Singapore Really Got Nothing To Do?
No!!!
When we decided Mynah would have a newsletter, I foolishly committed to a weekly publishing schedule. The magazine only comes out once every two(?) years so who knows where I found the arrogance.
Mynah has been incredibly busy. Since you last heard from me, we’ve confirmed three new guests for the podcast and edited February’s episode. I listened to that conversation again over the weekend. It’s a good one! Preparations are also underway for the next issue of the print magazine. Watch this space for announcements about our call for pitches and an exciting new opportunity that I can’t talk about just yet.
On top of Mynah and our regular day jobs, we’ve neglected the newsletter because we’ve been busy touching grass. I roll my eyes when people complain about how there’s nothing to do in Singapore. It’s simply not true. The availability of third spaces, especially across classes and mobility needs, could always be better. But there’s still so much going on that getting bored here is very much a skill issue.
Here’s a selection of what I did over the weekend.
A screening of Tsui Hark’s 1993 film Green Snake in celebration of Amanda Lee Koe’s newest novel, Sister Snake. (Amanda spoke with Jeremy Tiang about their experiences as writers and translators in our third issue.) I really enjoyed Sister Snake and I think Mynah readers will too. The screening was hosted by Singapore’s beloved independent cinema The Projector. They turn ten this year!
Filmmaker Kirsten Han, writer Amanda Lee Koe, and actor Oon Shu An in conversation after the film screening. The Projector’s Tenth Anniversary Party is on from 10pm til late this Saturday, 25 January, at their Cineleisure outlet. The Ethos Books edition of Sister Snake on sale at most bookstores around the country. It’s also available internationally from HarperCollins.
Commission Continua, a play by South African theatremakers Noma Yini. Commission Continua is about an archivist confronting the impotence of bureaucratic Commissions of Inquiry for processing some of his country’s most brutal histories. I saw the show with Karen, fellow Mynah editor, and we were absolutely rapt. The performance premiered as part of the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival, an integral platform for innovative performance work from Singapore and around the world. M1 is ending its sponsorship after 21 years, leaving the future of the festival up in the air.
The Singapore Fringe Festival is raising $50,000 to continue running in 2026 and beyond. Donations qualify for tax deductions.
A series of visual arts events under the umbrella of Singapore Art Week. Apart from the colossal (and skippable) international art fair Art SG, I also visited two group shows with Darren, one of Mynah’s other editors. We went to On Paper, a “residency” conducted by giving 20 different artists four sheets of A4 paper to do with what they pleased. We run a print magazine so, naturally, we enjoyed it. On Paper is led by artist Hong Shu-ying and curator Kirti Upadhyaya. (Kirti wrote about the public art in MRT stations for our debut issue!)
Lu Yixin’s response to On Paper. On Paper runs from 17 to 28 January and 5 to 9 February at FARM, #04-20 Waterloo Centre. Lu Yixin, one of the artists, will be leading “A Walk Above the MRT Line” from Waterloo Centre HDB Complex to Fort Canning Centre on Saturday, 25 January.
We also attended The Eye and The Tiger, OH Open House’s art tour held in Adam Park, a huge bungalow that used to be a plantation during the colonial era. OH!’s whole thing is telling alternative stories of Singapore through art. We have a lot in common. Some stand outs were Ezzam Rahman’s site-specific response to an apocryphal story about Raffles tricking the temenggong out of land by employing creative geometry and Chong Kim Chiew‘s work about the New Villages where suspected Communist sympathisers were held during the Malayan Emergency.
OH Open House runs art walks annually.
It was a packed couple of days. I’m hoping to catch some of the Art Week shows I couldn’t get to over the coming weekend. I’ve heard great things about S.E.A. Focus! Honestly, I wish things were more spread out across the year so I could actually see everything. That one not skill issue la, just the laws of physics.
— Ruby
In Case You Missed It
The second episode of The Mynah Podcast, Aren’t We All A Little Nyonya? with Faris Joraimi, is out now. We talked about the history of the terms “Malay” and “Peranakan” in our region. I also bully Faris a little and ask him to faster say if Halimah Yacob is Malay. If you can’t get enough of Faris, check out his weekly column on local and regional history and Raffles Renounced, a volume he co-edited around the (frankly, very weird) time of the Singapore Bicentennial. Our next episode drops at the beginning of February!
The Mynah Podcast is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.