Creating High Culture in the Globalized "Cultural Desert" of Singapore

Author(s): C. J. W. -L. Wee

Source: TDR (1988-), Vol. 47, No. 4 (Winter, 2003), pp. 84-97
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4488510
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84 criticalactscriticalactscriticalactscriticalactscriticalactscriticalactscriticalactscriticalactscriticalactscriticalactscriticalactscritih
mirez.Reply Affirmationin FurtherSupportof Motion to Dismissfor FacialIn-
sufficiency.
Ramirez, Garrett
2002 "LegalStatement."Email to lawyer,forwardedto author,31 July.
Reclaim the Streets
2001 "MAYDAYWRESTLING MADNESS!! SUPERBARRIO MAN!!" Email to
author,I9 April.

R2Kphilly.org
2000 "Remaining RNC Puppet Warehouse Defendants Cleared of All Charges."
<http://www.r2kphilly.org/r2klegal/press/pr- 21300.html> (23 June 2003).

Scott,JamesC.
1985 in SoutheastAsia. New
TheMoralEconomyof thePeasant:RebellionandSubsistence
Haven:YaleUniversityPress.

Shepard,Benjamin
2003 Email to author. 13 April.

Vitale, Alex
2003 "Open Letterto MayorBloomberg."Emailto author,13 April.
Wilson, David L.
2001 "SuperbarrioEludes NYC Police on May Day."Indypendent,
May: 5.

L.M. Bogad is a Lecturerin Drama and TheatreArts at the Universityof Birming-

ham in the UK. His book, Electoral Guerrilla Theatre: Speaking Mirth to
Power, an internationalstudy of satiricalelection campaigns,will be published by
Routledge Press in 2004. His writingshave also appearedin Radical Society and
TDR (45:2, T17o). Bogad is a veteranof the LincolnCenter TheatreDirector'sLab
and a memberof LaLuttaNew Media Collective.

CreatingHigh Culturein the Globalized

"Cultural Desert" of Singapore

C.J. Wee
W.-L.
This essay is dedicatedto the memoryof Kuo Pao Kun (1939-2002)

Singapore, with a population of 3.2 million (4 million, including foreigners)

is distinct from other postcolonial societies in its desire to emulate the ad-
vancements of the West while forsaking not only many of the political dimen-
sions of democratic life but also its cultural dimensions. The result is an
industrial and commercial understanding of culture; manufacturing and pro-
ductive institutions have become the collective basis of social life. And yet, de-

TheDramaReview47, 4 (T18o), Winter2003. Copyright? 2oo3

New YorkUniversity
andtheMassachusetts
Instituteof Technology
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spite this rather dour and puritanical modernity, experimental theatre and
visual art has begun to flourish since the 198os.
What further has transpired is an understanding by the state that in order to
be a "creative economy" and a "happening" Global City that can retain the
"best" foreign and local business and industrial talent, Singapore cannot dis-
play only a philistine modernity. Consequently, public policies have been set
in place since the 199os to foster artistic creativity and even create an arts mar-
ket, in the hope that such creativity will in turn encourage technological and
entrepreneurial innovation. Ironically, this poses challenges for those very
same innovative artists that the state professes to want to foster. This essay ex-
plores some of the tensions, if not actual contradictions, of the recent changes.

I
The city-state Singapore, under the leadership of the People's Action Party
(PAP) since 1959, represents a capitalist modernity that deliberately forsook
autochthony in cultural development for economic success (see Wee forth-
coming). The PAP's reputation for forging an uncreative society composed
mainly of shopping centers by and large stemmed from a pragmatic, petit-
bourgeois vision of a hard-working modern society. Nonetheless, since the
late I980s it has been open to creating a cultural superstructure that would
match its status as a major regional financial and industrial hub. In the 20-odd
years prior, "culture" had referred more to multiethnic cultures and values,
though by the early I98os to the mid-g99os, "culture" also signified the myth-
icized "Asian/Confucian" values that were the alleged foundation of Singa-
pore's "East-Asian Miracle" status. Cultural policy-policy that fostered the
arts and high culture-was not a real concern.
By 1989, the government began to articulate a recognizable cultural policy
with the government-authorized Reportof the Advisory Council on Cultureand
theArts (Ong et al. 1989). By this time, there was already a burgeoning theatre
scene principally led by The Theatre Practice (TTP), The Necessary Stage
(TNS), and TheatreWorks (Singapore), among the first contemporary profes-
sional theatre companies. There was also a nascent experimental visual arts de-
velopment, led by Tang Da Wu.
TTP's Kuo Pao Kun (1939-2002) was the major enabling personality in the
new theatre scene. He had been detained without trial by the PAP govern-
ment between 1976 and I980 for alleged communist activities. Kuo bounced
back into prominence in the 1980s with plays that examined the possibility of
trans-ethnic understanding and the destruction of culture and cultural mem-
ory in the wake of a statist modernity with totalizing impulses. He also broke
the mold of single-language theatre and created plays, such as Mama Looking
for Her Cat (1988), which utilized a range of the languages spoken in Singa-
pore.I Significantly, Kuo was a natural institution builder able to recognize and
generously support younger talent; he was able to harness the energy of visual
artists involved with newer genres such as performance art--introduced to
Singapore by visual artist and Fukuoka Cultural Prize winner Tang Da Wu-
thereby helping to pioneer an emerging multidisciplinary contemporary art
scene.
The three theatre companies created adventurous productions, often for-
mally bold (many of the plays were "devised," with the scripts created in a
workshop setting) and dealing with issues of memory, ethnicity, and other
identity issues. These were artistic reactions against the singular and sometimes

