Oxley Cultural Centre

Mon, 6 Apr 2015
3 min read
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38 Oxley Road
38 Oxley Road

So there are calls for Lee Kuan Yew’s home to be turned into a heritage site.

As always, I’ve got a better idea, ladies and gentlemen: Oxley Cultural Centre (OCC).

OCC will be an arts and cultural centre at which artists will stay at for residencies between a month to three months.

It’ll follow the same concept as Toji Cultural Centre, where I had such a fruitful time during my residency back in 2013.

Food and lodging will be provided by the OCC, which will have a National Arts Council-appointed manager/administrator to handle finance matters, maintenance arrangements, residency rosters, events such as poetry readings, etc; a part-time chef to provide lunches and dinners for the artists; and other support staff, where required.

Rationale:

  1. “When I’m dead, demolish it,” said the man, in reference to his home.
     
    But what would happen after is a foregone conclusion: A multi-storey condominium called 38 Oxley in its place – not exactly the most fitting tribute to one of the founding fathers of Singapore.
  2. If we preserve it as it is, it’d be an insult to Lee, who specifically asked for it to be demolished.
     
    His rationale for demolishing it was, ostensibly, to prevent an Ozymandian ending to a place where he must’ve had many happy memories.
     
    “I’ve seen other houses,” he said. “Nehru’s, Shakespeare’s – they become a shambles after a while.”
  3. This is the same man who once said that “poetry is a luxury we cannot afford”.
     
    Well, we can afford it now, after all that he and the old guard have done to build the nation – many thanks to them for that.
  4. Right now, we’ve only got Centre42, the Writer-in-the-Gardens Residency Programme and the Pulau Ubin Artists-In-Residency Programme.
     
    In the case of the latter two, they don’t exactly provide spaces in which artists can reside for an extended period of time to work.
     
    Extended interactions are important; artists work in solitude for much of the time – sometimes, not by choice, because the profession is as such.
     
    More opportunities for working closely with other artists – at residencies and festivals for example, where artists work and live together – will help broaden perspectives and deepen understanding about crafts that take years to hone.
  5. To pay tribute to the man in a respectful manner, we keep the house as it is, so there is room for memory and nostalgia, but we put it to another, better use – putting soul into Singapore through the arts and literature.

After all, Lee was always one for pragmatism. Putting 38 Oxley to practical purpose – as the OCC, in higher service of the nation – would’ve been what he’d’ve wanted.

Find out more about the Toji Cultural Foundation, and read what others have to say about their Toji Cultural Centre residency experiences.

QLRS: Dusty Gems

Mon, 11 Aug 2014
2 min read
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Since 2011, when I reviewed Tan Tarn How’s Six Plays, I’ve made it a point to review a Singaporean literary text for each Jul issue of the Quarterly Literary Review, Singapore (QLRS).

This year, I’ve reviewed Noon at Five O’Clock: The Collected Short Stories of Arthur Yap (Edited by Angus Whitehead).

Dusty Gems
Collection highlights little-known area of Arthur Yap’s work

Edited by Angus Whitehead, an assistant professor of English literature at the National Institute of Education in Singapore, Noon at Five O’Clock: The Collected Short Stories of Arthur Yap is a volume of eight short stories that comes on the back of The Collected Poems of Arthur Yap (NUS Press, 2013). Both volumes arrive eight years after Yap’s passing — a timely reminder of the 1983 Cultural Medallion winner’s contribution to Singapore’s arts scene in a milieu currently predisposed to lauding the “pioneer generation”.

While Yap’s poetry is synonymous with the Singapore literary canon, it is the mention of his short stories that pulls the reader up short: the average literature reader in my generation, and later, is probably unaware that Yap wrote fiction. Thus, kudos must go to Whitehead for his imagination and insight in tracking down and putting together this volume, so that the breadth of Yap’s talents can be fully appreciated by a wider audience.

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