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64 | TEMPO MAY 24, 2011

ARTS

Roy Voragen*

THE theme o the Singapore Bien-nale (SB2011) was ‘Open House’(as celebrated by many duringChinese New Year or at the endo the Ramadan asting month).

This theme comes with an ironic twist:Singapore is not exactly an open society.Can art open up and lay bare the contra-dictions o Singapore?

Open House sought to interpret artin terms o everyday urban lie, and itquestioned how we move across bor-ders—o the private and public sphere—and orm connections with others and

their views. But why should there be abiennale in Singapore in the frst place?Biennales are mushrooming around theglobe (those in Jakarta are marred by f-nancial, organizational and religiousproblems—in 2005, the FPI took a sinis-ter interest in the joint work o Agus Su-wage and Davy Linggar).

In a press release, the organizers stat-ed that the goal was to enhance “Singa-pore’s international profle as a vibrantcity in which to live, work and play.”This means that the biennale is part o

Third Singapore Biennale:Open House in a Not-So-Open Society

the branding o a city: art as a tool tosoten Singapore’s image to competewith other global cities. However, Sin-gaporeans and tourists I spoke with hadno clue about the biennale. The Formu-la 1 racing event seemed more enticing(and louder) than art.

For the duration o the Singapore Bi-ennale, Japanese artist Tatzu Nishi con-structed a hotel around the Merlion stat-ue at Marina Bay. During the day it isopen to visitors, and or the night, a roomcan be booked or S$150. As Marina Bayis a very touristic area, many who visit-ed the Merlion Hotel just happened to bein the vicinity and had no clue about the

biennale. They loved the hotel: patient-ly waiting or their turn to enter. Beoreentering, they hastily kicked o theirshoes and as good tourists took pictureso each other, especially next to the Mer-lion’s head hovering above the king-sizebed. Mayo Martin, the art critic o Sin-gapore’s daily Today, spent a night inthis makeshit luxury hotel, where heelt watched, even though he did not de-tect any CCTV. He concluded this was agood metaphor o Singapore.

American artist Jill Magid took a di-

erent, less paranoid stand on surveil-lance technology. She sought to seducethe system, wanting to enter the sys-tem by fnding its loophole. Magid pen-etrates seemingly closed systems to getintimate with these systems and in theprocess, technology is subverted bysensuality. A system o surveillance isturned into sel-surveillance so the sys-tem works as a mirror to create herselFor Magid, art is exactly this process oseduction. She said: “I seduce systems opower to make them work with me,” andin the process there is mutual change.

At the biennale, several o Magid’sworks were displayed, some o these

were commissioned or the 2004 Liv-erpool Biennale. In Liverpool, at thetime, there were 242 CCTV camerasNormally, ootage is destroyed ater31 days; however, the Data ProtectionAct which the UK enacted in 1998, al-lows one to submit a so-called SubjectAccess Request Form and, i approvedootage will be saved or seven years inan evidence locker. Magid stayed or amonth in Liverpool, where she submitted 31 request orms, which read like intimate love letters. Along the way a mu-

Michael

Lee’s Office

Orchitect. 

Evidence

Locker by Jill

Magid (right).

The moresubtle The

Meaning of 

 Style by Phil

Collins (far

right).

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MAY 24, 2011 TEMPO | 65

tual bond o trust was created, most po-etically visualized in Final Tour. On thelast day o her stay, she toured aroundLiverpool on the back o a motorbikedriven by one o the observers.

Magid’s work was intriguing, but italso raises questions. The most obvi-ous question is, o course, whether thiskind o work could have been made inSingapore—where surveillance cam-eras are ubiquitous—which seems ex-tremely unlikely. Another matter is ourposition—she calls us the ‘third par-ty witness’—and we are put in a pas-sive, voyeuristic relationship. She in-vites us, though, to seduce the systemourselves. However, wouldn’t the DataProtection Act be jeopardized i we, enmasse, started to submit request orms?Moreover, wouldn’t the public sphere asa democratic space become impossiblei we en masse bring our most intimateselves into this space? American soci-ologist Richard Sennett warned in hisbook The Fall of Public Man o the tyr-anny o authentic intimacy.

