The Hard State, Soft City of Singapore 9789048544004

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The Hard State, Soft City of Singapore

Publications The International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) is a research and exchange platform based in Leiden, the Netherlands. Its objective is to encourage the interdisciplinary and comparative study of Asia and to promote (inter)national cooperation. IIAS focuses on the humanities and social sciences and on their interaction with other sciences. It stimulates scholarship on Asia and is instrumental in forging research networks among Asia Scholars. Its main research interests are reflected in the three book series published with Amsterdam University Press: Global Asia, Asian Heritages and Asian Cities. IIAS acts as an international mediator, bringing together various parties in Asia and other parts of the world. The Institute works as a clearinghouse of knowledge and information. This entails activities such as providing information services, the construction and support of international networks and cooperative projects, and the organization of seminars and conferences. In this way, IIAS functions as a window on Europe for non-European scholars and contributes to the cultural rapprochement between Europe and Asia. IIAS Publications Officer: Paul van der Velde IIAS Assistant Publications Officer: Mary Lynn van Dijk

Asian Cities The Asian Cities Series explores urban cultures, societies and developments from the ancient to the contemporary city, from West Asia and the Near East to East Asia and the Pacific. The series focuses on three avenues of inquiry: evolving and competing ideas of the city across time and space; urban residents and their interactions in the production, shaping and contestation of the city; and urban challenges of the future as they relate to human well-being, the environment, heritage and public life. Series Editor Paul Rabé, Urban Knowledge Network Asia (UKNA) at International Institute for Asian Studies, the Netherlands Editorial Board Henco Bekkering, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands Charles Goldblum, University of Paris 8, France Xiaoxi Hui, Beijing University of Technology, China Stephen Lau, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Rita Padawangi, Singapore University of Social Sciences, Singapore R. Parthasarathy, Gujarat Institute of Development Research, Gujarat, India Neha Sami, Indian Institute of Human Settlements, Bangalore, India

The Hard State, Soft City of Singapore

Edited by Simone Shu-Yeng Chung and Mike Douglass

Amsterdam University Press

Publications asian cities 13

Cover illustration: The Singapore Really Really Free Market 60 on Telok Ayer Street, 31 March 2019 Photograph by Mary Ann Ng Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6372 950 5 978 90 4854 400 4 (pdf) e-isbn doi 10.5117/9789463729505 nur 740 © Simone Shu-Yeng Chung & Mike Douglass / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2020 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.



Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction

The Master Narrative and the Lived City – Half a Century of Imagining Singapore Simone Shu-Yeng Chung and Mike Douglass

9 11

Part I  (De)-Constructing Master Narratives of the City 1 Singapore Songlines Revisited

37

2 On the Banning of a Film

69

3 The City State of Singapore’s Territorial and Social Management Dilemmas

93

The World Class Complex and the Multiple Deaths of Context Mark R. Frost

Tan Pin Pin’s To Singapore, with Love Olivia Khoo

Reminiscing about Classical Athens Rodolphe De Koninck

Part II  The Arts as Prisms of the Urban Imaginative 4 The Address of Art and the Scale of Other Places

113

5 Forming Cityscapes

121

6 The Sinophone as Lyrical Aesthetics Redefined

145

Weng Choy Lee

Small Interventions and Appropriations in the City Gideon Kong and Jamie Yeo

The Case of Contemporary Singapore Chinese Language Poetics Chow Teck Seng

7 Noisy Places, Noisy People

Trouble and Meaning in Singapore Steve Ferzacca

171

Part III  The City Possible in Action 8 Place Management/Making

191

9 Conviviality in Clementi

213

10 Mediating Community in Bukit Brown

233

11 Collaborative Imaginaries

251

12 The Invisible Electorate

275

Conclusion

299

Index

307

The Policy and Practice of Arts-Centred Spatial Interventions in Singapore Hoe Su Fern

The Flowering of a Local Public Housing Community Goh Wei Leong

Natalie Pang and Liew Kai Khiun

Social Experiments, Free Schools and Counterpublics in Singapore Huiying Ng

Political Campaign Participation as the Production of an Alternative National Space Emily Chua Hui Ching

Simone Shu-Yeng Chung and Mike Douglass

List of Figures and Tables Figures Figure 1.1 Figure 1.2

Hock Hiap Leong on Armenian Street in the 1980s 36 and 38 Armenian Street today

38 39

Figure 1.3 Figure 1.4

Portrait of Dr. Lim Boon Keng (1890s) 43 A briefing by a HDB official during the Malaysian 50 Minister’s visit to HDB (1965) Figure 1.5 Poh Tiong Keng at Kim Keat estate of Toa Payoh 55 Figure 1.6 Television Singapura broadcasting the Minister for Culture giving a speech (1964) 58 62 Figure 1.7 Lee Wen, World Class Society (1999) 73 Figure 2.1 Publicity image for the film To Singapore, with Love Figure 2.2 Outside Ho Juan Thai’s hotel room window in Johor Bahru 84 Figure 2.3 Tan Wah Piow’s ‘two little suitcases’ 85 Figure 3.1 Putting everyone in their place 97 Figure 3.2 Housing foreign workers on the margins 100 Figure 3.3 Moving burial grounds out of town 102 Figure 5.1 Selected page spreads from Forming Cityscapes126 Figure 5.2 All the subjects serve a communicative function 130 Figure 5.3 Improvised notices pasted on temporary objects 131 Figure 5.4 A directional map; and the map in use 132 Figure 5.5 Desire paths that have resulted from various p ­ ractical needs 132 Figure 5.6 Stickers as visual interferences to urban objects and signs 133 Figure 5.7 A thin wooden board placed over slightly elevated ground135 Figure 5.8 Instances where the absence of people or actors in a photograph strengthens their imagined presence 136 Figure 5.9 Selection of photographs with similar photographic ‘subjects’137 Figure 5.10 Selection of photographs with similar photographic ‘themes’138 Figure 5.11 Loose selection of additional images 140 146 Figure 6.1 Left, part 1 of Xi Ni Er’s ‘LOST’. Right, part 2 of ‘LOST’ Figure 6.2 The three circles of influences of the Sinophone articulation network 153 Figure 6.3 ‘Words dedicated to the Bronze Statue of Raffles by Liang Yue’ 155 Figure 6.4 A pictorial multilingual meta-poem ‘LOST’ by Xi Ni Er 158 Figure 6.5 Chua Mia Tee, National Language Class (1959)161 Figure 6.6 ‘We Speak to Fish using National Languages’ by Zhou Decheng aka Chow Teck Seng 162 Figure 7.1 The Coleman Street entrance to the Peninsula Shopping Centre 174

Figure 7.2 Figure 7.3 Figure 7.4

The Doghouse 176 The Doghouse bar 177 The Straydogs guitar signed by all members of the band179 Figure 7.5 A Doghouse gathering 181 Figure 7.6 Jamming 185 217 Figure 9.1 Aerial view of a part of Clementi New Town Figure 9.2 Examples of corridor gardening in a public housing 219 block in Clementi Figure 9.3 Christmas decorations on the parapet overlooking a 220 playground in Clementi Figure 9.4 Lift spaces are currently used only for health and 223 safety-related notices Figure 9.5 Example of a void deck with benches and tables in Clementi226 Figure 10.1 The first version, iBBC, released on Google Playstore 242 Figure 10.2 A visitor uses iBBC to recognize the tomb and 243 retrieve related records Figure 10.3 Background information, related images and other 244 links on iBBC Figure 11.1 *SCAPEnodes’ Same Same But Different festival 255 poster (2016) 258 Figure 11.2 Growell Pop-Up schedule in 2015 259 Figure 11.3 Ground floor of Growell Figure 11.4 Foodscape Collective’s crowdsourced map of home 265 gardens, based on ArcGIS 286 Figure 12.1 Map of the GE 2015 electoral constituencies Tables Table 6.1 Table 11.1 Table 11.2 Table 11.3 Table 11.4 Table 11.5 Table 12.1

Relations in the Sinophone with respect to language, 154 script and geopolitical affiliations Overview of each case study 257 Schedule of the completed Babel sessions as of March 2016262 Selected interviewee quotations 263 Economic distinctions and their relevance to each 268 case study Models of autonomous research platforms 269 Results of all of Singapore’s general elections as an 279 independent nation

Acknowledgements This edited book project would not have been possible without funding support from the Asia Research Institute (ARI), National University of Singapore. We wish to extend our gratitude to each and every one of our contributors for gallantly engaging with the two eponymous themes, to present a wide yet cohesive range of work that testifies to the interdisciplinary spirit of this volume. All but two of the chapters in the book were developed out of selected papers from an academic workshop convened by Simone Shu-Yeng Chung and Mike Douglass at ARI in collaboration with NUS Museum in March 2016. Our sincere appreciation goes to Valerie Yeo for administrative assistance, the ARI events team for ground support and the museum’s team for facilitating the coordination. We would also like to acknowledge the advice given by Chua Beng Huat, which was invaluable for helping us refine our proposal in the early stages of this project. A special ‘thank you’ goes to Grace Chan Yee Bei, Nika Tay Hui Min, and Mary Ann Ng for editorial assistance in preparing the manuscript, and the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback. For steering us through the publication process, we are indebted to the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS), in particular, the Publications Officer, Paul van der Velde, Paul Rabé, in his role as Series Editor, and the Assistant Publications Officer, Mary Lynn van Dijk; and to the Amsterdam University Press, in particular, Saskia Gieling, Commissioning Editor for Asian Studies, and the Production Editor, Jaap Wagenaar.

Introduction The Master Narrative and the Lived City – Half a Century of Imagining Singapore Simone Shu-Yeng Chung and Mike Douglass Abstract This chapter outlines how imaginative representations of the city, told through the images they convey or evoke, form collective expressions of human agency in placemaking and the (re)shaping of urban space. Of equal importance are polemical developments that play integral roles in influencing conditions for artistic and social (re)production in Singapore. In foregrounding society-space relations and the city, we argue that physical spaces are subject to a multitude of social imaginings, which are then projected back into urban space to convey individual and shared meanings, identities and purposes. Such diverse ways of conceptualising space, which can sometimes be born out of resistance, present another mode of understanding and experiencing the lived city. Keywords: master narrative, the lived city, civil society, creativity, conviviality, SG50

The city as we imagine it, the soft city of illusion, myth, aspiration, nightmare, is as real, maybe more real, than the hard city. − Raban 1974: 10

Igniting the Terra Imagina of a Terraformed City Singapore’s accomplishments in city-building over half a century has propelled this ‘little red dot’1 to become a top-ranked global city and one 1 Indeed, this offhand remark about the diminutive size of Singapore’s sovereign territory, made by a former neighbouring state leader, has since been adopted as both an emblem of pride as well as a symbolic reminder of its vulnerability (MITA 2003).

Chung, Simone Shu-Yeng & Mike Douglass (eds), The Hard State, Soft City of Singapore. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020 doi: 10.5117/9789463729505_intro

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of the richest countries in the world, having ranked third in 2015 (ATKearney 2016).2 What has been stylized by the state and designated actors as the Singapore Model is construed by its advocates as a template for urban planning under state capitalism (Shatkin 2014). So persuasive is Singapore’s success story and so ripe is its planning formula for exportation that overseas private developers, hoping to emulate its achievements, actively seek local government support to create clone cities abroad. Defining this is Singapore’s meticulously constituted long-term master plan overseen by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) aimed at ensuring sustainable development, coupled with a successful Housing and Development Board (HDB) public housing programme directed towards home ownership for its citizens. These powerful agencies of a state that directly owns over three-quarters of the land in the country, along with tight regulations limiting public assembly and other uses of space, present the crucially indisputable fact that the government exercises substantial control over how Singapore’s material space is shaped and used. The foundations of the Singapore Model are deeply intertwined with the state-generated narrative of the country’s rise from third-world status to first.3 The Singapore story revolves around survival and subsequent triumph over daunting adversities – regional hostility, ideological threats, natural resource scarcity, and an uncertain future with the loss of its hinterland following Singapore’s acrimonious divorce from the Federation of Malaysia in 1965. Under the stewardship of a capable and committed government that its citizens implicitly trust, together with the efforts of its small yet robust population, hard-line pragmatics-based policies were implemented to improve the well-being of its people and the economy – initially through industrialization, then through expansion into the tertiary sector and more recently, toward research and development for innovation in advanced technologies. While the country has economically and materially flourished under a stable government, Singapore’s global and domestic achievements have consistently been employed to legitimize the unbroken rule of the People’s Action Party since national independence. Being a small country under the ‘management’ (echoing a technocratic disposition) of an authoritarian government, pathways to implementing national 2 Measured as the per capita gross domestic product (GDP), adjusted for purchasing power. 3 The phrases are intended allusions to Lee Kuan Yew’s two-volume memoirs, Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (1998) and From Third World to First: The Singapore Story, 1965-2000 (2000).

Introduction

13

policies and programmes are direct and largely unhindered, as central government is spared from having to go through multiple levels of subnational approvals – an advantage Singapore possesses as an ‘islandnation’, a crucial point made by the sociologist Chua Beng Huat (2011). By the same token, its compactness and relatively unlayered structure of governance assume elected leaders are in sync with the people they serve. This inferred perspicaciousness means that they should also be better placed to identify broader trends and respond to potential issues before they manifest into genuine problems. It also adds to the belief that the government knows best when questions of city planning and regulation are raised. For many who live in Singapore, the contemporary image of this worldclass global city in the tropics is characterized by its distinctive concentration of vertiginous architectural icons in the downtown area bounded by the swathes of verdure increasingly integrating with expansive residential estates infilled with uniform public housing blocks. It is, without a doubt, well-ordered, highly structured and fastidiously maintained. Yet, running counter to this constructed stable image, the constructed ground on which this city stands is constantly shifting, both metaphorically and literally. Metaphorically, Singapore is seen by some observers as tabula rasa – the term is used by the architect cum urbanist Rem Koolhaas in his critical summation of Singapore’s modern urban development into the 1990s in ‘Singapore Songlines: Portrait of a Potemkin Metropolis […] or Thirty Years of Tabula Rasa’ (Koolhaas 1995: 1009-1089). His impression of Singapore at the time was that of a prototype modern Asian city and, being ‘incredibly “Western”’, was an anachronism among Asian cities. 4 Desiring recognition, its leaders forcefully carved a presence in the region through sheer determination and a forward-looking attitude that left room for neither nostalgia nor attachment to place. In practice, urban renewal was pursued ‘through the new’ at the expense of the old, with ceaseless cycles of land recalibrations typically carried out at an immense scale that meant ‘no version is ever definitive’ (Ibid.: 1035). In Singapore’s defence, this deliberate decontextualization can be seen as a radical but necessary move on the government’s part to rid the city state of 4 Koolhaas’s essay is employed here to substantiate the basis for cultivating an urban imaginative field in Singapore and stimulate discussions on how the presence of the latter inextricably persists in the material city. However, William Lim (2004) and C.J. Wee Wan-ling (2007) have critically commented on how the Anglo-American positioning and ergo ‘Western gaze’ adopted by Koolhaas in his reading of Singapore has inevitably reinforced the outmoded idea that modernity and globalization are exclusively the domain of the West.

