The Comment Book: capturing an impulse

As part of the Singapore Arts Festival, I recently hunted down an outdoor sculptural exhibit which was advertised as next door to the Raffles City shopping mall. This piece is a series of columns formed a grid of towers - an architectural and transparent maze that the audience could walk around it, look through it and even move through it.

Each column was constructed out of a wire beams approximately 3 to 4 metres high that had been wrapped in a clear plastic cord stretched around and around the column spiralling up creating a sense of tension. Between these clear columns, a black fabric tape had been seemingly randomly stretched back and forth to create another series of barriers and openings that directed the viewer into the maze.

As I spiralled around the sculptural piece, slightly disappointed that this was all it was, I became aware that a young woman was watching me. She was a festival volunteer, a guardian of the sculpture, of university age, sitting at a collapsible table next to a banner advertising the festival delights. She waved a greeting and called out informing me that “you can walk through it, you know”.

I accepted her invitaton and went to enter into the maze. She was surprised that I was actually going to do it. After I’d walked the maze and had taken a couple of photos, I approached the woman. We entered into a conversation about the piece, the artist and why / how she found herself there as a volunteer.

She asked me whether I would like to make a comment in the comment book. She showed me an artist diary with black pages and a spiral spine. She had two thick artistic markers – one silver and one gold ink. I was surprised that this public artwork has a volunteer guarding it and a comment book.

I ask the young woman who read the comments - Was it a part of the festival process, wound the artist read them or the festival directors or wound some be published or was it a way for the organisers to validate the expense of the piece to the bean counter – who would gauge the success of the piece on the nature of the comments. She was unsure whether anybody would actually ever look at the comments book after the festival

We started to read some of the other comments and drawings together, delighting in the ecletic mix of ramblings. She realised that a lot of the work has been completed by the other volunteers passing their time and boredom doodling in the book. This lead to further discussion on the reasons why people volunteer. She attended a local university where she studied economics – Volunteering was a compulsory component of her course, but she liked the arts and had chosen to volunteer for this festival.

Finally I added my own comment to the book.

We discovered that neither of us were locals but both knew where the other had come from. The last thing we did was to introduce ourselves, say hello and parted ways with a smile.

It is my conversation with this woman from Penang as a volunteer and custodian of the comments book that captured my attention for the rest of the day... Unfortunately, I’ve unforgotten her name.

A few days later I entered another small art exhibition at Sculpture Square where the artist was attending to her own enquiry desk. She initiated another conversation about her comments book. I was starting to see a pattern. An idea started to take shape. Let's see where the idea takes me.

Crust: Capture an impulse

"The dignity and value of a man is not in his labour or abilities, it is in his worth as human being."

from Bob Geldof - "Is that it?" (1986)

I've been kicking this concept for a play around for nearly twenty years since I first started in theatre. It kepts changing as I incorporate new interests and draw on new theatrical experiences, but the general scenario has remained the same.

The original seed:

On a quiet night, a group of people in a bar decide that forming a band might bring meaning into their lives. With little talent and no experience, the idea of the band rises to heights of excitement before falling apart out of frustration all in the course of one night. The group finally breaks up sighting artistic differences as the reason for their break up, not being able to agree on a band name or music style to perform. Each character looking for different things from the band.

Notes behind the idea.

I liked the idea that people are often culturally identified or framed by their occupation or what they do for work? Take the quint-essential phrase, what do you do for a living? and ask do you make generalised observations or judgements on people based on their answer to this question. Do we categorise people’s intelligence, morals, values, dignity, ambitions, dreams through our knowledge and expectations of that job.