Juria Toramae 1
Details
Juria Toramae 1
Metadata (MODS) |
|
|---|---|
| Titles | Juria Toramae 1: Clip 1 |
| Name | Juria Toramae |
| Name | Dr. Joanne Leow |
| Type of Resource | sound recording-nonmusical |
| Genre | Interview |
| Identifier | Interview |
| Identifier | Juria Toramae interview Clip 1 |
| Abstract | Juria Toramae discusses 'diary' style of her work documenting Singapore's islands. She talks about the inaccessibility of many of the islands. |
| Extent | 5:25 |
| Form | sound recording |
| Note | Juria Toramae: Hi, I’m Juria, and I’m a visual artist. I’ve been doing the surveys with a group of people for like three years, and I’ve been trying to find a way to actually talk about the experience. And because the research that I’ve done for the works before that, for Points of Departure and Temporality, was all based on the archives and also field trips, I wanted to put everything together like a diary. So that’s how the form came about, basically. [0:29] Joanne Leow: What do you think the diary—the form of a diary gives you more than all the other mediums that you were working with before, when you were thinking of archives or photography? What did it help you express that maybe was harder to express? [0:39] Juria Toramae: I think it was more personal, and it was—it’s to aid the reader on how to imagine the place. Because if I write an informative essay with all the biodiversity lists, like what NParks do or what all the blocks do, it’s quite dry. But if I take you to the place through my words and how I see things, for example how the weather was like and the things that I’ve heard about the place, then it becomes like a grandma telling her story (laughing), you know, like your mom telling you a story, so that’s how I felt, and that’s how I like stories anyway. I wanted it to be more accessible, like very accessible and easily understandable. [1:22] Joanne Leow: That’s a lovely image that you brought up, that you want it to be like a story, like you’re trying to tell a story, because sometimes when we walk in these spaces we don’t often think of narrative, we don’t think that there’s a story. So, what was your experience like, then? Why did you feel it was important to go out into that space, and what did you encounter there that made you want to do this? [1:40] Juria Toramae: So, I have to tell you how I started. I came to Singapore eight years ago and I thought, “hey, it’s an island, I need to, you know, go around the island.” And then I realized there was a lot of…a lot of part of the island was unaccessible[sic], and that was fine. Then I started looking up the archives, I started joining heritage groups, walks, and you know everybody tells me something, like “oh you know there was this island here, there was this island there,” but all these people are at least forty and above. The ones that are young, they don’t know anything, just like me, back then. So I dug up more pictures and photos and I found these Facebook groups that has…they would just post pictures of their family going, for example, to Pulau Hantu, or even Palua Satumu, or, you know, villages of Pulau Sudong and Pulau Seking and Pulau Semakau, and I was so fascinated. So, I wanted to go there, but I realized that I can’t, like half of them, they’re either restricted or became a landfill or something like that. Anyway, I got upset sometime in 2012, because then I found out about the Singapore Memory Project. They were basically collecting pictures to keep them for people. And I thought that was kind of like, you know, the whole state and government and everything has not been documenting these spaces properly, and then have been razing and redeveloping and all that. How could you simply just say that you want to take these pictures to keep it for the next generation? I mean, for me it was—it felt like a slap. But then a lot of people contributed, a lot of people were very…they found this, I don’t know, connection through this nostalgia or, you know, just contributing and finding other people who are contributing as well. So, because of that, I thought, I wanted to bring these memories together, especially of the coast and the islands, because mostly all this project has been quite island-inward, like it’s all about Chinatown, or maybe somewhere in town, or some building or something like that, but it’s rarely about the islands. So that’s how I started; I started picking up pictures, and then I started trying to locate them on the coast. And then—it was so hard in the beginning because your only clue is the background. If it’s the north shore, the northern shore, then you have to look for Ubin. Or maybe, you know, that big hill in Johor, or maybe Tekong, but Tekong has changed a lot, and you don’t see it very well. And then if it’s a southern island it’s even harder. So, I found this group and I asked them if I could actually join them during their intertidal trips, and they said “okay.” And, yeah, that’s how I started. I started going with them, and then we went to the reefs because they do their surveys and for me it was the closest way to get to some restricted islands. I’d use my zoom and try to take pictures and then they scream at me, they’re like “(gasp!) if NPA or whatever, the coast guard, like the police coastal guard, finds out we might get arrested!” I’m like, “I think they’re just being careful, I don’t think that happens.” But, you know, I shouldn’t be zooming toward, for example, Pulau Sudong because that’s live firing area. Or especially Tekong, you know, something like that, so I try not to be that visible. But some of those shots didn’t work out because…I mean, for many reasons. Either the sea wall was just too high, or there were just too many ships, or the photographs that I had did not match the space, things like that. So, there was a lot of variables that made the project very difficult. |
| Access Condition | Contact Dr. Joanne Leow |
| Subject Geographic | Pacific Ocean |
| Subject Hierarchical Geographic | Asia--Singapore------Singapore |
| Subject Local Name | ----Fences--Islands--Photography--Re/development--Pacific Ocean-- |