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strident top-down disciplinary modernization of Singapore since the mid-

1960s, which had allowed little space for reflection on cultural or historical is-
sues. What was notable about the theatre of the I980s to mid-I99os was that
"difficult" theatre-even if text based-formed the mainstream of the more
important theatre groups; devised theatre even coexisted within companies
with fledgling, indigenized Broadway-style musicals. Gender issues were no-
ticeable by the early 199os. All in all, these were invigorating years. Theatre is
now the most prominent and, not surprisingly, visible art form in the city-
state. The formulation of cultural policy and the increased financial resources
that were poured into the arts, along with the creation of other theatre com-
panies-2002 well represents these changes-has dramatically altered the
overall cultural and certainly theatrical landscape since the mid-199os.
The visual arts scene has also changed. Tang Da Wu returned from London
in 1988 (after the best part of 20 years in England, with occasional return
trips), and founded a group called the Artists' Village in 1989. The group was
established in an abandoned village in a then-rural area called Sembawang as a
critical response to the petit-bourgeois urban society that Singapore was be-
coming.2
The art that arrived helter-skelter with Tang was contemporary, anticom-
mercial, and eclectic. Suddenly, there were dynamic experiments in concep-
tual art, performance, installation sculpture that used Duchampian "found"
objects, figurative painting that had German expressionist antecedents (but
was executed with personal rather than historical references), pop art, and
Happenings. There had been earlier intimations of such artistic possibilities,
but they were just that--intimations. Not surprisingly, the experiments that
sprang up around Tang did not definitively reference their origins. If, by the
mid-197os, conceptual art in the West was either popular or beginning to
grow stale, to be followed by a very plural visual culture that had an unpre-
dictable and innovative diversity, the corporate "arrival" of contemporary art
in its various forms in Singapore in the '9os was confusing but energizing. The
predominantly young artists Tang mentored, who were of various ethnicities,
experimented with themes that implicitly or explicitly critiqued the state's
wished-for bland identity and urban modernity. The environment, sex, vio-
lence, identity, and rebellion became valid areas for enquiry. The world of ab-
stract modern art that dominated the local arts in the 1970os exploded. What
was also notable was that many artists were from the less-privileged and often
non-English speaking social strata, which distinguished them from the more
bourgeois backgrounds of English-language theatre practitioners, providing a
distinctive edge to the visual arts.
Ironically, the arts flourished during the i98os up to the early 199os pre-
cisely because of the pragmatic, philistine modernity promoted by the govern-
ment. Singapore society--in its mercantile/industrial-oriented indifference
to the artsy-craftsy--allowed space for artistic growth,3 as such growth gen-
erally was not considered important enough to warrant attention.
For theatre, however, the late '8os was a very difficult time, 1987 in partic-
ular. A group called the Third Stage, which had produced plays critical of
politics and social issues in the city-state, was affected by a general government
crackdown on a so-called "Marxist conspiracy." The home affairs ministry al-
leged that the conspiracy planned to "subvert the existing social and political
system [...] through communist united front tactics to establish a communist
state" (Straits Times 1987). The Third Stage was a "front organization" of the
conspirators, and various Roman Catholic societies and one ecumenical stu-

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dent fellowship formed another front. Five of the 16 people detained on 21