South Arican Candice Breitz took upthe question o what drives individua-tion. In Toronto she flmed interviewswith seven sets o twins and one triplet.The title o her captivating work, Fac-tum, is taken ater two near-identicalpaintings by Robert Rauchenberg: Fac-tum I and II. The interviews show how in-dividuals struggle to be dierent and tobe considered an individual while some-

one with identical genetic codes is proxi-mate. Breitz explains this with a Thai ex-pression: “Same, same, but dierent.”

The indigenous Australian artist Trac-ey Moatt connects this question oidentity with power. Her video Otherwas a collage o all the colonialist clichésin Hollywood movies: the indigenousOther is assumed to hold the secret toerotic pleasure and unlocking this secretwill lead to greater power (already criti-cized by Edward Said in his book Orien-talism). And ftting a Hollywood produc-

tion, Moatt’s video ends with a cosmicejaculation. More subtle were the videoworks by Phil Collins and Tan Pin Pin.

Briton Collins ollows a group o Ma-laysian skinheads in the video The Mean-

ing of Style. I watched it three times inawe. The slow-paced, lyrical video playson and then sublimates our prejudices oskinheads. The Impossibility of Know-ing, a video by Singaporean Tan Pin Pin,was also a very subtle work. It touchesupon the impossibility o giving mean-ing to death. While a narrator gave usthe dry acts o some deadly accidentsaround Singapore, the camera pannedsolemnly through the landscape—look-ing or clues, and not fnding any.

Like Magid, Singaporean MichaelLee’s work Office Orchitect investi-gates the relationship between spaceand desire. For this work, Lee invent-ed the fctional architect KS Wong. Leepresents models o several o Wong’s de-signs, one more outlandish than the oth-er. Lee says: “When objects and spac-es lose their utilitarian unctions, theiraesthetic ones come to the oreground.”And in so doing, Lee tries to imagine adierent Singapore. However, Lee callsWong “anally rigorous”; how can a per-son who is excessively orderly and ussyimagine an alternative or the exces-sively ordered Singapore?

The great thing about visiting an artexhibition that is not in a museum orgallery specifcally designed or art

but in an abandoned building, is thatour senses are opened up to the poet-ry o the unexpected. One o the ven-ues o SB2011 is the old Kallang air-port. In a hangar stood the installationthe Deutsche Scheune/German Barnby Scandinavian artists Elmgreen andDragset. I walked around their instal-lation (the bit-too-neat barn is liesize)when something in the ar end o thehangar caught my eye. Most likely thiswas not an artwork in any traditionalsense, but it reminded me o what Mi-

chel Foucault wrote: “Why should thelamp or the house be an art object, butnot our lie?” This aesthetic question is,o course, also a political matter.

An abandoned building also oers

reedom to artists. Polish artist Gos-ia Wlodarczak made eerie drawings onwindows ( frost drawings), another art-ist scribbled on the walls o the staircaseo the old airport, or example: “the acto seeing with one’s own eye.” This textis a reerence to a movie by avant-gardeflmmaker Stan Brakhage (1933-2003)and it is a literal translation o ‘autop-sy.’ The scribble is part o a work by Bul-garian artist Nedko Solakov. However,he himsel never came to Singapore, be-ing mortally araid o ying. He invitedSingaporean flmmaker and artist LiaoJiekai to Sofa and on his return he cre-ated the work or Solakov.

The only Indonesian contribution tothe biennale was by the Jakarta-basedartist collective ruang rupa: SingaporeFiction. But at the Singapore Art Muse-um, one o the venues, two parallel ex-hibitions can be visited: It’s Now or nev-er II, New Contemporary Art Acqui-sitions from Southeast Asia and Ne-gotiating Home, History and Nation,Two Decades of Contemporary Art inSoutheast Asia 1991-2011. Many o thebig names o the Indonesian contempo-rary art scene were present at these twoparallel events, and hopeully, one day,these artworks will be shown again in

Indonesia.From the frst Singapore Biennale, in

2006, I only recall vividly one artwork:the sublime painting The heart is a lone-ly painter by Thai artist Chatchai Puip-ia. There is only so much art we can ab-sorb. Artists raise questions. We art lov-ers add even more questions.

*The writer is a Bandung-basedacademic and writer.

He can be contacted atatumbrutum.blogspot.com