a monument to the non-canonical
(Kin Chui, with ila, and Godwin Koay)
Tulle, PVC piping, plywood, paint, bricks
2016
Installation view: Outram Park Green, Singapore, January 2016
Commissioned by the Asian Film Archive for State of Motion
a monument to the non-canonical is a project that extends authorship beyond the singular through both a collaborative process between artists and an interfacing between artist and audience. Using the original site of Outram Prison as a starting point, the work roughly mirrors the classical three-act structure of cinema, progressing the encounter gradually from passivity towards active contribution to the narrative and development of the work.
In the first stage, an audio piece lays the groundwork with fictionalised fragments of histories relating to Outram Prison. This is heard en route during the State of Motion exhibition tour to the locality of the former prison that stood from 1847 to 1966 – demolished for HDB public housing that has also since been cleared. Creating an impression of a little-known past, the audio piece draws influence from the beginning of the 1959 film Korban Fitnah (Victim of Slander), where the protagonist Hussein is brought from Outram Prison to the courthouse for his hearing. In an inversion of this arrival at the site of judgement to that of incarceration, memories from a sketchy history of colonialist detention, repression, and punishment are excavated through recordings, setting the tone for the subsequent section. The audience is greeted on-site by the installation of a maze-like structure. On arrival, earplugs will be provided as they meander around the corners of the installation to dull out the surrounding construction work and shift the aural landscape. The maze is built from tulle and wooden panels, the latter illustrated in black and white with stylised imagery drawn from relevant historical moments of resistance, solidarity, and freedom. Together with the flowing fabric, this structure intentionally incorporates layers of transparency and softness, playing with degrees of obfuscation and revelation while taking the shape of an ambiguous enclosure. From the exterior, a viewer witnesses the crossing of bodies in overlapping streams of the inside. For the final part, a lone panel stands in the middle of the maze. Blank except for the words "a monument to..." and accompanied by marker pens, it presents a provocation to the audience to literally add to the further imagination and interpretation of the work. While film and cinema act like monuments perpetuating auteur-centred myth-making, a monument to the non-canonical is an attempt to imagine the possibility of a myth that could be retold through a multitude of perspectives, or perhaps even the beginning of its dismantling. |
Process documentation and the people who helped put the work together |