DID YOU KNOW that George Town became a city on 1 January 1957 at 8.30am? It made the front page of the following day’s The Straits Times, under the headline “Penang’s Big Day—What a Day!”
The time and date for this event—this birth—were the details used for a reading in Singaporean artist and geomancer John Clang’s recent fortune-telling art project. “George Town as a person, or main character, is represented by the zi wei (紫微, King Star),” John began. “Its friend is the tan lang (贪狼, Greedy Wolf). This means that George Town is a fun city that enjoys interacting with others. Its weakness, however, is that it is too easily affected by others’ opinions.”
John’s reading was part of the show Dreaming Islands: A Geomancy of Time, held at COEX from 8 to 12 January 2026. Curated by John’s long-time friend, art historian Michelle Lim, the show involved several com-ponents: a city-chart of George Town with live interpre-tation (“A Portrait of George Town”); a display of nine chairs arranged in auspicious positions (“Nine Chairs”); and personal readings for anyone who submitted a ques-tion (“Reading by an Artist”), hand-written on a canvas cloth (“Table of Inquiry”). The result was a highly interactive and participatory art show, which integrated art and geomancy with ideas of space and history.
