* (restored)
‘Haw Par Villa is a Chinese mythology theme park in Singapore with more than 1,000 statues and dioramas glorifying Buddhist, Taoist and Confucian folklore. Built in 1937 by brothers Aw Boon Haw and Aw Boon Par – famous for selling the popular medicinal paste Tiger Balm – older locals look back fondly at a place where parents would bring children for an education in morality, complete with bloody visual aids.
‘In 1988, the Singapore Tourism Board took charge of the Tiger Balm Gardens and renamed it “Haw Par Villa Dragon World”. The Haw Par in the park’s name is based on the Aw brothers’ personal names—Haw and Par, which literally mean “tiger” and “leopard” respectively. The dioramas and statues were restored, while plays, acrobatic displays and puppet shows were organised and held there. The management imposed entrance fees but the high fees discouraged visitors, so the management incurred a loss of S$31.5 million over 10 years. The park management made a profit during its first year of operations after renovations in 1994, broke even in 1995, but started incurring losses over the next three years and was forced to provide free entry in 1998.
‘Thousands used to throng the park, and it once stood shoulder-to-shoulder with attractions like Singapore Zoo and Jurong Bird Park. In its glory days, this avant guard theme park was an iconic symbol in Singapore, and considered a must see by locals and foreigners alike. “Every Singaporean over the age of 35 probably has a picture of themselves at Haw Par,” said Desmond Sim, a local playwright. Those pictures would probably include the following statues, each made from plastered cement paste and wire mesh: a human head on the body of a crab, a frog in a baseball cap riding an ostrich, and a grandmother suckling at the breast of another woman.
‘But the highlight of this bizarre park are the Ten Courts of Hell. This attraction used to be set inside a 60-metre long trail of a Chinese dragon but the dragon has been demolished, so the attraction is now covered by grey stone walls. A tableau of severe disciplines are shown in painstaking detail, along with a placard stating the sin that warranted it. Tax dodgers are pounded by a stone mallet, spikes driven into a skeletal chest cavity like a bloodthirsty pestle in mortar. Spot the tiny tongue as it is pulled out of a screaming man, watch the demon flinging a young girl into a hill of knives. Ungratefulness results in a blunt metal rod cutting a very large, fleshly heart out of a woman. Perhaps the most gruesome depiction is an executioner pulling tiny intestines out from a man tied to a pole. The colons were visible and brown. The crime? Cheating during exams.
‘However, Haw Par Villa is facing an afterlife of its own. As the country of Singapore developed, and became almost futuristic in it’s modern appearance, the thousands of dated figurines that make up this park began to lose their luster along with much of their original appeal. Some of the areas of Haw Par Villa have been shut down due to lack of preservation Hardly anyone goes there anymore, and closed sections of the park point to an uncertain future. For some it’s a refreshing antidote to the mall-culture, but it looks like mall culture is winning out over a day out in hell.’ — collaged
______
Gallery
___________
Presentations
Haw Par Villa: The Renaissance
by Genevieve Kong
Copy of Haw Par Villa
by Jiamin Wu
____
Tours
Haw Par Villa Singapore: The last blooming lotus
Silent visit
It will all be demolished one day. The land is worth billions.
A walkthrough of the Ten Courts of Hell attraction at Haw Par Villa
___________________
Rebranding Haw Par Villa
Proposal #1
by Leonard Koh
This rebranding project aims to promote about Haw Par Villa through the creation of a new identity to create a new impression to people who have been there before and arouse the curiosity of those who have never heard or been there before. Other materials have been created to promote about the area and others have been created as keepsakes and a reason to return.
Logo
Corporate Stationary
Postcards (Sun Wu Kong)
Postcard (10 Courts of Hell)
Postcard (Laughing Buddha)
Direct Mailer
Calendar
Park Map
Proposal #2
by Chinwee
An extensive and different take on rebranding for Haw Par Villa. Targeting the youths for a change, this project aims to revive Haw Par Villa and also the traditional chinese values and cultures that comes with it.
