About this Event
Soften the authority, open the seams, and let uncertainty do some work. A prospect is not a promise. It is a mindset and a lightening of viewing the world as if it has something you get from it, because what if… it does not?
Art & Copy hosts an intimate conversation salon for a handful at a semi-public location within or near the National Gallery. Will send you the meetpoint after you register to confirm [$].
This will be hosted by Art & Copy Editor Dipika Kohli, in real life in Singapore, not very many days from the time of the writing. The prospect is cool.
When the Singapore Writers Festival adopted The Prospect of Beauty as its theme, I went to it. I went with a then-new friend and his cousin. This felt like college tripping, from Phnom Penh, but instead of a beat-up car we flew economy on Jet Star.
The title so opened my eyes to things that I was prepared to stop what I was trying to do in Cambodia and make an abrupt detour to go and investigate who was there adn what they were sayng about this big topic. After all, the pursuit of beauty used to be a phrase in my artist statement (now it isn’t, I know that now, that you can’t pursue what unfolds naturally, if you’re lucky).The art of now, Project Now, Prjoect Epicurus, so many thigns came from this line of query in the years since. I think it’s good to go back to Singapore and deliver the small collection that I feel best says what I felt about this topic. Maybe a late response, sort of quietly and unintrusively and perhaps unnoticed by most. But maybe someone will remember it. They’ll go, Ah, I was there, too. And we can spark a conversation, from there. I’d look forward to that possibility.
A question—is beauty ‘gettable’?
People whoe live and breathe the creative process in its most native form aren’t lookign for a conclusion necessarily, i feel, but the invitation to dive in and get lost and mess up adn see what happens after all of that mucking arund to discover. Do we find beauty? I don’t know if you can quantify it. I know you can feel sometimes in flow, and you are getting to a thing, and you know, and it knows, and it comes and finds you. Maybe that’s the beauty that means the most to me, personally. It’s a conversation.
Now my artist statement talks about that. Art, at its best, is a conversation…
Enter relational art.
Exit relational art.
In a place like Singapore, where so much effort has gone into eliminating uncertainty, the idea of beauty as a prospect rather than an outcome may make people uncomfortable. Was that the intent? I wonder. I guess we pose questions and people respond as they will and do. I’m re-posing it, with this conversation salon.
Beauty is not secured by good planning or sound policy, but perhaps happened up. The chance encounter, serendipity, happenstance. Like a good K-drama opening when someone bumps into you in a hallway and you drop all your papers and bags. Then what? We don’t know. Complexity, for sure.
Vague... but is that not part of it?
Singaporeans I know like to explore how things work, but not always how things feel. That’s tough to do… but thinking about it, that’s all of Asia, though, I guess. And not just here, either. World has become more afraid to talk about thiose things out loud in public. That is why we do this in small, closed ‘containers,’ for conversation salons and the like, it makes it easier, I think, to let go and say what you wanna say even if you don’t know what that even is yet. That’s okay, too.
Beauty resists easy measurement. We have to factor in our Western gaze internal bias, too.
Art isn’t for money (always). It can be for… the sake of it.
Beauty. Order. Cleanliness. Greenery. Balance. Even restraint can have its own quiet elegance.
The Singapore Writers Festival’s engagement with The Prospect of Beauty mattered to me and influenced me in countless ways. Let’s open it up again, that prospect, of showing up for something unexpected and letting a magic moment, if we’re lucky, naturally unfold.
Much has been written about Singapore’s education system, often in terms of achievement and pressure. Less discussed is how education shapes aesthetic judgment—what students learn to notice, admire, or dismiss. When success is too narrowly defined, beauty risks becoming ornamental: something enjoyed after work is done. Make it and make it count, or else. Value comes into play here, too, naturally. What really counts and how it counts is subjective but we are taught to believe that X is more important than Y sometimes, and I would like to challenge those beliefs a little in this open-ended conversation salon for just a few of those of us who choose to opt-in to take part. We start when you say, ‘Let’s do that.’
Are you keen?
Tickets are USD 75, and they come with a copy of the zine, Art & Copy, ‘The Prospect of Beauty,’ a special edition for Singapore guests of our events set to happen in person.
Advance tickets only.
Book before: January 29 at 5PM. Thanks! The meetpoint will be sent to you at that time.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
National Gallery Singapore, National Gallery, Singapore, Singapore
USD 0.00
