a digital space between
Thinking,
Living
for big thoughts
& bared hearts
The Issues
Facades of home
I think it is fair to say that this issue holds special significance for us both. We chose this theme for this issue because of its almost-coincidence with national day (we were aiming for this release date initially). They say that distance makes the heart grow fonder, but for many Singaporeans living overseas, the reality may be much more complex.
In my first year abroad, it was difficult not to compare everything I’ve experienced to what I am used to. I romanticised Singapore then. But there is an ebb and flow to my affection for Singapore now. After the initial stages of adaptation and going through some hurdles, I recognise that being abroad affords particular experiences so different from Singapore. The kinds of people you are exposed to, the kinds of lives you see possible, the ways of being about the world, the generosity of practical strangers… … you almost never see or experience it here. Singapore is a unique blend of asian collectivism and western individualism that makes it at once successful but also limiting.
So we present this issue almost as a schizophrenic blend of our sometimes paradoxical, otherwise patriotic feelings towards home. Through it all, I think what is worth thinking about is an active engagement of how we think of home, what version of home we are working towards, and whether it is one we have been told to want or one we are actively building and rebuilding ourselves.
On the subject of Emergence
Writing is thinking, being, emerging. What is emerging? How is it emerging? Where is it emerging from? With this first issue, we explore the idea of emergence in tandem with this site’s birth. In the same way that this site crystallises what we are coming into, we reflect on what emergence means.
We’d love to ask: what does emergence mean to you? What is emerging from you? How does looking at the world with a lens of emergence change the way you see it?
Heidegger argues that being is ‘phusis’, the Greek term for ‘what emerges from itself… …, the unfolding that opens itself up… … Phusis is the event of standing forth, arising from the concealed and thus enabling the concealed to take its stand for the first time. ’ (Heidegger, 2000: 15-16).
Heidegger, M. (2000). Introduction to metaphysics (G. Fried & R. Polt, Trans.). Yale University Press.