Hi, my name is Ginette Chittick. And I'm 47 this year. And I'm the programme leader of the diploma and creative direction for fashion at LaSalle College of the Arts. I'm also a DJ, a musician, an artist and a one-time fashion designer. I'm currently doing research on the punk subculture in Singapore from the years 1992 to 2007.
So my maternal granddad is from England, or Britain. But I have very little connection with him, as they had my grandmother and my grandfather had moved first to Britain and then to Scotland when I was a year old, maybe or even before that. So I don't have any recollection of interactions with him. But my grandmother is Peranakan, and she had come back to try to live here after he died. she had died quite early on. So but in those days, you don't really keep your birth certificate. It was like a handwritten piece of paper. And it happened so long ago. So the government had also not really had any records of her. So she wasn't allowed to live with us. And she had to go back to Scotland.
I'm not sure what the Singapore identity is, you know, do you describe it through dress because then we've had all these cultural or ethnic dresses from other countries where our grandparents or great grandparents had come from, they're important. And there's, for me, there's very little connection to it. And the only way I feel connected, maybe it's through childhood memories of celebrating festivals like Chinese New Year. And, you know, being surrounded by Lion Dance music in our homes or Christmas.
My chosen dress object is a very dirty pair. I think these are Chuck Converse. I've had them for quite a few years. Now, as you can see, even the original colour it is, but you know, because I, you know, even when I wear dresses or anything that, you know, might be counted as Frou Frou.
I paired them with these because I feel I want to root myself in my subculture identity. And you know, Ramones, often credited as one of the progenitors of punk, wore them.
The underground music scene. It taught me that if you want to, you do it. And you create your narrative. And when we were teenagers, as little young female punks and Riot girls, we found that there weren't any publications that were kind of like speaking to our lived experiences. So we made our own music that spoke to us. There wasn’t any female Punk band then. And we were the first, so that was really exciting for us to be able to be there to say, Hey, this is a new path and let's forge it.
I think, you know, anything that's gone really extreme is something that is really dangerous.It’s like planting a seed that will eventually snowball into something dangerous. Because I think when you place labels, it's a value judgement, and over time, it will become a bit contentious. And I think that's something that we should worry about.