May 1987 were members of the Third Stage. Though four were released, an-
other six people were detained on 20 June; one of this latter group was the
president of the Third Stage.4
The situation calmed down thereafter, until another government crack-
down in late 1993-this time specifically on the arts. A 21-year-old perfor-
mance and visual artist, Josef Ng, who did a performance protesting the police
entrapment of working-class homosexual men, and TNS, which practiced
Augusto Boal-style Forum Theatre, were accused, respectively, of obscenity
and having a "Marxist" orientation. The latter charge, with the collapse of the
Berlin Wall, could only sound absurd. Performance art remains officially in a
position of limbo, and cannot receive National Arts Council funding (NAC).
Despite these obstacles, the state's desire for a commodified theatre and visual
arts scene has persisted.
What is curious in the city-state is a sort of "backward" arts development.
First, there was an experimental, cutting-edge arts scene, which was followed
by attempts to create the necessary infrastructure: proper arts education in the
schools, major art spaces or museums (the Singapore Art Museum [SAM], for
example, built to showcase modern and contemporary Southeast Art, was
opened only in 1996), and major theatre venues. "Black box" venues began
opening in the early 199os; the other options previously had been the inappro-
priately large Kallang Theatre and the colonial-era Victoria Theatre).
In 1992, the government began to promote a policy to make the city-state
not just a Global City, but, indeed, a Global City for the Arts. Unfortunately,
if predictably, an overall instrumentalist attitude predominated. Some leading
politicos had discovered that to become a "serious" Global City capable of at-
tracting and retaining the "foreign talent" of senior business executives who
could further "globalize" the city-state, we needed Western metropolitan-
style cultural infra- and superstructures that would enable Singapore to be-
come a sort of "London of the East."
As is often the case in Singapore, an it-needs-to-happen-tomorrow social-
engineering imperative and paradigm were adopted for the new cultural pol-
icy. The entrenched position of this paradigm gave rise to the central tension
between the professed wish for a dynamic creativity and the existing instru-
mentalizing and rationalist mental set. Arts funding increased and theatre, as
the most visible art form of the I980s, was a major beneficiary. The preten-
tiously entitled Renaissance City Report: Culture and the Arts in Renaissance Sin-
gapore (200o) advocated for even more funding to be made available (some
S$50o million-nearly U.S.$30 million-over five years), and these funds have
started to have an impact on the cultural scene. The crowning infrastructural
achievement was the October 2002 opening of the S$6oo million (U.S.$345
million) "Esplanade- Theatres on the Bay" arts complex, built specifically
for "world-class" foreign acts-a statist attempt to create a commercial Cult
of the Beautiful. It remains to be seen how this will affect theatre develop-
ment, given that the Esplanade has no medium-size theatre space: its major
theatre auditorium seats some 1,8oo00persons--a number that both the older
and newer theatre companies would find daunting to fill.

II
Before proceeding to reflect further on the Esplanade's potential impact on
Singapore's cultural life it is important to assess the arts from 1980 to the mid-

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1990os, and then to consider how diversity in the arts may be compromised by
sailing too closely to the reified production of what may be called a "global-
ized high culture."
The visual arts scene since perhaps the mid- or late 1990s has seen a nor-
malization of arts practices that had countercultural edges. This normalization
in itself is not surprising; it is the pattern in the metropolitan West. What is
surprising is the speed of the process, having taken place less than a decade after
such newer practices arrived in the city-state. Relatively speaking, there are a
pronounced number of newer, energetic zo-something artists-many of whom
are articulate in "pomo" talk-with privileged overseas fine arts educations
from metropolitan institutions such as Goldsmiths College or the Slade School,
London. (Their counterparts from the I980s also received fine arts educations
but, in many cases, they studied locally at institutions that were only then start-
ing up, such as what today is the LaSalle-SIA College of the Arts.) These artists
began participating in the global art world ofbiennales (Documenta at Kassel,
Germany; Venice Biennale) earlier in their careers than their immediate pre-
decessors had managed.
In some ways, it is this increased firsthand exposure to the metropolitan
West combined with the state's desire to occupy the cultural space it had pre-
viously evacuated that has led to both the increased visual arts activity and the
decline of artistic criticality, diversity, and radicalism. In this respect, on a re-
lated note, the establishment of SAM in 1996 served both to promote the idea
of "contemporary Southeast Asian art"6--the city-state is the only local place
within Southeast Asia with the finances and "Western" expertise to create
such a museum-and to contain the counter- or subcultural aesthetic im-
pulses, with public awareness in mind. With SAM, the state was moving rap-
idly and self-consciously into the emerging new art world.
As for the theatre, and indeed the contemporary arts scene in general, a ma-
jor impetus for change was Kuo Pao Kun, who died of cancer in September
2002-a loss that we have yet to come to terms with. Kuo forged significant
theatre links with Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan, and was a mentor to many
directors, including TheatreWorks' Ong Keng Sen, TNS's Alvin Tan, and Ac-
tion Theatre's Ekachai Uekrongtham. He was also the founding artistic direc-
tor of The Substation, Singapore's only independent arts center, and he raised
a strong public voice that questioned matters not only of the arts but other key
social concerns such as education and ethnic-management policies. Kuo
hailed from a period in Singapore's cultural-political life when it was possible
to hear more than just the state's voice-before the state had learned how to
dominate the space of public speech. His 1976 to 1980 detention without a
trial under the Internal Security Act gave Kuo a moral stature that enhanced
his natural charisma.
With Kuo's illness during recent years, TTP's programming (perhaps inevi-
tably) has seemed thinner when compared to their past output. In 2002, TTP
staged a Mandarin-Chinese version of David Mamet's Oleanna and Athol Fu-
gard's The Island. The latter was highly anticipated as it had been staged first in
1985 by Kuo himself (neither of the 200oo productions was directed by Kuo)
and was seen by some as Kuo's own oblique comment on Singapore's
detention-without-trial laws. However, neither of the productions reflected
the same progressive aesthetic that TTP had under Kuo's influence.
Singapore's other notable international theatre figure is TheatreWorks' ar-
tistic director Ong Keng Sen. With Ong spending much of his time on artistic
work overseas,' the company appointed a part-time artistic director for Sin-

