A global city for the arts? - Singapore

Art in America, Dec, 1997 by Lynn Gumpert

As Singapore's cultural ambitions expand to match its vigorous economy of recent years, artists and critics ponder their changing situation.

As the writer lan Buruma has observed, flying into Singapore can be a sobering experience for a Westerner. Buruma compares contemporary London's "crumbling Victorian buildings homeless people and potholed streets" with this gleaming, towering and spotless Southeast Asian city-state.(1) First-time visitors who have not personally witnessed the recent and radical transformations in Asia find it hard to believe that only 50 years ago, Singapore, like today's other economic "Little Dragons" (Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong), consisted of "two-storey shop houses [store below, family quarters above] smelling of factory smoke, pigs, chickens, and sewage."(2) Some Singapore residents remember back alleys filled with "brothels and opium dens, where immigrant Chinese laborers--still called coolies--blew up their wages in smoke while pining for home."(3)

The surge of Asian wealth which seems likely to continue despite recent stock-market turmoil, has been paralleled by burgeoning art scenes. Singapore, Taipei, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur all house energetic, albeit small, contemporary-art communities, rivals for international attention with the more established Japanese and Korean art worlds to the north. Singapore artists are not only active locally but are plugging into a dynamic, expanding Asian network. Pan-Asian exhibitions, for example the Asia-Pacific Triennials at Australia's Queensland Art Gallery [see A.i.A. June '97] and "Contemporary Art in Asia: Traditions/Tensions," organized by New York's Asia Society [see A.i.A., Feb. '97], have demonstrated the breadth and vitality of contemporary art activity in this previously ignored part of the world.(4)

Under Construction

With characteristic perseverance and speed. Singapore, a minuscule island nation sited around a natural harbor and linked by a causeway to the Malaysian peninsula, has decided to position itself as a "Global City for the Arts." Under the aegis of the Ministry of Information and the Arts, the Singapore National Arts Council, founded in 1991, oversees grants, provides spaces for performances and training. presents arts events (including art fairs) and works with communities to develop audiences. The National Heritage Board, on the other hand, manages the city's museums and is responsible for the current reorganization of the National Museum into separate institutions.

Government money has also been directed toward the promotion of the performing arts. Singapore now has a national symphony and dance company. A number of small, private theater companies cumulatively present more than 2,000 productions annually, ranging from touring Broadway musicals to avant-garde performances. Currently under construction is the mammoth Singapore Arts Centre, funded by a private and governmental consortium. Slated to open in 2001, the Centre is expected to contain multiple theaters that will showcase. Asian and Western performing arts, employing the latest technology to ensure the best possible acoustic standards, including outdoor venues designed to take advantage of the warm climate.

Singapore's location on the Straits of Malacca, one degree north of the equator, is its primary asset, making it a trading and shipping center, Natural resources are exceedingly slim. The metropolitan area is on the largest island itself only 14 miles from north to south and 26 miles from east to west: there are 54 tiny islets as well. For much of its history. Singapore was a swampy backwater harboring pirates controlled at various times by Siam (now Thailand), Sumatra and Java. In 1819, Sir Stamford Raffles of the British East India Company claimed the island for his trading emporium and Singapore was developed as the capital of the Straits Settlements, which also included Penang and Malacca. By the early 20th century; it had become a powerful economic force, attracting multitudes of Chinese. Malay and Indian immigrants.(5)

Singapore fell to the Japanese in 1942. After the war, its governmental situation changed several times. It became independent from British colonial rule when it joined the Federation of Malaysia in 1963. In 1960, however, it was booted out of the Federation over disagreements on how a multiracial society should be governed. Since then, Singapore has been tightly controlled by its first prime minister' Lee Kuan Yew and the People's Action Party (PAP). Although its political and legal systems are based on British models and its economy predicated on international capital investment, Singaporean leadership emphatically asserts the country's difference from the West. Lee has consistently criticized Western liberalism while attributing the nation's success to its supposed "Asian values" and "good government." Singapore, in turn, is often branded by the West as an authoritarian state.(6)

Mixed Heritages

I traveled to Singapore for the first time in early October 1996. During a five-day stay, hosted by the Singapore Tourist and Promotion Board, I juggled visits to artists. critics, the sole art museum, commercial galleries and alternative art spaces with exploring the city's varied sights, from "little India" to the sprawling outdoor hawker centers, which offer an inexpensive selection of ethnic dishes prepared in food stalls and provide congenial sites for informal gatherings of the art world. What I found was an intimate but lively contemporary art scene, at once intensely preoccupied with regional concerns yet cognizant of international issues and current theoretical debates. In keeping with its small size--everyone seems to know everyone else--meetings occurred on the spur of the moment, and exchanges were surprisingly frank and self-critical.