Dome of Disappearance

Right in thehistoric heart of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, stands Pamela Tan’s Dome ofDisappearance, a columbarium slash structural archive of the disappearingheritage elements of the city around it. Drawing inspiration from Sovietarchitect Alexander Brodsky and Ilya Utkins’ Columbarium Architecturae (a paperarchitecture work of a columbarium for “disappearing buildings” in Moscow lostto the project of rapid industrialisation), Tan has transplanted the idea intothe context of 21st-century Kuala Lumpur — a city following its own uniquemodernising vision. The sculptural formsuggests something skeletal, fragile, and evanescent: its shape is inspired bythe shadow cast by the city’s historic Sultan Abdul Samad Jamek Mosque (MasjidJamek), which stands in the background of the Dome at its location at KualaLumpur’s confluence where the city has its roots. The confluence and the mosque(one of the city’s oldest, dating back to 1909) already sit somewhatanachronistically amidst the concrete jungle looming over them, and theaddition of the Dome with its ghostly white sheen and minimalist aestheticcreates another provocative contrast to the city’s shifting landscape. The Domeis created with laser-cut metal and cotton thread woven interstitially alongits structure. The cotton threads unravel loosely at their ends as they rustlein the wind, evoking a sense of ephemerality — as if the Dome too may soon beblown off along the winds of change. Tan’s Dome is moreoptimistic than its name suggests, because it is a pre-emptive columbarium tohouse elements of Kuala Lumpur that are at risk of disappearing but have notdisappeared yet, with the aim of highlighting the urgent tasks of archiving,remembering, and being present to the changes happening around us. To this end, sheplanned a three-phase transformational approach for the Dome over a period offour months, allowing it to metamorphose alongside natural and humantemperament. Within the bustling city, the Dome was first erected as a stillstructural object — deliberately unfinished. In its second phase, the publicwere granted the autonomy to use the Dome as a columbarium by filling its“empty shelves” with their sketched memories of Kuala Lumpur in a communal yogaand sketch session. Then, it evolved into a safe space as the public again wereengaged to weave plants through its interstices, a gesture of resistance andsolidarity against modernism’s enforced disappearance of our rainforests. Within a highlyvisible and populated area in the centre of Kuala Lumpur where the consequencesof modernism can be seen at full force, that is where Pamela Tan’s Dome ofDisappearance sits. With its crowdsourced memories, followed by small butmeaningful corrective gestures, it acts as an indictment and a safe space. Throughits own generous structural nothingness serving as a vessel for confidingcollective anxieties about modernism, it is one of the few acts establishinghuman presence towards a creative rather than destructive end. Artist/designer:Pamela Tan Poh Sin Company: Poh SinStudio Project Title: Domeof Disappearance Project Date:October 2019- February 2020 (Temporary Installation) Organizer: TheCultural Economy Development Agency (CENDANA) Curator: Snow NgAdvisory & Projects Workshop 1: AlignSelf and The City(yoga and sketch) by Wen Yee Kok Workshop 2: A Plantwith a weave (Macrame and pot planting) by Zan Nureen and Farah Fadzil