OMG Singapore!!: Art in Singapore

A few weekends ago, Mathew and I decided to wander around an area of the city we hadn't really explored before. This was prompted by my discovery of an art exhibit that sounded pretty cool and our desire to eat Thai food.

The art exhibit was "non-traditional" in that it was not painting, sculpture, or photography, but instead, video. A lot of people here live in apartment complexes that are identical and facing each other. The artist apparently wanted to introduce opposing side neighbors and have them watch each other. She set up a video camera in each of 14 or so pairs of neighbors windows. She instructed that they must stand in the window for the first 10 minutes of the timed 30 minute recording. They all switched on the cameras at the same time, and that was that. The artist synchronized the films and put them on TVs that were next to each other, some askew, some higher than others, but always in pairs so you got the impression that you were watching a window of an apartment. It was really strange to see the reactions of the people on the left screen to what the people on the right were doing. Some people stayed in their windows for longer than the ten minutes, others left as soon as they could. Some people tried to entertain each other, others just stared. When the whole thing was done, she had a little lunch party with all of the participants. She had 8 sets of people in this exhibit, for a total of 16 monitors. It was a very cool exhibit and I liked the non-standard art feel of it. The piece was entitled "Jurong West Street 81" and was by Shannon Castleman.

In addition, we found some art in the basement of the esplanade. I thought this was kinda neat. It was a garden scene. I think they were all made of fabric and foam and other things like that. Anyway, they were pretty cool. I really liked the spider. (You should click the images to make them larger - some of these things deserve closer attention.)