Xinru Liu 

The Haunting Tigers is a participatory installation that takes place at the intersection of the past and the present, the real and the fake, the digital and the physical. Through making and telling the story of a magical realism story – that the ghosts of the 19th century tigers are haunting the city – I hope to activate the invisible and the underprivileged communities, which include but are not limited to the migrant workers and the homeless, to share their stories and therefore trigger public awareness and further actions in responding to the often neglected social issues.

In this project, the invented urban legend is a mechanism that disembodies the issues of injustice and reconnects them to the everyday life of Singaporean. The installation takes place both online and offline: the online form is an interactive wed map that shares and collects the incidence of the haunting tigers, while the offline form is a series of fabricated urban scenes serve as the evidences of the ghost tigers.

Inspired by William Gibson’s commentary on Singapore that the city-state is a Disneyland with the Death Penalty, the project is built upon the ‘fabricated’ and the ‘fairytale-like’ aura of the contemporary Singapore. The story of the haunting tiger is based on the anecdotes of the tiger hazard in the mid-18th to early 19th century in Singapore.

According to records such as the Singapore Chronicle, tigers were found in areas of Bukit Timah, Choa Chu Kang, and Pulau Ubin during the period. As plantations expanded, the conflicts between humans and the tiger increased; people were attacked and killed by tigers and tigers were trapped and killed by people. The concept of the ghost is contextualized and unfolded: people revere ghost as it stands for their ancestors; people worship ghost as it is believed to protect its followers; people avoid ghost as it also represents extreme obsession that death cannot reconcile. The urban legend of the haunting tigers is a twist of the Singaporean fairytale: these 19th century tigers were threats to the locals as well as the victim of the rapid urbanization. The ghost of tiger is a reminder: it reminds us that the marginalized and the eliminated ones have always been co-existing with us; it also reminds the privileged that their Disneyland is built upon the sacrifice of the underprivileged.

The forms of the ghost are implicit: they are the roaring sound coming from the forested park, they are the little flyers on the street suggesting the incident of the tiger, they are the crushed bushes implying the crossing of the tiger. The physical installations are these implicit scenes that are set up to provide evidence of the ghost. These scenes are constructed through minor alterations of the existing sites, such as placing the black and yellow stripy fur at the target sites and installing speakers that play the roaring sound of a tiger at the selected places.

Engagement is a key component of the project and it is achieved through the digital installation. An online interactive map of Singapore is a collective digital exhibition that showcases all the stories and ‘evidence’ created by the invisible and the underprivileged. This map is also a storytelling platform. The forgotten past of the land can be recollected and reconnected to the present on the map. The lineage of the ghost tiger is depicted through place-based storytelling. The map will also work as the disseminators that spread the story and raises people’s curiosities. Fabricated images that visualize the ghost at the targeted sites will be added to initiate the story. Articles will be posted illustrating residents’ encounters with the ghost tigers. This map is a map of the social-geographical conflict in disguise.