMARTPHONE-OBSESSED PEOPLE

Ms Eom, the South Korean visual artist, will be showcasing an “extreme representation” of this century’s smartphone-obsessed citizens who walk with their eyes down and minds elsewhere.

She will be sending a multi-camera recording device down the aisles of Sim Lim Square on a roller standee. This trolley gadget and the footage it collects will be beamed live on an online stream, and there will be a screen at the studio for audiences to watch.

Some shoppers may be given the chance to walk down the aisles with her device.

Examining the effects of technology on daily life, she said that technological advances alter not just body language, but the development of different hand muscles or eye diseases.

On the subject of live streaming, one Singaporean artist is taking it to another level.

Ms Chong, winner of a S$20,000 grand prize last year under the President’s Young Talents programme by the Singapore Art Museum, is in Spain and will only be back on Jan 17.

However, she will not be hindered in her progress and has hired a studio assistant who is already doing the groundwork for her. So Ms Chong gets to survey the shopfronts as her assistant films the scenes at the mall “live” for her.

For her work, Ms Chong is focusing her attention on cameras that pet owners use to remotely see, listen to and even “speak” to their pets. It will explore the intersection of spiritual and digital realms, culminating in a “tactile-based” installation she will create by the end of her residency.

Mr Yamin, a communications and new media undergraduate at the National University of Singapore, will base his work on an old, unwanted computer game he bought for less than S$10 at a shop in Upper Serangoon Shopping Centre.

The Taiwan-made shooting game called Cybwar will inspire the aesthetics of an abstract film he is trying to make, to look at Singapore malls through a “linked network”. He will be weaving in characters he meets at Sim Lim Square into his film, which will incorporate elements of speculative fiction and some raw footage he is collecting from various shop owners.

TWO COMMUNITIES GIVEN A LIFE LINE

Mr Urich Lau Wai-Yuen, 43, and Mr Teow Yue Han, 32, two members of Inter-Mission who curated the residency, said that they picked candidates who were “more conceptually engaged with the space”.

“We looked out for artists who are open to really soak in stories and all the aesthetics of the space and work with it,” Mr Teow said. Both he and Mr Lau are lecturers at Lasalle College of the Arts near Sim Lim Square.

Mr Lau, who had bought as many as 30 sets of surveillance cameras and countless miscellaneous items from Sim Lim Square for his own art installations, said that Inter-Mission had the idea to hold such a residency for “quite a long time” but never found the chance — until they were approached by organisers of this year’s Singapore Art Week to put together a programme for the event.

They met Mr Hari Das Gupta, 55, a landlord from New Delhi, India, who owns about 40 units in Sim Lim Square, when they were scouting for a space for the residency.

He agreed to lease them two units for a month at slightly more than S$5,000 for both units.

Mr Gupta, whose portrait photograph is on a glass panel overlooking the area where the artists work, admitted that he is not into art but agreed to let them use the lots, thinking that it will breathe new life to the now largely deserted upper floors of the mall that is seeing falling occupancy.

“By and large, this place has been very successful in creating business, in giving a good livelihood to so many people (who later moved to the lower floors with better accessibility after finding success),” he said.

“It is good to try and support the artists as well, while helping existing shops get new (traffic for) business.”

His son, Mr Vikas Gupta, 30, is the chairman of the building’s collective sale committee, and the group has so far collected 60 of the 80 per cent consent required before Sim Lim Square can go on the market.

While art residency at a mall may be a novelty, it is not the first taking place at an unconventional site. A previous one was held at a kampung house and studio on Pulau Ubin island between 2011 and 2015, where artists focused on working in and with nature and adopting environment-friendly practices.

ABOUT SIM LIM SQUARE ART RESIDENCY

• The artists’ studio at adjacent units 53 and 31 is open to the public between noon and 6pm daily from Jan 12 to 27.
• Guided tours will be held on Sunday, Jan 20, 4pm to 6pm, for those interested to hear the artists’ insights on the narratives, economies and politics of the space that they had gathered over the course of their residency.
• The residency space will be converted to an exhibition site on Tuesday, Jan 22 for the launch and presentation of the artists’ new works, ongoing research and documentations.

ABOUT SINGAPORE ART WEEK

• Sim Lim Square Art Residency is one of more than 100 events held as part of the Singapore Art Week, a joint initiative between the National Arts Council, the Singapore Tourism Board and the Economic Development Board.
• This year is the seventh edition of Singapore Art Week, which runs from Jan 19 to 27. Art After Dark at Gillman Barracks and the Light to Night Festival in the Civic District have been regular features of the annual event.