AR_CHV/ /FVR

I:★

In one of the most startling scenes of Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, the elusive writer Benno von Archimboldi stands under the night sky with his wife Ingeborg, and she tells him that all of the light that reaches them from the stars is dead, that it was cast millions of years ago, before anything on their world, this Earth, existed. “It’s the past, we’re surrounded by the past, everything that no longer exists or exists only in memory or guesswork is there now, above us, shining on the mountains and the snow and we can’t do anything to stop it.”

One afternoon, I came across Isabella Ong’s Lucy in the Sky With Debris when I visited the Objectifs gallery with a friend. Curated by Seet Yun Teng, the work focused on the issue of space debris and was presented in two parts. Alongside a kinetic installation titled “Errant Stars” was an exhibition of research material hewing closer to what might be called research-based art.

I was especially intrigued by the latter section. In one of the essays within Claire Bishop’s sterling Disordered Attention, the author identifies a break from narrative linearity in research-based art that echoes the rhizomatic structure of knowledge that characterises our technologically organised world. Research-based art lies in the conflation between, as Bishop puts it, search and research. Bishop also deftly identifies spectatorship as a crucial pivot around which such artworks turn, in a process I have always struggled to articulate despite my own fascination with it. Essentially, research-based art invites the viewer as co-researcher.

In my perhaps more idealistic and simplistic view, research-based art is particularly attractive for this premise of invitation, laying bare the inevitable processes of reading and writing – search and research – that we undertake subconsciously in our daily lives in any case, as we search for who we are and where we belong. It is

a form of art that is archival in nature, yet also sharply aware that it takes both reader and text for an archive to come alive.

Many years ago, I attempted to pen a short story titled “Distant Star”. It was something of a fable, with just two characters who were on a seemingly endless and futile journey, guided by the light of the single surviving star in the night sky. The title was stolen from another Roberto Bolaño book, even if the content of my short story had nothing to do with the novel, which was a much more violent and dramatic narrative concerning something of a literary terrorist. In contrast, my attempt at fiction was naïve, simplistic, and certainly not worth reading. I’m not sure what motivated me to write. I think I was so taken by the title of Bolaño’s book that the simple phrase inspired me to try. I had a vision in my mind of the two wanderers who would keep wandering, driven by the blind belief that the image itself would be enough to sustain the tale.

With nothing left to read, the two wanderers venture towards the star, following the only direction available to them. The stars are direction. We make star maps to give the night sky definition, but also to navigate the world, and to determine the prescriptions of fate. In some sense, is astrology not simply the mastery of that which is predictable but yet to happen? Is cosmology not simply the understanding of the inescapable fate of our whole reality? We live in a spectral archive, one that once deciphered speaks ahead of time. Everything has already been written. The fate of the universe is in hand. Everything possible is accounted for.

The last time I had seriously thought about the issue of space debris was when I first read Planetes, and also watching the animated series that adapted this hard science fiction manga by Yukimura Makoto. Planetes focuses on the lives of a crew of space debris collectors. Unlike many other more grandiose or fantastical space fictions, it takes a more grounded vision of the future, though one that is nonetheless aspirational in outlook. Mankind has reached space, found a way to live outside of the Earth’s atmosphere. At the same time, the series tackles the exploitative costs of such technological advancement, the mundane terror of capitalism, and the persistence of class inequality. The utopic veneer to this fantasy falls away quickly.

There is something about this contrast that beguiles me. I know that there is a type of meaning in the grandiose scale of the universe, insuperable, unchangeable, slowly tipping towards extinction. Yet in the individual stories of these small lives, there are new stories, new meanings, things that matter only in their relatively microscopic context. Politics, romance, social injustice, friendship – humans, in being so infinitesimal are also infinitely significant in the larger scope of outer space. In the vast, predictable decay of the universe, against the calculable path of the stars and the unchanging revolutions of the planets, we are like that which escapes the archive, the unpredictable and irrecuperable elements, the lost meanings and inexpressible truths – or as Ingeborg explains, that which exists only in the guesswork now.

Perhaps this explains the choice of the title of Planetes, a tad ironic given the lack of planets outside of Earth in its story. It gestures at the etymological origins of the term, from the Greek, meaning to wander. In some sense, the story casts humans as wanderers in this vast space, drifting in the greater destiny of the universe. We interact with this massive predetermination, creating elements of unpredictability, stories that matter only to ourselves, meanings that will disappear in the universe’s tomorrow like ghosts in the wind.