Brand Identity
Park Map
Park Souvenirs
Posters
Brochure & Postcards
Outdoor advertising
Popup Brochure
Website
Direct Mailer
*
p.s. Hey. ** Malik, Hey. I think it is Furry BlackLight. That name rings a loud bell. I’ll check for when it is next and see if it has a dress code. Ah, thanks for filling me in. Exciting and intimidating almost can’t exist without one another in the best cases, so, yeah, give it your all. All luck needed. Let me know how it goes if you remember. ** jay, Very fun: that investigation. You’re not rambling, I’m an excitable one too, and finding a perfect fit for your tastes is heaven. It just makes me more determined to find it. The artist who’s doing the ‘God Jr’ graphic novel is a manga expert, and I’ll see if he can give me some pointers. xo. ** Carsten, Thanks for the links/tips. I’ll go for them a bit later. Miles Davis had already gone electric at that concert. I think it must have been when he was early in the investigations that culminated in ‘Bitches Brew’. Yes, when comments have a bunch of links in them, they’re often sent to ‘moderation’ and then I have to approve the comment before it gets posted. Well, go find some conducive musicians? Is there an experimental musicians scene in your general area? ** Adem Berbic, If there’s a magic shop there, I’ll find it, trust me. Hope your ass feeling wasn’t just illness being flirty. You on your feet? ** Charalampos, You can buy ‘Worsted’ from the great Asterism site here. Yes, I did spotlight a Schutt book, and I need to illuminate another. No, the Amsterdam venue is just bringing us in for the evening and overnight. It’s unfortunately during a busy screening stint. We have Berlin, Palermo, and Amsterdam pretty much back to back. So I’ll have to go to Amsterdam again one of these weeks. ** _Black_Acrylic, I think of electroclash as a compliment. It seems to be making something of a comeback. Peaches seems to be packing them in on her current tour. That score doesn’t seem self-indulgent at all. Not in the slightest. ** fish, Good question. I was certainly a major social misfit in my wannabe magician days. Maybe it’s not so disassociated from wanting to be an experimental writer. In LA there’s this place that’s pretty famous called The Magic Castle where magicians hang out and perform for other magicians. You can only get in if you get permission from a professional magician. I went once when a friend of mine was starring in a movie where he played a magician. It was pretty fascinating watching the magicians try to impress people who knew all the tricks. ** Steve, Hey. Glad you dug some of it. I don’t know where that gif is from. I just saw it, and it intrigued me. To me it looks like it’s a moment from some theater piece. True: the persona thing. Enjoy your efficiently working body. ** Bill, You’ve seen Gong Slayer live? Wow. Haha, Slava has very liberal interpretation of what the word collaboration means. He interviewed me for a magazine once. That’s it. ** Hugo, Yes, Whitehouse reuniting for that gig is a big surprise. They must have been offered a lot of cash. I don’t know what a tomodachi life island is. ** HaRpEr //, I don’t even know what the mood one needs to be in to want to listen to Sunn0))) would be called, but I certainly go there. Lish certainly seemed capable of helping quite a wide variety of writers, from Raymond Carver to Lutz to DeLillo to Sam Lypsite to Schutt to Barry Hannah to Denis Johnson to … that’s a wild array. I think I relate to your description of your editing a lot. It feels right. ** sal, Haha, yeah. There’s tons of gay poetry going on du jour, but I haven’t read any that has that ‘shoot for the stars’ aspect that was the rule of thumb in the 80s. Boy love was considered a total legit subject back then, for instance. A lot of the better known poets of that time went there. Really impossible to imagine that now. ** Laura, Hi. My pleasure. I’m actually kind of curious why they put Rothko on the cover. I’ll ask Stephen. Bit of a surprise. I think I’m more on the balls of my feet today. Lyricism is maybe the best the truth can offer. Uh, it would probably take me days and a lot of referring to my notes and graphs to yes or no your theories, and I still might not be able to. It’s that kind of book. ** Okay. I thought I’d bring fake gore back to blog for a day. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
Hey Dennis! Cool day today – I’m sort of obsessed with model villages, and this doesn’t seem a million miles from that. I really enjoy how sterile the flyers and adverts are compared to the grimy display. Much appreciated, re: me rambling. The person who made this manga, Moto Hagio, is sort of legendary in slightly left-of-centre comics circles, so I imagine your God Jr. person knows her. I think last year she won the French comics equivalent of a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
I’m surprised you don’t know Tomadachi Life, it’s really interesting! It’s kind of like, say, Animal Crossing, but you have to individually make each character (people make friends, family members, fictional characters, etc), starting with the face and body, and then developing mannerisms as they level up. It’s interesting, a bit like the Sims. You’re less present in the world than you are in Animal Crossing, you more just float around checking in on the characters and watching them talk. I pirated it on my laptop, and it’s fun, but it requires a constant stream of creativity and patience that I think only children have on-tap. Anyway, hope you’re well, adios! P.S., sal, I left a reply to your reply yesterday, if you didn’t see that!
Thank you for explaining Tomadachi Life in a way I couldn’t lol.
More or less on my feet, although I still feel a little like I got hit by a train (at least, the feeling’s concentrated in my head and not my actual ass). I think it might be over-exhaustion, which is maybe better than being actually ill. So now I’m stressing about how I should really be resting this weekend but obviously have so many things crammed in that my rest probably won’t total more than about 30 seconds. There’s a Rivette screening on Saturday which I’ll probably have to miss, too – I love Rivette but my attention span is generally too fucked to savour him properly unless I’m sat in an actual cinema.
