old trivia
Clare Yow is an independent visual artist working in a library in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
She is a fan of nightbirding and shutter depression,
heartthrobs, blueprints, and changes of scenery.
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Singapore Art Museum, last year
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A year ago today was Day 21 of my trip home to Singapore after seven years away. My aunt and grandma were, I think, confused and amused at my photographing of the most banal activities and things. I remember remarking how small Mama’s kitchen was when I first stood in it during this trip. It’s weird, because as a child, it seemed and felt much larger.
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How have twelve months passed so quickly? My aunt and grandma after dinner and the concrete outside. I had crayfish noodles with my cousin earlier that day.
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Returning to Singapore from Penang, Malaysia one year ago - April Fool’s Day.
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I think a running theme in this blog is my mentioning how small a world it is. Today at work, Julie had been speaking to someone who used to work in the Learning Commons and who used to be one of my students. Abigail. Another one of my former students also works in the building and I often have email interactions with her. Renee. When I saw her at an event - probably in the Fall - I searched my brain for her name. I taught nine different studio classes, with each one having 15-20 students. That’s a lot of people. Three years on, Renee had grown her hair out and I’d cut mine. (On a related note, I dealt with a patron a few weeks ago and she kept telling me I looked familiar. I kept naming instances where we may have met or have had a mutual friend but no dice. The weird thing is that we first met, she looked really familiar to me too.)
Last week, I had a wonderful encounter with a colleague. Interactions with folks across UBC are frequent and often, brief (there are nearly ten thousand full time employees at the Point Grey campus!). Meeting people is something I adore and is thankfully, a big part of my work. Peng had visited to check out a room for next week’s “Addressing Injustice: UBC’s Response to the Interment of Japanese Canadian Students - Then and Now,” an event I’ll be attending, aside from having a very small hand in its preparation.
Before we met, we spoke over the phone and I thought I could detect a hint of a Singaporean accent. In person, when she mentioned she’d just returned from there, I immediately and excitedly asked if she was also from my little island. We spent something like the next twenty minutes chatting a lot about back there versus here. Now, Peng is closer in age to my parents than to me (she immigrated here in 1988, whereas I came in 1995 as a child), and so she had the obvious upper hand when talking about her experiences in Singaporean work culture. I felt like my parents could certainly relate to what she spoke of (leaving a well-paying, stable career to move a new country, folks back home putting extreme value on luxuries like country clubs and Prada bags, for instance).
Another thing we spoke of in depthly were the arts. She relayed a story about how she’d ended up in a Science program for top students across the country but realized her heart was really in the Arts. I told Peng I couldn’t picture myself pursuing an artistic practice in Singapore (this may well be false). My parents moved our family to Canada for the proverbial ‘better life’ and I wonder what path I would have taken had we remained in Asia. I told Peng how I was an awful student in school - I was poor at Mandarin and have such clear recollections of being scolded by teachers (thank you, Math teacher who made me miss my bus and stay after school to learn division and who slapped my hand with a ruler when I just didn’t get it). When I arrived here in the Fifth Grade, it was a breath of fresh air that teachers suddenly found me intelligent and mature, and in a class of twenty (not forty or forty five), I appreciated the extra attention and relished in all the new experiences I had.
Every so often I wonder if I can still claim I am Singaporean, being that I’ve been slowly working my way up towards twenty years in Canada now. One of my advisors once said that I can’t be an immigrant - I don’t look or sound it… I protested his statement. When I told Peng I was also from Singapore, she asked when I’d moved and exclaimed that I’m not Singaporean because I was so young when I immigrated (but the age of ten is not that little). It’s funny because in an email to my parents a few days prior, I told them: you can take the girl out of Singapore, but you cannot take Singapore out of the girl. I hold Singapore dear to my heart as it will always be a home and I take pride in being an immigrant - as challenging as that may be in itself.
After a hug, Peng and I promised to connect again with each other once next week’s event is over (how often do I hug someone I’ve just met? Pretty much never.) I’ll bring you pineapple tarts next time I go back, she told me. Bonding over pineapple tarts and the same primary school (!) - there’s nothing better. Here’s to a new friend.
*Photos from the Singapore City Gallery last year. The Central Area Model is one of the largest architectual models in the world and its scale is 1:400. From a didactic panel: “This model represents about 16km² or 2.3% of the whole land area of Singapore. Of the 16km², almost half is land reclaimed from the sea.”
