TAI-E3156 - Approaches to Writing, Lecture, 25.4.2022-23.5.2022

I chose a chapter from a book called Hotel Sapiens by one of my favourite authors Leena Krohn. Her speculative fiction is insightful and her writing has always inspired me. I love the imaginative scenarios she creates and her beautiful, descriptive style of writing and the creative use of language. Hotel Sapiens casts a critical and insightful, but compassionate glimpse to this world and humanity.

'Notes for a Singapore Bestiary: Sexuality, and Interspecies Exchanges in the City-State'. Lucy Davis, In Georg Schoellhammer ed. The DOCUMENTA # 12 Reader. TASCHEN Books, Germany. 2007. ISBN 978-382-28-2530-3

http://files.cargocollective.com/486840/Notes-for-a-Singapor-Bestiary-Documenta-Reader.pdf

I was drawn to this article as the in-depth critics towards social issues with the reinterpretation of Singapore Bestiary. For me, it is also a typical and good example as an artistic and non-conventional forms of writing which combines multiple concerns of personal perception, social politics and nature. Lucy used the fact of animal situations in Singapore and the bestiary of animals to compare and critique social reality. She splits and merges animal and human animality. In this context, animals are also creatures excluded by anthropocentrism, and also the symbols of insult to others in human cities. There are many puns and sarcasm in the text.