speakers corner quartet

one finds the most interesting things in strange ways. Covent Garden in London, home to many inanities, unexpectedly turned up the Speakers Corner Quartet busking outside the nike store, using the storefront as backlighting.

originally formed as the backing house band for the spoken word/hiphop open mic night at the Speakers Corner in Brixton, their sound is as unexpected as their makeup: flute, cello, double bass and drums. their original material delivers a tight mash combining hiphop rhythms with string soundscapes and a particular taste for Indian-tinged scales. tightness, of course, is in spite of the complex arrangement, with odd times and multiple sections changing in groove and feel.

mitzi

Mitzi (美食之家) or as my mum calls the place 美滋味, is a restaurant along Tanjong Pagar Road serving old style Cantonese food. Although the restaurant had only recently moved here from the nearby Murray Terrace, the mood of the place is unconsciously retro and immanently nostalgic. I'm a sucker for the old chinese restaurant atmosphere, which always brings back much memories of the old Lai Wah Restaurant along Jalan Besar Road that I used to frequent when I was really young. The chrome frame chairs around a round dinner table, promising a night of banter and togetherness. The table setting of a small plate, a bowl, a saucer and a spoon with a pair of dragon-pheonix chopsticks at the side is placed on the starched white table cloth forming a circular array around the lazy susan at the centre of the table. Double happiness serviettes, regardless of occassion, are stuffed into glasses which would eventually be filled with boiling hot tie guan yin (or fizzy orange soft drink if it was a wedding). The flavours too, are familiar and comforting. We had steamed prawns, crispy chicken, braised ginger duck, sweet and sour pork, stir fried kailan, fried tofu and ee-fu noodles. The meal would have been perfect if the dishes were served on little metal pedestals and the meal ended with a bowl of 花生糊 (sweet peanut paste).




Mitzi Cantonese Restaurant
62/64, Tanjong Pagar Road

train town

something i caught at Short & Sweet, a weekly event at Cafe 1001 on Brick Lane, Train Town stood out from the list of shorts for its dead serious, deadpan humour. directed by Keith Bearden, the film uses a simple allegory of a model train store, taking it in an unexpectedly political direction. annoyingly enough for the lurking internet movie buffs, Bearden has not put the film out on youtube, meaning that one has to see it at a festival (take that, cheapskates) - but the movie has been making many rounds at various festivals, so all is not lost yet.

hansel pop-up store

The label Hansel, by designer Jo Soh, has taken over the space of the old Baylene shop at Stamford House and set up a temporary store selling her range of girly candy-esque clothing. The shop interior is a whimsical jurassic landscape of pixelated mountains, cut-out dinosaurs and floating cuboid clouds. Inspired by children's pop-up books, sheets of brown cardboard fold out from the wall to form clothing racks and cartons are stacked to create display shelves, partitions and a counter. The people behind the interior concept is a group of MFA students from the La Salle School of the Arts working under the name Musement. The shop is open till 26 July.




The Hansel Pop Up Shop
#01-04 Stamford House

www.ilovehansel.com/

ART HATE

STATEMENT OF INTENT

AGAINST THE COMMON ENEMY

NATIONAL ART HATE WEEK has been instigated for the disruptive betterment of culture.

For one week in July the children of Albion will wake up and HATE ART on mass.

NATIONAL ART HATE WEEK is a call for direct action against the mass acceptance of art as a phantom economy for the smug manipulative elite and their ensuing grip of control over culture as a tool for mediated emotion, market lead non-critical homogeny, and boring popularism.

NATIONAL ART HATE WEEK presents a unified front of non-unified creative individuals against all that is despicable and loved by the people. We oppose the deliberate socio-economic strategy to make us all complicit in our own idiocy. We oppose the affront of state endorsed auto-cryptic balderdash and oppose the ruffians who have been pulled from the ghetto and polished up for elevated status and easy consumption by the masses.

ALL ART IS TAINTED

NATIONAL ART HATE WEEK will redress the balance and all art will be opposed and subjected to a sustained HATE.

NATIONAL ART HATE WEEK takes the symbol of the swastika hung from a gallows as an emblem of resistance against cultural fascism as disseminated by the bureaucrats of art.

During NATIONAL ART HATE WEEK citizens are encouraged to visit art institutions across the land and HATE. Individuals who are unable to attend an organised ART HATE are encouraged to open a random book on any given artist and HATE what they see.

If a child offers you a painting during NATIONAL ART HATE WEEK you are to turn away in disgust.

les amis

What better time to spend some money than during a recession. Les Amis, perhaps the most well known French restaurant in Singapore, was the setting for a fancy (if slightly pretentious) lunch one weekday afternoon. The 15 year old restaurant is a major name in the local and Asian fine dining scene. Made famous by Chef Justin Quek and currently helmed by Chef Armin Leitgeb, it offers a prixe fixe lunch menu of 2, 3 or 4 courses.

After having our order taken, I jealously watched as my lunch companion got served a free glass of champagne. The restaurant was offering free bubbly for ladies on Mondays and Tuesdays. But in this sexist world, life goes on and the meal began with bread service and the amuse bouche which was smoked salmon served on a slice of crisp bread. As simple as the item might sound, the flavours were well composed, a smokey flavour and the soft gelatinous texture of the salmon were complemented by the oniony note of the chives, with the crisp bread providing a nice textural contrast.


