ART-OTAKU.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

5:00 PM

Right. So the "vandalism” of SingPost mailboxes which happened not too long ago kicked up quite a hype for a while. What many people thought was a vandalism act turned out to be a publicity stunt by SingPost. They’re one of the sponsors of the upcoming Youth Olympic Games and have decided make use of their mailboxes to showcase the YOG’s theme, Express Yourself.

There were tons of stakeholders in this case I’d say. In fact anyone who has heard and debated about it is. People who first saw it rung up the cops, cops got down to the scene, created commotions, I’d definitely say it cost lots of resources and manpower. They could’ve been on other cases if they knew that Inkman was hired. The public also ranted all over the net, saying that Inkman should end up in jail soon, get his spray cans ready to do more graffiti on the prison walls, and so on, only to end up tongue tied only after SingPost reveals that they hired Inkman. Inkman and SingPost themselves are stakeholders themselves too, having to come out to apologize for all the trouble.

Well I’d agree that all that is art. It’s about expressing ourselves with visuals to get the human mind to ponder and realize things, so SingPost hit the nail on the head by getting Inkman to express himself with the graffiti in line with the YOG theme. The only problem is that art is also about getting the message and idea across to the viewers and that, right there did not happen. It was all completely misunderstood. Viewers were supposed to understand about expressing oneself but their narrow mindedness and the weak relationship between art and society had caused the breakdown. Our lack of exposure to art had resulted in this episode of wasting resources and that Singpost had overestimated Singaporeans’ abilities to accept such forms of publicity.

This is a print campaign for a season of Prison Break in Toronto sometime back and I doubt the reactions were as negative even if there were.

And ditto these by Julian Beever. It’s a whole floor she worked on but it’s beautiful.

Just look at their reactions!

And so here’s my stand: SingPost did fine with most of the necessary precautions they could’ve taken, and that it was the miscommunication amongst the police. It was mentioned in the straits times that the police had told SingPost that they didn’t need to apply for a license as the mailboxes belonged to them. What’s more, a list of timings and locations were given to the police about the stunts. Why didn’t the police realize the need for precautions? There could’ve been a simple notice to inform police around Singapore so that those who turned up at the locations of the reports could explain and clear things up. Well SingPost wasn’t entirely faultless. They could’ve put up posters even on the vandalized mailboxes to state its purpose. If these are done, then it’s up to whether Singaporeans are that and intolerant to simply call it vandalism despite notices if there were.

Some may even believe that this will spark actual vandalism, using the same reasons as excuses. Are we so distrusting of each other to think this way? Well I guess we have to. There are the troublemakers who will do it and all we can do is to get the right mindset though to everyone. It is graffiti, it is art, it is expressing oneself, it has got to have a purpose, and it has a limit so do it right under the safe and reasonable situations.

To end off, I'd say Inkman did a pretty decent job with the graffiti.