School of Creative
Industries
Alfonse Chiu
Based in Taipei and Singapore, Alfonse Chiu’s professional interests span writing, research, curation, design, photography and arts management. They are currently the editor and creative lead of SINdie – an editorial platform exploring Southeast Asian film culture(s) – where they head editorial direction, research and special projects. They are also the founder and director of the Centre for Urban Mythologies, a project-based research initiative interested in Southeast Asian urbanism, co-founder of the Moving Picture Experiment Group, a curatorial and research collective exploring the polyvalency of the moving image medium in contemporary practices and the programme manager of SeaShorts Film Society, a registered non-profit promoting Southeast Asian culture through short films.
Work
Alfonse's texts have been published on platforms such as KINEMA (University of Waterloo), Cinematheque Quarterly (National Museum of Singapore), NANG, Hyperallergic, and commissioned by institutions such as The Substation and the Asian Film Archive. Recent curatorial projects include the ongoing Glossaries for Unwritten Knowledges, a collaborative interdisciplinary art project aiming to empower and re-centre indigenous Malaysian narratives, supported by the Prince Claus Fund and Goethe-Institut, and ON/OFF/SCREEN, commissioned by the National Arts Council for Singapore Art Week 2021.
Thesis abstract
Evaluating community initiatives in preserving Singaporean built heritage, 2000 – 2020
While the conservation of the built environment in the form of built heritage has a precedented history in Singapore’s recent development, the mechanisms behind how built heritage is defined and the processes behind how certain sites are slated for conservation or demolition, are still relatively opaque and contingent on a mixture of state and private interests. Recognising that community initiatives in built heritage have traditionally been a crucial voice for advocacy and critique of conservation policies and decisions, this research surveys the development of community initiatives pertaining to built heritage conservation between the years 2000 – 2020 to evaluate their efficacy in preserving at-risk sites and structures, and map out key actors, methods and limitations associated with community initiatives in order to explore possibilities of heterogeneous discursive resistance by civil society against homogeneous state-led narratives. Through analysing both successful and failed community initiatives, the outcomes of this research generate potential openings for reconsidering how community initiatives can be utilised by civil society, as well as possibilities of participatory governance in the context of built heritage conservation management.