The same play of textures and flavours was to be found again in my starter which was a huge hunk of Hokkaido scallop with a slice of Iberico ham wrapped in a crispy ciabatta skin and served with a slice of lettuce on a bed of heirloom tomato slices. The dish was aptly named BLT scallop, though the lone slice of lettuce would be rather frivolous if not for the name. My companion had the roasted Challans duck ravioli, celery and diced foie gras in an "essence of duck" consomme. As I had chosen the 4 course menu, I had a middle course which was an oven cooked pike perch with spinach and ribbon pasta on a bed of mustard, which on the whole was a tad boring and disappointing after what the amuse bouche promised.

For mains, my companion had the slow baked Britanny kabeljau with spinach and butter sauce (i can't remember what the thing is on top, sorry) while I had the steak done medium rare served with (a leaf of) lettuce and a (note the singular again) truffle potato fry. The steak was well cooked, with tender red centre which is not bloody. Again, I didn't really care for the lettuce, which in all fairness was well cooked, green, crunchy and oozing full lettuce flavour, blanched-to-perfection if you will. The potato fry, on the other hand, was a better complement to the steak, the crispy exterior wrapping around a smooth fluffy centre with bits of truffle.



For dessert, we had the terrine of tropical sorbets with melting chocolate beignet (basically a deep fried chocolate cake) and the peach melba. The sorbet terrine came as a slice with various layers of multicolour sorbets separated by a thin layer of chocolate. It reminded me very much of a slice of nonya kueh or those neopolitan ice cream from the supermarket that comes in a tub. I stole a section of the sorbet and tasted it layer by layer. The effect was melodious, with sweet mellow flavours contrasting with the high notes of the citrusy flavours, mediated by the slight bitterness of the intermediate chocolate layers. The peach melba (we were told was named after the opera singer Nellie Melba), a composition of vanilla parfait, peach jelly with raspberry foam and a slice of peach on a biscuit base, was in contrast much lighter. The flavour profile, though aromatic and cleansing on the palate, lacked a heavier or stronger component which might help set of the lightness of the rest. We ended the meal with lychee infused oolong and a cup of cappuccino, along with a delightful mignardise plate which consisted of cherry financier, orange meringue, hazelnut biscuit and canele.

I left the restaurant reassessing my impression of Les Amis, it is perhaps not as "haute" and fancy as I had expected but is really about serving simply but well cooked dishes that respect the ingredients, allowing their inherent flavour to shine and not clouding them with complicated flavour combinations and over the top presentation.


Les Amis
1 Scotts Road
#02-16 Shaw Centre

'driftwood' - AA summer pavilion 2009

an exercise in fluidity, 'Driftwood' by Danecia Sibingo (concept author) stands out from the angular townhouses in its corner of Bedford Square in London, albeit mildly and without any bombast. inspired by images of the Jordanian city of Petra, the piece consists of 28 layers of plywood concealing a Kerto structural system. harnessing this system, 'Driftwood' intrigues with its continuity, reminiscent of a mobius strip and a topographical model all crossed into one. the form lifts off the ground at points, allowing the visitor to enter the central space, where he finds himself enveloped by the layered surfaces.

while there is a certain suspicion that the piece is simply an empty study of form, there is at the same time a feeling that there is a clear and organic beauty in the structure. wrapping itself around a lamp post, the use of bare plywood exposing the grain, and the slightly disjointed character of the panel construction grounds the entire structure in its environment and avoids any sense of awkward artificiality despite its size. one might go so far as to suggest that the piece could have been planted anywhere and still retained this feeling of harmoniousness.

serpentine gallery pavilion 2009

SANAA: “The pavilion is floating aluminum, drifting freely between the trees like smoke. The reflective canopy undulates across the site, expanding the park and sky. Its appearance changes according to the weather, allowing it to melt into the surroundings. It works as a field of activity with no walls, allowing views to extend uninterrupted across the park and encouraging access from all sides. It is a sheltered extension of the park where people can read, relax and enjoy lovely summer days.”

For this year's Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, SANAA, the collaborative between Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishisawa, performs a disappearing act, creating a silver cloud of aluminum slithering among the trees of the park above a forest of silver slender columns. The barely there, paper thin structures are signatures of SANAA and the floating cloud motif can be seen in some of their older projects, like the Civic Centre of Onishi or Flower House.



photos by Iwan Baan

The simplicity of this year's pavilion is a stark contrast to last year's bombastic car crash by Frank Gehry. Instead of making a big visual statement, it invites the user to consider the more inconspicuous qualities of the space and structure and its dialogue with the environment. Ryue Nishisawa describes the piece (here) as " a non-architecture idea, such as water or a rainbow". It can be said that both the SANAA and Gehry pavilions are both statements of exaggeration but on opposite poles. Whereas Gehry made a grand display of tectonics in his a tense and visually unstable structure, SANAA reduces tectonics to the level of abstraction, the pavilion visually becomes an abstract organic 2D plane floating above the forest of sticks; there is no architectural space, the inside and outside is one. My favorite part of the pavilion is perhaps the part where the canopy dips down creating a very low space which can only be occupied by sitting on the floor, breaking down the formality of the public space.

Photo by Javier Vergara Petrescu via Archdaily

The Serpentine Gallery Pavilion is a yearly event where renown architects are comissioned to design a pavilion on the grounds of the Serpentine without any programmatic and budget constraints. The pavilion is funded entirely by sponsorship and the sale of the structure its tenure. This year, the pavilion will be open from 12 July till 18 October.

look back away from the glare

video installtion showcasing reworked clothing by 6 young designers

Look Back Away from the Glare
part of Resuscitation presented at 72-13 Mohamed Sultan Road