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gapore productions, journalist-playwright Tan Tarn How (whose plays Ong

had directed in the 1990s), along with two full-time associates. Two new plays
were staged in 2002: Tan's own Machineand Russell Heng's ComradeMayor.
Despite TheatreWorks' attempt to maintain their local presence, Ong's ex-
tended stay in Europe during 2002 has led, along with Kuo's demise, to a no-
ticeable disruption in Singapore theatre. Malaysian director Krishen Jit-
himself a key theatre figure in Southeast Asia-as early as 1993 had already
commented in a conference address on "the absence of a strong critical tradi-
tion in Singapore theatre." According to Jit, this lack is also the reason why
"according to the local media, apparently Singapore theatre achieves an ar-
tistic breakthrough or a reinvention of its history almost every six months"
(1995:22). While Ong does bring his overseas productions back to the island,
the absence of Ong and the death of Kuo have weakened local theatre's sense
of itself.
Of the three major companies, TNS has been the most consistent. Artistic
director Alvin Tan and resident playwright Haresh Sharma continued, in
2002, the production of experimental and sometimes completely devised plays
that address community and social issues. The Beginning of the End (BOTE),
conceived and directed by TNS associate Jeff Chen, evoked the absurd and the
hysterical in the analysis of everyday life. Sharma's new play, goteatgod,staged
in July, was a response to the September II terrorist attack. It was an uneven mix
of song, drama, and comedy that dealt with the ramifications of 9/I I. Close-In
My Facewas a company-devised play that humorously examined the claustro-
phobia of living in Singapore's ubiquitous high-rise public housing estates, a
veritable symbol of its modernity.
TNS's ongoing commitment to the island-state's cultural life is significant,
but the theatre company also seems fatigued and overextended. In 2001, the
group retrenched, cutting many forms of cultural outreach. Most unfortunately,
2ooi saw the end of [Names Changedto Protectthe Innocent],a regular platform
the company had provided for exploratory work, well managed by Jeff Chen.
This program fostered installation and performance art, variously combined
with dance and visual art, as well as more "standard"theatre pieces-that is to
say, it ran the gamut of the contemporary arts in the city-state. Workshops and
forums were held in conjunction with productions. The end of this program
has meant the end of gem-like, small-scale experimentation.
As in the visual arts, the theatre scene has transcended the I980s to mid-
199gosphase, with a wide and diverse range of both companies and produc-
tions. Adventurous programming is attempted but with both uneven aesthetic
results and ill-defined cultural politics.
The bilingual (Mandarin-Chinese and English-language) Toy Factory The-
atre Ensemble, for example, has made a reputation for staging provocative
plays-and also for their sexually provocative advertising. In January and Feb-
ruary 2002, they featured English and Mandarin versions ofJonathan Harvey's
London fairytale of gay youth coming of age, Beautiful Thing. In September
2002, they put up Marius von Mayenburg's Fireface,which deals with identity
as an accident of birth and as constructed by the opinions of others, as well as
with controversial elements of sexual deviance and pyromania. Artistic direc-
tor Goh Boon Teck's most ambitious production for 2002 was his Singapore
Arts Festival contribution, an adaptation of Chekhov's The CherryOrcharden-
titled The MorningPeople.Goh seems to be ambitiously reproducing the English
tradition of staging classicsin "updated"or "localized" contexts. The setting was
transposed to 1934 Shaanxi, China, to evoke China's crumbling order. It was

