Most of my childhood memories are deeply linked to the neighbourhood of Eunos. The postal code brings you to the Eunos MRT station. This place was a transitory ground that was particular to my growth; it was a kind of liminal space for me, the bridge between a reality and a dream. At 6.30pm, Eunos feels timeless. The action is written as a cipher in which each number corresponds to a letter of the alphabet. “Run home” when the day ends; it may take forever.

Yoshio Nishimura, who was based in Singapore, died in December 1934 of an apparent suicide. He was under investigation by the British Special Branch, who suspected his company of being a cover for espionage. The president of the Japanese Association at the time, his funeral was attended by five hundred mourners, the largest ever held at the cemetery. Before and after Nishimura’s death, Ishihara Sangyo Koshi extensively mined iron ore in Sri Medan, Batu Pahat in Johor; this was processed into steel and supplied to the Japanese Imperial Steel Works. Those defunct mines are now filled with rainwater, resembling wounds that have never healed.

MRT stations are utilitarian, transitory spaces—somewhere that most of us must pass through in order to get somewhere else—and they are also communal ones, that have to be used and regulated as such. Therefore, they are filled with texts that guide our responsible interactions with our physical surroundings and with our fellow commuters. These texts appear on signs, posters, stickers, banners, screens; they could be permanent or temporary, illustrated or plain, proactively designed or reactively inserted. My instruction imagines each MRT station as a ‘book’ to be ‘read’ by the participant, who, in searching for one word, must stop to read them all.

Lo(ro)ng Sighted is an amalgamation of two terms: Lorong (Malay for “alley”; in line with the location of the instruction) & long-sighted (the inability to see nearby objects).

It draws inspiration from the artists’ chance encounters of peculiar sights found in back alleys – an often overlooked place that appears ordinary. The instruction encourages one to investigate our seemingly mundane surroundings, and in doing so, observe the scenes that reflect the traces of modern life and the human role that lies therein.

I learnt about muons at the cusp of the pandemic outbreak. In the midst of experiencing an abrupt change of time-space, an acute sense of uncrossable distance and invisible presence, at a planetary scale, muons felt like science fiction. These impulses of cosmic longing, and the folding of distance and time, were explored in my work Path. 12, River Origin 浪淘沙^* in 2021. Widjaja performed for the camera along Labrador Park at the southern coast of Singapore facing his hometown Java, and sensed, through his body, the arrival of muons with a custom muon tracker in my hands.

*Commissioned by BIO:ART Southeast Asia Taiwan, curated by Tang Fu Kuen, and supported by the National Arts Council Creation Grant and Exactly Foundation.

It could be the outside of your office or the streets in front of your house – a familiar place that holds a space in your memory; a place that is public in context but private in character. Many HDB corridors are uniform in design, with slight differences created as they age. They may be decorated with plants or ornaments, but their walls may never be recoloured. It is a place that is not yours, but only you know its cracks, its spots, its history, and the exact time the lights turn on or off.

About the Location:

Our South always changes. It continuously extends towards the horizon, endlessly filled by sand dunes; the memories of individuals are consequently displaced and removed. What is left are ghostly apparitions within our minds, and a much newer visual physicality. At the chosen site, the state has constructed a replica of a natural structure historically used for wayfinding; an attempt to immortalise a bit of our national history, set against an ever-expanding shoreline.

Pay attention to changes in the climate as you enter the bus. Look out of the window to see a play of shapes and light. Imagine the bus window’s frame as the frames of a movie, maybe an abstract movie with hand-painted frames of light and colour juxtaposed against the urban transitional, from the soft tumbling lines of shophouses to the hard urban lines of Suntec City, Marina Bay, the floating platform, and Capitol. Create that movie for yourself starting from when you first look out of the window. Alight from the bus when you arrive back at Serangoon Road.

Built in 2000, Woodlands Civic Centre is home to many public agencies, providing residents in the area and other members of the public with a convenient way of accessing and using various government services. This building is also a ‘transitional’ space for people on the go, who are running their everyday errands. It could also be an unexpected place where two eyes might meet for the first time, in agreement and with consent.

