Of Wayang, Buangkok, and Bukit Brown: Photographing Heritage

Date: 23 February 2012, Thursday
Time: 7.00pm
Venue: NUS MUSEUM

Admission free. To register email:  museum@nus.edu.sg or call 6516 8817 / 8429

A Panel Discussion 

Speakers: Ken Cheong and Zann Huang

In this second installment of THE PHOTOGRAPHY SERIES, we explore the role of photography in relation to heritage, a much-discussed concept that comprises investigation into aspects of history, memory, spaces, and rituals. Used as an instrument of documentation, photography becomes a medium through which these are immortalised through photographs; where slowly-eroding rituals are re-enacted through pixelled motion; and where our ideas about what is recognised and perceived as ‘national’ heritage becomes archived within visual compositions. Along with these arise problems of what is then to be identified as ‘national’ heritage, authentic or fabricated, projecting into larger themes of ownership: whose heritage are we documenting, and why?

Featuring the works of photographers Ken Cheong and Zann Huang, this panel discussion will feature the photographers’ visual documentation and insight into the ritual of the Wayang, as well as spaces like Buangkok and the Bukit Brown Cemetary, trailing into a discussion of how documentation via photography infers and affects our construction of heritage in Singapore.