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1. Publicityphotofor Toy
FactoryTheatreEnsemble's
Fireface (20o02), directedby
BeatriceScia, stagedat the
ToyFactoryTheatrette,
Singapore.(Photo? Toy
FactoryTheatreEnsemble)
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i
ei a•: :
..
beautifully staged, but some felt it failed to convey the urgency of Chekhov's
play for a contemporary audience and "filled" the meaningful silences of the
Chekhovian text (see Seet 2002).
The Harvey and von Mayenburg plays are part of what Ong Keng Sen calls
the "global playwright" phenomenon; the plays of such authors get staged in
Western European cultural centers such as Berlin and London-and now in
Singapore. Despite the provocative content of the two plays, the management
of Toy Factory presents their productions as "events" that are part of the glitzy,
globalized theatre world. However, at this stage, Toy Factory's aesthetic am-
bitions exceed their capacity to deliver.
In February 2003, Toy Factory produced a version of Hong Kong play-
wright Raymond To Kwok-Wai's Mad Phoenix at the Esplanade's studio the-
atre. The play, which was made into a film in 1997, tells the story of Cantonese
opera playwright Kong Yu-Kau (19o9-1984). Goh's staging attempted to use
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Chinese opera-style singing and movement-both of which his (generally
capable) youthful actors were not up to, as these are techniques that hardly can
be mastered during a limited rehearsal period. Ambition- commensurate
with the city-state's leaders' own global ambitions-was allowed to override
aesthetic good sense. It is also significant that despite Toy Factory's "alterna-
tive" status, Mad Phoenix was staged at the Esplanade, the new center for the
arts, as part of its Chinese Festival of Arts (6-16 February 2003).8

III
One might think that the PAP government has realized the "postmodern"
as that stage in capitalism when, as Fredric Jameson has famously pronounced,
culture has to a greater or lesser degree become coextensive with the econ-
omy. The actuality, though, is a more superficial grasp of the situation, as the
state still remains true to its older modernist and, indeed, vulgar Marxist com-
prehension of the economy as the base of all reality. However, some politicos
and senior civil servants have either read or heard enough of cultural policy
papers with titles such as "From the Information Economy to the Creative
Economy: Moving Culture to the Center of International Public Policy" (Ven-
turelli n.d.) to know that the government must now create a cultural sphere to
match the city-state's existing "hub" status within the global economy.
There is a certain refreshing directness in statements by government officials
about their investments in the culture industry: economic forces reign su-
preme. In a 2002 statement made in Manchester, England, justifying the build-
ing of the costly complex built during a time of recession in the city, the
permanent secretary of the Ministry of Information, Communications, and
the Arts, Tan Chin Nam, points out the financial benefits of the complex:

$6o00 million is a worthy investment for Singapore to attract world-class

musicians and performers. When they come, not only the local, but for-
eign businessmen also, are elated by the buzzing arts scene. Add to that
the whole hotel industry, F&B [Food and Beverage industry], airline,
transport and local designers gain from the dollars these foreign per-
formers as well as [their audiences from the region] spend in Singapore.
(in The Graduate 2003:4)9

Not surprisingly, Tan makes no mention of local artistic development-

which, after all, might in time become suitable cultural "content" for "ex-
port."
The dynamism of "alternative theatre"-in actuality, as already noted, the
mainstream, until more conventional theatre such as Action Theatre became
visibleo--has waned in recent years, possibly fatigued by the pursuit of "re-
sults" demanded by state funding. This situation may be exacerbated by the
Esplanade's opening. The Substation, for instance, has had 12 years of a multi-
disciplinary contemporary arts festival called Septfest, during which some good
younger talent has been supported. Septfest's direction might need to be re-
considered, given the new circumstances, in which the state's interest in the
visual and performing arts is stronger. The 200oo2 festival still manifested a
strong commitment to theatre programming, featuring two small, innovative,
young experimental groups: the idiosyncratic Spell#7, and a newer group,
KYTV ("Kill Your TV"), which mixes music, the visual arts, kitsch costumes,
and movement.

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The Esplanade's opening festival in October 2002 featured Batsheva Dance

Company's Anaphaza and, as its mainstage theatre offering, a new musical on
the life of the Chinese Dowager Empress by popular Singaporean songwriter-
singer Dick Lee, entitled ForbiddenCity: Portraitof an Empress"--a suitably
monumental offering for the opening of the state's cultural monument.
The question that arises out of Singapore's new circumstances is this: What
sort of art will we now have, versus the sort of art we may now need?Political
and cultural commentator JanadasDevan noted a decade ago, when it was ap-
parent that the government would build a monumental arts center, "[Y]ou
cannot do without an Arts centre-or something that answers to that name: a
centre. [...] The centre exists whether you like it or not." The more important
thing is:

to keep in tension the relationship between one kind of art and an-
other- [...] a tension which, if it doesn't already exist, one must create
and sustain. Only that art which keeps in tension the relationship be-
tween singularity and plurality will save us. [...O]nly that art which re-
fuses to simplify what it promises, [...o]nly such art is absolutely
necessary. (1995:55)

