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CUBES (SINGAPORE)
Saving History
By Rachel Lee |
01-Dec-06 | Two architects explore the streets of Malacca and emerge with "Malacca: Voices from the Street" - a book that is both beautiful and poignant in its portrayal of the town.
You would think that the authors behind a book on Malacca would be old fogies who have lived a large, if not most, part of their lives in the quaint little town, eager to translate that special affinity they have with the ex-Portuguese colony into photographs and words. Well, it didn't quite work that way with "Malacca: Voices from the Street", a compelling documentation in words and images of the town's past and present. Malaysian architect Lim Huck Chin and Portuguese architect Fernando Jorge only knew Malacca as strangers - inquisitive ones who were willing to don the roles of busybodies to learn as much as they could, but strangers nonetheless.
What started out as research for a travelling exhibition in 1999 turned into a full-blown race against time to immortalise the fast-fading history of a town that is being sucked into the voracious whirlpool of tourism and consumption, where centuries-old buildings are being recklessly demolished to make way for malls and hotels even as you read this. "Sometimes architects and urban planners think of these [buildings] as just shells. But architecture tells us the stories of people," Jorge relates. "When we started photographing the town, inevitably we interacted with the locals and the human aspects started to come into the fold and we realised that it is the human face of Malacca that is also being lost," Lim says, his voice revealing a mixed tinge of frustration and sadness that must surely be felt in greater measure by Malaccans.
In the book, the pair tells of the town's profusely rich past and sickeningly sad present, street by street, as they themselves experienced the place. Photographs taken by the authors reveal a peek into Malacca's past and a multi-layered reading of its present at one and the same time, each portrait, each facade, space and detail resonating with poignancy. Speaking to Lim and Jorge in person, they relate heartbreaking stories of the realities of renewal - an old shopkeeper tearing up a yellowed photograph of his own mother to make space in his new home in the suburbs or a shoemaker given three days by government officials to move out of a shophouse that has housed a family business for over a hundred years.
"Some [stories] were more fascinating for us because we were able to find out more. [But] I think the stories that touched us the most were those that had a sense of impending loss, impending disappearance," Lim reveals. Jorge backs that up saying,"Sometimes we photograph a building and it's ok. The next time we visit, it's gone. You can't take more that half of the photographs in the book because the places are no longer there."
And so it seems that as much as the book is a collection of stories told in honour of Malacca and its people, it is also a protest on behalf of its people against the indignation the richly-historical town is being subjected to. Two strangers lend their voices to a town that they have come to learn about and consequently, come to love. |
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