[Talk] Multiplicities of Truth: Layering Narratives and Memory in Heritage

Multiplicities of Truth: Layering Narratives and Memory in Heritage

Date: Friday, 1 August 2025

Time: 5.30pm

Venue: NUS Baba House

Heritage, contrary to its name, lives and evolves through time, communities and space. These aspects create hybridity, through networks of interactions and relationships shaping the people and places around them.

Join Johannes Widodo and Hadi Osni as they discuss the significance of connecting and uncovering narratives and memories in heritage conservation. Through their respective experiences working across community groups and landscapes, explore the question of authenticity and how memories can uncover the complexities and multiplicities of history missing from mainstream narratives. What happens when we confront the impulse to treat authenticity as a singularity, when the reality of history presents itself otherwise?

This talk is part of the “Authenti(cities): Questions in Urban Conservation” series.

About the speakers

Johannes Widodo is a professor at the National University of Singapore, teaching at the MA Architectural Conservation Program. Affiliations: mAAN (modern Asian Architecture Network) founder executive, AAHM (Asian Academy for Heritage Management) executive committee, UNESCO Asia Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation jury, ICOMOS ISC member, ICOMOS National Committee (Indonesia and Singapore) founder, DoCoMoMo (Macau and Singapore) founder, iNTA (International Network of Tropical Architecture) founder & executive, TCHS (The Circle for Human Sustainability) member, and SEACHA (South East Asian Cultural Heritage Alliance) founder and advisory board member.

Hadi Osni is a curator at the Malay Heritage Centre under Singapore’s National Heritage Board. He earned his PhD in Architecture from the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2023, focusing on the spatiality of memory within the Baweanese community and their migrant lodging houses. His research interests include Malay material culture, diasporic narratives, and the history of Southeast Asia’s built environments. Hadi has led participatory research, cultural mapping, and GIS-based projects to preserve community narratives and has contributed to heritage initiatives supported by government agencies. He is also involved in curatorial and research projects on Malay heritage in Singapore.

The views expressed here are solely those of the author in his private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of the National Heritage Board and/or any government agencies.

About the series

As Baba House prepares for a major 18-month restoration project, “Authenti(cities): Questions in Urban Conservation” invites speakers working across heritage in Southeast Asia to engage with the pressing issues and discourse in heritage conservation. Situated inside the empty House, we invite guests to consider how the questions of holistic conservation and defining authenticity relate to the context of the Baba House’s imminent restoration.