For our third Writers Fortnight, we listened to Danny Raven Tan. He is a local artist in Singapore and founder of The Tiffin Gallery, which is a gallery in his HDB flat in AngMoKio. I think the most catching thing he said throughout the talk was “I believe I was created to create.” I just thought that this was such an interesting perspective on life and our role as people. But when he was summarising his life, it sounded like just series of unfortunate events and battles he had to face, from having pancreas cancer, depression, a mother with dementia and having his dog die. The biggest takeaway from his talk was, it gets better. Life gets better, and that the best soldiers have to fight the hardest wars. He told us that he was living proof that you never know what will happen, so do what makes you happy, before its too late. He said that although he got through cancer, he had a large scar on his stomach and it was a constant reminder it it. So instead of looking at it in a bad way, he did a photo shoot in order to embrace his scar. He said “Life is to celebrate and ever scar tells a story”.

Although the talk was much more about his life than his art, I think that his life and what he has gone through is hugely reflected in his work. And I personally got a lot more out of the session hearing about his life than his art, because he used his life as an example to say the greater messages that life should be celebrated, but do what makes you happy because you never know what will happen and everything tells a story.

For our second Writers Fortnight, we had Author, Poet and Photographer, Marc Nair come in and talk to us about his experience as a writer in Singapore. He immediately told us, possibly as a disclaimer, that he was both Indian and Chinese and grew up in Singapore. Which as he said, “Allowed him to poke fun at all three.” He read us a poem called Pan-Asians, which wasn’t poking fun at them but was joking around with the stereotypes of Pan-Asians. But besides his sometimes sarcastic, humorous but dark poems, he writes serious ones about current issues. I found this very interesting about him because he said that he wasn’t just using poetry to write about his feelings and thoughts, like most do, but to spread awareness about current issues. Not only will his poetry spread awareness but he also said he writes about things to help the readers deal with problems. In particular he writes about travelling to help others when travelling. As briefly mentioned before, he also often writes about race and heritage. Nair also said that he doesn’t just write from his perspective, but also from the many other people in Singapore. He said that in many of his poems, he played around with a foreign workers perspective. This linked into him talking about Evolving practice, and playing around with different ways people see art, like from another persons perspective. Nair isn’t just a poet and an author, but he is also a photographer, he said that he often uses the photos he takes and creates a story for them. He talked about the ‘Observed World’ and said, “Once you see a scene happening, its to late, creates anticipation.” He said you need to be constantly aware in order to really capture the scene. He looks for the scene that contain possibilities of stories within themselves.