With the first Biennale being held in Singapore now, it would be interesting to know how it has impacted or even influenced Singaporeans. With the rising popularity of blogs these couple of years, it is possible to look into the thoughts and feelings of Singaporean’s towards this event. I found these sites most useful and intriguing as these writers play different roles in the Biennale and thus have very different views of how well the event went.
Apart from blogs, there is the podcast which is similar to an audio blog. These podcasts on the Biennale allow an alternative form of expression. In one of the podcast I found, the podcasters went onto the streets of Singapore to interview people on the street how they felt about the Singapore Biennale. Informal interviews like this, as compared to news reports, may be able to get honest rather than politically correct views from the public.
From the previous entry, I included links to some of the artists that wrote about their experience participating in the Singapore Biennale in their personal blog. I thought that it would be interesting and educational if the organizers could get a group of the participating artists and organizers to blog on the Singapore Biennale website about their experiences, from the making to the final product or event. This would give the public more opportunities to learn more about the event and also the process of art making. It would make it more accessible to the masses by placing it on the main website. But sadly, this was missing.
It would also be interesting to see some statistics from the first week of the event too. It would be good if the demographics of visitors are included too, so that the organizers of the event have some statistics to help measure the success of the event.
Websites
1. Roger Christopher McDonald
McDonald is part of the Curatorial Team of the Singapore Biennale 2006 and in his personal blog, he wrote a bit on his thoughts and feelings during the setting up of the event.
2. What Art???
The author blogs about her experience with the Biennale after helping out over the opening weekend. It is interesting to see how someone who is, as she put it, not “highly conversant with art” looks at the exhibits.
I especially found her conclusion about how contemporary artist were irresponsible interesting. Since “they emphasize the experience, show you the final product, but leave you to interpret the process, which could be completely anything.”
3. Singapore Biennale 2005 Exhibition Venue
In this website, one can take a pictorial tour of the exhibition venues, which is a very well thought through selection, which covers a huge part of Singapore. These include religious site, the newest state-of-the-art university campus to historical and culture site.
4. A Photo tour of arts works in some of the venues and the opening day on the 1st September 2006.
5. More photos of arts works from the Biennale in Artnet.
6. Photos of Shigeru Ban and Zaha Hadid’s work in the Biennale.
7. Photos uploaded in Flickr by a group.This group was started as a public area place to share photos and images and thoughts on the Singapore Biennale.
8. Interview with Singapore Biennale 2006’s Artistic Director, Fumio Nanjo.
9. Singapore Biennale Shows ‘Diversity Is Gold’
10. Audiences try out interactive art of Singapore Biennale
Podcast
1. The Wire
Interview done on the streets asking people how they felt about Singapore Biennale.
2. On this site is a list of podcast a group of secondary school students made, reviewing the Singapore Biennale 2006.