The manga series Orb: On the Movements of the Earth by Uoto also looks at our relationship with the cosmos, albeit in a way perhaps inverted to that in Planetes. Taking place across the 15^th century, it cycles across a number of characters who find hope and inspiration in trying to prove a heliocentric model of the galaxy, against the pronouncements of the church. Essentially, it is a harrowing tale about the relentless persecution of these heretics and their pursuit of scientific truth. In Planetes, humans pursue personal meaning and identity against the vast backdrop of space. In Orb, they seek the secrets of the universe while trapped in the conflicts and contradictions of culture and history.

The story of Orb is a story of memory. Its plot is built around a type of legible linearity, that it is possible for one thing to inevitably lead to another – though not without great costs. It is through a chain of research, storytelling, and sacrifice that the science happens. The series indulges in this fantastical conceit, charting a careful path through its fictional history both narratively and thematically. One of the characters describes being able to write and read as miraculous, an act of crossing space and time in being able to engage with a conversation from long ago or to spur action far into the future – the light from long ago, so to speak. In another instance, a poem by Lucretius is used to settle a matter of debt, or rather to call upon a favour to pass information on. A book, written almost by chance, smuggled into survival, passed on via an audacious gambit. Multiple chance encounters, multiple deaths, a single thin line through which all of this could have happened.

Science and knowledge, particularly from this historical perspective, is a massive archive that humanity adds to as a whole. And the archive is miraculous: it speaks outside of its own time, and more importantly, in a sense it is already defined totally – it is all the knowledge of the cosmos. We are merely accessing it through research, filling the gaps in our understanding.

But seen in this way, Orb’s greatest artistic accomplishment is historiographic. In being almost excessively self-aware about the acts of writing and storytelling that enable the science, it also admits to the fantastical nature of its linear conceit. That is, this story happens so narratively precisely that it could only have happened in fiction, yet in the grand narratives of science and human history, it is the gaps in these archives at play that enable – perhaps necessitate – fiction. For all that is known and accounted for, there are such gaps of meaning and experience, such things we can never recover – such things we must discover and imagine, tell and render anew.

In 2025, I revisit Orb through the anime adaptation, and I am reminded of perhaps its most staggering scene, in which a young scientist is confronted by an inquisitor. The inquisitor expresses great perplexity. He cannot understand why anyone would throw away the chance at a decent life and the chance to go to heaven just for the belief in something that has so little evidentiary support, is disparaged by all voices of authority, and will presumably not improve anyone’s life. He doesn’t realise the irony that they sit on opposite sides of the same coin that is blind faith. In a fit of bewilderment, he asks: “Can’t you see how that is madness?”

The young scientist doesn’t protest. He simply says: “You’re right. But you could also call it ‘love’.”

II: The Memory Architects

Outline

 The Memory Architects is a research-based creative project that considers takes the archive as its subject, exploring a diverse range of archives in Singapore to contemplate our nuanced ways of remembering and the structures of memory. It is a multi-genre literary project that is primarily presented as literary essays, but will also feature an online presentation and participatory events.

The project proceeds from the essays, which employ a subjective approach to the archive supported by research, presenting the multiplicity of the archive in its various possible forms. This is accomplished by surveying a variety of archives in Singapore, with a looser definition of the term, studying the concept of an archive across different subjects and critical lenses.

In doing so, the project travels through different facets of Singapore’s history and culture, drawing on various pockets of the archives and collections to contemplate history, memory, and our ways of remembering. The project finds archives in places beyond library shelves and specialist collections. Thus, The Memory Architects presents the archive as being more than just a repository of information, but also transient and textual in nature – to be read critically and interpreted, in their unstable nature in accumulation, transformation, and decay. Every archive is a moment. Every archive is a person. Every archive is a text.

Project Details

The project will mainly take the form of a series of essays that deal with different types of archives and different themes. Broadly speaking, the project would draw on the collections for historical records of particular spaces, research on cultural history, visual artefacts such as photographs and film posters.

I list these essays or chapters below in more detail. With each, I also include broad research areas that would give a sense of what type of materials I would be drawing on from the collections.

Natural Histories

• From natural history drawings to contemporary art, through flora and fauna extinct and endangered, science and science history, and even across the physical archives of spaces such as the Singapore Botanic Gardens, this chapter explores the ecological archives and histories of Singapore.
• Research areas: Local ecology, natural history, botany science history, natural history drawings, history of spaces such as the Singapore Botanic Gardens and Singapore Zoo

Visual Cultures

• This chapter is a study of film history and the film industry in Singapore, but also extends beyond the filmic texts, looking into movie posters, cinemas, film collections, and film restoration.
• Research areas: Singapore film history, Singapore’s cinemas, film posters, restored films

Transmigrations

• A contemplation of the dead in terms of funerary practices and processions, but also ghost stories and hauntings, this chapter explores the ways we memorialise the departed and understand the afterlife.
• Research areas: Records of funerary practices, histories of local cemeteries, ghosts in fiction from literature to film, local folklore

