TERRITORIAL MARKINGS : GRAFFITI AND BUSKING IN THE ORCHARD SHOPPING BELT

Abstract

The envisioned rising trend of the arts and performance scene in Singapore‟s Orchard Shopping Belt district by the local authorities has essentially begin to mark its way and alter the traditional perception and conceptualization of the Orchard district as merely a pure consumerist belt. However, in view of the urban conditions pertaining to the built environment, the envisioned notion of the arts and performance scene is presumably still suppressed by the urban conditions set up for economic viability. Through an analysis of the urban conditions within the Orchard Shopping Belt therefore, the street is uncovered as a potential medium where the cultural scene of arts and performance may in fact be boosted – specific to two forms of street art that has found everyday existence along the streets; street Graffiti and Busking. The focus of the dissertation will therefore be governed by the potentiality of the street and the three main actors of the urban condition - the local authorities governing the Orchard district, the street artist of Graffiti and Busking, as well as the street users. This dissertation seeks to reveal the pragmatic approaches governing the Orchard district since the 1930s and forms of control that are still inevitably present in the set up of street Graffiti and Busking, which essentially suppresses the nature in which these forms of art along the streets may boost vitality to the cultural scene. Importantly, is the investigation of the nature and needs of territorial space and markings that street Graffiti and Busking have essentially crafted out along the streets, predominantly through Lefebvre‟s theory on the production of space – inclusive of physical space, mental space, and social space. Street users‟ participation in varied mediums held for the arts and performances within the Orchard district have also been systematically tabulated. At such, through a cohesive analysis of the social tripartite relationship between the street pedestrians, the street artists, as well as the local authorities on an individual level within the urban conditions of the Orchard shopping belt, a new form of synthesis and ideal equilibrium may then be abstracted as a contributor towards a new form of identity and culture towards the Orchard district.