Global Ambitions: Positioning Singapore as a Contemporary Arts Hub (original) (raw)
Related papers
"The Naked Museum: Art, Urbanism, and Global Positioning in Singapore" (Art Journal, summer 2016)
Art Journal, 2016
I approach the the National Gallery of Singapore as part of a contemporary art geography, which is not purely tied to a fixed location, but is a shifting and malleable construction comprising real territory, its imagination, and its representation in various media. My interest is in the interconnections between national, regional, and global affiliations in the context of the Singapore art scene, and I look at institutions, curatorial strategies, performance art, but also at the way nature is being configured in the context of nation building. My theoretical starting points are site-specificity, monuments and re-performance, not so much as opposed entities but as interrelated parts of a larger inquiry into the representation of artifacts and their institutions on a global stage.
'Practising Contemporary Art in the Global City for the Arts, Singapore'
In Performance Paradigm: A Journal of Performance and Contemporary Culture, no. 8 (August 2012), special issue on ‘Practising Contemporary Art in the Global City for the Arts, Singapore’, guest ed. C. J. W.-L. Wee (internet journal; see http://www.performanceparadigm.net/category/journal/issue-8/), 2012
Contextualized Practices in Arts Education: An International Dialogue on Singapore, 2013
The chapter synthesizes relevant literature on arts education in Singapore and discusses its evolving context in the city-state. It locates the position of the arts in the history of Singapore before and after its independence, during and after its brief merger with Malaysia, and from its early years as a fledgling city-state to its current position as an affluent nation in the Southeast Asian region. On the one hand, it takes into account the evolving cultural policy crafted and enacted by a strong state and which has had significant impact on the local arts and culture. On the other, it rearticulates perspectives on Singapore arts and culture from the local artists and the academic community by highlighting what may be regarded as alternative expressions to the statist account of the Singapore arts landscape. Tensions and contradictions that interlace the development of Singapore arts and culture and that offer constraints, challenges, and potential opportunities for arts teaching and learning are also brought to the fore. A commentary on these tensions and contradictions is then provided (Chapter 2). The commentary expresses the confluences that arise from these tensions as well as some possibilities for the learning context.
The State and the New Society: The Role of the Arts in Singapore Nation-building
This paper takes an historical perspective on the trajectory of Singapore’s arts and cultural landscape from 1965 to 2000. It examines the arts and cultural field as an ideological site within which the People’s Action Party government constantly sought to reinvent or vision a new society. From harnessing the arts for the task of creating ‘‘civilised’’ and ‘‘cultured’’ citizens immediately after independence, as well as to play out multicultural fantasies, to the government’s ‘Global City for the Arts’ project in the 1990s for economic imperatives, arts and culture has not only been ideologically instrumental for nation-building purposes but also malleable to the ruling elite’s changing visions of Singapore society. The PAP government’s deployment of art to establish orthodoxy is a recurring feature in the paper, including its cooption of ‘‘renaissance’’ themes as early as 1980, thus purging ideals of romanticism from public discourse. The paper concludes that Singapore’s cultural policy, although driven by economic impulses, will continue to be an important ideological instrument for nation-building.
The Import of Art: Exhibiting Singapore’s National Development through MoMA’s Visionary Architecture
ISEAS, 2017
The Import of Art: Exhibiting Singapore’s National Development through MoMA’s Visionary Architecture Ms Kathleen Ditzig spoke on “The Import of Art: Exhibiting Singapore’s National Development through MoMA’s Visionary Architecture”. She introduced the exhibition, which featured imaginative, visionary, and idealistic projects from international architects considered too revolutionary to build. Friday, 29 September 2017 – For the 14th instalment of the Arts in Southeast Asia Seminar Series, Ms Kathleen Ditzig (Assistant Curator and Manager, Curatorial and Programmes, National Museum of Singapore) spoke on “The Import of Art: Exhibiting Singapore’s National Development through MoMA’s Visionary Architecture”
Great Expectations: What Does it Mean to Make and Hold Space for the Arts in Singapore?
Space, Spaces and Spacing 2020: The Substation Conference, 2020
The arts and artists need space to thrive. However, as much of the land in Singapore is state-owned, providing space for the arts—literally and figuratively—remains challenging. Today, there is a rich variety of arts infrastructure in Singapore, including performing arts venues, state-subsidised artist studios and co-working spaces for freelancers. However, this state- administered infrastructure comes with expectations, as these arts spaces have been positioned as expedient policy resources capable of achieving a broad confluence of cultural, urban, economic and social outcomes for Singapore. These “great expectations” on state-initiated arts spaces and the ensuing implications are the foci of this paper. I will use two case studies to question what it truly means to make space, hold space and lose space in the arts in Singapore. In doing so, I will explore the possibilities of practices of community, solidarity and collectivism in the arts in Singapore. The paper will highlight the limitations of mere physical space provision, by focusing on the practices of commoning and forms of solidarity that inhabit artistic practice and arise from coming together.
From Global to Local: Singapore’s Cultural Policy and its Consequences
This article explores the effects of Singapore’s Global City for the Arts project on the local theater industry. It begins by describing the character of the Singapore state and its ability to meet the challenges of globalization. It then shows that while historically global in orientation, the city-state’s early cultural policies were resolutely local and insular prior to the economic recession in 1985. From that year on, local arts and culture was driven by an economic rationale—eventually culminating in the birth of a globally oriented national cultural policy: the Global City for the Arts project. The author contends that the Global City for the Arts project has pressured the Singapore state into shedding some of its authoritarian practices in order to conform to international norms. However, the author also illustrates how certain theater companies with the requisite cultural capital for the Global City for the Arts project have benefited from the country’s cultural policies while others that do not possess such cultural capital are marginalized. The article concludes by arguing that the Singapore state, in going global, exacerbates the economic disparity by accentuating preexisting inequalities and divisions in the local.
Art and Politics in Singapore: Beyond LKY at VWFA
Asian Art Newspaper, London, 2010
A ugust is flag month in Singapore. As nationalist fever -genuine or co-opted-grips the city-state, the island's centres of culture, like its malls, play up the high-summer theme as they do Christmas and the lunar New Year.