How did the name “kapok” come about?
The tree which we took our name from grow tall in their ecosystem, branching out to provide a home for plants and animals dependent on nourishment and exposure. Likewise, kapok provides a unique roof under which people in the community can meet freely and find inspiring quality goods with great aesthetic. Our founder initially wanted to name the store after a tree, as there was a large banyan tree outside kapok’s first store in Tin Hau, Hong Kong. But as you know, the banyan name is already taken. Locally, you can find the kapok tree in the Singapore Botanic Gardens, right beside the famous white band stand.

How many brands does kapok stock at the moment?
Our brand curation is constantly changing, but we have up to 100 brands. In our National Design Centre (NDC) store we are required to present 40% home-grown brands and right now, Singaporean brands take up half of our NDC brand curation. Most of our international brands, such as A.P.C. and Maison Kitsune are from France, as our founder Arnault Castel himself is French.

Why does kapok display local brands alongside international ones, rather than have a dedicated Singapore section?
Our goal is to present emerging or independent brands on a same platform, regardless of its country of origin. In Hong Kong, home-grown brands are placed side by side with international brands, and we group our products according to fashion, jewellery or lifestyle categories. The point is for people to buy things because they are well-made. When they discover that an item is from a Singapore label, that’s a bonus.

What does kapok look for when it comes to deciding which brands to stock?
‘Discovering future classics’ has always been our theme. We look for authenticity, a sense of freshness yet timelessness in brands stocked in our stores. We prefer products that are more sustainable and are made from natural materials. The design should be understated and warm, not aggressive or loud.

How different is kapok Singapore from kapok Hong Kong, and in what ways?
kapok NDC is the first store to incorporate a dine-in cafe and it is one of the biggest kapok stores in the region. Of course kapok NDC also holds the largest number of Singaporean brands. Those that do very well in NDC may go on to be stocked in our Hong Kong stores, like menswear label Faculty, and cassette posters seller Rehyphen.

There are several other multi-label designer stores in Singapore – what makes kapok stand out?
We have a very approachable take on fashion and design. Being in this neighbouhood, we have people from all walks of life come in and chat with us. To quote Arnault Castel: “The kapok person is someone who is always curious about new things, is an idealist and looks for sustainable products. Shopping here isn’t about age or gender. The brand is not elitist.”

What can we look forward to from kapok in 2018?
In 2018, we will bring new brands to kapok Singapore, such as Johnny Romance from France (who are bringing cross-stitch back in fashion) and Wood Wood (the new kings of Scandinavian sportswear). We will also release the fourth collection of our own fashion label, future classics, including our take on the perfect raincoat.

By Gwen Pew
Published on 10 January 2018

INDEX was formed as a design collective winged under local theatre company The Finger Players in 2013. That was when spatial designer Lim Wei Ling, sound artist/composer Darren Ng, and lighting designer Lim Woan Wen first worked together for IN:dex, a performance installation presented as part of the Esplanade’s The Studio’s RAW series.

In 2015, INDEX created a three-part series as part of Centre 42’s Vault programme, where the three artists individually responded to Quah Sy Ren’s play, Invisibility, without directors or performances. Instead, they explord the play’s themes through space, sound, and light. And now, they’re back with a new project titled The Little Room that  Grew Buoyant, Little by Little. The team is currently still in the early stages of conceptualising the experiential installation, but here’s a little bit about what we can expect, and how the three of them are planning to work together.

What do you hope to explore with The Room that Grew Buoyant, Little by Little?
Lim Wei Ling: We are contemplating the idea of a room as a medium in framing the richness of our world, its narratives and experiences; a room as a place that defines or situates a reality that is already there. Our world is already so wonderfully rich with life, unpredictability and multiplicity. Rather than devoting meaning, intellect and form to these, we look to return creatorship to the everyday phenomena that surround us by working as agents to surface, situate, frame and allowing them to create themselves.

How do you plan on exploring that?
Lim Woan Wen: It is not confirmed yet, but we are looking at putting together a site-specific installation that would be opened up as a free space, where the visitor is invited to spend time with/in.

How did the title of the piece come about?
Darren Ng: I was reading The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard, and came upon a quote by Jean Laroche in which René Char dreams in “a room that grew buoyant and, little by little, expanded into the vast stretches of travel”. I was very taken by this string of words – how vastly visual, yet at the same time still and quiet, but organic. I felt at once enclosed and released. This sentence grew on me over time. When this project came about, I proposed the title to the others, and it sat well with all three of us.

Tell us about your process in putting together The Room that Grew Buoyant, Little by Little.
DN: The three of us share the same belief that the work itself will inform us of the intent and content as it develops. In this project, we are learning to let things be and allow the piece to form naturally. So, we try not to constantly steer the project with an end result in mind. We are hoping that by not injecting too much intent as we progress, the piece will act as a pith for open ideas as visitors experience it, allowing them to form meanings and narratives of their own.

This may not be an easy way to work, as it requires us to trust the process and one other a bit more than usual. To facilitate the process, we continue to share thoughts and readings, tidbits of life and encounters from different points of our lives. We muse together and stay honest with one another. Based on what we are looking to explore, we also share our perceptions and our learning with each other, and we respond to them individually while keeping an open mind at all times and staying on the same page.

Do the three of you have very different working styles/approaches, or are you quite similar?
LWW: The phrase “same same, but different” sums it up – we are three individuals with different personalities, traits, habits, wants and needs. The fact that our medium of expression is different means that our work flow and approaches differ out of necessity in some aspects. But as a collective, we share very similar sensibilities, aesthetics and work methods.