As mentioned elsewhere, the Whitehouse announcement spun me out. I was literally talking to a friend last week about how I’d pay stupid amounts of money to see them live, but London to Osaka plane tickets are around £1.2k right now, which is pretty steep for anything besides, I dunno, a tiny-venue Daft Punk reunion gig or something. Hm, if they’re doing Japan in April, maybe they’ll headline Glastonbury in June?
Haw Par Villa is a dream destination and some of those souvenirs do look very covetable. Seems the Far East would seem to specialise in gore-related hijinks.
Greatly enjoyed last night’s Champions League game which ended PSG 5 Bayern Munich 4. Le Parisien called it “pure madness, this pinnacle of art and culture, this museum of world wonders, this legend for the history books” and I can only agree. No doubt this would have been the talk of Parisian cafés all day today, yes?
Re. Miles already steering toward “Bitches Brew” territory at that concert: man, even more amazing. To have witnessed that at the age of 15, wow.
Re. my idea about merging poetry & music: Well that’s the thing, not only is there no experimental music scene in my area, the area is pretty tame culturally all over. Meaning what’s out here is very mainstream. There’s plenty of music venues, but they cater to diners who want some background noise for their drinks or a chance to dance. I’m meeting new people though, & who knows, as my social circle widens maybe I’ll come across some weirdo musicians who want to team up. We’ll see.
But then there’s also the potential plan to spend some time in Paris this July. Do you think it’s realistic that I make some connections there within the span of a month tops?
Found “Room Temperature” on Vimeo yesterday: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/roomtemperature
Did you link to that already & I missed it? Anyway, that’s a legit VOD release, no? Just want to make sure. Do you & Zac get a cut of the 10 bucks they charge per rental?
Oh my blog just crossed the 5000 view treshold, which I’m very happy about. DC’s is usually the top referrer, so thanks again for hosting my guest posts which have evidently led plenty of folks toward my blog.
@Carsten! i’m always chuffed to write a song around someone else’s lyrics, no idea if you’d be into the end result but if you’ve got anything lying around, give and i’ll musicify it 😀 most likely won’t produce it tho so what you’ll get back will be v bare ^_^
Hey Dennis, I’ve never seen Gong Slayer live, just extrapolating from the video!
Good to see Haw Par Villa again. I might have mentioned I was taken there as a little kid, one of the more memorable family outings! I hope they don’t modernize it too much, though I’d be into some of the new merch. The brothers also built a smaller complex in Hong Kong, but I believe only parts of it survive. I was staying near there a few weeks ago and should have checked it out, darn. Tiger balm is still popular in many parts of Asia, by the way.
Bill
tiger balm is still popular at mine’s lol, both the hot and cold version. idk if that’s bc my husband’s half Indonesian or if we just happened upon it but i swear by the slight cure for pain
Fake gore: one of this blog’s recurring attractions.
The floaters are still blurring my vision, but they appear to be a normal part of aging.
With all the talk about the Last Poets here in the past few days, I decided to play them on my next “Radio Not Radio” show. Probably for legal reasons, the Pop Group’s “One Out Of Many,” which samples them, has been taken out of circulation.
PS: The Prismatic Ground festival, which specializes in avant-garde films, kicked off tonight in New York. They’re streaming a selection of shorts for free online through Sunday: https://www.prismaticground.com/year-six/wave-infinity
I think a new place has been added to my bucket list of trips. I don’t how I didn’t notice until just now that fake gore is an interest of yours that’s come up pretty consistently. Where does that come from for you? Yeah, from what I’ve seen (Fred Halsted’s LA Plays Itself being a notable exception) most gay porn wasn’t very watchable up until the late 70’s/early 80’s, which is unfortunately when most of the pornographers got less ambitious.
hi Dennis!
can’t believe they’re letting the place die! nooo! i want to go, have you been?
can’t stand on the balls of my feet at all these days (neuropathy, remember), so jel of yr range of motion, ya habib. which, bloody sad, i once was a gymnast and stuff =( hope you’re nicely aimed forwards! =)
i might know why that Rothko lol, synesthesia is subjective obvi but as per mine there’s a p slay correspondence btw that black background and the bottom of the piece, and then there’s what might amount to variations on three themes or levels of intensity or whatever, separate but related tho directionally ambiguous. def ask him! and then we find out if i’m full of shit 😀
what the truth has to offer… yea. yea we agree. it’s making me write a thing, wanna see? you’re a v good muse. ^_^
if it’s that kind of book, i might just go ahead and make my headcanon canon in the end. you’ve been warned!
ugh i trimmed my hair and now it’s waist length and i regret it. tell me it grows back lol
<3
A Sunn O))) mood? Maybe wanting to be inside an event rather than just listening to someone tell you about one. I actually listen to a lot of drone adjacent types of music, almost every day, usually if I’m feeling blah and need some proximity to the void. I’m big on Yellow Swans at the moment.