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classical Western vestiges of modernity in favour of a global identity (Wee 2007). Koolhaas’s asseveration that ‘(Singapore’s) territory – its ground – is its most malleable material’ (Koolhaas 1995: 1031) suggests this was a justified compromise in exchange for concretising a national ideology and vision. The outcome of this comprehensive investment in the contemporary is ultimately pastiche modernity, registered in Singapore’s skyline and the urban fabric. Such impressive, if disconcerting, reliance on state planned transformations, already underway during the colonial period, rapidly intensified after Singapore became an independent republic in 1965. The degree of entrenchment that has become an associative feature of this island can be seen in itself as the current administration’s legacy. Far exceeding mere landscaping, the strategic deployment of wholescale land shaping and land forming is geared towards expanding land area seawards and increasing water catchment capacity from a topological-ecological perspective, but the deeper implication is the direct manipulation of all aspects of social and economic life, practice and production by the state (De Koninck, Drolet and Girard 2008; De Koninck, this volume). This perpetual state of tabula rasa, opines the architect William Lim (2004) – one of Singapore’s leading public intellectuals – leaves the city continuously dispossessed of its past.5 While acknowledging this reality, Lim steadfastly defends against claims that Singapore is homogeneous: although homogenized, it is far from homogeneous. Looking beneath the cutaneous built environment to uncover details of urban life veins is essential for explaining the social substance and people’s own understood realities of the lived city. This prospect entices us to submit to Jonathan Raban’s (1974) beckoning – that the material city, even while it imposes limits and pushes back, can nonetheless be transcended by residents’ daily practices of placemaking. The soft city he so eloquently describes exists in dynamic tension with the hard city that is moulded to a specified form. In the Singapore experience, this hard city is indistinguishable from the strong powers afforded to government to master plan the city through legislation as well as in urban space. Conceptually, the soft city aligns with one of the three spatial spheres conceived by the French philosopher Henri Lefebvre. Termed ‘representational space’, it is, in Lefebvre’s lexicon:

5 In reality, the colonial historic core remains relatively intact, as with selective and superficial preservation applied to pockets of ethnically themed areas (Chinatown, Little India, Kampong Glam and Emerald Hill) under the 1986 Conservation Master Plan for tourism development.

Introduction

15

[T]he space directly lived through its associated images and symbols, and hence the space of “inhabitants” and “users”, but also of some artists and perhaps a few of those, such as writers and philosophers, who describe and aspire to do no more than describe. This is the dominated – and hence passively experienced – space which the imagination seeks to change and appropriate. (1991: 39, original emphasis)

Thus, alongside the physical structures and associated practices that make up our lived environment and the conceptualized space engineered into material form by bureaucrats, experts and commercial interests, there exists a perceptual layer conjured out of people’s everyday life experiences. In some instances, the ‘people’s city’ has material expressions, such as planting home gardens, decorating hallways of HDB flats and organising the ‘really really free market’ where people share goods and memorabilia with others. While many imaginative projections into urban spaces might not be as tangible as the functional designations assigned to these spaces by the government, they are nonetheless equally vital and palpable representations of the city. Perhaps the more widely known articulations of the lived city of Singapore, by virtue of their reproducibility and ease of circulation, are the enduring celluloid images constructed by local filmmakers following the local film industry’s rebirth in the late 1990s.6 Technological capabilities for producing limitless copies, along with the mass audience’s ability to relate to filmic simulacra of the real, have made film a universally popular medium – to the extent that it has redefined the relationship between art and the masses (Benjamin 2010). In this new era, the moving image is actively employed by filmmakers, artists and the lay public alike to help them confront the speed with which their surroundings are being transformed and digest the reality of their situation post hoc. The unglamorous snippets of the everyday in quotidian spaces of the city that have become the hallmark of documentarian Tan Pin Pin (whose domestically banned film is the subject of Olivia Khoo’s chapter in this volume) can be interpreted as an impulse to snatch audiovisual fragments of Singapore’s continuously refashioned urban landscape. Lilian Chee’s argument that ‘space is not the point of Tan Pin Pin’s film’ (2015: 17) confirms the filmmaker’s true intent – that is, to capture the social milieu. 6 Singapore’s film industry, which was tied to Malaya’s until their separation, went through a period of decline as a result of post-independence focus on developmental economics. In 1998, the Singapore Film Commission was strategically set up to direct the growth of the local film industry and has been instrumental to its revival (Millet 2006).

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The commemorations of Singapore’s urban spaces – most of which were in the process of disappearing or facing redevelopment – in the elegiac film projects spearheaded by Royston Tan, Old Places (2010) and its sequel Old Romances (2012), are likewise focused on documenting the soft city. In these films, visual documentations of the sites in their present condition are layered with extra-diegetic audio narrations. Imbued with emotional gravitas, the verbal recollections extending as far back as people’s living memory evoke the meaning and significance of each locality and establish a tangible link between memory and place. Cinematic recordings of human life taken in real locations offer highly nuanced sociological information and can be used to produce a focused anthropological study of people’s characteristics and behaviour. Increasingly more valued, they contribute to polemical discourse through their capacity to communicate, in this instance, the effects of unfettered command planning of urban space on the social fabric of life in a pellucid format. Although these are just a couple of examples testifying to the richness of Singapore’s inhabitants’ memories, experiences and their meaningful interpretations of the lived environment, such thoughtfully conceived representations of the city potently contradict Koolhaas’s assignation of Singapore as the Generic City. The topographical remoulding for the greater good of the nation, compounded by the hegemonic disciplining of its population, has affected a desire among residents of the city to construct mental reproductions of the quotidian as a means of affixing a genius locus that can allow them to make sense of the dislocating changes around them. This centring is not only crucial for affirming a person’s lived reality but also constitutes a source of creative stimulation: ‘Artists and writers have found inspiration in local character and have “explained” the phenomena of everyday life as well as art, referring to landscapes and urban milieu’ (Norberg-Schulz 1984: 18). Nostalgia, aspirations and meanings are ignited to furnish the interstitial realm of imagination that is subsequently reinserted into real space. Drawing on insights from diverse sources, this edited volume, for our purposes, is less concerned with representations of the city per se than by what they contribute to our understanding and experience of the lived city. In other words, our overarching interest is in their affects rather than the tangible outcomes of these representations. Such articulations have profound impacts on the city’s inhabitants, as illustrated in their enunciation of qualitative aspects of the city and urban life. Following from the observations above, the noun ‘state’, as it pertains to our disquisition, is significant for the double meaning it carries. The first

Introduction

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meaning acknowledges the existence of a modest but thriving creative and intellectual urban culture in Singapore that is invested in exploring and deciphering the particular conditions of the city state in which this culture emerges. It constitutes a concerted attempt to reassert people’s right to the city, insofar as it addresses their right to be the protagonists of urban life, with priority given to those who inhabit and use its spaces (Lefebvre 1996). As rephrased by Harvey (2008), the ultimate expression of the right to the city is the production of spaces and changing them to follow ‘our heart’s desire’ (Park 1967: 3). The other invocation of ‘state’ invites us to address the challenges of nurturing or even preserving the autonomy of the terra imagina under the gaze of state authority. One proven measure for countering the encroaching sense of alienation resulting from all-encompassing state planning is through placemaking, including the recovery of place (Chang and Huang 2008; Ho 2009). Rather than simply being a fixed material entity, place can only be grasped in its totality by understanding the qualitative aspects that connote its meanings and ambience to those who interact with it (Norberg-Schulz 1984). Brenda Yeoh’s (2003) study on toponyms in colonial Singapore illustrates their coexistence: the enterprise of naming streets and places by British administrators, vital for organising information about the built environment for management and planning, did not impact the significance of place for social reproduction by everyday users in the community. In other words, meanings people attach to places can differ from those intended and instituted by the state-driven production of space. However, placemaking in such circumstances must be agile to move in the shadows of master planning. By taking the urban imaginative field as the point of departure, we can begin to probe the resilience of cities through the images they convey or identities evoked, not just as nostalgia or fantasy, but equally as a means for collective expressions of human agency in placemaking and (re)shaping urban space. Simultaneous to this endeavour and of equal importance is a consideration of the components that play integral roles in influencing conditions for artistic and social (re)production in Singapore.

The New ‘Three “C”S’: Creativity, Community and Conviviality The 2010s signal a watershed in Singapore’s history, both internally and in relation to the world. Among the new dynamics is an escalation of shifts in its demographic structure. In 2012, the first cohort of the baby

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boomer generation entered the ‘65 and over’ age group, officially marking the emergence of the Pioneer Generation (Yap and Gee 2015).7 With longer life expectancies tied to better standards of living and care, as well as the majority intent on retaining their independent lifestyle, silver citizens in Singapore – especially those from the middle class and above – are pursuing avenues of active aging. These include self-enrichment or seeking out worthwhile causes aimed at achieving better quality of life, equality or improving the liveability of their environment. In his National Day Rally speech that year, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong adjured the nation to practise ‘mutual responsibility amongst (themselves) and especially on the part of those who are more successful than others’ (PMO 2012) – a sentiment clearly couched in the notion of ‘kampong spirit’. Having already attained comparative economic advantage, enviable financial wealth and efficient governance, the conservation of communal solidarity is now officially recognized as sine qua non to the future of first-world Singapore. Reference to a ‘kampong spirit’ highlights how state narratives are also prone to imaginaries that impute the continuity of a romanticized past into the present. In 1960, three-quarters of the population lived in kampongs, but from 1966 almost all such settlements were systematically eliminated in waves under the Land Acquisition Act, with their residents rehoused in new towns planned by HDB. In this context, whether the ‘kampong spirit’ continues to exist in Singapore has become a subject of continuing inquiry (see Ho 2009). For example, recent research shows that only 10 percent of HDB residents have shared memories and a sense of community (Lokajaya 2016). In response to the loss of community identity, which is requisite for generating social and cultural vitality, an alternative three ‘Cs’ – creativity, conviviality and community – is proposed here as ingredients for cultivating an inclusive and progressive society that can contribute to improving the liveability of the city and building a resilient economy. This presents an antidote to the rapacious qualities inhered in the ‘Five Cs’ that have hitherto encapsulated the materialistic aspirations of Singaporeans: cash, car, credit card, condominium and country club membership. Political leaders have reinscribed the ethos of ‘self-reliance’ and ‘mutual support’ into the Singapore story to highlight the shared attributes that have enabled the country to achieve the milestones it has along the journey to its 7 The Pioneers are Singapore nationals aged 65 and over in 2015, so named in recognition of their contribution to the country’s economic development in the post-independence era. Their special status entitles them to healthcare concessions and social welfare support.

Introduction

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golden anniversary of national independence in 2015, otherwise known as SG50.8 If we were to superimpose a conceptual framework that appropriates the aforementioned qualities to produce socially responsible and proactive citizens, it would infer the ‘tools for conviviality’ for collective use outlined by the social critic Ivan Illich (1984). The adjective ‘convivial’ is appended to describe tools that promote autonomy and creative relationships among people and with their environment, crucially differentiating them from those used in Taylorist forms of rote industrial production that use human beings as tools rather than creators of what they make. Freedom to create and use tools rather than become one is not an individual action, but is instead a condition realized through ‘social arrangements that guarantee each member the most ample and free access to the tools of the community’ (Ibid.: 12). As such, tools for conviviality are not only within each person’s grasp, but they are also meant to encourage inclusivity and egalitarianism through sharing. The primary goal of this project of self-empowerment is for citizens to regain a degree of autonomy from bureaucrats and technical experts, and recast the relationship between the people and the state, and among one another, for the better. At the level of the individual and at least the everyday, progress – to paraphrase Illich – should be measured as increasing competence, rather than increasing dependence. In Lisa Peattie’s interpretation of Illich’s idea of conviviality, for human happiness, ‘creative activity and a sense of community count for at least as much and maybe more than material standard of living’ (Peattie 1998: 249). In terms of the city, she invokes the idea of ‘community’ by referencing ‘third places’ beyond home and work, to add a crucial spatial dimension to conviviality by underscoring the space-forming, space-contingent interplay of human creativity through associational life. Five decades ago, the now defunct independent think-tank Singapore Planning and Urban Research Group (SPUR, 1965-1975) had already highlighted the need for citizen involvement in discussions concerning cityplanning and policy decisions (SPUR 1967). Civil society participation was promoted as civic virtue, for dialogues generated out of what the collective termed ‘democratic “grassroot” planning’ were a valuable opportunity to demonstrate its citizens’ pride and stakeholding in the future of their city. 8 In his 2015 National Day Rally speech, PM Lee Hsien Loong credited ‘this culture of self-reliance and mutual support’ as one of three factors behind Singapore’s success. It was indispensable in the past for creating a ‘rugged society’ that, while small, was strong as a unit (PMO 2015).