The "tension" that Devan speaks of is very different from the tension that ex-
ists between the professed statist desire for a creative society and the actual im-
plementation of instrumentalized cultural policy.
The Esplanade's opening festival did have its moment of "plurality."Part of
the festival was an Asian Contemporary Theatre (ACT) festival, coordinated
by the late Kuo Pao Kun and his codirector of the Practice Performing Arts
School, T. Sasitharan. The festival featured India's Kalakshetra Manipur (Nupi
[Woman]), Japan's Gekidan Kaitaisha (Bye-Bye: The New Primitive),Indone-
sia's Sardono Dance Theatre (Nobody's Body), and Taiwan's Shakespeare's
Wild Sisters (Six Memos for the Next Millennium). An accompanying confer-
ence examined the "meaning" of "contemporary Asian art," and had speakers
such as the intercultural theatre practitioner and theorist Rustom Bharucha
and Tokyo University's Uchino Tadashi. Unfortunately (and possibly tell-
ingly), the Esplanade's publicity for both the ACT and conference was rela-
tively poor, and the admission charge for the conference was prohibitive,
excluding most ordinary people.
Two points emerge from the 2002 theatre season: first, the amount of
money invested in the theatre scene may raise official expectations that far ex-
ceed the realistic possibilities for aesthetic development in the short term; and
second, while the presence of the Esplanade "center" will not thwart ambi-
tious local theatre-indeed it may expose us to aesthetic possibilities--there
is still a need to be aware of the challenge of having this center. Beauty was
once a subversive protest against the markets' instrumentalism; at present, the
attempted commodification of the arts-both in the theatre and the visual
arts-means that beauty can be made to be the gloss of the established order,
even in a pragmatist society where the arts have not had a significant historical
place. We must be careful of the suppression of everything outside of com-
mercial culture, especially given the aspiration to have the arts be the decora-
tive capstone of an aspiring Global City.
The start of 200oo3 brought new problems for the arts: the Iraq war and the
appearance of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in the region led
to the further weakening of the Singapore economy, following in the wake of
the 1997 Asian economic crisis and the 2001 crash of high-tech equity. While
government arts and cultural funding will increase in 200oo3 by 24 percent to

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dg
)
2. Fromthe TheatrePrac-
tice'sMandarin-language
j productionof Descendants
of the Eunuch Admiral
(1995) at the Victoria Thea-
??::i tre, Singapore,directedby
Kuo Pao Kun. (PhotoC
The TheatrePractice)

S$529 million (U.S.$302 million), much of this amount goes to "hardware"or

infrastructuralprojects such as a new National Librarybuilding and the redevel-
opment of the Singapore History Museum. Actual arts funding-as channeled
through the NAC-has shrunk by Io percent to S$35.5 million (U.S.$20 mil-
lion). There is also talk of cuts in the funding for the Singapore Arts Festival
(see Tan 2003). The issue here is not that there should be no cuts to arts fund-
ing during hard times, but more the depth of the government's commitment
to the arts in the first place. Given that, it is hard not to think that, in 2003, the
PAP government pulled the rug from underneath the arts. The funding situa-
tion highlights the contradiction between the older economic instrumental-
ism and the hope for a "creative economy" in which the arts have a pivotal
role.
It is appropriate to conclude this essay with Kuo Pao Kun. An astute ob-
server of the city-state's cultural life, his allegorical Descendantsof the Eunuch
Admiral (1995) offers an incisive analysis of Singapore's liminal arts space-
and it potentially becomes an analysis that offers a more universal picture of
culture and the arts.
Descendantsoffers a post-romantic vision of mankind that retains a commit-
ment to human aspiration and imagination. It draws explicit parallelsbetween
the history of the famous Muslim-Chinese admiral and explorer Zheng He
(aka Cheng Ho [1371- 1435]), who during the expansive Ming Dynasty sailed
with his Chinese armada to the shores of East Africa, and contemporary man,
and between the cost to be paid for service to the state-in this case, an anach-
ronistic and allegorized Chinese nation-state before that modern idea really
existed-and to capitalism-allegorized in the play as "markets." If, because
of poverty, some men voluntarily submitted to the literal and symbolic castra-
tion necessary for state service, Zheng He, Descendantsasserts,was violently set
upon by the state and cut off from a Muslim identity and future for the state's
glorification. The Zheng He character must therefore seek help from any pos-
sible source:

Allah knows my bitterness

Buddha has mercy on my soul
Sea Goddess protects my fleet
Voyages to the West fulfill my life. (Kuo 2003, scene Io)

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Ironically, the moments of transcendence beyond Zheng He's present con-

dition come about only during the voyage to realms and markets away from the
ambiguous and discomfiting home that is China, while representing the glory
of the Ming emperor:

At the end of this great market-festival, Zheng He and the king ex-
changed gifts of gold and silver, silk and ivory, jewels and porcelain. As
the setting sun displayed the most brilliant of its colours, they parted in
passionate sorrow. The king and his attendants hold on to their treasured
silk, porcelain, and jewels while Grand Eunuch leads away the rare ani-
mals and birds given to his mission as reciprocal gifts. Even when they
were sailing down the river back to the [Zheng He-led Chinese] ar-
mada, the music from the instruments made of shells and reeds could
still be heard from land. [...]
Grand Eunuch Zheng He, faithful servant of the Ming Emperor, was
sent to the Western Ocean as an imperial emissary to blaze a trail of
glory for the Middle Kingdom. Never did he expect to leave a path of
amazing splendour that would seep into the lives of so many people in
so many places, through so many ways over so long a time [...]. (2003,
scene 13)

