“Laboratory Eden” is an essay published by Desired Landscape Magazine in 2020.
It stems from a residency undertaken in 2018 at ICA-LASALLE Singapore to explore the fifth senses. The research project included the development of a scent, a text, the presentation of archival research and maquettes. Working in direct collaboration with Givaudan, I developed the unique scent Swiss Hill of Singapore. Mixing tropical humidity with the freshness and crispiness of the Alps, I created a biofiction meant to be the portrait of a land whose identity and history had been rewritten through ownership. Transformed into a bubble world made of nostalgia and humidity, this hybrid place was the new Monte Rosa of expatriate Swiss traders looking for kinship and longing for pure and elevated alpine air, while experiencing the local tropical humidity.
Singapore stands as a model of economy and urban green politics but it can also feel as a strange hybrid place and a fascinatingly manicured heterotopia. The greenery showcased and promoted is not the primitive jungle that once covered the island; it is a man-made series of mobile assets such as gardens, zoos, nature reserve parks etc. Emphasizing the efforts put into place to create this urban green paradise, Singapore Government Agency’s website declares that The luxuriant greenery that Singapore enjoys today is no accident of nature. Curated nature considered as a resource goes hand in hand with methods of appropriation and accumulation. From the nostalgia of colonial merchants to former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew’s vision, all recent occupants and administrators have tamed wilderness, reshaped the land and manipulated its identity to their wishes.
But ghosts and shadows keep creeping behind today’s green screen, resisting oblivion, rationalism and maintaining an emotional connection with the land. Weeds keep travelling freely and growing in between cracks in the asphalt. And forgotten stories resurface through traces in the landscape and local archives.
“Laboratory Eden”, Desired Landscape magazine issue 3, 2020. Accompanied by illustrations and limited series of linocuts by illustrator Christos Kotsinis.