Today for Special Inerest Learning (that's SIL, a special kind of assembly thing where speakers from different fields come to give talks). This week we had an artist from the non-governmental organisation Post-Museum. Her name was Jennifer (I can't remember her surname), and she was a personal friend of Mr. Chang's.
Post-Museum is a congregation of artists that focus on projects that encourage proactivity among Singaporeans. It used to operate out of 2 adjacent shophouses at Rowell Road (a brothel district), until the place closed in 2011. So now they are "roaming", using whatever spaces are available islandwide to carry out their projects.
Miss Jennifer isn't an artist in the orthodox sense - she doesn't do installations or paintings, though the old place was used for art exhibitions. Some of her projects are interesting and really gets the public involved, and all of them are non-profit, like "Awaken the Dragon", and "Singapore Really Really Free Market", and another one to promote awareness about the Bukit Brown Cemetery which is going to be flattened for a highway soon. Here's their website for more details:
http://www.post-museum.org/
I find this approach to art rather interesting, even though it deviates away from traditional methods of producing art (which was to do it by your own artistic abilities and efforts). It's more of amassing members of the public to help in a project, then letting the project take its own course, just like in the DADA art movement where some artworks were determined by chance.
A classmate asked about how she got the funding; most of her projects were free, but for those that needed funding she applied to organisations like the Singapore Arts Council.
I managed to catch up with her after the talk (and missed a few minutes of lesson, ha ha) and had a short chat and asked a few questions, like what became of the dragon kiln that was supposed to have closed down if not for her project "Awaken the Dragon", to which she replied that the project would be continued the next year. I salute her creativity, and perseverance as even she herself stated that "logistics was a nightmare" for the project - I still lack the tenacity to carry out, let alone lead an operation of this magnitude. When I asked her if it was hard to gain public support, she said that in fact many people were enthusiastic to join projects like "Awaken the Dragon". That surprised me, since I thought Singaporeans like myself would usually reject doing projects that "waste time" or "are not productive or mainstream".
It seems that people in Singapore can be proactive after all - they just need someone special and creative to start the ball rolling.
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