Have an art project that needs some funding? Here’s some cash from a scientist who passionately hates her job.
Dr. Eng Kai Er has launched her very own No Star Arts Grant that will see her handing out $1,000 every month out of her salary from her bonded employment to fund art projects of any genre. Grants will be disbursed every month for a year, with the last instalment shelled out in October next year.
It sounds crazy, but it’s pretty legitimate. Already, the first grant has been disbursed to an Andrew Chan for his project The Wedding Banquet, where he will walk down the aisle by his 40th birthday in December either with a husband if he manages to find a groom before the wedding date, or alone if none are found.
Turning this arts grant into an artistic exhibition unto itself, Dr. Eng’s endeavour is not purely driven out of a sense of philanthropy or a righteous spirit for the Singapore arts scene. Rather, she’s doing it out of spite to her job in science and technology company A*Star, which she declares to have no interest in at all. She can’t quit her job because she has to serve a bond from September, and it costs $74,1657 to break it. The No Star Arts Grant is her way of protesting the very nature of governmental grants by creating her own no-strings attached grant.
“I don’t like it when people make policy and then my life gets turned into shit because of their policy. Therefore, I will make my own policies from now on.” the eccentric A*Star scholar declared on the No Star Arts Grant website.
She points out that both research scientists and artists perform similar types of “narcissistic, masturbatory work,” and that it’s unfair that scientists get paid a lot more.
“My PhD project resulted in a thesis that less than 5 people read, and that not more than these 5 people actually want to read, about a very obscure virus that no normal people even know the name of, and my findings related to this obscure virus are nowhere near useful,” Eng remarks. “So how come I was paid so well for my PhD by the Singapore government, to do something “useless,” and paid so little for art, to do something “useless”?”.
Application for her arts grant is open to all Singapore-based artist in any artistic genre. In return, she only wants a piece of documentation of the art for her to publish on the website.
Photo: Vimeo screengrab
Have an art project that needs some funding? Here’s some cash from a scientist who passionately hates her job.
Dr. Eng Kai Er has launched her very own No Star Arts Grant that will see her handing out $1,000 every month out of her salary from her bonded employment to fund art projects of any genre. Grants will be disbursed every month for a year, with the last instalment shelled out in October next year.
It sounds crazy, but it’s pretty legitimate. Already, the first grant has been disbursed to an Andrew Chan for his project The Wedding Banquet, where he will walk down the aisle by his 40th birthday in December either with a husband if he manages to find a groom before the wedding date, or alone if none are found.
Turning this arts grant into an artistic exhibition unto itself, Dr. Eng’s endeavour is not purely driven out of a sense of philanthropy or a righteous spirit for the Singapore arts scene. Rather, she’s doing it out of spite to her job in science and technology company A*Star, which she declares to have no interest in at all. She can’t quit her job because she has to serve a bond from September, and it costs $74,1657 to break it. The No Star Arts Grant is her way of protesting the very nature of governmental grants by creating her own no-strings attached grant.
“I don’t like it when people make policy and then my life gets turned into shit because of their policy. Therefore, I will make my own policies from now on.” the eccentric A*Star scholar declared on the No Star Arts Grant website.
She points out that both research scientists and artists perform similar types of “narcissistic, masturbatory work,” and that it’s unfair that scientists get paid a lot more.
“My PhD project resulted in a thesis that less than 5 people read, and that not more than these 5 people actually want to read, about a very obscure virus that no normal people even know the name of, and my findings related to this obscure virus are nowhere near useful,” Eng remarks. “So how come I was paid so well for my PhD by the Singapore government, to do something “useless,” and paid so little for art, to do something “useless”?”.
Application for her arts grant is open to all Singapore-based artist in any artistic genre. In return, she only wants a piece of documentation of the art for her to publish on the website.
Photo: Vimeo screengrab