Australia's gift to Singapore: Scary ugly or scary cool?
As you may have heard by now, Australia announced on Wednesday its elaborate list of gifts to Singapore as we celebrate our 50th anniversary this year.
Among the many artistic SG50 contributions, a roaming puppet performance – The Snuff Puppets Human Body Parts, has been the talk of town.
The fascinating and weird performance is one of 50 that Australia will be contributing this year, which is also the 50th anniversary of diplomatic ties between the two countries.
On top of this, Australia will be giving public art to 50 heartlands and organise 50 simultaneous barbeques on a special night in June.
All of these contributions are packaged under the name, “50 Bridges”, launched by Australia’s foreign minister Julie Bishop and our Minister for Culture, Community and Youth, Lawrence Wong.
Now, imagine seeing life-sized disembodied human parts – the eye, hand, mouth, foot, nose and ear - sneaking up on residents near MRT stations or malls.
Be it scary or funny, the performances definitely bring a surreal experience to many.
The body parts will be performing at heartlands across Singapore from Friday to Monday. Two of them – the eye and the mouth – made their way to Bishan MRT on Friday afternoon.
“It’s cute, something interesting. It was fun, reminds me of Halloween, which is coming soon,” said a Victor Reutens, 72, who was visiting Junction 8 shopping centre with his family when he was surprised by the performance.
However, his grandson, 9-year-old Alexander Tan, thought that the puppets looked “disgusting”.
ITE students Jolia Tan and Josephine Seah, both 17, said the puppets looked “creepy and funny”.
Meanwhile, students Andralyn Low, 17, and Lau Yun Shan, 16, said that the puppets were “really friendly”.
Low added, “it is really unusual to see, because we don’t see a lot of this in Singapore.”
The puppets, especially the mouth, even entered shops such as KOI café and teased a customer having a drink at Toast Box.
“I think it’s really funny. I wasn’t shocked because I knew it was already near,” said June Tan, 48, the Toast Box customer whom the mouth had teased.
