Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: The Master Narrative and the Lived City – Half a Century of Imagining Singapore
- Part I (De)-Constructing Master Narratives of the City
- Part II The Arts as Prisms of the Urban Imaginative
- Part III The City Possible in Action
- Conclusion
- Index
- Publications
5 - Forming Cityscapes: Small Interventions and Appropriations in the City
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: The Master Narrative and the Lived City – Half a Century of Imagining Singapore
- Part I (De)-Constructing Master Narratives of the City
- Part II The Arts as Prisms of the Urban Imaginative
- Part III The City Possible in Action
- Conclusion
- Index
- Publications
Summary
Abstract
This chapter presents a photographic documentation project with a particular interest in everyday city life in Singapore. As a theoretical reflection on the project, we examine the interrelationships between the project and related ideas across urban studies, photography and design, while positioning it as a form of ‘artistic research’. Selected photographic findings from Forming Cityscapes are presented alongside a critical discussion on creative forms of appropriation that indirectly critique ‘top-down’ design implementations and suggest other micro-possibilities through actual use. With this, an imaginative representation of Singapore's cityscape is represented through (1) our creative practice, and (2) photographic findings of creative practices found in the city.
Keywords: artistic research, photography, Singapore cityscape, everyday life, creative appropriation
Introduction
The following is a description of Forming Cityscapes:
This project started as an attempt to make sense of all our snapshots of the Singapore city taken on a daily basis, which progressively became an archive of everyday observations. Some are made through careful observation, but most are just casual and intuitive documentation on things of interest. Through a process of organization, groups of images are presented in an ongoing series of small books, each displaying ideas of a selected theme. The result is a visual documentation of objects and spaces in the urban environment and our relationships with them. (Kong and Yeo 2014: 5)
This chapter is an exegesis of Forming Cityscapes, a photographic documentation project derived from our artistic and design practice that observes everyday life in the urban environment. The physical outcomes of this project are an ongoing series of photographic booklets (six at the time of writing), each containing selected images from a pool of photographs we have been collecting since 2014. Although many of these photographs capture the minuscule and seemingly mundane, they reveal a potentially overlooked aspect of the city that could be described as creative interventions and appropriations by its everyday inhabitants.
This brief study reflects on both the project and its outcomes, in particular, the (1) methods and processes (of gathering, organizing and presenting photographs) adopted throughout the project, and (2) themes surrounding Singapore's urban environment that have been revealed through the photographic outcomes.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Hard State, Soft City of Singapore , pp. 121 - 144Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020