Memory Buildings

• From museums and galleries to stories of architectural conservation, this chapter is a consideration of archival spaces and spaces as archives in themselves.
• Research areas: Historic buildings in Singapore, architectural heritage and conservation, museum histories, curatorial practices

Latent Cartographies

• A study of the different maps of Singapore, historical and contemporary, from neighbourhoods to MRT lines, across different formats and purposes, this chapter looks at the archives of pathways, routes, areas, and spaces.
• Research areas: Historical maps of Singapore, transport maps, design archives, road names and histories

The Archivists

• This chapter looks at book collections, from public libraries to personal ones, from historical collections to current ones. As a concluding chapter, this also considers archives more critically, reflecting more generally on their various forms and how they structure our acts of remembering.
• Research areas: Singapore’s publishing industry, library and information science, Singapore’s libraries and various collections

Overall, the project is a broad survey of different forms of archives through a literary form. While examining different facets of Singapore’s history and culture, it also explores the diverse possibilities of the archive. This self-reflexive approach would also invite people to think critically about archives in general and contemplate on broader themes of history and memory. By examining a wide array of themes and drawing upon [redacted].

III: timeandtide

Sometime in 2024, I made a submission for a research-centric creative project that focuses on the cultural histories of Singapore while stretching the boundaries and definitions of what an archive is. In Singapore, the questions of identity and memory are constantly explored in art, which is unsurprising given our heavily diasporic population, rapid and aggressive modernisation, and the legacy of colonialism. There is often in the literary and artistic canon of my country the issue of how to locate ourselves in the wider world.

It is a type of genealogical drive, this search for identity and belonging is a process of sense-making. Much like the characters of Orb hopefully pursuing the model of heliocentrism, most if not all people try to figure out their place in the universe. It is why we are artists, scientists, dreamers, and lovers. My interest in the archive proceeded from such a drive.

Much of my writing work has an archaeological nature. The first time this became apparent to me was when I undertook a writing residency at the Singapore Botanic Gardens. I was working on a project that would futilely attempt to connect personal histories with those of the Gardens. One of the first things I did was to quickly dive into our family photos. A few years ago, my mother had thrown out a large fraction of these that had been sitting dormant in the cupboard, as if to say, one should not give in to nostalgia. This was reasonable. Many of the photographs had not seen the light of day in years. Who was ever going to look through these again?

I had known that we used to visit the Gardens as a family. I was searching for these stories and trace connections. To my relief, I did find the photographic evidence that I was looking for, but there was so much that was missing from them. They felt distant, alien, from a time I never knew and would never understand. It was as if, having lay dormant for several years, these photographs no longer had value as artifacts of memory. And the gaps in this personal archive, they only became more pronounced. How could I connect these to my own history and my project? I panicked, flipping through the albums anxiously, searching for anything that could connect me to the Gardens.

It was then that I realised that the true nature of archives is their otherness. It is the distance between the present and a lost moment, between one subjectivity and another, one knowledge system and the next,

between our multiple selves,
between me and you.

The tacit goal of “The Memory Architects” was to destabilise the definition of an archive. Through my earlier with the garden, I had come to realise that the Botanic Gardens are an archive in the way that all gardens are archives. In an aesthetic sense, they reflect a particular curation and subjectivity. Botanic gardens have a further quality in that they are research gardens and so they are repositories of science, accruing and organising large volumes of knowledge in their lab, libraries, and people. Above all, the Singapore Botanic Gardens contain so many cultural and social histories, as well as personal remembrances.

Similarly, could a cemetery be thought of as an archive? Or an old hard drive?

A person?

The proposal was rejected, which brought surprising disappointment – surprising because I already knew that it wasn’t very good, and I had somewhat expected the organising committee to decline. I breathe something of a sigh of relief at the rejection. Sometimes, the unattained aspiration is more comforting than the prospect of being able to work on something exciting. Besides, I’ve produced so much unsuccessful, abandoned, or rejected work that I now have a veritable library of such instances. I’ve written time and again about incomplete or abandoned projects, or used them to create comedic stories. I occasionally wonder if there is a name for this subgenre of literary or artistic fantasy.

Nevertheless, I still hesitate to look at “Distant Star” again. A part of me is afraid to. I would have to see how badly written it was, to unearth some embarrassing truth of a former, immature self that might somehow be too much to bear. I wonder why it holds such power. What harm could it possibly do to me? I don’t know. I think of it sitting in that folder on my computer, and then I think that surely many archives are imbued with emotions like these, moments of joy and guilty consciences, instances of shame, all of which exceed reason and escape deduction, the excess that eludes the readable surface.