The markets-representing a sort of prelapsarian capitalism-thus can be-

come the cosmopolitan contact zones for an expansive Asian globalism, zones
offering the genuinely marvellous, that which exceeds the confines of alien-
ated life in the modern nation, with the potential for intercultural exchange
still alive.
The circumscribed reality of castration, deracination, and entrapment
through service to the state remains; but we must search for meaning and for
the possibility of an identity that-if need be-may be different from one's
origin, precisely because of the reality of a seemingly universal capitalism that
continues to fragment local spheres. Zheng He's fractured Muslim-Chinese
origins and life itself-as shattered as Singapore's cultural life, but also repre-
senting more than the Singapore condition-suitably only comes through as
disjointed narrative fragments in the play; when we try to add them up, we see
how the one missing male "fragment" has animated this life.
In the end, Descendants says, cultural identity and history are hard to protect
from the politico-economic realm. The challenge is to transcend the literal
and symbolic violence done to the realm of culture, and even to transcend the
nation-state that practices such violence. Any person who serves the state and
the global markets must face this challenge -multiple cultural attachments
and identities are offered as a goal to aspire to rather than a problem resolved
in Descendants:

But the eunuch admiral seemed never to have given up the hope of
finding an alternate life. On board his drifting vessels, in the loneliness
of the vast ocean, in the limbo between departing and arriving, between
being a man and a non-man, he kept on dreaming, hoping, searching,
struggling. (Kuo 2003, scene 16)

Singapore artists-as the paradoxical "descendants" of the eunuch admi-

ral-must maintain the suitable tension between plurality and the singularity
that may now threaten cultural production in the city-state.

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Notes

I. Nearly all of Kuo's plays in English-he wrote most of his plays in both Mandarin-
Chinese and English-have been published (see Kuo 1990, 2000, 2003). The planning
has commenced for putting together Kuo's collected works.
2. In 1989, Tang is quoted as saying: "The main reason for being here [in Sembawang] is
the isolation." The magazine writer's response to this was: "The psychological context
of the village is earthy, rudimentary, and free of the numerous and trivial distractions
normally found in the city" (Chia Ming Chien 1989:33).
3. This point is illustrated by one journalist's writing on the Artists' Village:

Describing their [visual] work may be simple enough. The greater difficulty lies
in actually rating the artists. [As art critic and historian] Mr. [T. K.] Sabapathy
says: "There's no critical history here [in Singapore] where you can slot an artist
somewhere on a scale of I to Io." (Lee 1989)

4. In the city-state, the term "Marxist" is taken by the state to be coterminous with "com-
munist." The 1987 crackdown was codenamed "Operation Spectrum." Straits Times
correspondent Chua Lee Hoong-a former Internal Security Department officer-re-
cently offered the most extraordinary comparison between the 1987 security sweep and
the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident as a justification for Operation Spectrum: "Every
country has its own iconic movement in dealing with potentially destabilising dissent.
Tiananmen was one of China's, and I dare say it brought relative political stability for at
least 20 years" (2003:I8). According to Chua, Operation Spectrum was one of Singa-
pore's such "iconic movements," along with the infamous February 1963 Operation
Cold Store, when the security forces detained over Ioo leading opposition political fig-
ures. Singapore was then trying to join the Federation of Malaysia, and internal security
on the island was shared between Malaya (now West Malaysia), Britain, and Singapore.
It is too easy to say that Chua represents the state's position on such matters; it is most
unlikely the PAP government would wish any of its activities--historically or other-
wise-to be compared with the very violent Chinese clampdown.
5. For more information regarding this crackdown on the arts, see the essays by Sanjay
Krishnan, Sharaad Kuttan, Lee Weng Choy, Leon Perera, and Jimmy Yap in Looking at
Culture (Krishnan et al. 1996). This anthology was initially intended to be an issue of the
National University of Singapore Society's journal, Commentary. The Society panicked
in the wake of the 1993 arts controversy, and stopped the publication process; the editors
resigned and subsequently had the issue privately published.
6. The opening show and the published catalogue were entitled "Modernity and Beyond"
(see Sabapathy 1996). The exhibition showcased SAM's potential for defining the ter-
rain of modern "Southeast Asian art."
7. In 2002, Ong was in Berlin for the In Transit intercultural festival at the Haus der Kul-
turen der Welt; in Kornborg Castle, Copenhagen, for his Search: Hamlet, which ends the
intercultural Shakespeare trilogy that began in 1996 with his Lear; and at Lincoln Cen-
ter, New York, for Silver River, with music by Bright Sheng and libretto by David Henry
Hwang.
8. The main jewel of the Festival was the Asian debut of the Kun opera, The Peony Pavilion,
directed by Chen Shi-Zheng, which had premiered at the Lincoln Center Festival of
1999. Unfortunately, attendance of the event was poor: the country's limited arts edu-
cation has not developed a significant audience for an opera that stretches out over five
evenings.
9. The editorial goes on to note a truth the entire population should be familiar with: "By
now, the people should see that whatever the government invests in, be it education, the
arts, conservation projects or biotechnology, the bottom line is how one derives an eco-
nomic benefit from each venture."
io. Action Theatre is one of the more artistically ambitious companies of the commercial
theatre. In 2002 it adapted for the stage Singaporean Hwee Hwee Tan's novel Mammon
Inc. (200I), which deals with a 2o-something Singapore woman's capitulation to global
consumerism in the guise ofa transnational firm that "manages" cross-cultural identities
for the "betterment" of global business. Action has also involved prominent Malaysian

