requiem for the factory
Contributors
Jeremy Fernando, Kenny Png, Yanyun Chen
Description
Requiem for the Factory is a conversation between two forms of writing: language, and light. This occurs in a tale that attempts to explore the relationship of a self to her self through the figure of a factory. Told through an "I" that refuses to remain stable, one is never sure whether this is a moment when the tale is recounted, recalled, or whether it is being told at the moment of telling. And this is why this requiem has to be narrated. What is foregrounded is not only the fact that memory, history, is fictional, but more pertinently that the self-and the "I"-can only be uttered, perhaps even known, through fictionality. This is not to say that the self is imagined-unreal-but that the imaginary is in the very fabric of reality itself. This is a tale of two writings that are speaking to, and with, each other, whilst also speaking in their own realms at the very same time.
Back cover blurb
Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote that philosophy should be done “dichten”, as poetry. Jeremy Fernando manages to give this program a form, a direction. His texts contain many questions: in Requiem for a Factory poetry is an investigation, both in a cognitive and historical sense. Without being illustrative, Kenny Png's impressive urban photographs testify (this verb is crucial) to a new possibility of perceiving instead of just seeing. By the same token, Fernando's writing, Png's pictures, and Yanyun Chen's minimal narrative ideographic interventions testify to the possibility of a new narrative: investigating history means telling all possible stories, through different though simultaneous linguistic paradigms. Requiem for a Factory builds up a (hi)story of the possible as a narrative of the possible.
~ Alessandro De Francesco
Reader comments
This is a devastatingly beautiful book, written in the cracks of a heart broken open. A recurring dream that haunts with strong feeling, alluding recollection. The words and images fall through the mind like sand in an hourglass, begging at each ending to begin again; to dream it again. Read it.
~ Julia Christa
Reviews
Anders Kølle: The Singapore Review of Books