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r ’ s o l t e i tter d
Dear reader, Where were you on 3 April, 2020, when the circuit breaker was announced? My family had gathered nervously around the living room TV, bracing ourselves for the news. After hearing of the Covid-19 horrors in other countries, a lockdown had seemed inevitable after weeks of rising cases. My parents, ever practical, wondered aloud if we should have skipped the news and joined the ‘hoarders’ at NTUC Fairprice. While countries beyond our borders orchestrated lockdown measures in an attempt to contain Covid-19 outbreaks, our government had imposed a ‘circuit breaker’ in Singapore to the same effect. To most of us, who are unfamiliar with terms used in electrical engineering, it was a curious turn of phrase. Even stranger was the circuit breaker itself, which disrupted all of our lives in a multitude of ways. We wanted to document some of these stories in Circuit Breaker Zine, a project that was conceived of and produced (almost) entirely during the circuit breaker. In these pages, you will find intriguing forms of artmaking, such as Cheryl Gan’s blackout poems made from newspapers she received during her quarantine order, and Izyanti Asaari’s photos of wildflowers that bloomed around our unmanicured estates as we stayed at home. The effects of Covid-19 have also deepened the socio-economic fault lines that already existed in our society, as illustrated in Leong Yee Ting’s essay, “How Inequality Holds Us Up”. In “Where I Know I Must Be”, Alysha Chandra writes movingly about how home-based learning has made classes difficult for her brother, a student with special needs. This difficulty is acknowledged in “Teaching during Home-Based Learning”, where Hazirah Helmy interviews her mother, a teacher, about her new experience of teaching students from home. How do we move forward from this moment? None of us have all the answers. All of us are trying our best to settle into this ‘new normal’ that still feels unfamiliar; where everyone still has to mask up before going out, where workers fear losing their jobs to the recession, and where a sense of unease still hangs between every social interaction we have. We hope that you will enjoy reading this first issue of Circuit Breaker Zine, which has kept us editors busy through the lockdown months, and given us pockets of time to reflect on the unfolding crisis. Here’s to all ‘non-essential’ artists and writers, whose livelihoods have been impacted by the virus, yet who have persisted in pursuing their craft and believing in the importance of their voices.
Sincerely, Wenxin Gao (Wendy) Editor
