Wash Hands! With soap frequently!

by mr

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11/05/2012 – 11/06/2012, Singapore

Wash Hands! With soap frequently! Eat Healthy! Exercise Regularly! Do not Litter! Or: Silence is golden! Everything is protected! These are just some of the messages Singapore is trying to communicate to us. Like a mother to a child. Singapore warning signs tend to show both what one should and should not do. They incorporate folk wisdom, represent social agreements, and indicate punishments for not obeying them.

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The extreme example is the Singapore Ok Park, built in 2004 as a reaction to SARS epidemic, in which figures left the flatland of signs and inhabited real 3D space in form of 1.5 m high bronze statues reminding us of the proper behavior. They share characteristics with USSR Social Realist sculpture after the WWII, i.e. a clear didactic role in transferring the values incorporated by the State, which are not to be called into question. The State is moral, ethical, caring, etc. On the other hand, the fundamentally didactic sculptures from the Singapore Ok Park, deprived of any ideology or irony, perhaps best describe the peculiar ranges of digitalized human civilization at the beginning of the 21st century.

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foto: miro roman