re·claim (verb): to claim the return or restoration of, as a right, possession.

What is the most obvious gripe? Too much of the same colour scheme – GREEN! 

Case in point:

I was trying to think of the possible reasons for such an occurrence, but couldn’t gather my thoughts well. There must be very real and valid reasons, possibly ranging from nature of stories, laziness of photographer, close-mindedness of photographer, uncreativity (sic) of photographer (you see where this is going), and etc. Let me just take a break, like what Justin said, and come back with a fresher eye and more open mind.

In a strange way, this period before the examinations has opened up that opportunity for me to get back in the project again. After weeks of neglect due to deadlines, it seems the only obstacle to get the ball rolling again is the examinations and that ends in about two weeks.

From experience, it’s probably good that we had this lull period, so that we could get over our self-hype, put it aside for a while and now return with a pair of fresh eyes. One thing that has stuck in my head a lot is the idea of showing what is not there.

1. On first look, the people we have talked to are doing very ordinary things — common sights that we pass by every day.
2. The first crack in this boring picture is when we ask why there? Then we realise that these people exist in illegal/unplanned — reclaimed — spaces.
3. When we ask how do they do it, we start seeing how ingenious and simple the actions really are.
4. We then take it further and ask why not there? This for me is the so what element and helps to unmask the ideology of planned spaces here that these people are resisting. By seeing what is not there, we see a more robust picture and set these people in a greater context than what we started out with.

In a moment of geekiness, might I exclaim that this is just like the Gestalt principle, where the whole is greater than the sum!

“Meaning is no where bound to the orbit of purpose, intention, or utility“

- Charles Bernstein

*

As I raise the idea of “reclaim land” to people, they immediately think of physical land reclamation.

“Like Tuas, izzit?”

“No lah, not that kind…”

So well, part of the excitement now is that I’m able to give them a re-imagining of this term. And if not “that kind”, then what kind? Here’s an inkling of ideas regarding the characters in our project who reclaim land:

1. They are deviants, not defiants.

A group of skaters we interviewed who illegally use a plot of land for their activities once claimed, “We’re not doing anything wrong!” The act of skating itself isn’t wrong, but that they’re at the wrong place criminalises them. That is to say, they’re not out to intentionally challenge or resist the laws in place, as in a defiant, rather, that their act of skating at the wrong place marks them as departing from socially accepted norms (noisy! Dangerous! Damaging public property!) makes them a deviant. These people never had the motive of breaking the law though their interests lie, unfortunately, in a grey area that is not always welcomed by the public. So therein they present not a crime, but a crisis — do we need to open up? More flexibility? More free spaces? What do our current generation crave for?

2. They do not speak the language of our city

The language of our city is clearly written in our street signs — one that mainly converses of safety (as in “No Rollerblading” signs at most HDB void decks) and security (as in “State Land” or “No Trespassing” or “No Littering”). The “No Rollerblading” sign does apply to the aforementioned skaters, but they try to compromise by coming up with a new language. They’ve put up their own signs to supersede the ones in place — “No Skating After 6 P.M.” is one of them, a true act of balancing out so that they can maintain their possession of the land. Is there space for more varied languages, instead of a homogenous one that will eventually be detrimental to diversity?

3. They can’t afford ‘Disneyland with the Death Penalty’

Once in a media class we were given out an article by William Gibson: Disneyland with the Death Penalty. It describes Singapore as an expensive utopia, including having to pay with our freedom. This prosperous city is the vision of one man, and although successful, not everyone buys it, or buys into it. Often the people we interview, such as skaters, street hawkers and kampung dwellers, cite “it’s free!” as one main reason why they occupy a certain space. But also, they aren’t attracted by the glitter of Disneyland that is the Singaporean dream. A micro example is that they don’t always use the shiny facilities availed to them, and ultimately create their own spaces that is at once a more truthful and utopic place for them, at the risk of penalty.

*

This group of characters do not reclaim land by adding physical quantity to space, as in breadth, but they add textures and layers to a space, as in depth, with their own laws, languages and activities. It’s a resistance to our constructed city where when one thinks of land reclamation, a big yellow crane of a machinery comes to mind. At the end of the day the construction and reclamation of a land is also up to our own imagination, with our own bare hands, for machines without a mind can never help us re-imagine a space in depth and dimensions and most significantly in new meanings.