The supermarket is a natural public gathering place. While the work focuses on an action that can be executed alongside a task-oriented grocery run, this action also transforms the mundane everyday site of the supermarket into the site of a happening. By disrupting the banal scenes to which we are accustomed at the supermarket, visitors on site inadvertently participate as viewers of this ‘public sculpture’. The sculpture becomes a durational artwork that lasts long as the three pieces of fruit remain stacked.

“Beautiful Sunday” is a long-running public concert series at Esplanade since 2003, showcasing homegrown amateur and professional musical groups in the Concert Hall. Esplanade is “an arts centre for everyone”, and you can see this in the crowds after these concerts. At the upper concourse are friends, families, and even people who just watched their first concert, alongside fans of the music who return monthly for the performances. Streaming down the backstage stairs are the performers, who might be professional musicians, students, or even someone with a day job who just loves playing music.

This is the only bridge I know of that is tucked away from the main road and caught in between 2 clusters of HDB blocks. Seemingly private, the bridge tends to only be accessed by the people who move around the blocks between Pasir Ris and Tampines. The bridge itself does not have a shelter (yet) and overlooks the Tampines Expressway. It is a common route used by delivery riders, as well as avid cyclists travelling along the Tampines Park Connector.

I intended to choose a site that is specific to the activity yet generic enough to be easily accessible. Rather than growing wildly and freely outdoors, the flowers in the confined space of a florist’s cooler would have been arranged by someone, whether haphazardly or in an orderly manner. This interference by a human being points toward a kind of logic or reasoning that is not naturally occurring. I find that this creates a much more interesting set up due to its unpredictability and subjectivity, and in turn opens up much more avenues of interpretation.

By the transformation of original coastlines into steep inclined boundaries formed by rocky granite breakwaters, the perfect habitat was formed for a new and invasive species of fish: the Sabah giant grouper. Hybridised specifically for consumption, it is one of the predominantly farmed species in Southeast Asian aquaculture. Escaped and released fish find dwelling within the crevasses of the breakwaters; their voracious appetites unbalance coastal food chains by decimating native fish populations. They can no longer be re-captured by nets, only by the strategic angler with rod and line.

This instruction considers the intertwining relationships between bodies, object, community, and the quotidian. It examines the veiled lived conditions of the communities in Boon Lay, Singapore, where I live. A considerably large segment of the residents in the neighbourhood are working class. Here, surveillance is glaringly heightened, and the balance between safety, privacy, and autonomy is often precarious. While many associate light (visibility) closely with notions of safety and security, there are also lights which are cast upon some more intensely than others.

The Urban Redevelopment Authority’s Night Lighting Master Plan for the Civic District and Bras Basah.Bugis aims to achieve a nightscape that is “unique and three-dimensional”. It posits that “[g]ood night lighting can help to transform the image of the city by improving the appearance of the city at night and extend the life of the city after dark”. Broadly classified into classic and contemporary buildings, it recommends that “nightly lighting shall be elegant, tasteful and sensitive to the architecture of the building and well-coordinated with the overall night time streetscape”.

Bishan Park is a park that runs along the border of two neighbouring heartlands in Singapore, Bishan and Ang Mo Kio. The entire park stretches six kilometres long, with the Kallang River flowing through it.

This is one of the oldest Buddhist temples in Singapore, having existed at its present location since 1884. The current building was opened in 1982 following an extensive expansion. It is a popular place of worship for devotees of Guan Yin, the Chinese goddess of mercy. For the Singapore Biennale 2006, artistic director Fumio Nanjo selected the temple as a site to display artworks by Xu Bing, Tsai Charwei, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Santiago Cucullu. It was meant to showcase Singapore as a multireligious, multicultural society and to reflect the role of architecture in the construction of beliefs.

Fully sheltered, open 24 hours a day, and conveniently accessible via the Kallang and Stadium MRT stations, the 888-metre three-lane sports track at 100PLUS Promenade has been my place of choice for night exercises. It surrounds the National Stadium and has evenly spaced-out spotlights that continuously cast oncoming shadows as one runs down the circular path. It’s almost impossible to outrun the shadows in front, beside, or behind you, and to attempt to do so would likely result in an endless race against yourself, both physically and metaphorically. Ready, set, go!

