Traditionally, suffering is associated with artistic pursuit. If one led a happy and pleasant life, then life was easy. And an easy life could never penetrate to the deep and profound truths which give wisdom. It was only through pain and anguish that one could experience the deep and profound truths, the fundamental truths, and …
Continue reading “What is the relationship between suffering and art?”
By Ranger Mills and Lishan Chan (printed in Because of the Night zine) Alongside with the disciplines of philosophy and the sciences, art is a generative activity, from which ideas and new ways of thinking can originate. In recent times, however, there has been a change from the perspective of art as generative to art …
Continue reading “Has Singapore Killed Art? And then Propping it up through the Management of Art?”
Discussions on the arts in Singapore have not, to my knowledge, touched upon the subject of philosophy. Philosophy is thought to be a subject only for academic pursuit. Alternatively, philosophy is thought of as a topic intertwined with religion- Buddhism, say, is a philosophy. Consequently, the idea of philosophy, as being in relation to the …
(1) The institutionalisation of poets. The fact is that many poets now have stable incomes from either teaching poetry in schools/universities or else from administrative jobs in the arts. How does this affect the kind of poetry that is being written? Does it in any way imply a loss of freedom or autonomy in what …
Continue reading “Three questions about poetry in Singapore”
If art does represent something, does art represent physical reality, or does art represent the mind’s eye, or some other thing? Physical reality. It might be thought that art represents physical reality, since it is often depicting objects or scenes from the world. An artwork can depict a scene- a cafe or a restaurant, or …
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There is usually agreement that something is a work of art, but what causes this agreement? Is there something objective in the arrangement of the artwork that causes some kind of aesthetic experience in each of us? Or is it entirely a subjective interpretation, hence that only some people will evaluate and understand something as …
CHAN LI SHAN 