Making Stories: Week 2 of the Singapore Writers Festival
If my first week at the Singapore Writers Festival was about the importance of changing the ways stories are told, week two’s takeaway was how we can make it happen which is, to simply start and to use whatever means we have available to us, no matter how strange it may seem. My week started early at the What if “I” is Not Me panel organised by ART:DIS in collaboration with Jazz Association on Thursday where I was startled by how powerful and effective anyone’s poetry can be with just a smidge of support. The result of a closed door workshop happening over three sessions for socially marginalised individuals, the event was as intersectional as it was interdisciplinary, featuring a fascinating mix of cross-cultural poetry and performances. Undoubtedly, the highlight of the session was for me Sonia Serrenade’s The Believers where she skilfully weaves folklore into our daily lives in a beautiful story about her father’s fleeting encounter with fate which is both haunting and heartwarming. In response to the father’s question as to why he didn’t cross the river that would take him to the banks of the afterlife the way his brother-in-law had, she asserts through her stirring tale that:
“This river is the tears of people who are crying for your brother-in-law. No one is crying for you, instead, they are praying for you to go back. That’s why you can’t cross that river because there are no tears for you.”
Touched by her faith and the way she saw magic within her everyday, I couldn’t help but to shed a generous amount of tears (which is in my defence, not at all at odds with the message of her story and excusable in this instance).
Following from the cross-medium literary experience delivered by ART:DIS, Aditi x Nilesh’s performance at the Festival Village on Friday night was also similarly enchanting. Despite the contrasting scales and tuning systems used within the Eastern and Western musical traditions, the duo had blended them together so dreamily that it effortlessly filled the night with an otherworldly air of harmony. On top of opening my eyes to how powerful collaborations can be even if they seem to be at odds with one another, my biggest takeaway from their set is how often language is used as an excuse to shut ourselves out from other cultures. Given that I could recite lyrics in both Japanese and Korean without knowing a lick of what I’m saying and still feel something from the melodies and the ways the sounds feel on my lips, what reason did I have not to enjoy this expression of their selves that they had put their heart and soul into?
In a similar vein, the SWF SunSets: DJ Sessions set preceding Aditi x Nilesh’s performance by Ken Tan (whom I just learnt is also the Senior Director of Programming and Producing at Arts House Limited, Singapore, where he oversees the Singapore Writers Festival among several other festivals) also made me think about how a turn-table session can be read as a platform for worlds to collide through the mix and match of songs and genres. However, I do wish that the performance was more literary. Don’t get me wrong, he played many of my favourite songs and his transitions between them were smashing but since we’re at a festival dedicated to the literary arts, perhaps the current popularity of audiobooks could be looked into by mixing soundbites from a selection of narrated titles into the tunes he had selected to better distinguish his performance from the filler festival music. Given that the week is peppered with many other inter-disciplinary performances such as the absolutely delightful adaptation of Heidi Shamsuddin’s Nusantara: A Sea of Tales by Orkestra Sri Temasek where traditional Malay instruments like the gambus, rebana and marwas, and Western instruments like the violin and accordion are brought together to re-tell Malay folklore in a cross-cultural manner, this feels rather like untapped potential.
Musical performances aside, there were lots of opportunities to get hands on at the festival as well. I myself was lucky enough to sit in for two fully-subscribed workshops despite being slow to the game due to no-shows. That worked out well for me but please, people need to stop signing up for things without committing to them. Aside from being common courtesy, it really makes things difficult for the organisers and can also really dishearten the people who are putting themselves out there just to share what they love.
The first of the two was Bengkel Reka Wayang Kulit dan Bercerita Wayang Puppet-making and Storytelling Workshop with the extremely sweet Is Yuniarto where we saw how pop culture can be adapted into traditional Javanese art with a mere change in perspective (i.e. thinking from a 2D vantage point ala the Egyptian hieroglyphs and not the front-facing 3D stances we are used to). On top of sharing with us how he had brought the Avengers and Darth Vader into Wayang Kulit’s shadow realms he had also specially made a golden batik puppet out of the Merlion for the program. Inspired by him, I went cross-cultural as well and made a puppet out of a Kappa.
