just rambling

Take that Helvetica! Battling Globalised Culture

Worried about how visual culture like Helvetica has become a “universal typeface” that is homogenising our environment, graphic designer Sanchita Jain decided to wage war against globalisation. For her final-year Masters project at the LASALLE College of Art, Sanchita embarked on Decoding Culture, a project that is a “reaction to that homogenity” caused by the easy spread of ideas globally that were replacing unique places and cultures with one that looked the same no matter how far apart they were physically.

The ammo for her battle was a series of signs that she designed that highlighted unique aspects of her hometown in Delhi. Sanchita then put up these signs in Delhi to catch the attention of those living in the city and hopefully, igniting a discussion. The aim: to bring Delhi’s culture out to the open in order to remind those living in it about how unique it was. “My project brings people back to the tangible environment and uses cultural idiosynracies as an inside joke,” says the 24-year-old. “For example, there are two Singaporeans, and you both know Singlish, then Singlish is what unites you. You won’t talk about it much or say it out loud, but it is like a knowledge that unites a culture.”

Some of her signboards did attract much attention. Meter or Cheater? for instance refers to Delhi’s popular form of public transport auto rickshaws that are infamous for overcharging as they don’t use their meters. “I almost got mobbed,” she said. Though the auto drivers weren’t very happy with the sign, she feels that it has become a unique aspect of Delhi. Some of her signs — Fee to Pee refers to the practice of urinating in public and Death Trap Corp refers to the how dangerous it is to take Delhi buses — do showcase the negative aspects of her city, but they are also what makes it unique.

But there were signs that hardly got a reaction, and this Sanchita says, shows how these aspects of Delhi culture were lost to globalisation. Family Reunion depicts the practice of families going out at night to eat ice cream from street hawkers. Today, these families head straight to global chains like Baskin Robbins instead.

The signs themselves are also reminders of a dying Delhi culture. They are based on public signs in Delhi and were all hand-painted by Delhi signmakers like in the past. Today, these signs are printed by machines instead.

As part of the project, Sanchita also created a series of signs for Singapore. These were based on discussions with her Singaporean friends about what was unique about this city. Unlike the colourful signs of Delhi, the Singapore ones look plain with just a hint of colour. This was a visual look she noticed in a lot of the advertisements found in our local newspapers. As it turned out, they must have looked right to Singaporeans. After putting up postcards of these Singapore signs at the LASALLE Show, they were all taken up in just 15 minutes!

First Book: Divercity Singapore

Divercity Singapore: A cartoon history of immigration is a new book that tells the Singapore story through the people who have helped transform this island from a fishing community to a modern metropolis — immigrants. I’ve been very fortunate to have had the opportunity to write and research this book with cartoonist Morgan Chua, and with the support of my publisher/editor Cherian George. It’s now available at most local bookstores for a retail price of S$10.90. Click here to find out more about the book!

Reclaiming Changi Airport

Tourists arriving at Singapore are often greeted at the airport by teenagers… … studying. Whether it is at the aviation gallery, eateries like McDonalds, or empty corners of the airport, Changi Airport is home to students looking for somewhere quiet and comfortable to hit the books…

Read the rest of my little field study here

Civic Life: Dreaming of a Home in Tiong Bahru

Amidst the grand plan for a global city called Singapore is the small neighbourhood of Tiong Bahru, a place I like to go home to one day.

This is a piece I recently contributed to the project Civic Life Tiong Bahru.

In Singapore, Emptiness is Full of Meaning

An empty piece of land is not something that will catch our eye as we go about our daily lives, but for photographer Darren Soh, it sparked his on-going project that documents the building of Marina Bay Sands. Presenting at the inaugural PLATFORM, Darren showed a full-house crowd at Sinema his “progress pictures” of the integrated resort since construction began some four years ago. The photographer, who has made several photo collections of the Singapore landscape, said this island is one big construction site and that makes emptiness in Singapore’s landscape significant and something worth documenting.

Indeed, living in a country where everything is so transient, Singapore’s landscape has been extensively photographed. However, most works on it that I’ve seen focuses on the death of landscapes and its decay. It’s become a knee-jerk reaction for photographers living here — just look at the number of photographers who have been flocking down to Tanjong Pagar Railway Station now that it’s future is in limbo. Darren’s project responds to this Singapore condition from a different time frame — its beginning and birth. More importantly, his project freezes the never-ending construction work that we are seemingly surrounded with and allows us to reflect, and even marvel, the building of Singapore.

Coincidentally, I recently had the privilege of helping do some background research for an architectural project that looks at the conditions of emptiness in Singapore. The findings of architect Thomas Kong’s project will be presented in ‘Zero’: Alternative Scenarios for Architecture in a Post-Bubble Era on 16 June in Rotterdam.

As a number, zero is neither negative nor positive but we often assign a degree of negativity despite its neutral meaning. A vacated site similarly lies in a liminal state with potentiality. However, architects have been taught that the only thing they could present to society is a building, to fill the void again. But what can they learn from the way in which individuals and groups appropriate empty sites in towns and cities? And in broader perspective, what can zero offer as we live through the Great Recession, when the myth of continuous economic growth is shattered, the assumption of ready capital for development can no longer be guaranteed and architecture students are taught only one mode of survival as a professional?