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But in order for all parties to contribute effectively, government authorities needed to ensure that relevant information was made available to genuinely interested members of the public. This example underscores the importance of maintaining common resources in the public domain to be tapped. While a great deal of data and information gathered by the government on Singapore and its citizens and residents are available, access to much of them, such as the national census, remains at the discretion of the state, which defends its careful oversight as a way to maintain social stability, given Singapore’s always precarious position in remaining competitive in the global economy (Khoo 2012). Encouraging a convivial society also requires an openness to people making choices, rather than simply setting goals that must be achieved by everyone in unison. In the process of improving the liveability of personal living environments, social cohesion inevitably becomes a part of the equation. However, such objectives are also contingent on identifying and developing a suitable set of apparatuses and platforms for sharing. Tan Tarn How (2015) notes how digital technology, especially the Internet, has been utilized as an organising tool with relative success in Singapore due to its ubiquity and public accessibility. It brings together likeminded individuals to share knowledge, skills and ideas on a virtual platform, as well as to publicize workshops and events that take place in real locations. As such, it functions as a conduit for connecting people and raising awareness of common concerns. The enabling role of cities as ‘theatres of social action’ (Mumford 1961) can never be overstated. Edward Soja’s (2003: 275) oft-quoted phrase, ‘things take place IN cities […] cities in themselves have a causal impact on social life’, underscores the spatiality of human settlement density and intensity that defines city living: people are always in close proximity to one another, whether or not they want to be. For this reason, the power of affects must be recognized. Broadly understood as encompassing the intractably visceral or vital forces that go beyond emotions and compel us towards either movement or inertia (Seigworth and Gregg 2010), Ben Anderson (2014) interprets affects as being transpersonal, in the sense that they exceed the body enacting or experiencing them, spilling over into social life and physical space. Powerful sentiments or a dominant mood circulating in the atmosphere can give rise to a collective mood with the capacity to infect receptive individuals as it diffuses across the human landscape. Unsurprisingly, therefore, certain key moments can be described by a single, nameable emotion. Such ‘public feelings’ are themselves elements within the larger social sphere and are directly shaped by people’s

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sentiments (Anderson 2014). To illustrate, the historic events that transpired in 2015 took the nation on a rollercoaster ride of emotions. The initial excitement for SG50 was shadowed by a deep sense of loss with the passing of Singapore’s founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew in March that year. On the whole, the population was united in their sorrow (and censures were meted out to criticizers). The revived euphoria leading up to National Day celebrations that followed carried over into the general elections, but by the end of year the atmosphere across the island had tempered into a reflective mode, due in part to ‘SG50 fatigue’. The persistence of affects throughout the year can be directly attributed to the combination of prevailing domestic conditions as well as unifying events that occurred slightly before and during that period. With access to better education than their predecessors, and being more globally connected and attuned to current affairs, Singaporeans have over time developed greater public consciousness and the motivation to affect change. In the last two decades, non-government organizations advocating for gender and racial equality as well as minority rights have gained more visibility in Singapore. The gradual easing of restrictions on civil society activity is generally viewed as the state’s accommodation of people’s demands, but, as noted by scholars (Chua 2003; Douglass 2010; Shatkin 2014), steering civic activism along directions that are favourable to the government is a strategic manoeuvre to redirect discontents in support of rather than antagonistic to those in power. Civil society, which can be defined broadly as the voluntarily organized face of society, exists in the contemporary world in a diversity of relations with the state and the market economy (Friedmann 1998; Schak and Hudson 2003; Koh and Soon 2015). From the 1960s to 1980s, Asia’s ‘tiger economies’ – Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan – were led by authoritarian ‘developmental states’ that suppressed the participation of civil society in the public sphere in exchange for rapid economic growth and increases in material welfare (Douglass 1994; Evans 1995). Civil society nonetheless engaged in activities for itself, particularly in the realm of art and the conviviality of cultural and social life. As developmentalism melded into neoliberalism from the 1980s, a neo-developmental state emerged, in which national governments remained strong but shifted from leading to facilitating the use of corporate capital in their economies and the production of urban space. By the 2000s, cities in higher-income economies had been recast as ultracompetitive engines of economic growth whose fate depended on capturing global flows of capital for advanced services and the consumption of global

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consumer goods. Cities that still had (pre-)colonial landscapes up to the 1980s found them swiftly supplanted by a new era of corporate mega-projects in the form of shopping malls, world business hubs, entertainment complexes, franchises and chain stores, and vast gated housing projects. Public spaces were rapidly privatized, and the ‘urban tissue’ of spaces ‘previously accessible to the public’ was being lost (Sassen 2015: 1). Over this same period, the rise of civil society resulted in fundamental democratic reforms in several countries in Asia, including South Korea and Taiwan. In contrast, Singapore has remained an electoral democracy with tight controls limiting public assembly and protests of any kind. For example, under the Public Order Act (revised in 2012), group protests and processions of more than two people in public spaces are still not permitted unless they are state-initiated or pre-approved. Such efforts by the government are further exemplified by the rule that each public housing estate must have a racial mix that mirrors the nation’s composition, which means that each should have about 70 percent ethnically Chinese residents, to avoid forming large ethnic enclaves. More broadly, landscaping is employed across the island to dictate directions and patterns of pedestrian movement as well as how public spaces are to be used. All of these controls are defended in the master narrative as being essential for a small country to show the high level of social stability needed to attract and sustain high levels of globally footloose investment. Controlling and organising the production of urban space is an active dimension for the maintenance of social stability; master planning by the Government of Singapore, enshrined as law, is used not only to produce sites to accommodate global investment, but also to control the use of space by civil society. The government’s use of law-making powers and production of space can also be seen as a means of directing social identities toward the state. As explained by Koh and Soon, civil society forms associations that are held together ‘by shared values, interests and purposes’ (2015: 209). Based on his observations on how such relationships are constituted in practice, Manuel Castells (2010) differentiates three types of identity formation – namely, those that support and legitimize the status quo; those that express resistance to it; and those that promote new identities through alternative identity projects – that are useful for explicating the production of urban space in Singapore. First, state powers have been extensively used to promote identity with the state while limiting the formation of resistance identities. The 50th anniversary of the nation in 2015, SG50, which was celebrated with events throughout the year, is a particularly vivid example of state promotion of national identity. Secondly, as explained above, the possibility

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for resistance identities to form is severely dampened not only by laws but also by the production and regulation of urban space. Whereas peaceful protest marches are common in South Korea, Taiwan and even Hong Kong, they are still not allowed in Singapore. The third type of identity formation, which is the pursuit of projects that open possibilities for new identities that redefine positions in society and, ‘by doing so, seek the transformation of overall social structure’ (Castells 2010: 8), is also highly constrained when seen by the government as political action. However, in many, if not most, instances these projects represent civil society for itself and are not necessarily either for or against the state or status quo. Whether they are directed at urban farming, LGBT rights, or saving a public cemetery, they arise from associational life; when not expressed physically, they are inscribed in space through memories and imaginaries of what could be. In various ways, people are continuously engaged in such identity projects – some of which are actually supported by government (such as ethnic and religious festivals)9 – and many continue to occur in smaller, out-of-the-way spaces or are highly ephemeral, appearing and disappearing quickly. Although fundamental social issues remain at the forefront, people are also beginning to think more about minute everyday concerns that directly affect their quality of life and personal wellbeing, and proactively engage in debates about them. This visible trend also suggests that emerging grassroots movements are not necessarily rooted to the ‘heartland’10 or tied to localities, as seen in earlier iterations.11 With digital connectivity providing reliable support, collective actions are no longer bound to local neighbourhoods, as the younger generation and more cosmopolitan enthusiasts take on the role of local actors in grassroots initiatives. Leonie Sandercock’s (2006) concept of cosmopolitan urbanism offers a way to understand this formulation, of which one principal element is to overlook differences and emphasize flexible membership. Its practitioners embrace an empowered form of 9 At a forum discussion at the 2016 Art Stage, Chua Beng Huat described Singapore as ‘liberalising (with respect to cultural development)’, but doubts that it will ever be liberal. ‘The Spirit of Cities: Why the Identity of a City Matters in a Global Age’, SEA Forum talk with David A. Bell and Chua Beng Huat, 24 January 2016 at the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre. 10 A term used in Singapore to cover neighbourhoods of HDB flats, especially the original ones on the outskirts of the central business district. 11 Serene Tan and Brenda Yeoh (2006) make the distinction between heartlanders, who are considered ‘rooted’, and cosmopolitans, who choose to remain ‘rootless’. The former, who reside in suburban hubs where HDB housing estates are located, exhibit attachment, familiarity and a concern for (their) place.

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citizenry with confidence in their capacity to imagine and initiate change. Thus, group identity is solidified by common values and shared aspirations, which in an active society is always an ongoing process of negotiated identity formation. The fluidity of the city as an idea suggests that the production of space is necessarily implicated in the collective imaginations of communities and their solidarities. Limitations are almost always tied to practical constraints – how long these projects can run, the availability of space, time commitments and passion of the group to sustain momentum. Perhaps the way forward is to think of community as ephemera in this context and exploit its latent potential. This is not an innovation, but simply a reversion to how communities were historically constituted according to its Latin etymology communitas. First and foremost, community is a property belonging to subjects who join one another to form social relationships and simultaneously, a quality such as a sense of solidarity borne out of attachments – typically emotional ones – that further binds this collective (Esposito 2010). It is only when the community consolidates into an identifiable entity and becomes settled to the extent it lays claim to a territory that it develops a sense of belonging tied to a finite place (Ibid.). Thus, as its original meaning implies, a community is always incomplete, impermanent and fluid in its formation – much like this contemporary version. As such, it can be highly flexible and adaptable. The larger question remains: how can the impact generated by the pursuits and presence of different communities be maximized? Whether or not they are propinquitous, communities require the production of space to flourish. If instances of organic human flourishing can only occur in locations categorized by Lim (2004) as ‘spaces of indeterminacy’ – urban pockets that have evaded state-planned redevelopment and programmatic use – or find moments of incidental political climates when moderated public expression is briefly encouraged, such as when campaign rallies are held across the island during the Singapore parliamentary general elections’ cycle, then the prospect of scaling up is limited. The fact remains that mobilized actions arising from the social aspirations of everyday residents and public intellectual instigators can only scale up by either joining forces with like communities to generate greater public voice on shared issues, or changing political institutions to allow greater scope for participatory governance – or both. Given the appropriate outlet and support, the liminal spaces where imagination thrives can leave an imprint on the wider public sphere. For one, they can become egalitarian spaces from which groups excluded from

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Singapore society are able to project their voices. The clutch of poems in Me Migrant by Md Mukul Hossine (2016), translated from Bangla to English, form a deeply personal account of a foreign labour worker’s experience that exemplifies this possibility. ‘Eid Abroad’ (Ibid.: 15) conveys the lonely existence and necessary sacrifices made by an economic migrant living far from his loved ones. This literary project takes a different route to revising people’s assumptions of foreign workers in Singapore (Ho 2016). Readers gain a clarity from the confessional verses that conventional formats of public education and dissemination of information – such as official facts and published research studies – are rarely able to capture and enunciate effectively. Perhaps the true societal contributions to and by the people are those located in smaller spaces of the city that comprise the spatial tissue of urban life which are not discernible in state-managed design. A key objective of this edited volume is therefore to identify the many types and forms of people’s imaginaries of their realities that are in distinct contrast to those envisioned by the state. We undertake this with the aim of illustrating how a city’s raison d’être is more crucially defined by its users than by the functional ensembles orchestrated from above. The different permutations of human agency and collective action detailed in these chapters underscore the autonomy that people in Singapore actually have in shaping alternative futures for themselves. By this, we mean futures that are considerably more open-ended, with other enticing and as-yet-undiscovered possibilities, besides the largely predetermined and technology-dependent trajectory painstakingly mapped out in the sensorial The Future of Us exhibition.12

Chapters in the Book With Singapore serving as the subject of exploration, the purview of this edited volume is to expose imaginative representations of the city by foregrounding various forms and modes of intellectual and creative articulations of its urban condition. For this purpose, the imperative is to bring together diverse perspectives from scholars and practitioners alike to offer a multifaceted view on this subject. The scope is similarly wide, ranging from thoughtful deliberations on the viability of an urban imaginative field in Singapore to in-depth studies on specific projects and topics that address 12 Organized as a capstone event to conclude the year-long celebration of SG50, this major budget exhibition in Gardens by the Bay ran for just over three months.

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the construction of narratives, acts of censorship, local activism, notions of placemaking and identity. With the ascent of Singapore in the world system, a considerable interest in the Singapore experience is to be expected. By showcasing the heterogeneity of people’s views, both within Singapore and from the outside, these multidisciplinary contributions offer counterpoints to the neat official master narrative. Merging theory with practice, they directly address current issues on the ground and, in several cases, extend to include emerging formulations in the post-SG50 era. What coheres in what might otherwise be construed as an eclectic collection of chapters is the contributors’ concerted attention to the themes of ‘hard state’ and ‘soft city’ posed by this edited volume. Rather than forming separate lines of inquiry, the relations and tensions between the two themes provide intersecting storylines that appear in varying ways in the individual chapters. On one level, they highlight the challenges of preserving the domain of terra imagina of lived spaces vis-à-vis the more functional perspectives of state authority in Singapore. The intention is not to provide a critique of an authoritarian state. While state dominance in the production of urban space is important in its reflexive relationship to residents’ access to and uses of space, negation of state control in this context is neither conceivable nor sufficient to elucidate how people see their own life spaces. Instead, we choose to illuminate the spirit of innovation and resourcefulness of people through the different forms and practices adopted by inhabitants of this city, who deftly negotiate the given conditions of their lived environment under the state panopticon. Instances of creative placemaking and meaningful interpretations of lived spaces, initiated by individuals or through collective action, are most evident at key moments of Singapore’s internal developments, or in response to controversial issues that threaten the future of an established locality and individuals’ stakeholding of their lived environment. The malleability of space that allows creative practices and self-expression to thrive in organic, non-interventionist processes is echoed by Raban, ‘For at moments like this, the city goes soft; it awaits the imprint of an identity. For better or worse, it invites you to remake it, to consolidate it into a shape you can live in’ (1974: 9). By foregrounding socio-spatial relations and the city, we argue that physical spaces are subject to a multitude of social imaginings, which are then projected back into urban space to convey individual and shared meanings, identities and purposes. The f irst section, ‘(De)-Constructing Master Narratives of the City’, begins with Mark Frost’s critical engagement with Koolhaas’s meditation on Singapore. Frost traces how initiatives to construct a modern global