In 2022, it was announced that Singapore is moving towards becoming a ‘City in Nature’ as a key pillar of Singapore’s Green Plan 2030. Simultaneously, a number of construction projects in Singapore drew attention due to concerns regarding environmental conservation. Everywhere, we see construction sites surrounded with metal panels that illustrate pixelated trees, while stretches of hoarding are camouflaged with vinyl stickers depicting photographs of greenery. The intersection of urbanisation and green capital results in an ambiguity in Singapore’s ‘natural’ environment. This instruction looks at how this ambiguity manifests in public housing projects, which must integrate pockets of nature into their spatial design.

The toilet is proposed as a mediating site between the social and the private realms.

Not just a place to pee or poop, the restroom has been a conducive site of idea generation for artists and writers alike.

Traditional German toilets had a ‘poop shelf’ where stools lingered briefly in a shallow pool of water before disappearing into the hole; this allowed users to inspect their own faeces to ascertain their state of biological health.

The present work proposes the toilet as a safe space to check in with one’s money situation, to judge if one is overextending financially.

I chanced upon this location and thought it looked particular right away: what is the purpose of putting railing around this patch of concrete structure? The answer is probably pretty pedestrian and predictable (safety concerns). The city state has always been very clear about putting signages to demarcate and name type of spaces, so this strikes me as a rare incidences when it is left ambiguous for us to interpret.

This traditional British red telephone box is a familiar sight on the streets of the United Kingdom, but it is an unusual sight here in Singapore, especially hidden amidst a generally quiet, peaceful estate in Upper Bukit Timah. Though the kiosk was apparently present in former British colonies, whether or not this particular one dates back to Singapore’s colonial period is unclear. Here at the junction of two roads—one with a distinctly English name, and the other a romanised Chinese dialect—it can also be a way to consider our history. The participant is encouraged to take some time to explore the surrounding neighbourhood.

Winding through the slopes of Kent Ridge Park, South Buona Vista Road is flanked by secondary forest as well as planted roadside trees. The notorious hairpin curves link Dover to Pasir Panjang Road. As the name suggests in Italian, the descending slopes of South Buona Vista Road used to offer drivers stunning elevated sea views. Constructed before World War II, the ridges were the site of the famous battle of Pasir Panjang, which took place in February 1942 between the invading Japanese forces and the Malay Regiment, led by Lt. Adnan. (Adapted from here)

The gregarious Javan myna forms large communal roosts in urban areas, where they are often considered a nuisance. Reportedly, up to 3,000 litres of water is used every night for pressure washing the Orchard Road pavements to rid them of the birds’ droppings. Efforts to scare them away—including high-pitched sonars and a hawk brought in from Jurong Bird Park—have failed.

Globally, the bird is listed as vulnerable to extinction, with only 2,500 to 9,000 left in its native range. Even in Singapore, the population has declined from 220,000 in the 1980s to 139,000 in the early 2000s.

455A Teck Ghee Park View is one of the tallest HDB blocks in Ang Mo Kio. It was built in 2017 and it has 34 floors. It is also one of the tallest accessible places to go to in Ang Mo Kio. Of all the blocks in Teck Ghee Park View, I believe that 455A has the best unblocked views. However, it might seem a bit bizarre standing in the corridors of the units where people live but at night, it can be quite comforting because it is fairly quiet and the weather isn’t too hot.

Lower Peirce Reservoir was built in 1912 by artificially creating a standing body of water. This was for a practical reason: to meet the increasing demand for the supply of water in Singapore. More than a century old now, it has nurtured a mature secondary rainforest around the reservoir. There are an estimated 900 types of flowering plants, 100 types of ferns, and 250 animal species found in the area.

The Yishun Dam is a causeway over a man-made reservoir that is flanked by twin roads. Its consistency in my life has been like a refrain of sorts, loosely connecting the different chapters of my existence. I also envision it as a kind of junction where a time before grief and a time marked by grief are threaded together like the bi-directional traffic.