Similarly, Look Ma I Wrote A Game! — Game Writing Fundamentals by Ubisoft game writers Zec Chua and Ian Goh who were both, equal parts hilarious and nurturing, also shared how their creative work required them to look at things from a plurality of angles. My favourite part of the workshop was looking at the mind-boggling story maps with its multitudes of alternate events that the duo flashed to us after a writing exercise on creating branching dialogues. The point of all this is that, games writing is a creative process that is highly collaborative, requiring the story-makers to not just work together (whether with the wordsmiths or the game designers that handle the technical aspect of things) and also with those playing their games. Consider how a further dimension is added to the process when live-streaming of gaming sessions to home viewers becomes a thing. At a further panel with Jio Play Game, where we talked about how they respond to their audience’s interest in the content they create. If you think about it, it really isn’t that different from spoken word poetry slams isn’t it?
On top of talking about how game narratives can educate, just like how Greetings Zeon (don’t ask) learnt much about (useful) drugs or perhaps stabilisers through Metal Gear Solid, the trio also discussed how the rise of microtransactions may affect how digital landscapes are used to tell stories rather cogently. Despite there being a real fear of a shift away from narratives towards instant gratification and more immediate financial gains, quality storytelling would always triumph as games are meant to create intrigue and stir one’s curiosity, to allow you to feel and know what being in a particular situation is like, to make you want more. From my perspective, as opposed to demonising gaming and regarding it as anti-social behaviour, knowing how to appropriately harness the fascination it creates is hence crucial. While the materiality of the gaming experiences in relation to the controllers and devices was also discussed, my favourite part about the conversation was its emphasis on how a very important aspect of gaming that sets it apart from other narrative forms is that further to the story and gameplay elements, you also learn a lot more about each other. Regardless of whether you are a creator, a gamer or a streamer/watcher, you are taking part in a process where the stories of our lives are being written.
So finally I come to my favourite part about the festival which is, getting to know the people who are, to quote a ground-breaking literary classic, “all in this together”. I was feeling bitter about not being able to catch Jeanette Winterson’s speech and I was just lurking around, trying to soak in the atmosphere. Out of curiosity, I started chatting with a fellow enthusiast in front of me trying to find out more about what I had missed, (according to her and if I remember correctly, how sci-fi and religion are similarly interested in transcending the human albeit in different ways) only to realise half an hour later that she is none other than the poet Mok Zining whose first book Orchid Folios had been nominated for a Singapore Literary Prize. Funnily enough, this realisation only came about when a friend of hers joined us mid-conversation where I was fixating on the “Panelist” lanyard around his neck as he wouldn’t tell me that he is actually the one and only Jonathan Chan. On a similar note that is also coincidentally Jeanette Winterson related, another amazing thing about this festival is the way it uplifts Singaporean work. My friends who sat alongside her at the It’s the Cliches that Cause the Trouble were embarassed about having to sit next to her for a book sign at what they referred to as the table of humiliation but it was actually so encouraging to me how Singaporean writers and artist can be put on the same level as international writers. Any fiction that we have about New York and London being unsurmountable walls that are unexplainably better is really nothing but squashed myths. There’s nothing we should be afraid of and we should just go out there and start making art, wherever, whenever and however we like.
For me though, the sweetest part was getting to know Josh Steinbauer who is honestly, the sweetest and nicest ever. I had attended his session panel, Connecting The Dots: On Meanings Through Mediums last week where he had absolutely mind-blowing discussion with Trotsky Marudu and Berny Tan about how their art is inspired by literature. Attesting to this is his Portrait of a Book Report series (which he very kindly printed onto postcards and distributed to the audience as I had posted above) where he illustrates the authors he had read which really resonated with more for it is deliciously interdisciplinary and a statement of how important it is to keep making, even if it may seem strange and unexpected as long as it is true to your inner voice. Starstruck by his work, I slid into his DMs and told him about how badly I want to decorate my walls with them and not only did he respond, he even stopped by the festival grounds during a 5-hour stopover (he had already flown out of Singapore by the time he saw my DMs) just to hand some of the postcards to me. If this isn’t the best thing that had happened at the festival, I honestly don’t know what is.
Unfortunately, I haven’t had the opportunity to attend much else this week but here is a list of events that I wish I had attended:
Ted Chiang: Time Travel in Fiction and Physics
Gaming The System: Perspectives on Video Game Narratives
Just The World I’m Looking For: The Multiverse and Fiction
The Globalisation of Manga Style
Once again, do reach out if you have anything to share!