With the magic talk I just remembered this time when I was in Budapest at the Harry Houdini museum and saw the worst magic show of all time. The magician’s smoke machine beneath his shirt cuff went off by mistake. There were five people in the audience and he wanted someone’s wedding ring for a trick and the only person who was married removed his ring after being forced to by the angry magician, getting annoyed that ‘no one is married anymore’.
Maybe the problem with bad magic shows is that magic only seems genuinely magical if it’s unexpected.
I’ve got so far through ‘The Tunnel’. It’s addicting, and very risk-taking, exceeding my expectations of what it would do structurally. There are so many structural tricks and hidden details and things. The book is sort of a tunnel in itself. Gass’ sentences are wild. Critics have frequently described them as ‘edible’. They’re kind of grotesquely beautiful.
There’s a lot of bravery in what Gass does in using details from his own life (including even his name) and placing them on the narrator who is a kind of latent fascist, and Gass makes himself complicit. The horror people talk about in regards to this book is in how it dissects ‘the fascism of the heart’ in terms of suburban family dynamics and day to day life. It makes fascism seem so familiar, which really gets under the skin. It’s like being trapped in a room with a funhouse mirror and a madman.
Anyway, sorry, I think my comments have been very long lately. I think I’m just bursting with ideas at the moment, getting carried away easily.
Hey Dennis, been a bit shy to talk because we’re doing a face-to-face, kinda, soon and I’m a little nervous about it but logged in to say I just saw Room Temperature and I’m very affected. It’s too soon to tell exactly how but I will say that I almost fell apart completely during Extra’s dialogue with Andre. Thank you for this movie, and will to talk to you at length about it tomorrow. I think it also helped me understand I Wished better, in an odd way, or at least what you try to do with art, which is not to suggest that you’re doing the same thing across, but perhaps an insight into a sensibility? Unsure how exactly to put it.
This was also the first of the 30 or so films that I’ve shown that my friends wanted to rewatch!
Particularly apposite post to leave this comment under.
I hope that NC viewing is going so amazing and great rn and I am sending my energy over
Last night I took a “pill” bcuz I like to when im alone while texting my friends alot and writing. I listened to artists and was transported back to some highschool memories(less than 5 years ago for me) and deep sentimental reflection.
Oh also the femoral artery is, when punctured, a lethal artery close to the groin
Heres a bit of what I wrote last night.
Dont judge it too harshly?
I I feel so much comfort in knowing I feel the flesh of a female wrapped upon me that wouldve given much comfort
To my 13yr old self a hug and escape into a fantasyland away from this mess.
I escaped e into the rainbows and prisms,
To hide behind carousals rabbit holes, rabbit take my me
Yes, some tangible escape from this reality,
Please get me away from here.
I just wish to escape
I read pieces of myself like a suicide note
and realize
“Huh Its great this person hasn’t escaped that maze yet”
April 29 26” 1:50 am
Come down?
So I was taking this on this and that and so I kept adding all these things and I knew it was destructive but didnt care
just didnt care
TO feel damage in my control
I felt myself gracefully crushed down as a cigarette
I became a cigarette. I feel myself being chipped away from Earthbeneath a computer screen, I fade.
To dissolve into a background
Tihs worldI created to escape as a child, so viscerla,dissociative, can be brought back by certain chemicals
I felt myself become so insignificant I was granulated into a single chip on a computer screen made up of a thousand smaller bits
and thats what I am here. Just this granulated sound compacted on your screen
Thats all I have ever been sometimes it feels in this world.
Just a nuaned soul so expressive, I feel ive fleshed so much of my soul upon these notes yet the more people I let in I feel it is to hard to flesh this self before them…Or not yet……..
Its a weird thing
now:
When I was writing “you” I was referring to the screen, not YOU specifically,, the internet, is almost like the universe. You can speak into it so freely, not think of what will be put back towards you.
Hope that wasnt too absurd. Most definitely was.
oh, I keep forgetting to tell you, but now that tommorow is the day, Im getting my tattoo, its been a while
Can you guess what it will be?
Worry not! I’ll definitely remember to tell you about it. It’s one of those things I’m letting everyone know because it’s just so new and crazy. Might even lead me to take the leap and try for a whole production run. Maybe.
Furry cons are very “come as you are.” Not everyone has a suit, considering ordering a custom one to be made can range up to $3k, so some just get the head, a cheaper premade, or decide to make one themselves. Otherwise, you could just bring yourself in your regular clothes and be right at home. Pretty much the only furry accessory I had was a pair of fake ram’s horns I got a thrift store for an old cosplay. But it helped me realize this ram character I made was the perfect “fursona,” so it worked out.
Also, late remark to the last post but good to see the Sunn O))) shoutout! The duo that got me on the path into noise music honestly. Really dig their new album. ezcodylee is a neat new discovery as well. I’ll gladly tap into him.