This instructional-based participatory project begins with a participant-decided urban site at their preferred time of day and advocates an imposition of a mountain symbol, drawn either on paper or digitally composed, set against the chosen urban backdrop. The project completes with a pictorial record of the activity. The image of the mountain is a symbolic expression of one’s consciousness, which serves as an essential bridge between the physical and the digital. The result is consequently an allegorical articulation of the triangular feedback system between the physical, the digital, and the psychological.

The instruction is to look for any open field or clearing, where one can turn their gaze upwards without being obstructed by high-rise buildings or structures. This alone is perhaps a challenge in itself, within Singapore’s highly dense urban infrastructure. But once one can find a rooftop, a square in between HDBs, a quiet field, a construction site, a local park; there are many opportunities to search for objects in the sky. And in the case of severe light pollution, one can only continue to study the empty sky in this collective act of viewing.

The National Archives of Singapore is responsible for the collection and management of records relating to the nation’s political, social and economic history. I would particularly recommend its Audiovisual Archives, which includes educational television programmes, public service broadcast programmes, and daily news bulletins.

From 1991 to 1993, 5th Passage transformed an incidental passageway into a thriving interdisciplinary arts space. Far ahead of its time, it organised projects dealing with environmental issues and animal ethics, and upheld artists as a cooperative for mutual support. Its myriad events involved collaborations with The Substation, Lasalle, various schools, and the public. However, its work was short-circuited: unjustly, it was evicted in early 1994, taken to court, and then purposefully occluded from Singapore’s arts historical context. The site still remains, with not a trace of what, for a time, it once was.

(Remembering also The Substation’s walled garden, that once was.)

The Tanjong Rimau Formation and the Fort Siloso Formation are two rock formations in Sentosa that comprise black, brown, and red/orange rusty sandstones. This constitutes the basement rock of Singapore, which was formed in the early Triassic period.

A Field Guide To the Geology of Singapore (Oliver & Gupta, 2017) documents an account of a possible dinosaur footprint found during a field expedition. The research paper created a point of departure for visualising Singapore during the prehistoric era.

Junkie’s Corner is a massive second-hand store hidden in the jungle near Turf City. It was established in 2003 by collectors who have been gathering antique and vintage collectibles for decades. It is a place where you may not only find things you need, but also rummage through objects crossing the centuries, reminding you of the passage of time. According to the Urban Redevelopment Authority, Phase 2 of the Cross Island Line will be sited at Turf City. Since 2019, tenants have been reminded of the need to vacate the site due to future development plans. Soon we may not find Junkie’s Corner in such a setting anymore.

Similar to many cities around the world, trees in Singapore are uprooted and relocated to conform to a controlled cityscape determined by urban planning. A digital marker for a tree engages participants in the act of observing individual trees and their state of existence in the garden city of Singapore through photography. The gesture of photographing creates an interaction between the image-maker and the selected tree, setting up an intimate encounter for attention and care. In contributing the photograph on a collaborative Google Map, each exchange with a tree is recorded to create a collective mapping of trees, and the permutations in which they exist.

^*How to mark a tree on Google Map via an Internet browser:
1. Open up the map by clicking on this link
2. In the search bar, type in the address where you found the tree. You can use the name of a street or address of a building to anchor the pin.
3. A pin with a pop-up bubble should appear. Click on ‘+ Add to map’ in the pop-up.
4. Click on the ‘Edit’ icon (pencil symbol).
5. Click on ‘Add image or video’ icon (camera symbol) on the bottom right corner of the pop-up. You can also edit the address to be more specific (e.g. ‘In front of XXX’ / ‘Along XXX’).
6. Save your edits. You have contributed a marker to a tree!

As adults, the end of a school day is experienced differently: those with children might already be part of the community of ‘waiters’, while those who are childless would have long moved on from the simplicity of after-school joy. With shifting familial dynamics, the demographics of the waiting crowd also present a snapshot of parental roles and values. The visible relief spilling out with the students further echoes the 1895 short film Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, making space for connections to be drawn between modern systems of mass education and the industrialised workforce.