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image for Singapore predate its post-independence history. A century before, Singapore’s intelligentsia, being mostly Western-educated and multilingual, were already enveloped in a transnational dynamic to consolidate a cosmopolitan identity. Linking this examination of the careful cultivation of Singapore’s image throughout its initial decades of nation-building to more recent developments is the controversy surrounding the Media Development Authority’s refusal to issue Tan Pin Pin’s documentary To Singapore, With Love (2013) with a rating for domestic screening and distribution. Olivia Khoo’s chapter effectively opens up broader discussions into the issue of censorship in relation to Singapore’s promotion of itself as a global creative city – an image that is predicated on a perception of openness, to attract foreign capital investments and talent. But what has been crucially overlooked in this polemic, as pointed out by Khoo (and in the filmmaker’s public statement), is the film’s poignant glimpse of Singapore from the outside by Singaporeans living in exile and the longing they continue to harbour for their homeland. Rodolphe De Koninck, on the other hand, remains adamant that the soft city is far from being able to challenge the hard state. By mapping the island nation’s landscape transformations across different periods, he illustrates the extent of state penetration in a visual format. In this chapter, the stipulation of where all sectors of society are ‘housed’, from the transitory foreign worker population to local residents, both living and the dead, is foregrounded. It compellingly supports his argument that the relentless overhaul of Singapore’s living space is nearly always considered a fait accompli in state development and employed as a tool for political control. The power wielded by the state is demonstrated most visibly in its ambitious plans to redevelop the vast Bukit Brown Cemetery – the subject of the chapter by Natalie Pang and Liew Kai Khiun. The second section, ‘The Arts as Prisms of the Urban Imaginative’, reveals how novel use of spaces in the city – sanctioned or otherwise tolerated – and creative interpretations of it are instrumental to the formation of another perceptual layer of space. We set out to do this in the hope of illuminating the truth of lived space, through how mental space – which is informed by an abstract structural logic that is responsible for conceptualising representations of space – conjoins with the social component articulated in spatial practice (Lefebvre 1991), to reveal the nuances residing in them. Complications arise when we consider how Singapore seems to define itself more by its anxieties than its aspirations. In its bid to become a world-class global city, anxieties about performance inadvertently lead to an anxiety of place because the primary outcome

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of this pursuit is often, as we have discussed, the erasure of place. Weng Choy Lee poses the valid question of whether artists who happen to be located in Singapore are able to have a local address that is fundamental for exploring ‘otherness’ in relation to other scales of reference amid the shifting ground in which they operate. The photo essay by Gideon Kong and Jamie Yeo, distilled from their ongoing project ‘Forming Cityscapes’, offers a witty and whimsical view into the ways in which everyday objects and spaces around Singapore are appropriated for use or unintended (and perhaps, even intentional) misuse in the public realm. They focus on how ‘tactics’, following Michel de Certeau’s (1984) framework, are deployed as creative interventions or a form of resistance by the city’s inhabitants. Although mostly minor and unnoticeable at first glance, the duo’s carefully catalogued inventory of interventions visually evidence how city spaces are def ined by their users and do not necessarily adhere to the functions prescribed by state authority. Applying close readings and intertextual comparisons to poetry texts, Chow Teck Seng demonstrates how poetics is an amalgamation of imagined spaces and the overlapping of narratives. He argues that the different combinations of national, aesthetic, cultural and linguistic identities in poetry are integral to the canonization of new poetry texts and emergence of subgenres in the field. Intertextual poetry performances, upgraded from poetry readings, are shown here as having the capacity to induct audiences into an exclusive contact sphere and make them active participants in the experience. The potential of live performances to induce solidarity, albeit momentarily, is likewise underscored in Steve Ferzacca’s ethnographic account. In an obscure basement corner of an old shopping centre in Singapore, a small community of musicians and their supporters spontaneously come together to actualize the objective of representational space and test the limits of authorized use of communal areas. It critically contravenes the notion that Singaporeans are generally risk adverse and compliant participants in government and commercial enterprises. The final section, ‘The City Possible in Action’, highlights instances of human flourishing, which might be instigated by an individual but are always mobilized through collective efforts, and how they create a space for dialogue and exchange in the public realm. Hoe Su Fern’s chapter focuses on the efforts of state-driven initiatives, local arts practitioners and organizations to infuse urban vitality in the city by activating latent or under-utilized spaces. Conceptual distinction is made between

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place management – a top-down approach prioritising the delivery of results – and the community-driven process of placemaking to facilitate discussions on spatial interventions in Singapore executed through the former. The rigid framework applied to all art projects and constraints to what is permissible by government authorities reveal the need for policies that can ensure suff icient flexibility to accommodate diverse activities. Meanwhile, Goh Wei Leong supplies an insider’s view of how ‘heartlanders’ have creatively taken advantage of perceived distance from state monitoring to pursue individual interests alongside convivial interactions in their public housing environment. The ‘flowering’ of local social life in his neighbourhood in Clementi New Town is hosted in neutral shared spaces – common corridors and void decks of residential blocks, neighbourhood stores, hawker centres and coffee shops – while established local public characters play a vital role in fostering conviviality, acting as informal points of contact for the local community or providers of space for social interactions. Alongside the transecting histories of specific individuals or events that either complement or contradict the master narrative are also those that sit external to it, which was the case for Bukit Brown Cemetery, one of the largest Chinese burial grounds outside China, until 2011. Announcement of a highway project across the site that year not only ignited conservation discourse on mainstream media but also mobilized civil society heritage activism that transcended spatial dimensions. Natalie Pang and Liew Kai Khiun specif ically discuss how media-based applications can be enfolded in cemetery visitor activities in ways that take advantage of the pervasiveness of mobile devices and digital connectivity in Singapore. Augmented experience can enrich in situ heritage appreciation as well as enhance post-visit learning. Collaboration between the state, NGOs, the academic community and grassroots volunteers to realize the iBBC app marks an altruistic effort at utilising digital technology strategically to encourage wider visitor engagement with the site’s grave artefacts and natural environment, even as the eventual fate of the cemetery remains undecided. Optimism continues to abound with the increased visibility of civil society and citizen engagement highlighted respectively in Huiying Ng’s comparative case study on the Growell Pop-up, Babel and Foodscape Collective, and Emily Chua’s incisive reading of GE2015 – the parliamentary general elections held after main celebrations for SG50 had concluded. Ng offers a fresh, millennial’s perspective of a young eco-consumer immersed in the growing ecological and social consciousness through consumerist

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activities. The projects tabled in her chapter demonstrate the use of tools for conviviality through workshops and gatherings conducted in real space and, equally, the efforts involved to publicize and maintain the networks that are formed. These practices and social imaginaries become the means for Singaporeans to exercise their autonomy and share their experiences by optimising transient networks, organically constituted opportunities and digitally supported platforms like crowdsourcing. Chua’s chapter rounds up the volume with her nuanced reading of what transpired on the ground during Singapore’s General Election in 2015 (GE2015), which coincided with the peak of year-round events celebrating SG50. The unexpected outcome of GE2015, which earned even more votes for the ruling People’s Action Party than the previous election in 2011, can be partly attributed to residual euphoria from the golden jubilee. However, the stronger show of support for political opposition parties on the ground and the atmosphere during campaign rallies reveal a disjuncture between the map of electoral administration and campaign terrain, which is not conf ined to voting wards but extends across the country as a space lived in and reflected on by its citizens. Although the political hegemony of the PAP will unlikely be substantially challenged, this new practice of popular political engagement has engendered a political dualism – referred by Chua as ‘two futures’ – that compels voters and Singaporeans alike to think about their own future and their nation’s more laterally. In closing, the urban imaginative field can always be read as a repository akin to the songlines of the Indigenous Australians (eponymously Koolhaas’s essay title), which contain the stories of the people and ancestral spirits of the land. Time is composed of connective threads that stitch together the patchwork of individual and collective tales so that they are ‘not merely a collection of fragmentary moments on a calendar but the continuum of past and present’ (Daley 2016), in both this realm and in reality. Paths leading to the creation of the respective projects and pieces – however large or small, impactful or insignificant, enduring or ephemeral, inspirational or detrimental – that form the gamut of the urban imaginative field in Singapore illuminate the navigation that is essential to decoding each songline. The interdisciplinary spirit of this edited volume supports the deepening of extant scholarship on Singapore by concurrently repositioning issues that may already be familiar to some readers in a different light and incorporating recent developments that have emerged at this critical juncture in Singapore’s history.

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About the Authors Simone Shu-Yeng Chung is Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore. She holds a Ph.D. in Architecture and M.Phil. in Screen Media and Cultures from the University of Cambridge and has practiced as an architect in the UK. Mike Douglass is Emeritus Professor of Urban Planning, University of Hawaii. At the National University of Singapore (2012-2018), he was a Professor at the Asia Research Institute. His research includes globalization and the city, progressive cities, creative communities, and environmental disasters.

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Singapore Songlines Revisited The World Class Complex and the Multiple Deaths of Context Mark R. Frost Abstract This essay revisits Rem Koolhaas’s classic meditation on Singapore’s natural and built environment in the post-independence era. Building on Koolhaas’s provocative depiction of Singapore as an architectural and environmental tabula rasa, it delves deeper into the twentiethcentury modernist conditions which produced the post-independence city state’s decontextualized urban landscape. Singapore’s city-making state policies have resulted from more than an off icial ideology of pragmatism; rather, they contain within them an off icial poetics with which independent creatives in the city must contend and negotiate. An analysis of these poetics, embodied in Singapore’s off icial image of itself, reveals a pervasive preoccupation with ‘the global’ and a wilful desire to liberate Singapore from the constraints of history through creative urban destruction. Keywords: globalization, global cities, urban renewal, heritage, post-colonialism

I turned eight in the harbour of Singapore. We did not go ashore, but I remember the smell – sweetness and rot, both overwhelming. Last year I went again. The smell was gone. In fact, Singapore was gone, scraped, rebuilt. There was a completely new town there. (Koolhaas 1995: 1011)

So begins Rem Koolhaas’s classic meditation on Singapore as a tabula rasa, an architectural blank slate wiped clean and inscribed with new buildings, and then wiped clean again. It is a depiction of the city that resonates with

Chung, Simone Shu-Yeng & Mike Douglass (eds), The Hard State, Soft City of Singapore. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020 doi: 10.5117/9789463729505_ch01

38 Mark R. Frost Figure 1.1 Hock Hiap Leong on Armenian Street in the 1980s

Source: Singapore Tourism Promotion Board (STPB)

me. In 1982, at the age of nine, I spent a delirious week with my family in that Singapore of ‘sweetness and rot’. My siblings and I ate croissants for the first time at the luxurious Oberoi Imperial Hotel on Jalan Rumbia near River Valley Road. We watched our parents haggle in the markets of Chinatown, where I first encountered cha kuay teow and found the bitter taste of the cockles more unsettling than the rat that ran past our table and out onto the street. We wandered afterwards wide-eyed through old Bugis Street. The entire trip was a reverie, a slice of pure and other exotica. For the next decade and more I yearned to go back. When I returned to conduct field research for my Ph.D. in late-1999, I experienced the same feeling of punctured nostalgia and sensory grief that Koolhaas captures. The ‘smell was gone’; my childhood love was unrecognisable. To limit this sense of loss, I kept to a narrow circuit made of a few appealing waypoints, all of which have now been erased or scraped clean and repurposed: the cheap although slightly cockroach-infested Chinese hotel on Armenian Street where I slept; the old National Library where I conducted most of my research; the Hock Hiap Leong kopitiam (opposite the old Tao Nan school) where I ate lunch; and the S11 food court near the library where, late at night, I watched Chinese girls and Indian guys drink together, and thereafter falsely assumed (until I moved to the city state) that the whole island heaved with a similar illicit flirtation. On a few occasions, I ventured down to The Substation, today the last survivor of this earlier era, to listen to a battle of the bands being fought out in the garden. The contest was ultimately won by Hokkien-singing punk rockers.

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Figure 1.2 36 and 38 Armenian Street today

Photograph by Mary Ann Ng (2019)

In his essay, Koolhaas attempts to make sense of Singapore’s erasure of its spatial heritage to the point where it has become, as he puts it, ‘uncontaminated by surviving contextual remnants’. He sees the city – almost all of which he claims to be ‘less than 30 years old’ at the time of his return in 1990 – as representative of ‘the ideological production of the past three decades in its pure form’: ‘It is managed by a regime that has excluded accident and randomness: even its nature is entirely remade. It is pure intention: if there is chaos, it is authored chaos; it if is ugly, it is designed ugliness; if it is absurd, it is willed absurdity. Singapore represents a unique ecology of the contemporary’ (Koolhaas 1995: 1011; original emphasis). To explain this state of being, Koolhaas engages in what he calls ‘reverse alchemy’. From the travel writer Bruce Chatwin (1998) he borrows the notion of ‘songlines’, the dreaming tracks that Australia’s aboriginal peoples believe ‘creator-beings’ long ago wove across the landscape, conjuring it into existence. The songlines that Koolhaas explores combine to form a powerful narrative of transformation dating back to the United Nations urban renewal report for Singapore of 1963. Koolhaas particularly places the erasure of the old city in the context of worldwide fears about urban decay and population explosion during the 1960s. In addition, drawing heavily on the writings of sociologist Chua Beng Huat (1985), he presents independent Singapore as a product of the developmentalist-survivalist discourse of the island’s political elite. His account is ostensibly non-judgemental, and yet it becomes clear that he deems the changes he has witnessed perturbing. Occasionally, his lens moves beyond Singapore’s ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) to examine

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other players in the city’s urban transformation: the Metabolist school of Asian architecture, for example, or the local architects and planners from SPUR (Singapore Planning and Urban Research Group). For the most part, however, this is a tale of a very hard and largely uncontested state willing a new urban formation into being (Koolhaas 1995; Chua 1985). Koolhaas’s storytelling is powerful and visceral and, even if his conclusions are sometimes questionable, I find it hard not to sympathize with the sentiments behind them. Yet, as a historian interested in Singapore, I feel that further exploration of the ideological production of the modern city as realized in its physical space is necessary, as well as some further analysis of the government’s erasure of contextual remnants. The aim of this essay is to pull back, bring forward and expand upon Koolhaas’s original Singapore songlines to examine other historical antecedents that set the stage for the new Singapore dreaming that commenced in the early 1960s, thereby widening our understanding of the ideological forces that have shaped this official dreaming, and finally, to further our appreciation of the creative voices that have come to contest it. In so doing, I want to emphasize several points. The first is the extent to which the ideological production of Singapore has been the consequence of a struggle between powerful and influential figures in the city and their immediate local contexts, by which I mean those particular and idiosyncratic characteristics (be they historical, cultural, ecological or topographical) which define the spaces through which such elites move and give meaning to their thoughts and actions. Secondly, these powerful and influential figures, in their struggle with their immediate contexts – in their effort to build what Koolhaas would refer to as new and ‘uncontaminated’ alternatives – have been propelled forward, while also seeking validation from, their imaginative conceptions of the global. Indeed, one theme that runs right though this essay is the haunting of Singapore’s urban imaginative field by elite constructions of the global, whether expressed through official arts policy or officially guided urban development. Lastly, following Koolhaas, this essay strives to reinstate the official imagination as both a creative and destructive force in Singapore’s postwar history. I argue that Singapore’s PAP government, far from acting as a philistine state concerned only with technocratic pragmatism, has long been imbued with an aesthetic vision. The technocracy, in other words, has long indulged in its own poetics. These off icial poetics are critical elements that need to be considered in any discussion of the island’s urban imaginative field because they have so often proved hegemonic. Through the state’s vision of Singapore as a concrete civilization or a garden city or a