We have been working together for years in theatre before we started INDEX. In our kick-start project IN:dex (supported and presented under the Esplanade’s The Studio’s RAW series) back in 2013, we made an improvised performance installation where we did not reveal our final vocabulary to one another until the actual show. As it turned out, all three elements still “matched” rather substantially and there were audience members who believed it was all pre-rehearsed. In some ways, we thought the experiment had “failed”, but at the same time it said a lot about the shared intrinsic qualities in our individual work.

How do you think INDEX has grown in the last five years?
LWL: I would like to think that INDEX was created to give ourselves a platform of autonomy and a channel to have honest conversations with one other, the audience and our own selves through our works. 

LWW: Yes I agree. So, in a way, INDEX is a reflection of our combined values and fluctuating states of mind and it has grown as far as we ourselves have, individually as well as collectively.

What do you enjoy most in working with your particular language of expression – space, lights, and sound?
LWL: The spatial discipline has the privilege (and also danger) of framing the world with ideals and perspectives. I enjoy how it can redefine or amplify the everyday narrative in life, giving new possibilites to the way we operate in the world.

LWW: I am most intrigued by the intangible quality of light as a natural element as well as the language I work with. It is something one cannot physically touch, yet it is capable of touching one viscerally and very deeply. As the sun, light is literally a life-giving source; as a design element, it has the potential to activate the inanimate and visualise energies.

DN: Sound is intangible, invisible and formless, yet very tactile (as vibrations through different mediums). It informs perceptions and beliefs, suspends or alters one’s reality or transports them metaphysically, without the restriction of a physical space. Yet, it interacts with physical spaces, resulting in acoustics and experienced as psychoacoustics. So I enjoy the phenomenological nature of sound, and how much I can learn from it, through responding and interacting with it in space and in time.

By Gwen Pew
Published on 10 January 2018

Rehearsal rooms are typically patriarchal, according to Rei Poh and Zee Wong. The director, playwright, or producer is the king who sets the rules, and everyone else are the followers who carry out the instructions given to them. This may be the conventional way of getting the job done, but the pair wanted to find out whether there are other approaches to the process.

Their chance came in the form of Attempts: Singapore. Rei had created and staged the first iteration of the piece in Melbourne in 2016, when he was studying for his Masters in Theatre Performance & Directing at the Victorian College of the Arts. The work was inspired by Martin Crimp’s 1997 postmodernist play, Attempts on Her Life, where the audience is presented with 17 unrelated scenarios that give clues about the possible identity of a woman named Anne. Rei was commissioned to restage the work as part of the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival in 2018, and as director, the first thing he did was to bring Zee on board as his dramaturg. After all, she was a big part of the reason that he started examining what it means for him to be a feminist, and it’s a topic that the couple would often discuss.

“I think it was a very natural progression [for me to dramaturg for Rei’s work] because we have always been aligned in terms of our interest in feminist theatre. And examining the male gaze is something I do in my own work as a playwright as well,” says Zee, who is also an actor and singer. “As a dramaturg, my role is to help the team look at patterns, and to help them find meaning in the images they come up with. I’m also there as a second pair of eyes for Rei and the team.”

At the time of this interview, the team has had about five rehearsals, and Rei has already been learning a lot.

“Zee has taught me many things, such as how to relook my position as a man,” says Rei. “I’ve learnt that even in my practice of creating works, I am still subconsciously abiding by the laws of toxic masculinity.”

Together, they have been making a conscious effort to create what they call a “feminist rehearsal room” for the Attempts: Singapore team.

“One of the ways we’re attempting to subvert the patriarchal hierarchy of traditional rehearsal rooms is by focusing not on the product, but on the wellbeing of the team,” Rei explains. “Because of my training in Forum theatre with Drama Box, I also see myself as a facilitator rather than a dictator. So in the rehearsal room, we replaced comments like ‘you should have done this’ with ‘would you consider doing this?’ This has somehow made a very strong impact on the progression. I no longer feel the need to dictate, and the collaborators are now owning their parts in this project. In a feminist space, everyone has their own role that they are interested in. It is a space where they can challenge themselves and at the same time feel safe.”

To build on that, Rei invited the cast and creative team – including the stage manager, sound designer, and intern – to devise the content of the piece from scratch, even though he had already staged the work before. In each rehearsal session, the team would look at one or two scenes and come up with a series of images based on the text, which they will then expand into a performance. Rei and Zee would encourage them to incorporate local context into the piece, and tackle issues that are relevant to Singapore.

Naturally, the resulting work is similarly feminist in its nature and structure. Attempts: Singapore is set in a fictional world governed by a corporate conglomerate called ARC. The company provides an Artificial Intelligence system called JOAN, which predicts and caters for the needs of the population. But when a mysterious database containing the memories of a woman named Anne is found within JOAN’s code, the audience members – or “players”, as Rei likes to call them – are tasked to deduce Anne’s identity by exploring a series of spaces. As the piece is rooted in the genre of participatory theatre, players are given the agency to make a decision, and thus determine how the play ends: a feminist element in itself.

But while the team will take every care to create a safe environment for participants to feel empowered to speak out and make decisions, Rei and Zee hope that those who attend Attempts: Singapore will confront their own biases and prejudices, too. For instance, the players will have to decide whether they would be willing to relinquish certain powers that they might enjoy in a more patriarchal system, in exchange for more feminine values. They will also be meeting quite a few complex female characters.

“In Singapore, there can be a sense that women have achieved full equality, and we don’t need to fight for women’s rights anymore,” says Zee. “This sort of thinking is dangerous, because it means that the women who quietly live with spousal violence, unfair treatment and sexual harassment at their workplaces solely because of their gender are ignored and forgotten. As an artist, I hope to get people to see that there really is something wrong with the way we’ve defined gender today. And really, we need to stand up for each other a little more.”

By Gwen Pew
Published on 10 January 2018