In April 2025, I saw Jia Zhangke’s Caught by the Tides, a wonderful drama film drawing from 22 years of his work. The concept was devised during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the director realised there was no way to work normally as a filmmaker. Caught by the Tides is mostly assembled with footage from across his career, utilising the actual passage of time in its creation.

There is a similar accumulation of time in Twin Peaks, the television and sometimes film series created by Mark Frost and David Lynch. The series returns with its third season 25 years after the last canonical piece of media, with most of the original cast returning to reprise their roles. It leans into the passage of time. These actors have aged, and so have their characters. Deviating from the nostalgic premise of Hollywood revivals of classic series such as Terminator and Jurassic Park, which testify only to the hollowness of memory, here the returning actors appear as characters bearing the weight of time.

A similar effect is also seen in Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, a massive film undertaking with photography completed just over a decade. This more direct approach intentionally and systematically leverages the years, presenting the actual weight of time through the vector of ghostly cinematic presences.

I like to identify a trilogy of films in Jia Zhangke’s later works, being Mountains May Depart (2015), Ash is Purest White (2018), and now, Caught by the Tides (2024). These films are not officially a trilogy, and they do not feature characters that carry over from one film to the next, but they are something of a thematic trilogy of time. In Mountains May Depart, the narrative skips from 1999 to 2014 and eventually to a slightly more futuristic 2025. From narrative time to personal and dramatic, Ash is Purest White interrogates the gangster film genre by charting the full arc of two lives, pitting the archetypal against the mundane.

And here, in Caught by the Tides, he turns inwards, sifting through his body of work and his own memories. I wondered what had gone through Jia’s mind as he worked on the film. I can almost see him in my mind’s eye, perhaps a cigarette in his hand, the dim glow of a screen, scribbles on sheets of paper, folders and folders of digitised film. In looking into his own past, how many lost things must he have found again? How many things must seem strange and uncanny to him now? The archive bristles. There are such inconsistencies, such gaps. It’s him, but one that he doesn’t recognise.

Would I have his courage, the courage to look into my past and be confronted by the otherness of the self? We are each ghostly in nature, immaterial and vacuous, projected identities, misremembered things. We are each an archive. And if we accept that the archive’s true nature is otherness, then we must also accept the otherness of the self. Looking back into one’s past can surprise, frighten, like seeing a ghost.

We age as archives do. Their fidelity shifts with time. They drift further and further from their point of origin, as they await their reader, the perpetual variable, the instable shape, who will encounter their unique language, finding only echoes. And so it is that we too find unfamiliar selves and too much data, stories distorted and truths fabricated, as we collect each second, each minute, every single year.

Perhaps our true substance is time.

Nevertheless,

To reach for the other is to read them, to try to know them is to make sense of the things that comprise their person, every page, every word, every image, the structure of the archive. How could two souls ever find each other? It’s a fool’s errand. The distance between two people is insurmountable. Yet, every archive is activated only in the presence of another – archive and archivist, art and artist, library and librarian, love and lover. It takes two. Every person only makes sense in relation to another. And so, against impossibility, against fate, against the overwhelming distance between each other, we blindly believe that we can find each other, that we can truly know someone, that we don’t have to be alone. The knowing is less important. It is understanding the distance that matters.

I don’t let myself indulge in flights of fancy, to daydream, to let myself imagine a future for us – out of fear, certainly. But there is one fantasy I allow myself, at least. In it, we’re building our library together, adding to our shelves as we learn about each other, the collision of our selves. I wonder which writers from my collection you’d dislike. I see those in yours that I don’t recognise. I imagine our two languages filling out the shelves like a kind of pointillist painting. The shape of the worlds between us and the maps to charter together – two distinct archives becoming something new.

I want ours to be a story of joy.

Tomorrow I will say to you that I would like to get to know you, understanding that this task is a life’s work. Tomorrow I will tell you perhaps of how I fell in love with you. Tomorrow I will admit that I want to try to do the impossible, to never know who you are just as I will never know myself. Tomorrow, tomorrow, I give you this promise. If all that is possible has been written, then we must choose to write the impossible, to find the belief in the granular arcs of meaning, where nothing is predictable. I will pursue unreason, I will choose to unravel logic and sense, and I will carefully tend to the distance between our worlds, as we all do, in our quest for connection, yes, we believe and hope, and I suppose you could call it empathy, resilience, courage, or you could call it faith, like that of religion or the leaps that follow scientific intuition, or you could call it obligation, responsibility, ethics, in family, in community, in society, or perhaps you could call it folly, a mistake, blindness, to believe that we could ever know something of the unknowable that we could reach the other how much work it takes how much conviction I don’t know if I have the courage to give myself a chance to give us a chance madness perhaps yes I suppose you could indeed call it madness or idiocy recklessness madness yes madness but I’d like to call it joy

I’d like to call it love