I sent this for professional scanning. Turns out a lot better than the school scanner in terms of colours, tones and sharpness. But the most important difference is the alignment. In school, the scanning alignment is terribly off, which results in sections of a picture being chopped away, as well as crooked (in hokkien: seng eh) pictures. 

I do not know yet if scanning every potentially usable picture will be worth it in the long run. Options are: 
1) Send for professional scanning and worry only about the shooting. It costs $8 for each picture scanned.
2) Use school’s scanner and hopefully get the hang of it in the long run at the costs of injuring the transparency slide and man-hours.
3) Buy an Epson scanner for maybe $900.
4) Screw film.

I think I will make a trip to mac lab again for at least a few more hours of trying. In the meantime, I will check out if the misalignment thing happens to all scanners anyway, or is it because the school’s scanner is more prone to it due to age and non-usage. Who wants to make a trip with me to view scanners at Sim Lim or Funan? I think I might really use the scanner for my own purposes in the future.

Looking at the picture, one might think that I am wasting my money shooting on medium format slides when the same picture could be produced using a digital camera. From my perspective, I see a difference between the images shot on MF slides and the images shot with a DSLR. I wonder if other photographers and non-photographers feel any difference. I know in a personal project, it would matter less what others think in terms of the medium used. But this project is a group effort, and increased costs and efforts may compromise on other elements of the project, and may not be fair to other members. 

People, including my own group members, always ask me (not in a confrontational way, of course) why I shoot on MF slides for this project. This is a question that I am constantly struggling with. As time progresses, I find myself with different answers to this question, so much so that I sometimes wonder if they are really reasons or just excuses. I would get frustrated when faced with the question. I think the frustrations stem partly from not being able to justify clearly my decision, as well as the futility of the question. Does it matter to have a tangible rationale? Why can’t I work with a medium simply because I feel motivated to work with it?

As honest as I can be,
1) It makes me more disciplined by making every frame count ($1 per exposure).
2) The higher dynamic range makes shooting environmental portraits or landscapes (very common in this project) with wide exposure ranges manageable.
3) In some cases, people give me more leeway with a camera that does not look and sound like a DSLR.
4) A chance for me to peg “learning something new” to a project which has an end product to show for and involve consequences (satisfaction, grades etc). 
5) I feel motivated to work with it. 

As it is, I am acquiring an affinity for slides.

What does it take to fit in?

When you travel and look every bit the foreigner, you’re bound to be asked by the locals of that particular location, “Where are you from?” If you say “Japan,” they begin to concoct in their heads cute Japanese stars in popular television shows or innovative drink machines and gadgets. As how uttering “America” brings to mind McDonald’s. Unfortunately or not, declaring “Singapore” spurs buzzwords like can’t spit or fine city or clean roads.

Place often evokes public identity and we’re just that — can’t spit, fine city, clean roads. In other words: law, money, order, in no specific preference. That is why discovering the chaotic, often hidden parts of Singapore being reclaimed by unique individuals has become increasingly exciting — for the very fact that they reveal identities this nation has tried to resist.

A story that Justin and Serene are pursuing concerns street hawkers and a particular person that strikes me much is Barber Lee. He takes up a small, dingy alley space and does his hair-cutting duties diligently. But of what significance is he to the nation, considering his unattractive economic status? To most, his identity is a mere, ordinary barber, devoid of creativity and ambition. But during the short span of time speaking to him, there is resilience in this man who perseveres with his job despite losing his original shop to development. These are all that he possesses in his business now — about 2 makeshift shelves, a huge canvas sheet and an old dentist-looking chair — and he makes a mean shop out of them in an alleyway. If that’s not creative, then I don’t know what is. This identity of being creatively desperate is worthy to be told in a time when our country is desperately creative and hungry to churn out a vibrant arts industry.

One other resisted identity is that Singaporeans are actually religious. Secularism is important in our city-state because it encourages equality and in turn aids meritocracy. (This touchy-feely topic of religion is also best avoided because we might potentially kill each other if we talk about it, in the form of another Maria Hertogh riot.) Still, shrines in kopitiams and musollahs in shopping centres exist almost as a necessity, albeit in an invisible manner away from the public eye. You don’t see it, but you know it’s somewhere. People who use and manage them say the presence of religion gives them “peace of mind” — strangely, this being said in a country already known for its peaceful nature. It seems then that the perpetuated Singaporean identity is that he is surely at peace with his neighbours, yet, the existence of these hidden religious spaces reveal that we might not always be at peace within ourselves; this inner, individual condition being something that a country can never fulfill with any law or ideology.

