The future of Singapore is bleak, in a city that is all too willing to archive its past.
While across the world, developing and using Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools in daily life is fast becoming the norm, it’s been especially worrying that local government entities have been leaping onto the AI trend and adopted it as the next big thing. From designing posters to interactive chatbots, AI has enamoured and convinced us of our need for it, and plays so well into our love for efficiency, that it wouldn’t come as a surprise if it eventually became something akin to an overlord, a sage we rely on for actual advice and policy planning.
That is the dystopian vision presented in Johnny Jon Jon’s National Memory Project, the latest production from Teater Ekamatra. Expanded from an earlier version in 2016, National Memory Project is a two-hander play that imagines a future version of Singapore that’s strangely, not too different from where we are now. We learn that the landscape has been irrevocably changed, with the disappearance of even places like Tanjong Katong rendering it practically unrecognisable, and how easily people have forgotten the past.
Playwright: Johnny Jon Jon
Director: Mohd Fared Jainal
Set Designer: Mohd Fared Jainal
Cast: Fir Rahman, Ellison Tan Yuyang
Lighting Designer: Alberta Wileo
Sound Designer: Tini Aliman
Surtitlist: Alysha Kaisah
(Source: Bakchormeeboy website)