Singapore abuzz with own art agenda

Carla Bianpoen, Contributor/Singapore

These days, Singapore is brimming over with art activities. While auction houses like Larasati and Sotheby's have lured the haves of the region, and foreign initiatives in the arts are burgeoning, the city-state's citizens are also being brought into the fold through presentations of art trends in Southeast Asia and the availability of art insurance.

While Shanghai, New Delhi and Korea's Gwangju have emerged as important points on the arts map, and Jakarta made its own stab in that direction in 2003, Singapore is groping for its place in the sun.

However, Southeast Asia's most prosperous country still has a way to go to fulfill its objective of being the arts hub of the region.

In 2006, Singapore wants to have a biennale, so SENI: Art and Contemporary Singapore 2004 has been launched as a comprehensive warm-up exercise.

SENI encompasses the entire arts scene, including new visions, with video, installation or performance works focusing on the contemporary, while inducing the public to rethink certain notions that have become taken for granted in the course of time.

So, next to the auctions that are providing an enticing cash flow, Singapore is also giving space to art practitioners who shun the conventional system of curators, galleries and art collectors.

SENI (it's the Malay word for art) comprises a multidisciplinary group show in Singapore organized by the Singapore Art Museum and National Heritage Board, conducted by the artistic director, the sociologist Chua Beng Huat and by coordinating curators, Ahmad Mashadi, June Yap and Kim Machan.

Home Fronts, taking place at the Singapore Art Museum, displays the works of 10 artist collectives from Southeast Asia and Asia that explores the notion of "home", an understanding that has been defined by history and memory as a place where one lives and feels at ease or the land where one belongs.

Taring Padi, a progressive arts network from Yogyakarta that promotes the concept of people's art through actions for the plight of the oppressed, naturally challenges our conventional notions of the home.

It focuses on Indonesian migrant workers, recreating a rural Indonesian kitchen and simulating the role of migrant workers; members of the group wash your shirt, if you wish, offering you a replacement shirt while yours hangs to dry on a clothes-line.

Other collectives in the exhibition include Fondation Arabe pour l'Image from Lebanon, with a geographically specific series of works raising questions about portraiture, performance, photography and identity.

Spacekraft, the first artist-run space in Malaysia for young radical cultural workers, takes a multi-arts approach to investigating personal, private and official histories, views and issues which encompass the social, cultural and political realm.

16 Beaver Group from the United States is the address of a space initiated and run by artists to create and maintain an ongoing platform for the presentation, production, and discussion of a variety of projects on artistic, cultural, economic and political issues.

Others include Project 30' (Thailand), a non-profit visual arts organization that seeks to integrate art into the community; Big Sky Mind/Philippines, which is part of a group across the region, and seeks to promote art which engages the critical concerns of contemporary life and times; and Videoart Center Toky' (VCTokyo), which explores the moving image to reflect on consumption-driven urban societies.

Very interesting is the collaborative' 'sciSKEW', a group comprised of three Singaporean architects based in Shanghai. They dissolve the artificial boundaries between art, architecture and media based on contemporary Chinese domesticity, with an abstraction of one of the artists' apartment in Shanghai. Interaction cuts through bodies (of the inhabitant and the visitor), space (the apartment and museum space) and time/daily routine.

Of note is also The Artists Village, a group which has for over a decade played a crucial role in creating a platform for contemporary art practices in Singapore, exploring sites and monuments in their shifting historical and social and meanings.

An interactive installation representing the symbolic reproduction redefines the whole project and the idea of Artists Investigating Monuments (AIM).

A second part of SENI Singapore 20004, Moving Pictures, explores the inner meaning of notions or the disrupter of such.

It includes Human Love, a 4.43-minute video by Arahmaiani, a prominent figure on the Indonesian arts scene with an international reputation whose work here suggests the delusion of humanity and love, two words written on the forehead of a woman's submerging forehead.

There is also Divided Tonight (2:50 minutes) by Singapore artist Heman Chong who works across the fields of graphic design, video art, photography, journalism and new media. The work here suggests the finding of meaning through chaos -- a reflection and criticism on the notions of efficiency, progress, stamina, acceleration, and The Last Three Minutes of the Earth (4:00 minutes), by internationally renowned Beijing artist Feng Mengbo, whose works here draws on Paul Davies book about the ultimate fate of the universe.

There is also Empty Time (16:00 minutes) by Indonesian artist Krisna Murti, showing the painstakingly slow motions of the Bedhoyo court dance suggesting a documentary, but also perceived as the slow pace of developmental progress. Valay Sahende of India shows serialized footage based on the epic tale of the Mahabharata, against scrolling text referring to the violence of Gujarat in 2002, in Scrolls (17 minutes).

A Psychotectonic Experiment by Michael Lee Hong Hwee, an artist/art writer/art curator who explores his shifting identity.

The 21st Century's Big Big Sci-Fi Disaster Horror Movie (4:7 minutes) by Tan Kai Syng, whose works have been widely screened, and Christophe Charles, portrays the process of preparing for the possibility of a major earthquake.

As new media art is gradually finding its place in the contemporary art scene, Gravity, the third part of SENI Singapore 2004 is a major display which seeks to create a space to think and feel the weight of the information age against the mass of art history.

It is organized by the Brisbane-based international platform for New Media art, MAAP Multimedia Art Asia Pacific, in coordination with the Singapore Art Museum, the Earl Lu Gallery, The Substation, the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Gallery, The Art Gallery National Institute of Education and Esplanade Theatres on the Bay.

One of the works comes in the form of the Asia Art Archives installation at the Substation, using scanners, digital cameras and duplicating equipment to transform the information in hard copy to a weightless, paperless archive, ready to be instantly emailed to the home office in Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, the City Art Project that integrates artworks into their respective public spaces includes The Peoples' Portrait by Zhang Ga (China/USA), at Caltex House. It consists of a photo- booth where visitors can have there portraits taken, with each portrait being displayed simultaneously across urban centers in New York City, Singapore and Brisbane.

The Epic, by Emily Chua (Singapore) and Rutherford Chang (USA), at Tanjong Pagar MRT station, is a visual reinterpretation of the media we encounter. Don't Aloha My Banana by artist Ann Healy and filmmaker Lisa Cunico Singapore at Raffles City Shopping Centre, Garden Court, is a large scale photo media project that transforms urban floor-spaces into visual promenades for the audience to walk on.

A symposium will be held on Nov. 20-21, with selected speakers providing a critical appraisal of the changing and emerging concepts of "the contemporary".

With such a comprehensive take on the art, it will not be a surprise if the prospective Singapore biennale in 2006 lives up to expectations and grabs a major place on the arts map in Asia.

-------------------------------------- SENI Until Nov. 28, 2004

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