That we’re religious, that we’re creatively desperate, are just some of the identities obscured behind shiny, happy structures of our eternal city. Increasingly now, I tend to see our orderly, planned spaces as a reflection of what we want to become, and in these chaotic, often illegally reclaimed places, the gradual revelation is of what we truly are. Best part is, it is the least a disappinting picture. If these are what goes into being Singaporean then I am far from being ashamed. However, we choose only to recognise our city of perpetual becoming. I wonder, how much we’re willing to embrace and claim back these undermined identities that are after all, a part of our collective personality that is Singaporean.

Mr. Mahabubur Rahman goes fishing in his free time in India, not here though, with the lack of rivers

Us and Them
And after all we’re only ordinary men
Me, and you
God only knows it’s not what we would choose to do
- Pink Floyd; Us And Them

From Robert E. Gamer’s, The Politics of Urban Development in Singapore (1972)

Land-use decisions by public agencies are changing the entire face of Singapore island and affecting Singapore’s way of life. (my emphasis)

These decisions do not emerge from a vacuum or in an entirely random manner. They are the outputs of a political process and an approach to decision-making.

…

Land-use decisions may be popular, and easy to finance and administer. At the same time, they may serve to segregate social strata rather than unite them. They may isolate the best resources in the hands of a few people and destroy cultural conditions without replaceing them with new ones. They may narrow the occupational choices of large numbers of people, degenerate people’s diets, reduce the options for leisure time, create congestion and incessant noise, and in other ways adversely affect the tone and substance of life.

…

The interests of those who control resources, skills and administrative and political capabilities often run counter to what is needed to cater to the needs of people. By enhancing the power of these individuals, massive urban redevelopment and industralisation programs may be weakening government’s ability to serve human needs, rather than strenghtening it as is commonly assumed.

I thought I’ll try to clarify the direction of the project so that we all know where we are headed. I’ve boiled down it to two mental models:

• The green model uses the examples of reclaiming land as a starting point to explore other stories, for instance we see skate boarders then we go on and explore who these people are and profile the community.
• The blue model, however, ties these seemingly disparate stories of skate boarders and street hawkers to the idea that they are “reclaiming land”

It seems we sometimes get caught up in the green model and lose focus on what this project is about — the blue model. In fact, I think it is something similar to the previous post about the photo essay.

So what is our project about? I would like to convey the following ideas:

• That the land of Singapore owned by various powers who plan and determine how it is used
  • What is the ideology behind it?
  • Who does it favour?
• But there exists users who reclaim their own spaces by using them in ways not intended
  • Why do they do so?
  • How do they do so?

Hopefully, through it all, Singaporeans can feel they are not so helpless after all and maybe inspire some to reclaim land too.

Check out www.viiphoto.com. Then click on Marcus Bleasdale’s photo essay “What Price Oil – Our Love Affair with Cars”.  

I like it for two reasons. I think this is a very poetic photo essay because of the way it allows a viewer to construct his own story. This is a good example of how there is no need for the presence of people in photographs to tell a story that has a big impact on or is heavily consequential of people themselves. Marcus Bleasdale has made it possible for us to reflect on our deeds without seeing ourselves in the picture. 

I also like the way he uses signs, messages, advertisements and graffiti to tell his story. He has created meaning out of the most mundane sights. I think he has brought forth a consciousness of looking out for all these latent messages around us when confronting a certain issue, such as ours. 

Individually, the photographs are over-simplistic, and some (for instance, the facecuts of dead American soldiers) seem to not fit in. But thread them together, and there seems to be a vein that connects them – and the viewer fills in the gaps (at least what’s what I found myself doing). The vein becomes the story: the issue, the cause of the issue and the consequences of the issue all at once.

So if a particular scene strikes you as something to do with our project, even though it can be very fleeting or marginally connected, please feel free to immediately call or sms to tell me. The same goes for any “sign” that you see that when paired up with the environment it is in, takes on a new meaning related to the project. I will be very interested to hear you out and check out the place. Because it can gain strength when put together with other pictures.