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global city, the official eye has shaped and continued to shape the island’s urban aesthetics. As we shall see, these official visions of the city remain a challenge to arts practitioners in Singapore who seek to impress their individual sensibilities upon it. In pursuing this argument, this essay diverges from certain seminal studies that have deployed the notion of political pragmatism to explain Singapore’s PAP and its post-independence policies. The key work in this field is that of the aforementioned sociologist Chua Beng Huat from the mid-1980s, which has been more recently extended and refined by the political scientist Kenneth Paul Tan. To broadly summarize, Chua argues that the political philosophy of the PAP since Singapore’s independence in 1965 has contained both utopian and operant elements. The ‘umbrella’ utopian element is the promised (although seemingly still far off) goal of Singapore becoming a mature and stable democratic society; the operant element is pragmatism. The PAP government’s day-to-day operations are ruled by solutions that are identified as ‘natural’, ‘necessary’ and ‘realistic’, and that are consistent with a technically efficient approach to the optimal use of scarce resources. Technological rationality rules over moral-political and aesthetic modes of thought; soft, qualitative evidence, principled arguments and concerns are dismissed in favour of so-called hard evidence of a statistical type. The raison d’être for such pragmatism is continuous economic growth, which is the singular criterion by which all government activities are evaluated (Chua 1985).1 To this picture, Kenneth Paul Tan adds two additional observations: (1) that pragmatism is often deployed strategically by the PAP to undermine alternative political philosophies, not to mention the PAP’s own early idealism;2 and (2) that PAP pragmatism is not merely driven by the overarching goal of continuous economic growth, but ‘is intimately associated with – and, in some instances, even subordinate to – a more fundamental though much less publicly-expressed goal of the PAP government, which is to maintain the one-party dominant state with the PAP solidly in power’ (Tan 2012: 80). Yet, as the remainder of this essay will suggest, there has long been something more than political pragmatism behind Singapore’s physical transformation: a historical need to be seen as modern and to display 1 See also Chua (1995: 57-78). 2 In 2009, during a notable debate in Singapore’s parliament, the former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew described an exhortation asking the PAP to abide by its founding ideals in policymaking as dangerously ‘high-falutin’’. See The Straits Times (2015).

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one’s modernity internationally (at the expense of what makes Singapore Singaporean) – a preoccupation, one might say, with both the colonial and postcolonial global gaze. At key historical moments, the utopian element of the PAP’s political philosophy has done more than provide a post hoc gloss to ad hoc materialist-driven pragmatism; it has, instead, shaped and determined the party’s operant elements, particularly through the imposition of a state-driven self-consciously modernist and ahistorical architectural, and even ecological, aesthetic.

Colonial Dreaming: The Global Imaginings of Dr. Lim Boon Keng During my return to Singapore as a doctoral student, the figure I spent most of my time researching at the old National Library was the Straits Chinese doctor Lim Boon Keng (1868-1957). The simplistic portrayal I was trying to contest (one that is now shifting thanks to the efforts of several scholars) was that Lim and his reformist circle of fellow Straits Chinese (also known as Baba or Peranakan Chinese) were simply ‘King’s Chinese’ – that is to say, deracinated British Empire loyalists. China and being authentically Chinese mattered to the local-born, English-educated Lim – which explains one of the pivotal moments in his early life-story. As a student of medicine in Edinburgh in his early twenties, Lim was approached by a professor to translate a Chinese scroll and proved unable to do so. Meanwhile, Chinaborn students attending the same institution spurned him because of his inability to speak Mandarin (Rudolph 1998). Lim’s desire to overcome his personal sense of inauthenticity, exposed internationally while he was a young man far away from home, appears to have inspired the reform movement that he led on his return to Singapore in 1893. Its purpose was to transform and modernize the identities of his fellow Straits Chinese, followed by those of the wider Chinese population in general. Lim dreamt of a future generation of Straits Chinese who spoke both English and Mandarin fluently, and who journeyed to China, as he himself did, to take the fair share of their due inheritance as ‘Sons of Han’ by acting as intermediaries for European and Straits-based commercial enterprises. For Lim, the Straits Chinese were to form a class of global middlemen between the Middle Kingdom and the West, tasked with reconciling these two great civilizations.3 Crucial to the articulation of this vision was Lim’s discovery of the works of the exiled late-Qing Confucian reformer Kang Youwei, who arrived in 3

For Lim’s own description of this global mission, see Lim (1903).

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Figure 1.3 Portrait of Dr. Lim Boon Keng (1890s)

Source: National Archives of Singapore (NAS)

Singapore in 1900. Kang inspired Lim to present Confucianism as a modern, rational and scientific religion that did not meddle in primitive supernaturalism, and that, in contrast to Christianity, was well equipped to deal with the theories of Darwin (Frost 2003; 2005). At the same time, Lim’s radical Neo-Confucianism was a product of his effort to keep pace with developments in the wider regional-cum-global context through which he moved and which he expected himself to influence. Western missionaries he debated with in Singapore dismissed his movement as an imitation of the Indian Hindu reformist Brahmo Samaj that had arisen in Calcutta, and of the reformist Buddhist modernism then spreading across Asia from its base in Colombo, Ceylon. Lim, in reply, admitted his knowledge of these other port-city movements and that he had, indeed, studied them. He was, in effect, in competition with them (The Straits Times 1899a; 1899b; 1899c; 1899d).

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Already, the journalist and educationalist Tan Teck Soon, Lim’s close ally in his Confucian revival activities, had interviewed Anagarika Dharmapala, the leader of Ceylon’s Buddhist modernist revival, at the offices of Singapore’s Daily Advertiser newspaper (The Daily Advertiser 1894). Their meeting occurred early in 1894 as Dharmapala was making his way back to his homeland from the Chicago Parliament of Religions. In Chicago, the Sinhalese leader had presented Buddhism to the world as a modern scientific religion in harmony with the theory of evolution, in much the same way Lim would later do in the case of Confucianism. Lim’s subsequent Neo-Confucian endeavours, which included a failed attempt to build a Confucian ‘temple academy’ in Singapore, were intended for consumption by a similarly pan-Asian and international audience, one Lim reached out to via the same port-city literati networks that kept him in touch with the rest of the region and world. Besides Singapore journals, Lim also wrote for the periodicals of India’s Western-educated literati. Later, he would become a literary associate and friend of the famous Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore (The Straits Times 1902). 4 In the early 1900s, he intended for his radical neo-Confucianism to put Singapore on the global map of these Asian progressives.5 His efforts in this regard were constructive: they produced new journals (in Chinese and English) and new associations, and eventually new schools that taught Mandarin. They were also destructive, although perhaps not as much as Lim would have liked. His reform movement took aim at many of the local cultural contexts – and the rites of belonging enacted through them – which Lim, as a Baba, had been born into and which he had probably not questioned until his international exposure in Edinburgh. He and his self-styled ‘progressive’ young Baba party denounced ancestral worship, feng shui, food offerings and prayers to the gods, as well as Buddhist-Daoist wedding and funeral customs.6 They succeeded in getting the management of the Thian Hock Keng, Singapore’s principal Chinese temple, to end its involvement in the Chingay and Hungry Ghosts’ festivals – annual commemorations that, they claimed, embarrassed local Chinese in the eyes of the world’s nations. At the temple meeting where Lim and his supporters pushed for this reform, they expressed their belief that Chinese temples 4 In 1902, for example, Lim penned an article on the Anglo-Japanese agreement for the Madras-published Indian Review. See the editorial note in The Straits Times (1902). 5 See the full debate in The Straits Times (1899a; 1899b; 1899c; 1899d) between ‘Amicus’ and Lim, writing as ‘Historicus’. On Dharmapala’s interview with Tan Teck Soon, see The Daily Advertiser (1894). 6 See the following articles in The Straits Chinese Magazine: Lin (1898) and Lee (1901). See also Lim Boon Keng’s (1899; 1900a; 1900b) articles in the same publication.

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should no longer be places of prayer and petitioning, but rather of rational remembrance and reflection upon the deeds of past heroes. Thenceforth, the Chinese temple was to be what we might today think of as merely a meditative heritage site (The Straits Chinese Magazine 1906). Yet it was the local Malay-influenced Peranakan Chinese customs that most consumed Lim and his circle’s initial reformist energies. The hairstyles and dress of Nonya (Straits Chinese women) were attacked, as was the speaking of Baba Malay. In 1899, Lim and his associate Song Ong Siang established the Straits Chinese Girls School to educate future Nonya out of their Nonya-ness by teaching them domestic science, English and, initially, while Lim’s first wife was alive, Mandarin. The idea was that – once cleansed of their Malay-influenced habits – these girls would as mothers commence the education from the home of Lim’s future generation of globe-trotting Anglo-Chinese Baba (Frost 2003). Two years before the school opened, Lim published a lecture entitled ‘Our Enemies’ in which he described the Malayan Peninsula as home to ‘wild and restless tribes antagonistic at once to the routine work of civilized society and to the nobler demands of literature’. His pioneering Chinese ancestors, he claimed, had managed to cultivate Chinese literature ‘in spite of their Malay surroundings’ (Lim 1897). Yet the darkest side of Lim’s quest for cultural ethnic cleansing was revealed a decade later, in an article he contributed to a fund-raising publication in aid of the Straits Chinese Girls’ School. In this essay, entitled ‘Race Deterioration in the Tropics’, Lim placed the blame for the ‘decay’ of local-born Indians and Arabs in the Straits Settlements and Malaya on the ‘constant influx of Malay blood’, an influx which rendered both races ‘indistinguishable from the Malays, except in certain anthropological characters’. In a similar vein, he attributed the decline of the local Eurasian community to ‘Malay wives’, who ‘often returned to the barbarous ways of their people’ so that ‘the children imbibed with their milk the instincts of the Malay rather than those of their European fathers’. To arrest what Lim perceived to be the Baba’s own racial deterioration, he recommended their ‘removal from the Tropics’: ‘The social atmosphere must be purified. A proper system of moral education for the home must be instituted, and everyone must be instilled with the highest ideals of the race’ (Lim 1909: 5). The unease of influential and self-styled ‘progressive’ Singaporean elites with their immediate local contexts thus appears to have a long history. Does Singapore therefore owe something of its later urban transformations to this earlier colonial songline? Did Lim’s battle to reform local Chinese identities and avert tropical race ‘deterioration’ leave remnants of ideas

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that were later resuscitated in the independent city state ruled by the PAP? Lee Kuan Yew was, after all, born into the Peranakan Chinese community from which Lim Boon Keng, intellectually at least, once lorded over in Singapore. In the 1950s, most of Lee’s ‘Oxley Rise set’, he later admitted, were colonial bourgeoisie educated in Western universities abroad, as Lim and many of his circle had been. Lee and his government promoted English education and subsequently, from the late 1970s, a speak Mandarin campaign in their effort to position the whole island of Singapore in the same role Lim had dreamt of providing for the Baba: the ultimate Europe-Asia intermediary. At various moments in its history, the PAP has legitimized its urban engineering through what Koolhaas refers to as the ‘ideological umbrella’ of Neo-Confucianism (Koolhaas 1995: 1019). In addition, Lee, like Lim, appears to have viewed Singapore’s natural tropical environs as an enervating obstacle to civilization and progress. In 1967, Lee lectured an assembly of foreign journalists in Tokyo on his personal belief in the ‘cultural pattern’, determined by ‘many things, including climatic conditions’, through which it was possible to demarcate nations in various parts of the Asia region, and to explain the ‘different tempo’ of each, which explained why East Asian nations were more industrious (National Archives of Singapore [NAS] 1967: 5-7). In a speech in New Zealand two years earlier, in the same year that Singapore separated from the Federation of Malaysia, Lee claimed of Southeast Asia as a whole: [I]f you look at the region you will not find cultures which created societies capable of intense discipline, concentrated effort, over sustained periods. Climate, the effects of relatively abundant society and the tropical conditions produced a people largely extrovert, easy going and leisurely. They’ve got their wars, they have their periods of greatness when the Hindus came in the seventh and again in the twelfth centuries, in the Majapahit and Srivijaya empires. But in between the ruins of Borobudur and what you have of Indonesia today, you see a people primarily self-indulgent. (NAS 1965a: 14)

Asked in a 2009-2010 interview to what Singapore owed its success (in addition to its history of racial tolerance), Lee replied: ‘Air conditioning. Air conditioning was the most important invention for us, perhaps one of the signal inventions of history. It changed the nature of civilization by making development possible in the tropics’ (quoted in Chang and Winter 2015: 101).