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Grandma at dinnertime
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I’ve been attending a number of public talks as of late - the most recent being Thursday night’s “Remembering Our Chinatowns: A Trio of Readings and Booklaunch” at the Museum of Vancouver. Rebeca Lau spoke about her maternal grandmother’s story of growing up in Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico (Mami); Chad Reimer, a historian, researched the historical space and peoples in Chiliwack’s Chinatown (Chilliwack’s Chinatowns, A History); Larry Wong recounted his tales of growing up in Vancouver (Dim Sum Stories). Wong’s reading of a few of his stories from the 40s to the 60s was so charmingly hilarious and I really enjoyed them.
Beforehand, I toured the two key exhibits happening there: Bhangra.me (closes New Year’s Day) and Neon Vancouver | Ugly Vancouver (until August 2012). Bhangra, I learned afterwards, was curated by one of my teachers from a ten day Museum Studies courses I took during my first summer of grad studies at UBC. I like seeing small connections like that. It’s an interactive show recounting the history of Bhangra following it’s rise in the Lower Mainland since the 1970s. The latter show was not as big as I was expecting but being able to stand next to glowing neon signs (from the 1950s era and beyond) was an immersive experience. Collectively, the way the signs hummed was slightly eerie, considering there were no other visitors and there was a feeling that I could be electrocuted at any moment, or that radiation was seeping into my bloodstream. I can still hear the buzzing.
Last weekend, Ethan Zuckerman at the Chan Centre engaged us — as part of the 2nd annual Human Rights Lecture — on “Cute Cats and the Arab Spring: when social media meets social change.“ A new term I learned was Slacktivism which made me think of how many people I know who participate in this act, myself included. Zuckerman’s talk will be posted on CBC Radio’s Ideas in early December, if you’re interested in hearing it.
Prior to this was a talk at the Museum of Anthropology with Joy Kogawa (author), Marie Clements (playwright), and jamie griffiths (photographer and artist) on “Artists’ Responsibilities” in the depiction of challenging or contentious topics. This session was held in the physical space of the MOA’s main exhibition, hiroshima, which consists of beautifully lit photographs by Ishiuchi Miyako (it’s the first time this work has been shown outside of Japan; I highly recommend it).
The photographs depict items that individuals were wearing or had on hand when the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan in 1945. From false teeth, a tube of lipstick, to a camera (fried beyond immediate recognition), a memorable image for me was of a shirt - cream coloured with dark polka dots. As a result of the explosion, the polka dots had all fallen out and it was mentioned that they’d burned impressions onto the body of the girl or woman who’d been wearing it. Kogawa herself is a survivor of the internment camps many Japanese-Canadians in British Columbia were shipped to following a growth of anti-Japanese sentiment throughout Canada at that time.
Image of Martin Creed’s installation of Work No. 890: Don’t Worry, 2008 as part of the Singapore Biennale earlier this year, in the Old Kallang Airport.
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Previously forgotten about gem from March this year.
This is the view of my work place and Alma Mater (complete with ski hills in the distance), en route to Los Angeles with a final destination of Singapore. I distinctly remember my feelings as we tore past - you can see for yourself how physically isolated the University is. Surrounded by trees and water (and logs, in the water), it is like its own city in itself. You can also get a hint of the pink of the sky that evening as the sun continued its setting.
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Taking the red-eye to Toronto tonight. Departure in t-minus two hours and I’ll be leaving home for the airport soon (it is a short train ride away). I have not had a good sleep in the last one and a half weeks and later on, will be arriving in the East 3:30am Pacific time. It will be a whirlwind trip home and to St. Catharines for the Image and Imagery Conference. It hasn’t really sunk in yet that I’m headed there - though the last three days at work, I have been telling people about my plans. It’s nice. It’s just about go time and I’m thinking and am frightened about having a coughing fit on the plane. Still haven’t yet fully recovered from illness from two weeks ago. Oi. But on the plus side, I selected my seat when I got home from work earlier - aisle!
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Admittedly, my colour correction skills aren’t that great, but it must be added that aeroplane windows are the worst sort of filters, so one simply has to make do. Also the haze that afternoon was pretty wicked, if I can remember. Full of excuses, this girl, right here…
