5/52

Week 5 of 52
Old Kallang Airport
9 Stadium Link
Singapore

This past weekend I visited the Old Kallang Airport for the 2011 Singapore Biennale Open House.  The Singapore Biennale is an art exhibition that is held at various locations around Singapore.  From their guide...In one of the world's busiest ports, a multicultural city built on trade, 'Open House' brings together artworks that offer multiple perspectives and myriad creative approaches to questions of how we move across borders, see other points of view, and form connections with others.

It was a win-win for me because I was able to see quite a bit of art and also explore an area of Singapore that is normally not accessible to the general public.  I think I went more to see the airport but some of the art was pretty amazing which was nice for me.

The airport was opened in 1937 as Singapore's first civil airport and was closed in 1955.  From what I have read, the circular control tower allowed for planes to land on any side of the airport. 

 

We were able to go into the building and wander around almost all of it to view the art.  You could tell that the terminal building was built in the 1930s...

One of the art exhibits was random writings by an artist all up the walls leading up the tower...

It was fun to see all of the different things written and all of the random places that he wrote things.  More interesting to me was being able to climb the old control tower...

I was so excited to get to the top and look around and take pictures...but this was as far as they let us go...

Oh well...

One of the things I love about being in Asia is that they aren't as uptight about keeping people out of things.  When they open up old buildings for things like art shows you get to wander around...where ever you want...

The whole time we were walking around and exploring I kept thinking somebody would come up to us and tell us we weren't supposed to be there.  Thankfully, they never did so we had a great time wandering around.  This is inside the old hanger pictured above...

And this is me being a little artsy...since I was indeed at an art show...

I really enjoyed wandering around what is left of the Old Kallang Airport.  One of my favorite parts of the day was wandering through the exhibit which featured over 3000 pieces of art from Singaporean elementary school students. 

There were row after row after row of these pictures...and some of them were just SO amazing!  A few of my favorites...

There were two other exhibits that stood out.  The first was simply written word painted on a wall...be sure to double-click on the photo to enlarge it to be able to read what is written...

The second was called Frequency and Volume and was by artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer.  It used our shadows to tune in to local radio stations...