Things They Left Us

In response to the fast changes felt in my school, SOTA, in 2015, as well as my own pre-nostalgia from being in my graduate year, I began to document the disappearance of objects in the school. The school building is important to SOTA students; the school had moved to the current campus at Zubir Said Drive only when I had first entered as a Year 1 student. We still heard stories of the old Goodman campus

 

In the school, it was common to see objects left behind by past students. Old artworks too large to bring home live in the corridors, boxes of stuff at the back of classrooms with table tennis equipment, a scooter named after a mandated-reading literature book, abandoned exam notes. Leaving things behind for future students was a tradition, and cleaners knew not to throw away these things. Thus when the new effort to clean up the school, and throw away these school heirlooms began, students reacted quickly. Communal objects were quickly put into personal lockers to 'save' them from being thrown out, items were reorganized to look less like trash. However, a majority of items were taken away, and with that, the presence of past batches; their memories and well wishes.

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The poster focused on two areas that were important to me: the back corridor that linked half of my cohort's classrooms together, where students would sneak out of class for long toilet breaks, and later on in the year, frantically study for exams. Another space was my Design studio, which my friend and I cleaned up one night, when we found ourselves there at 8pm with nothing to do. While one space had been cleaned on order, while the second had been cleaned by existing students themselves, both achieve the same effect of a clean space. While cleaning we wondered: What was useful? What should we leave behind?

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Things We Left Behind

Partaking in the school tradition, my cohort mates left many items behind for the next students who would take over the classrooms. Creating a website, I invited friends to submit what they had left behind, which was then put on the website as an online exhibition of objects. Through which, at least, the objects can be remembered.

 

One such important item was my class guitar, which had been bought by the top class together in Year 1, been passed around throughout the six years, and left in the class cupboard for the next batch of students to find, and use. Many of us, including I, learnt how to play guitar on that particular guitar. In my graduating class, where the guitar resided in its sixth year, there had been about 3 different guitars and a  kiwi ukelele at the back of the classroom (with a rubber tyre and a 'Japanese garden' complete with wooden crates and pebbles left behind), which anyone could borrow and play. Last I heard, there had been an ordered cleaning of the classrooms, and no idea on whether the guitar has survived.