Book: Left to Right – Querying Singapore's Manic Image Factory

Book Preview: Left to Right. Photograph courtesy of Geraldine Kang.

Book Launch: Left to Right (L-R) – Recording Singapore’s Image Factory

A new book Left to Right (L-R), edited and published by Geraldine Kang and Kenneth Tay brings together 53 entries by artists, curators and writers based in Singapore and beyond. Each entry features a maximum 200-word response to selected lens-based image(s) produced in or of Singapore. Coupled with additional conversations with artists and researchers around the issue of image making and marking, L-R is an invitation to a meaningful pause against the onslaught of images produced in the jubilee year of 2015. As an alternative image bank, L-R may be read as a record of our complicities and anxieties surrounding Singapore’s image factory.

Foreword

Left to Right began as an introspective reflex to the SG50 bubble: a sudden surge of induced remembering, and a flurry of activities and special projects in the name of national solidarity. The demise of Singapore’s first Prime Minister midway through the year found itself a curious and unsuspecting interlocutor to the year’s celebrations, adding a dash of trepidation and reality in the lead-up to August 2015. As a society obsessed with creating and burying images, it is in this moment that taking a meaningful pause over images produced in Singapore is timely, if not much needed.

Hoping to serve as an alternate image bank in print, this project involves individuals within the editors’ immediate circles — artists, writers, curators, academics, friends — to select lens-based (i.e. photography and video stills) images made in and about Singapore, and more specifically images that they each had no part in. These images are culled from a plethora of genres and modes of production, including artworks, archival materials, advertisements and amateur photography. The images are in turn paired with written entries of up to 200 words each.

The title of the publication is a reference to the captions that are regularly encountered in group photographs: “from left to right”, or sometimes simply abbreviated as “(L-R)”. It also alludes to directions of reading, writing and moving. Think of this publication as a survey of thoughts and anxieties from a group of people who are sometimes frustrated, sometimes complicit, but always concerned with the state of Singapore’s image factory.

Entries by Adeline Kueh, Alexander Yang, Amanda Lee Koe, SongMing Ang, BAN-FAM (Vanessa Ban & Andrea Fam), Bruce Quek, Charmaine Toh, Cheong Kah Kit, Chris Yap Wooi-Hoe, Chua Chye Teck, Chun Kai Qun, Daniel Hui, Debbie Ding, Erica Lai, Gilles Massot, Heman Chong, Ho Rui An, Ho Tzu Nyen, Janice Loo, Jason Wee, Jennifer Teo, Joleen Loh, Jonathan Tan, June Yap, Justin Zhuang, Kamiliah Maimon-Bahdar, Kathleen Ditzig, Kenneth Feinstein, Kent Chan, Kin Chui, Koh Nguang How, Jiekai Liao, Lim Qinyi, Loo Zihan, Luca Lum, Lucy Davis, Mark Wong, Martin Constable, Melvin Tan, Michael Lee, Ng Xi Jie (Salty Thunder), Nurul H. A. Rashid, Philipp Aldrup, Robert Zhao Renhui, Shubigi Rao, Silke Schmickl, The Saturday Projects (Jolene Lee, Zi Hao Wong), Ngiap Heng Tan, Tse Hao Guang, Verena Tay, Ruobing Wang, Wong Bing Hao, and Zhuang Wubin. Conversations with Homa Shojaie, Mike Hj Chang, and Yeo Su-Jan.

The book is scheduled to launch on 6th April 2016 at Objectifs, Singapore.

Pre-orders receive a *free* fresnel magnifier strip. Email [email protected] to place your orders. Books are retailing at SGD$35 a piece, SGD$25 for students.

Launch Event Details: https://www.facebook.com/events/1678291802440881/

Left to Right Specifications

Edited by: Geraldine Kang and Kenneth Tay
Designed by: Currency
ISBN: 978-981-09-7625-5
Paperback, 288 printed pages
110mm x 148mm x 22.5mm
Edition of 500