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In sum, there are multiple examples of ideological continuity, especially if we include Lee’s discussions of race during the latter part of his political career.7 Nonetheless, the way this particular songline has mutated is as important to recognize as its origins. During the party’s first two decades, Lee and his PAP lieutenants, such as the Tamil Indian S. Rajaratnam and the Eurasian E.W. Barker, were hardly as susceptible to Victorian racial discourse as Lim was. Rather, it could be argued that they were far more at home in Singapore’s everyday cosmopolitan context than Lim, with his public concerns about racial and cultural purity, was ever likely to have been. Instead, as we shall discuss further shortly, Lee and his Oxley Rise set were to become committed to a vision of Singapore as a harmonious and multi-ethnic utopia built around the banishment of prejudice based on race, language or religion. In any case, Lim’s influence over how Chinese elites imagined the city of Singapore and its inhabitants waned after World War One. Frustrated at his failure to gain equal rights as a British imperial citizen, he departed Singapore in 1921 to work in China for the next two decades, whereupon new voices emerged in the city to challenge his earlier thinking about tropically induced degradation. One of the ironies of the generation of China-born literati who arrived in Singapore after 1918 and transformed its Chinese-language intellectual scene was their eventual embrace of their new environment. These newcomers may have been filled with the ideals and patriotism of the New Culture and May Fourth movements; nevertheless their editors insisted that they acclimatize themselves to local reading tastes, which meant embracing the Nanyang (the Southern Ocean) and its distinct ecology (Yeo 1993). From 1937, the loose collection of China-born artists that became known as Singapore’s Nanyang School did likewise. As (relatively speaking) new arrivals, these writers and painters were hardly less globally savvy than the local-born Lim and his reformist circle. In hindsight, however, they appear to be far more appreciative of Singapore’s immediate tropical context.

The PAP as Creator-Destroyers: Post-War Arts and the Cosmopolitan Vision of Singapore The post-war era in which these China-born artists came to public notice was a period not only of political turbulence but also of great creative excitement and optimism. From 1945 until the early 1960s, the Singaporean arts scene 7

For a dissection of these thoughts, see Barr (1999).

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flourished. Along with the Nanyang School of painters, a group of leftist Chinese social-realist artists established the Equator Art Society in 1956, their stark, black and white woodcut prints of everyday political and social struggles contrasting with the Bali-inspired Tropicanalia of Liu Kang, Cheong Soo Pieng and the like. At the same time, literary life in Singapore was energized by cosmopolitan Anglophone poets who studied at the University of Malaya (founded in 1949) and by ASAS 50 (Angkatan Sasterawan, founded in 1950), a gathering of Malay and Indonesian leftist writers that included the renowned Singapore-born poet S.N. Masuri. Singapore’s architectural scene soon arose reinvigorated from the wartime wreckage, while in the 1950s, its burgeoning film industry would bring together audiences of Chinese, Malays, Indians and others through the pan-ethnic appeal of P. Ramlee. Ramlee’s portrayals of local ethnic archetypes, and his scenic representations of the rural and urban essences of Singapore and Malaya, became the imprint on celluloid of a nation-in-waiting. Meanwhile, at Singapore’s ‘world’ amusement parks, a mixed audience of Chinese, Malays, Indians and Europeans shopped, danced and watched performances of bangsawan (Malay language musical theatre) and gewutuan (Chinese cabaret) (Frost and Balasingamchow 2009: 340-343). A key point here is that Singapore was developing into a regional cultural hub without state intervention and policy making. Singapore drew writers, film directors and artists from China, India, the Philippines and Indonesia not because it possessed a world-class creative infrastructure and the promise of government subsidies, but because it allowed for a relatively open trade in ideas. Colonial restrictions notwithstanding (especially during the Malayan Emergency of 1948-1960), this trade remained free enough to allow for artistic experimentation, emulation and competition. To those who believed they shared a common struggle against colonialism and inequality – and, of course, for those who believed their role as artists was to capture and document this struggle’s essence – Singapore became a magnet, because it contained that essential duality: both the ‘sweetness and the rot’. The PAP’s nascent utopianism belonged to this wider cultural efflorescence. Not only did the party’s leaders look to create a cosmopolitan civic identity for Singapore, but they also began to imagine a broader cosmopolitan Malaya which belonged to all ‘Malayans’ – be they Malay, Chinese, Indian or Eurasian. Following the attainment of self-government in 1959, the PAP, led by its Minister for Culture S. Rajaratnam, campaigned to see Malay (not English) emerge as the common language of Singapore’s diverse populace. Rajaratnam dreamt of a ‘Malayan’ culture that encompassed elements from each of the island’s different ethnic groups. Initially, this official dream

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manifest itself through state-sponsored Aneka Ragam Rakyat (People’s Cultural Concerts), the PAP’s politically-correct version of a cultural eclecticism that had long been available at Singapore’s ‘Worlds’ (Frost and Balasingamchow 2009: 389-391). Most significantly, the ideological production of Singapore as a profoundly modernist material space – the architectural songline whose origins Koolhaas locates in both the global and local urban anxieties of the mid to late 1960s – commenced earlier that same decade, when the PAP began to imagine the city as the gleaming progressive metropolis of a young Malayan nation. The party’s social revolution in housing, health, education and industry, launched so quickly after it swept Singapore’s first general elections in 1959, was intended to be the blueprint for a second stage: the export of this revolution to the Malayan Peninsula, with which Singapore merged in 1963 to form the new Federation of Malaysia. Urban renewal in Singapore, which in Koolhaas’s essay becomes a euphemism for the bulldozing of the old city, in fact began with this utopian dream of Malaysia in mind. As an oft-quoted official booklet on Singapore’s housing revolution in 1965 (composed before Singapore’s departure from the Federation of Malaysia later that year) put it: ‘What is urban renewal? Urban renewal means no less than the gradual demolition of virtually the whole 1,500 acres of the old city and its replacement by an integrated modern city centre worthy of Singapore’s future role as the New York of Malaysia’ (Housing and Development Board [HDB] 1965: 84). In the same publication, Lee Kuan Yew expressed his view that the more than 50,000 Singapore Housing Development Board (HDB) flats which had by this time sprung up in various parts of the island were not merely a social necessity. They were, just as importantly, a political and cultural symbol – the beginning, even, of a new social contract: ‘All great civilizations have this hallmark in common – imposing public buildings and good private dwellings […] Singapore has always had imposing public buildings – thanks to the British – intended to awe the people into obedience BUT not the private dwellings, which its elected government has erected […] Singapore is a proud city. It is acquiring the one hallmark of a great civilized community, magnificent buildings plus comparable workers housing’ (Ibid.: 1). In Lee’s vision, Singapore would achieve the hallmarks of ‘a great civilized community’ through steel girders and concrete. Its imposing concretized civilization would reveal what could be achieved in Southeast Asia, notwithstanding the, in his eyes, deleterious impact of ‘climate, the effects of relatively abundant society and the tropical conditions’. Furthermore, this new urban solidity would serve as an example to the rest of the Malayan Peninsula of the ‘winds of change’ the PAP would bring if elected in Malaysia’s 1964 general elections.

50 Mark R. Frost Figure 1.4 A briefing by a HDB official during the Malaysian Minister’s visit to HDB (1965)

Chief Architect of HDB Teh Cheang Wan (fourth from right) looked on as Minister for National Development Lim Kim San (third from right) and Malaysian Minister for Local Government and Housing Khaw Khai Boh (second from right) listened to a briefing by a Housing and Development Board (HDB) official during the Malaysian Minister’s visit to HDB (1965). Source: Ministry of Information and the Arts (MITA)

To help realize this dream, three United Nations inspectors – a German, an American and a Japanese – visited Singapore to produce for the government their infamous ‘Growth and Urban Renewal’ report of 1963. Over time, this document has attained a folkloric status for providing the original sanction for the thirty years of demolition that followed. As early as 1964, Lee Kuan Yew was using it to justify the demolition of Malay homes in the Singapore neighbourhoods of Crawford, Rochor and Kampong Glam (Frost and Balasingamchow 2009: 417-418). Koolhaas reads this document in much the same fashion: as an international warrant for future urban destruction. He notes that the report breaks down urban renewal into three key elements: ‘(1) conservation, (2) rehabilitation and (3) rebuilding’. Nevertheless, he sees its recommendation that ‘a commitment be made to identify the values of some of Singapore’s existing areas as well as their shortcomings and build and strengthen these values while planning to remove some of their shortcomings’ as no more than a ‘pondering of preservation’, one that in retrospect can be taken either as merely ‘lip service’ or as the experts’ belated self-realization

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that their overall recommendations ‘will seal the island’s fate with the transformations they are about to set in motion’ (Koolhaas 1995: 1025-1026). Koolhaas might not be the only person guilty of misreading this critical document, but he remains one of the most influential. In terms of our overall discussion, it is illuminating to examine what the UN experts actually wrote. At this critical juncture in Singapore’s history, urban renewal was not to be, as the island’s authorities later defined it, ‘no less than the gradual demolition of virtually the whole 1,500 acres of the old city’ – the inspectors were explicit on this point. Rather, they wrote that in ‘framing objectives’, ‘it is important to know the purpose of urban renewal. It is more than simply tearing down sections and rebuilding them’. The full quotation that Koolhaas selectively pillages reads: With all its confrontations, the question that an urban renewal program must face and resolve is whether to make a commitment to the retention of its areas or to raze them and create something different in their place. We recommend that a commitment be made to identify the values of some of Singapore’s existing areas as well as their shortcomings and build and strengthen these values while planning to remove some of their shortcomings. A city of predominantly Chinese people for example, without a Chinatown would be an anachronism. The Chinatowns of cities are among their most attractive features and they have evolved out of their own travail rather than out of planned models. Too many people derive their livelihood from such areas to be uprooted en masse. Many prefer to continue living in them rather than in the housing projects […] Chinatown can also become a main focus of tourism and a locus of better restaurants and shops as well as provide a contrast in a big city that needs divergencies between old and new, between the superimposed and the spontaneous. Every big city needs escape hatches from sameness and order and areas like Chinatown can emerge into important examples – if they are treated with something more subtle than the steam-shovel. (Abrams, Jobe and Koenisgsberger 1963: 121-122, my emphasis)

In the 1963 report, the UN experts hired to advise the PAP government wanted key urban contextual remnants in Singapore to be preserved. Given that Singapore was the first city in Asia to undergo major urban renewal, they were acutely aware of the need to maintain internal ‘divergencies’, those ‘spontaneous’ architectural elements which allowed for an escape from the ‘sameness and order’ of the abstract and rationalized urban space they proposed elsewhere. What is more, two decades before the Singapore

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government would awaken to such possibilities, the UN experts provided a clear pragmatic justification for conservation and preservation in terms of growing the island’s tourism and leisure sectors. More than merely ‘pondering’ preservation, the UN experts provided explicit guidelines as to how it was to be achieved. Areas of the city would first be publicly declared as designated for urban renewal through ‘rehabilitation and selective not wholesale demolition’. Rehabilitation would consist of five stages, which would include: (i) a survey of every block to determine which areas were to be conserved, which rehabilitated, and which demolished and rebuilt; (ii) the re-planning and rebuilding of blocks where better parking and traffic flows were required – ‘in line with a regard for their composition and flavour’; and (iii) a ‘code enforcement programme to compel the repair and preservation of buildings’ which were ‘sound and salvageable’. The UN experts understood Singapore’s central business district would pose a challenge. Nonetheless, they concluded that, ‘Here too, conservations coupled with selective improvements are the keys’ (Abrams, Jobe and Koenisgsberger 1963: 120-123). But the government of Singapore, keen to transform the city into a modern ‘New York of Malaysia’, was at that time working according to a different timetable and with a different set of priorities. It therefore took from the report only the ‘pragmatic’ recommendations which suited it at the time. Eventually, in the 1980s, the authorities would declare patches of the city as heritage districts: namely Chinatown, Kampong Glam, Little India, Emerald Hill, the Singapore River, and key parts of the old colonial town. In the mid-1960s, however, ignoring the full recommendations of the UN experts, they pursued the old town of Singapore’s ‘gradual demolition’ as part of their vision of a modernist urban utopia, and subsequently justified such demolition conducted over the following three decades as a pragmatic necessity and inevitability.8

A Liberating Separation? Building, Flattening and Greening Such a vision of Singapore’s exemplary place in the Federation of Malaysia would be short-lived. But did Lee Kuan Yew cry tears of relief as well as regret on television during his announcement of this dream’s death in 8 Kenneth Paul Tan (2012) observes that heritage-making had to be given a pragmatic rationale before the PAP government would embrace this policy from the 1980s. The interesting point here is that such a pragmatic rationale was wilfully ignored by policy makers in the early 1960s when it was first stated.

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August 1965? Did Separation mark the demise of a wider context that had been eating away at Lee’s vision of a modernist Singaporean utopia? Had Merger, in fact, been turning Singapore more Malaysian rather than, as Lee had hoped, Malaysia more Singaporean? Was the failure of Merger, the cutting of those bonds of kin and geography that Lee wept over, a liberation for the PAP leadership from its previous constraints – from the ties and obligations of historical and geographical belonging?9 According to Koolhaas, Lee was an admirer of the works of the futurologists Herman Kahn and Alvin Toffler, and in the aftermath of Separation a markedly futurologist language became a feature of PAP utopian discourse. In an address to a gathering of local teachers, Lee made clear his view that Singapore did not possess a common historical context from which a modern national identity could be formed. The Singaporean, he argued, was not someone like the American – who could tell you ‘all about George Washington or Abraham Lincoln […] For he has history, and he can say, “These are the great events in the life of my people” […] We are not in the same position’ (Frost and Balasingamchow 2009: 430). Rajaratnam, in a speech in 1968, went further: We do not lay undue stress on the past. We do not see nation-building and modernisation as primarily an exercise in reuniting present generations with a past generation and its values and glories […] A generation encouraged to bask in the values of the past and hold on to a static future will never be equipped to meet a future predicated on jet travel, atomic power, satellite communication, electronics and computers. For us the task is not one of linking past generations with the present generation, but the present generation with future generations. (quoted in Ibid.: 430-431)

Nor was this official attack on history simply an elite one. As the historian Mary Turnbull has noted, a popular slogan for young PAP supporters at the time of Separation was ‘SINGAPORE HAS NO HISTORY. SINGAPORE’S HISTORY BEGINS NOW’ (Turnbull 2009: 1, original emphasis). The post-Separation myth of Singapore as a ‘sleepy f ishing village’ before 1819, possessing little of signif icance in the wider world or state of things, might similarly be construed as part of this off icial effort to escape historical context. In an interview with a British journalist just two days after independence, Lee described Singapore as just such a space 9 On Lee Kuan Yew’s uneasiness regarding the changes in Singapore during the Merger period, see Lee (1998).