ts criticalacts criticalacts criticalacts criticalacts criticalacts criticalacts criticalacts criticalacts criticalacts criticalacts criticalacts
96 criticalactscriticalactscriticalactscriticalactscriticalactscriticalactscriticalactscriticalactscriticalactscriticalactscriticalactscriti,
director KrishenJit with their work. He was involved with another 2002 project called
SqueezeandSqueezability,a smorgasbordof six short plays. The quality of the scriptswas
uneven, though the direction and acting were of high standards.
I I. For more on Lee's work, see Wee (1996).

References

Chia Ming Chien

1989 "The Artists' Village." Man, April-May:33.
Chua Lee Hoong
2003 "Me? I'd Rather Save Money on the Candles..." Straits Times (Singapore),
Op. Ed. section, 2 April:18.
Devan, Janadas
1995 "Is Art Necessary?" In Art vs. Art: Conflict and Convergence (The Substation
Conference 1993), edited by Lee Weng Choy, 51-56. Singapore: The Sub-
station.

The Graduate
2003 "The Esplanade an Impetus? Only Time will Tell." Editoral. The Graduate
(Singapore), February-March:4.

Jit, Krishen
1995 "The Larger Context of Arts Development in Singapore." In Art vs. Art: Con-
flict and Convergence (The Substation Conference 1993), edited by Lee Weng
Choy, 21-25. Singapore: The Substation.

Krishnan, Sanjay,et al., eds.

1996 Looking at Culture. Singapore: Artres Design & Communications.
Kuo Pao Kun
1990 The Coffin Is Too Big for the Hole-And Other Plays. Singapore: Times Books.
2000 Images at the Margins: A Collection of Kuo Pao Kun's Plays. Singapore: Times
Books.
2003 Two Plays by Kuo Pao Kun: Descendants of the Eunuch Admiral and The Spir-
its Play, edited by C.J.W.-L. Wee and Lee Chee Keng. Singapore: SNP Inter-
national.

Lee Siew Hwa

1989 "Village Artists." SundayTimes(Singapore), "Sunday Plus" section, 28 May.
Ministry of Information and the Arts
2000 RenaissanceCity Report:Cultureand the Arts in RenaissanceSingapore.Singa-
pore: Ministry of Information and the Arts.
Ong Teng Cheong, et al.
1989 Report of the AdvisoryCouncilon Cultureand the Arts. Singapore: Singapore
National Printers.
Seet, K.K.
2002 "Review of The Morning People." Arts Magazine (Singapore), September-
October: 128-29.

Straits Times
1987 "Two Main Fronts in Conspiracy: Full Text of Ministry of Home Affairs
Statement on the Marxist Conspiracy." Straits Times (Singapore), 27 May.

Tan Shzr Ee
2003 "The Art of Spending." Straits Times (Singapore), 16 April, Life section:L4.

Venturelli, Shalini
n.d. From the InformationEconomyto the CreativeEconomy:Moving Cultureto the
Centerof InternationalPublicPolicy. Cultural Comment Series. Washington,
DC: Center for Arts and Culture. <http://www.culturalpolicy.org>.

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Wee, C.J.W.-L.
1996 "Staging the New Asia: Singapore's Dick Lee, Pop Music and a Counter-
modernity." PublicCulture8, 3 (Spring):489-5 10.
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C.J. W-L. Wee teachesliteratureand culturaltheoryat the Nanyang Technological

University,Singapore.He wasformerly a Fellow at the Institute of SoutheastAsian
Studies, Singapore,and is the authorof Culture, Empire, and the Question ofBe-
ing Modern (Lexington Books, 2oo3), and the editorof Local Cultures and the
"New Asia": The State, Culture, and Capitalism in Southeast Asia (Instituteof
Southeast Asian Studies, 2002).

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