MEMORY, MUTILATION, MATTER : BODILY PROJECTIONS AT 54/56 JALAN TUN TAN CHENG LOCK

Abstract

In rapidly „modernising‟ Southeast Asia, contesting uses of land may accelerate the literal erasure of historical dwellings. The shophouse, belonging to a typology widely applied to the colonial landscape, occupy a precarious position within this context. The shophouse historically housed the vast population of the colonised, often in deplorable conditions. By this virtue, the shophouse may be posited as the colonial „other‟, to be viewed in opposition to the coloniser‟s projection of power to be found in monumental works of architecture. In the context of colonial rule, the “standard” writing of history drew upon documents primarily authored by the colonisers, lending an inherent bias within these narratives. This condition is compounded by the fact that documentation of colonial experience from the perspective of the colonised is inherently lacking. Brenda Yeoh proposes the construction of an alternative discourse based on an examination of „place‟, in which such narratives may be derived. This dissertation seeks to exhume fragments of history otherwise embodied within the domestic envelope of the shophouse, left through the occupations of these spaces. By examining these traces, the dissertation does not seek to speculate narratives that contribute to the shaping of architectural matter. Instead, the investigation aims to establish relationships between occupant and architecture in order to examine the way in which bodies in space relate to their envelopes. The space in question refers to the home, which is posited as both ontological and symbolic; a membrane that includes and excludes. This dissertation seeks to propose the reading of architecture as part of the colonial system of inclusion and exclusion. Within the amorphous, undefined body, external and tangible symbols are needed as anchors in defining the boundaries of the said identity categories. In this manner, the domestic envelope performs the negotiation between internal and external, individual and collective.