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back in the days before Sir Stamford Raffles landed: ‘I am here because over 100 years ago, the British came to Singapore, a little fishing village, and decided to develop the place’ (NAS 1965b: 3). Interestingly, Raffles’ vision of Singapore was never to render the island historically contextless. Rather, he dreamt of a Singapore rooted in the region and its past, an island whose colonial development would restore it to its ancient role as a centre of Malay (in its broadest sense) civilization (Frost and Balasingamchow 2009: 49-58). This official concern about presenting Singapore as history-less following independence adds a new dimension to our understanding of the intensified urban destruction that followed. Over the next three decades, the government demolished buildings and removed and relocated whole villages, thus ending, for some, the rituals and rites they had periodically inscribed onto the island. In their place, the state built new edifices of its own, or permitted the construction, once land was open to private investors from the 1970s, of ones that would reflect the capitalist prosperity the state had orchestrated. Across the island rose an imposing concrete ‘heartland’ of HDB blocks, the solid walls of which (eventually pasted with official messages) served to remind the people to whom they ought to feel gratitude. The state relocated temples, and in so doing completely reordered Singapore’s sacred geography – as did its ban, imposed from 1964 (following the Chinese-Malay riots of that year) on all religious foot processions for these two communities, whether their members were Christian, Daoist, Buddhist or Muslim. The state built multi-ethnic community centres which drew people away from clan and other communal associations. It flattened hills, filled in swamps and added land to the island where once there had been sea. As Koolhaas observes, the state also ‘remade’ nature. Driving Lee Kuan Yew’s ‘greening’ of Singapore policy (which commenced in 1963, was renewed in 1967, and then took off as a public movement in the 1970s with the inauguration of officially led tree-planting drives) was the desire to cover up the bare concrete structures of his exemplary modern Asian capital. In addition, Lee hoped that Singapore, as a comfortable garden city, would become more attractive to international visitors and investors. Yet the green ‘oasis’ he set about making was hardly a throwback to the ecological context celebrated by an earlier generation of immigrant China-born writers and artists. Indeed, the greening of Singapore, at least during the first twenty years, was in its own way largely contextless. Tree and plant species were chosen because of their ability to grow fast and provide shade rather than because they were indigenous. Singapore’s tree-growing technicians, having discovered that varieties native to tropical Southeast Asia could not survive in the newly

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Figure 1.5 Poh Tiong Keng at Kim Keat estate of Toa Payoh

Poh Tiong Keng at Kim Keat estate of Toa Payoh, visible from Toa Payoh Lorong 6. In the background were HDB flats being constructed. This temple was also known as the ‘sunken temple’, as the ground it was built on was on low or former swampy ground and its surrounding would often be flooded. The Poh Tiong Keng temple was eventually demolished in 1977. Source: Ministry of Information and the Arts (MITA)

concretized metropolis, were forced to resort to species imported from drier climates (Koolhaas 1995; Auger 2013; Lee 2000). Politicians in Singapore have reminisced about this era of transformation as one in which the young Singaporean nation overcame the odds. It might equally be understood as a period in which the state made subservient or completely erased numerous other contexts that gave meaning to the physical space Singaporeans inhabited: sacred, ecological, topographical and historical. Nation-building was other-context erasing, and after 1965 the rites of Singaporean belonging increasingly belonged to the state. Singaporeans became united by the sameness and order of officially regulated and defined experiences – in their HDB flats, at their schools, during (for men) National Service, and even through government-led tree planting drives. For some years, the only foot procession that gave ritual meaning and a sense of temporal continuity in the modernized metropolis was the August 9th National Day Parade – until 1973, when the Singapore Tourism Board realized that more was needed in a city that aspired to be ‘Instant Asia’ and reinstated (after a 67-year absence) the city’s annual Chingay parade.

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Today, there are signs Singapore has come through this period of creative yet destructive urban development. A new generation of politicians, planners, curators and architects, not to mention heritage and environmental activists, have imbued the city state with a reawakened sense of history, sacred geography and place. The struggle to preserve a sense of local context is ongoing, yet some gains have been made. For Tony Tan Keng Joo, the former Chief Architect of HDB responsible for Singapore’s entire public housing programme from 1983 to 2003, a watershed moment in urban planning came in the late 1990s, during the early stages of the Punggol New Town development. In a 2012 interview, Tan recalled that until this development, the pressure to build housing as quickly and cheaply as possible through the destruction of existing landscapes had become ‘engrained in the psyche of our planners, architects and engineers. In the initial stages of Punggol New Town, they just followed the same approach, putting down a grid and sending in the bulldozers to flatten everything’. Nevertheless, as the ‘buildings started to rise in Punggol’, Tan and his team ‘began to rethink the design strategy’ in order ‘to preserve what was left of the existing natural landscape’: ‘Yes, Punggol New Town was the starting point for a change in mindset. As professionals, designing and building for others, planners must understand that the idiosyncrasies of a site are in fact its main asset. Only by preserving the memories of that location, and creating an identity, can a new town then have a character of its own, connecting residents with where they live’ (Fleetwood and Meijia 2012: 150).

Bye-Bye Hinterland: The Birth and Legacy of Rajaratnam’s Global Dreaming Though it might not represent an unbroken continuity with the past, when seeking to understand the interplay between Singapore’s spatial and imaginative environments, it is worth noting one further post-independence development harking back to an earlier period: the official dream that arose to fill the void left by Singapore’s failure to become the ‘New York of Malaysia’. In 1972, a good two decades before academics picked up on the idea, the Foreign Minister S. Rajaratnam informed a gathering of international journalists that Singapore had recently acquired a new status as a ‘global city’. For Rajaratnam (NAS 1972: 3), this metamorphosis into what he described as ‘a new kind of city […] a new form of human organization and settlement that has […] no precedent’, made explicable Singapore’s ‘inexplicable’ success following Separation, and its avoidance of the ‘gradual relapse into economic

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decay’ that some had predicted. Before 1965, he admitted, the PAP had assumed that Singapore needed a natural hinterland to provide it with raw materials and a domestic market. The years of progress that followed Separation had disabused the party of this former mistaken belief.10 The ‘Global City, now in its infancy’, Rajaratnam claimed, was ‘the child of modern technology’ – namely, electronic communications, giant tankers and supersonic planes – and of ‘industrial organization’. It was also the future. ‘Agrarian romantics’ who waxed lyrical about ‘the countryside surrounding the cities’ were simply expressing the ‘defiant cry’ of those who looked on while the countryside was ‘swallowed up relentlessly by the cities’. Thanks to the population boom across Asia, the old context they were desperately trying to hold on to was fast disappearing. Rajaratnam, in addition, also argued that global cities such as Singapore were unprecedented because, ‘unlike earlier cities’, they were linked ‘intimately with one another. Because they are more alike they reach out to one another through the tentacles of technology. Linked together they form a chain of cities which today shape and direct, in varying degrees of importance, a world-wide system of economics’ (NAS 1972: 5). Singapore had evolved into a global, ‘more than a regional city’, he continued, because the economic benefits of being merely the latter – as the city’s entrepôt trade declined – were insufficient to sustain it. Instead, Singapore’s future now lay with the worldwide club of other global cities and ‘the international economic system’ that this club shared (Ibid.: 3-8). In a diatribe against the field of urban history and its obsession with generic types, the social historian of India Raj Chandavarkar proclaimed the city a ‘relational category constituted by and dependent upon its wider political economy’ (2009: 218-219). In essence, Chandavarkar argued, cities are made by their hinterlands, just as they in turn make their hinterlands: one cannot be thought of or studied independently of the other. Such a perspective is clearly applicable to Chandavarkar’s hometown of Bombay, with its deep connections to the Indian countryside that fed it and provided it with labour. It also appears applicable to the Italian Renaissance city republics and their contados. However, Rajaratnam’s vision of Singapore in the early 1970s flies in the face of any such presumption that a rural hinterland alone constitutes a city’s wider political economy. As he told his journalist audience, ‘Once you see Singapore as a Global City, the problem of hinterland becomes unimportant because for a global city the world is its hinterland’ (NAS 1972: 8). 10 Also reprinted in Christie (1998: 286-291).

58 Mark R. Frost Figure 1.6 Television Singapura broadcasting the Minister for Culture giving a speech (1964)

Television Singapura broadcasting Minister for Culture giving a speech when he launched Television Singapura commercial service (1964). Source: Ministry of Information and the Arts (MITA)

Rajaratnam does not appear to have included the arts in his imagining of Singapore as a global city. At the time, he was more concerned with emphasizing the electronic communications and supersonic air travel that made Singapore’s contract with other members of the global cities club so regular and rapid. However, the way his official dreaming of Singapore has impacted the government’s arts policy in the decades since has been significant. By the start of the new millennium, a new generation of PAP planners recognized that even though Singapore’s First World status had been achieved economically, the city lagged behind in its cultural life. In the year 2000, the then Ministry of Information and the Arts produced its Renaissance City Report, which articulated ‘a vision of Singapore as a world-class city supported by a vibrant cultural scene […] one of the top cities in the world to live, work and play in’ (MITA 2000: 4). The report employed comparative data from what it labelled ‘benchmarking cities’ to ‘obtain a clearer picture of where Singapore stands in terms of cultural development’ and set down a five- to ten-year plan whereby Singapore could ‘reach a level of development that would be comparable to cities like Hong Kong, Glasgow

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and Melbourne’ (MITA 2000: 4). In the longer term, the objective was ‘to join London and New York in the top rung of cultural cities’ (Ibid.). Just as Lim Boon Keng had once looked sideways to other modernising cities in his competitive quest for an internationally recognized Singaporean cultural modernity, so did the island’s architects of global progress a century later. For these planners, the global city club now provided a new context for making their assessments of Singapore’s arts scene and recommending policies to ‘improve’ it. What this comparative data consisted of, and exactly where, in cultural terms, Singapore stood in the global city club was evident a decade later in the 2010 Report of the Economic Strategies Committee. In one sense, this document indicates a maturation of the official urban vision: ‘Singapore’s future must rest on being a global city. New York and London are what they are, not because of their specific economic activities, but because people want to be there’ (Economic Strategies Committee [ESC] 2010: 9). In what is possibly a tacit acknowledgement that a decades-long urban destruction had robbed Singapore of its distinctiveness, the report emphasized the need to add ‘character’ to the city in order to make it a ‘distinctive global city’. To this end, the report concluded, arts and artists ought to be given considerable state support as they strive to give Singapore a unique flavour. Nonetheless, when it came to the how and why of such state-led creativitymaking, it was clear the ghost of Rajaratnam’s original global city vision still haunted Singapore’s planners: To be a leading global city is to be part of an elite community of world cultural capitals. Singapore ranks highly in various business and liveability indices for our first world business and city infrastructure and networks. While we have obtained first-world standards in business and liveability, we are still lagging global city standards for culture. [The footnote reads: ‘In a recent Global Cities report, Singapore ranked seventh overall and within the top ten in terms of business activity and human capital but it ranked 37th in cultural experience’.] Our cultural sector falls behind that of global cities like London, Paris, New York and Tokyo in terms of scale, diversity and demand. On the other hand there has been a major shift in focus in the global cultural landscape towards Asia, as evidenced by the booming Asian contemporary art market and massive investment in cultural infrastructure by competing Asian cities. [The footnote then lists Hong Kong, Seoul and Abu Dhabi as major global city competitors in this regard.] To be a player in the league of top global cities, we need to make significant investments in our cultural capital and landscape. (Ibid.: 70-71)

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The report was then able to list, through the efforts of its subcommittee, where such investment should be directed in order to make Singapore a ‘hub for the arts’ and ‘an influential innovator of distinctive cultural experiences with global appeal’: ‘We must develop thriving creative and arts clusters – distinguished for both their development of Asian content and appeal to an international audience. We should also aim to host more pinnacle global events, building on the new vibrancy of the city and Marina Bay’ (ESC 2010: 9). How was the ranking that so bothered these planners – 37th in the global cities club for ‘cultural experience’ – arrived at? The league table of global cities in question was produced by the international consultancy firm A.T. Kearney. According to its website, A. T. Kearney’s specialist expertise includes: aerospace and defence, automotive, chemicals, communications media and technology, consumer products and retail, financial institutions, healthcare, metals and mining, oil and gas, private equity, public sector, transportation, infrastructure and utilities. It does not, it appears, include the arts or cultural resource management. What importance did these international consultants assign to ‘cultural experience’ in the making of leading global cities? The answer was ‘15 per cent’. How did they assign this grade in their assessments? By awarding cities points based on the access they provided ‘to major sporting events, museums and other expos’ (A.T. Kearney 2016: 7). In sum, the global arts complex that Singapore’s planners imagined in 2010 was one that would project the city on an international stage, in which cultural excellence was achieved through diverting funds to international exhibitions, mega-museums, Formula One and 50,000-seater stadia.

Art as Resistance to the State’s Global Dreaming? The chief aim of this discussion has been to explore the elite and official dreams that have dominated the urban imaginative field in Singapore, whether such dreams have manifested through the spatial environment that envelops Singaporeans, or through the cultural policies that direct and sometimes circumscribe them. The emphasis, when discussing a present-day society in which freedom of expression is permitted only so far as what is expressed falls within quite restrictive state-determined parameters, has perhaps inevitably been on the ‘hard state’ rather than the ‘soft city’. But what, then, of this ‘soft city’, which invites you, as Jonathan Raban (1976: 9) claims, ‘to remake it, to consolidate it into a shape you can live in’ as it bends to the individual imagination?

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I have stressed that in Singapore, individual imaginations have repeatedly had to compete with and against the urban visions of the city’s official dreamers. That these official imaginative constructs – most recently the ‘smart city’, and before that the ‘Renaissance city’, the ‘global city league’, the ‘garden city’ and the ‘New York of Malaysia’ – need to be dissected goes without saying, especially when the state seeks to enlist local creatives to assist in their propagation. It likewise goes without saying that the continuing hardness of the Singapore state in its attitude towards censorship means that the relationship between local creatives and their government will probably continue to be fraught and periodically oppositional. At the same time, it needs to be recognized that this relationship has become increasingly interdependent as a result of the increasing funding and infrastructure the state now offers local creatives – a development that raises a whole set of new questions regarding Singapore’s urban imaginative field. For one thing, what sort of creativity does the government conjure into existence as it strives to make the city more globally distinctive? What sort of aesthetic expression does an officialdom that yearns to create a global arts hub organize and configure? Equally important, will creatives working within this configuration become influential enough to change how the ruling party imagines the city it continues to govern? Some months before the Renaissance City Report of the year 2000 appeared in Singapore, I wandered off my daily circuit between Armenian Street and the old National Library to explore the recently opened Singapore Art Museum. Here, I caught the cultural medallion winner Lee Wen’s satirical mixed media installation World Class Society. In it, the visitor looks down a long cloth funnel at the artist on a video screen intoning, ad infinitum, lines such as: ‘We have world class food in world class restaurants and world class hotels. Because we are world class […] a world class airport, a world class government, world class artists and a world class museum’. I found this work consoling: it was not just an outsider such as myself who responded in this way to Singapore’s ‘world class’ complex. Somewhere in the hard state someone had permitted this artistic act of subversion to take place within a national arts institution. Having subsequently worked with government heritage and media agencies across Singapore, I came to realize that the city’s hard state is, like all states, an assemblage. The planners and politicians who dream up futurist urban visions form one part of this assemblage. They might, and do, find their visions mediated, remoulded, subtly un-dreamt, or even subverted by other parts of the assemblage.11 In 11 On the state as assemblage, see Frost (2016) and Delanda (2006).

