Heman Chong's Singapore

Street View invites inspiring figures from art and culture to paint personal portraits of their home cities, with questions written by Singapore-based artist Heman Chong tapping into secrets, sounds, songs, tastes, smells and superstitions.

In this inaugural instalment of the series, Chong answers his own questions in relation to Singapore, where he lives and works.

Can you share a secret place in Singapore where you escape to be alone, regroup, reset and recharge?

I live on Depot Road in Singapore, and it’s very near the southernmost point of the entire continent of Eurasia. Whenever I need a big time out from my routine, a way to get out of my skin, I take the MRT (the subway) from HarbourFront to Punggol Coast, which are terminals at opposite ends of the North-East Line. I just need to get as far away from my life – and, in turn, myself – as much as possible.

Upon arriving in Punggol, I would convince myself to slip out of my ego, my anxieties, my need for validation, my addictions, and go on long walks around this area without any predefined route. The method to achieve this is that I pretend that I’ve died and I’m visiting Punggol as a ghost for a day, and there’s nothing I can do to change anything anymore. This relaxes me immensely.

Which five songs would you include in a soundtrack to Singapore and why?

1. In so many ways, Changi Airport remains one of the most visible institutions that represents Singapore globally, so I feel Brian Eno’s 1978 ‘Music for Airports’ is an apt inclusion for this list.
2. ‘Ditto’ by NewJeans resonates as a track that strangely feels like a memory of the city as a floating world, but one that I’ve never experienced. ‘Stay in the middle / Like you a little, don’t want no riddle / Say it, say it back, oh, say it ditto / Can’t wait ’til the morning, so say it, ditto.’
3. I love listening to ‘Kid A’ by Radiohead while I’m staring out into the quiet darkness of the city at 3am from the heights of an HDB block, so that’s definitely on the soundtrack. The electronically distorted voice of Thom Yorke in this piece of music always reminds me of how unreal Singapore can be when it’s dead silent.
4. ‘June 12’, track eight from Astreal’s debut album Ouijablush, released in 1997, is often on a constant loop in my head when I think about all the demolished buildings in Singapore that mean a lot to me and that I will never be able to experience again. Like these buildings, Astreal as a band has gone through many ‘demolitions’, and the track I’m talking about is only available as a bootleg on YouTube. A city of erasures.
5. Finally, the song that best describes my very complex feelings towards Singapore is ‘The Downtown Lights’ by an obscure Scottish band from the 1980s called The Blue Nile. ‘Sometimes I walk away / When all I really wanna do / Is love and hold you right / There is just one thing I can say / Nobody loves you this way / It’s alright, can't you see? / The downtown lights.’

What is your favourite food to eat in Singapore, and who cooks it best?

In Singapore, carrot cake is, of course, not carrot cake. It is the perfect emblem of misdirection: cubes of radish cake, fried with garlic, egg, preserved radish, sometimes dark soy, sometimes not – a dish whose very name is already a confusion, a mistranslation that somehow stuck. I’ve always liked that because it refuses clarity from the outset and insists on being misunderstood.

Some days, carrot cake arrives burnt, some days under-fried, some days perfectly crisp on the outside and soft inside. It resists standardisation. It’s a food that performs what Singapore does best: mistranslation, hybridisation, the refusal to be what it says it is.

If you ever find yourself craving this dish, my favourite place to eat it is in the mornings at Telok Blangah Food Centre. There’s one stall that sells it: look for the longest queue and order the half and half; black and white. Bring cash. She doesn’t accept any cards or apps. Ask for: 源成菜头粿 Yuan Cheng Fried Carrot Cake.

Do you prefer walking, driving, taking the subway or the bus? Share a route that you love.

I am very big on walking very long distances. I once walked from my apartment in the East Village in New York to the Met Cloisters along the Hudson River. I miss walking in New York very much, but I don’t live there permanently anymore.

I find that walking the entire stretch of East Coast Park, all the way from Katong Park MRT Station to Changi Airport really does the trick for me. It’s close to a four-hour walk, so it’s not for the faint-hearted. There are ample rest stops and lots of food options along the way, though.

I find it easier to walk this route after noon because the sun is behind you and it’s not as glaring as it is to walk this passage in the mornings. I also find it very enjoyable to cycle this route from time to time, although the act of walking remains my first love.

Are there any artists living in Singapore that you particularly admire? What is it about their work that resonates with you and reveals something unknown about where you live?

I am a big fan of Genevieve Chua, and her work has consistently mesmerised me since we became friends 20 years ago. When I think about art that’s made in Singapore, I feel that so much of it is often pushed toward articulation, a clarity of purpose, and ultimately a legible productivity. Paintings do the opposite.

On the other hand, Genevieve’s work operates in the realm of the unreadable, the illegible and the opaque. In doing so, it carves out a fragile, necessary resistance. We need more spaces in Singapore where we can learn by failing, and to imagine those attempts into something that moves into a realm of questions, so it’s not just about seeing every situation in life as something to be fixed or solved.

What recurring events – perhaps a natural phenomenon, a cultural festival, or an unusual tradition – feel the most unique here?

In 2004, the Singapore Tourism Promotion Board came up with the branding tagline for Singapore, ‘Uniquely Singapore’, which I’ve always thought was funny because I feel that there’s nothing unique about Singapore, as with most places, I’m afraid. There’s no shame in that, because we are a country constructed out of diverse fragments that have been appropriated from many different cultures, and to do so with such great ease is a feat.

The one thing I’ve always loved encountering in Singapore are the heavy thunderstorms that come out of nowhere and sweep across the city-state. It is the only time when Singapore feels porous, when the illusion of control – urban planning, air-conditioning, the constant hum of efficiency gives way to the sheer insistence of non-stop water from the clouds. Everything is either inside or outside of it, and there is no negotiation. It is the natural phenomenon that I think truly connects us to the larger subjective framework of Southeast Asia.

Describe a local superstition. How does it affect people’s daily lives? Do you subscribe to this yourself?

I’m really into superstitions and my city state is full of them. Every corner you turn, people will tell you something insane about something that might seem like a situation right out of a Stephen King novel. But my absolute favourite is this: Singaporeans believe that if you smell a strong sweet scent at night from a frangipani flower, you’d better run for your life because it signals the presence of a Pontianak, a female vampire who died during childbirth. There’s so much to read into this from a feminist point of view.

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Street View invites inspiring figures from art and culture to paint personal portraits of their home cities, with questions written by Singapore-based artist Heman Chong tapping into secrets, sounds, songs, tastes, smells and superstitions.