62 Mark R. Frost Figure 1.7 Lee Wen, World Class Society (1999)

Lee Wen, World Class Society (1999). Video installation with survey forms, badges, jar, stuffed white globe with wings, stuffed white star and various media. Dimensions variable. Video duration 4:00 mins. Source: Singapore Art Museum collection, with permission from the Estate of Lee Wen

spite of dipping, for the purposes of the present discussion, into the roots and iterations of Singapore’s fixation on global city benchmarking, I am aware of the striking contrast presented by the city’s National Art Gallery. Although this institution was established to cement Singapore’s status as a global cultural hub, it has done so, thus far, through a curatorial focus on Southeast Asia. In this case, an older Singapore songline, dating back to the city’s post-1945 cultural efflorescence and even before, appears to have been reinvigorated. Of course, Singapore’s tabula rasa syndrome, which its official planners have until recently accepted as inevitable – and which, as the video artist Ho Tzu Nyen has noted, at some point in the 1990s transitioned from the ‘bull-dozing stage’ to the ‘perpetual makeover’ in which ‘nothing can be left alone’, whereby the ‘lifespans of things and buildings are abridged’ and ‘everything comes with an expiry date’ – certainly remains a challenge for those seeking to leave their creative imprint on the city. Juan Foo, quoted in a 2008 study by the political scientist Kenneth Paul Tan, speaks of it being ‘increasingly difficult to have a continuity and consistency of the cinematic landscapes that are depicted in Singapore film’ – the recognisable locales,

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‘the elusive essence of the city’ that are the key to narrative in filmmaking (Tan 2008: 222). Royston Tan, another Singaporean filmmaker quoted in the same study, admits to feeling ‘a great sense of loss in Singapore because it’s constantly changing’. Nevertheless, in the words of the study’s author, Tan’s sense of loss propels him to try ‘to immortalize as many things as [he] can in film’ through his work. The director’s ‘earlier works are set in pockets of “old world” Singapore, in places that seem to represent for him an intimate but temporary refuge from the relentless and inflexible logic of modernization, and in particular the indiscriminate forces of urbanization’: ‘Tan’s mission is to preserve through art those places in Singapore that have deep meaning for him. As Singapore transforms into a global city clone, indiscriminate urbanization threatens to demolish these places and replace them with contextless buildings that lack character and historical depth’ (Ibid.: xxiii). Hock Hiap Leong, Tan’s short film about the kopitiam on Armenian Street (the same one that, in 1999, I myself fell in love with) is one such example. Works by the video artist Ho Tzu Nyen, by playwrights such as Alfian Sa’at, Huzir Sulaiman, Paul Rae and Kaylene Tan, and by the photographer Darren Soh, the graphic novelist Sonny Liew and the film director Boo Junfeng, provide further examples of how the imprint of individual creators can be superimposed on Singapore’s seemingly ever-changing, contextless present. These artists reject the myth that Singapore has no history. They mine the island’s past for all its creative worth, restoring formerly lost songlines to a city that has long seemed bent on the erasure of its contextual remnants, to the point where all that remains is a scraped-clean and politically safe past of sometimes stupefying nostalgia. This recovery of (to varying degrees) unsanctioned histories is thus one way creatives in Singapore negotiate the hard state. Yet how do they respond to its ongoing world-class society ‘complex’, a fixation that shows no sign of abating and that now extends to the official effort to make Singapore into a globally recognized city of culture? Certain creatives (including those from outside the city who have now made it their home) have in recent years greeted the global arts hub policies of the government, especially as they refer to the visual arts, as a good tonic for a local scene that has been far too inward-looking and parochial (Lyn-Tan 2015; Oates 2015). Others have been more circumspect. The thoughts of the abstract painter Ian Woo are instructive. Woo, in a 2015 interview, accepts the vital importance of visual artists from Singapore exhibiting abroad and being seen ‘in the context of the world’. Nevertheless, he concludes: ‘I never thought of the arts hub. I don’t understand what it’s all about. I don’t want

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to make work to service a system that is positioned by the government. I fear I may end up making work that caters to a certain assumption. So, to Singapore artists, you make the best work you can make. The most original, the most individualistic that’s unique to you; you just have to be excited about your work. If you make good work, the hub is going to happen anyway’ (Lyn-Tan 2015). In a city that has for so long been afflicted by the global benchmarking fixation of its ruling elites, often to the detriment of what makes it distinctive and unique, Woo’s resistance is understandable and commendable. Perhaps, too, other local creatives, by resisting Singapore’s official fascination with global recognition and attainment, will continue to recover their island’s lost contexts – contexts that are more than nostalgia, more than merely traditions, contexts that lend themselves to being borrowed and bent and reinvented, and contexts which are never truly killed off while there is still someone with the imagination to conjure them back into existence.

Works Cited A.T. Kearney. 2016. The A. T. Kearney Global Cities Index and Global Cities Outlook. Available at http://www.atkearney.co.uk/research-studies/global-citiesindex/2015 [accessed 26 Aug. 2016]. Abrams, Charles, Susume Jobe and Otto Koenigsberger. 1963. Growth and Urban Renewal in Singapore: Report Prepared for the Government of Singapore. New York: United Nations Programme of Technical Assistance, Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Auger, Tim. 2013. Living in a Garden: The Greening of Singapore. Singapore: Editions Didier Millet. Barr, Michael. 1999. ‘Lee Kuan Yew: Race, Culture and Genes’. Journal of Contemporary Asia 29(2): 145-166. Chandavarkar, Rajnarayan. 2009. History, Culture and the Indian City. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Chang Jiat Hwee and Tim Winter. 2015. ‘Thermal Modernity and Architecture’. Journal of Architecture 20(1): 92-121. Chatwin, Bruce. 1998. The Songlines. London: Vintage Books. Christie, Clive. (ed.) 1998. Southeast Asia in the Twentieth century: A Reader. London: I.B. Taurus. Chua Beng Huat. 1985. ‘Pragmatism of the People’s Action Party Government in Singapore: A Critical Assessment’. Asian Journal of Social Science 13(1): 29-46.

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—. 1995. Communitarian Ideology and Democracy in Singapore. London; New York: Routledge. Delanda, Manuel. 2006. A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity. London: Continuum. Economic Strategies Committee (ESC). 2010. Report of the Economic Strategies Committee. Available at http://www.mof.gov.sg/Portals/0/MOF%20For/Businesses/ESC%20Recommendations/ESC%20Full%20Report.pdf [accessed on 26 Aug. 2016]. Fleetwood, Claire and Viviana Meijia. 2012. Housing People: Affordable Housing Solutions for the 21st Century. Singapore: Surbana International Consultants. Frost, Mark R. 2003. ‘Transcultural Diaspora: The Straits Chinese in Singapore, 1819-1918’. ARI Working Paper Series No. 10, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. —. 2005. ‘Emporium in Imperio: Nanyang Networks and the Straits Chinese in Singapore, 1819-1914’. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 36(1): 29-66. —. 2016. ‘Pandora’s Post Box: Empire and Information in India, 1854-1914’. English Historical Review 131(552): 1043-1073. Frost, Mark R. and Yu-mei Balasingamchow. 2009. Singapore: A Biography. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Housing and Development Board (HDB). 1965. 50,000 Up: Homes for the People. Singapore: HDB. Jacklee. 2012. ‘36 and 38 Armenian Street, Singapore’. Available at https:// commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:36_and_38_Armenian_Street,_Singapore_-_20120103-04.jpg [accessed 30 Aug. 2016]. Koolhaas, Rem. 1995. ‘Singapore Songlines: Portrait of a Potemkin Metropolis . . . or Thirty Years of Tabula Rasa’. In Small, Medium, Large, Extra-Large: Office for Metropolitan Architecture, Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau, ed. Jennifer Sigler. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 1008-1089. Lee Kuan Yew. 1998. The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew. Singapore: Singapore Press Holdings. —. 2000. From Third to First World. The Singapore Story: 1965-2000. Singapore: Singapore Press Holdings. Lee Teng Hui. 1901. ‘The Effects of Ancestral Worship on Society in China’. The Straits Chinese Magazine 5(2): 130-135. Lim Boon Keng. 1897. ‘Our Enemies’. The Straits Chinese Magazine 1(2): 52-58. —. 1899. ‘Straits Chinese Reform – 4. Religion’. The Straits Chinese Magazine 3(12): 163-166. —. 1900a. ‘Straits Chinese Reform – 5. Filial Piety’. The Straits Chinese Magazine 4(13): 25-30.

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—. 1900b. ‘Straits Chinese Reform – 6. Funeral Rites’. The Straits Chinese Magazine 4(14): 44-57. —. 1903. ‘The Role of the Baba in the Development of China’. Straits Chinese Magazine 7(3): 94-100. —. 1909. ‘Race Deterioration in the Tropics’. In The Straits Chinese Annual, ed. Song Ong Siang. Singapore: Strait Times Press, pp. 2-5. Lin Meng Ching. 1898. ‘The Doctrine of Feng Shui’. The Straits Chinese Magazine 2(6): 67-68. Lyn-Tan, Wyn. 2015. ‘Global Hopes – Is Singapore an Arts Hub Yet?’ The Peak, 22 January. Available at http://thepeakmagazine.com.sg/2015/01/is-singaporean-arts-hub-yet-2/ [accessed 26 Aug. 2016]. Ministry of Information and the Arts (MITA). 2000. Renaissance City Report: Culture and the Arts in Renaissance Singapore. Singapore: MITA. National Archives of Singapore (NAS). 1965a. ‘Transcript of Speech by the Prime Minister of Singapore, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, to Students of Canterbury University Christchurch, New Zealand on 15 March 1965’. Available at http://www.nas. gov.sg/archivesonline/data/pdfdoc/lky19650315b.pdf [accessed 16 April 2018]. —. 1965b. ‘Transcript of an Interview Given by the Prime Minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, to Mr Gerry Seymour, Resident Correspondent of Independent Television News (ITN) on August 11, 1965’. Available at http://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/ data/pdfdoc/lky19650811b.pdf [accessed 28 Aug. 2016]. —. 1967. ‘Transcript of Speech by the Prime Minister, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, at the Foreign Correspondents Association’s Dinner in Tokyo, 21 March 1967’. Available at http://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/data/pdfdoc/lky19670321.pdf [accessed 16 April 2018]. —. 1972. ‘Singapore: Global City, Text of an Address by S. Rajaratnam, Minister for Foreign Affairs to the Singapore Press Club on February 6, 1972’. Available at http://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/data/pdfdoc/PressR19720206a.pdf [accessed 28 Aug. 2016]. Oates, Greg. 2015. ‘Singapore Repositions Image as a Cultural Hub with Local Artists’. Skift. Available at https://skift.com/2015/09/15/singapore-repositionsimage-as-a-cultural-hub-with-local-artists/ [accessed 26 Aug. 2016]. Raban, Jonathan. 1974. Soft City. London: Hamilton. Rudolph, Jurgem. 1998. Reconstructing Identities: A Social History of the Babas. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing. Tan, Kenneth Paul. 2008. Cinema and Television in Singapore: Resistance in One Dimension. Leiden: Brill. —. 2012. ‘The Ideology of Pragmatism: Neo-liberal Globalization and Political Authoritarianism in Singapore’. Journal of Contemporary Asia 42(1): 67-92. The Daily Advertiser. 1894. ‘The Mission of Buddhism’. 13 January, p.2.

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The Straits Chinese Magazine. 1906. ‘Editorial’. 10(4): 203-205. The Straits Times. 1899a. ‘The Advancement of the Straits Chinese’. 7 July, p.3. —. 1899b. ‘The Moral Advancement of the Chinese’. 13 July, p.3. —. 1899c. ‘The Attempt to Rejuvenate Confucianism’. 15 July, p.3. —. 1899d. ‘A Confucian Revival’. 18 July, p.3. —. 1902. ‘Editorial’. 9 May, p.4. —. 2015. ‘In His Own Words: “Equality is an Aspiration, It Is Not Reality, It Is Not Practical”’. 27 March. Turnbull, Constance Mary. 2009. A History of Modern Singapore: 1819-2005. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press. Yeo Song Nian. 1993. ‘Chinese Language Literature in Malaya and Singapore (19191942)’. In Chinese Adaptations and Diversity: Essays on Society and Literature in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, ed. Leo Surydinata. Singapore: Singapore University Press, pp. 169-180.

About the Author Mark R. Frost is Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of History at the University of Essex. He has published scholarly articles in international journals such as The American Historical Review, The English Historical Review, Past and Present, Modern Asian Studies, and the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies. He is author of the best-selling Singapore: A Biography (2009) and a sometime documentary filmmaker and exhibition designer.

2

On the Banning of a Film Tan Pin Pin’s To Singapore, with Love1 Olivia Khoo Abstract This chapter details the circumstances surrounding the banning of Tan Pin Pin’s documentary To Singapore, with Love. Shot in Thailand, Malaysia and the United Kingdom, the film is an intimate portrait of nine political exiles who left Singapore during the 1960s and 1970s due to their involvement in alleged Communist struggles. The government’s decision to ban the film reveals what is at stake in this specific act of censorship. The chapter also touches on the broader issue of censorship in relation to Singapore’s promotion of itself as a global creative city. While the island state promotes and encourages creative freedom, particularly when it involves international collaboration, it also seeks to considerably restrict freedom, especially among its own citizens. Keywords: Singapore, censorship, documentary, Tan Pin Pin, pragmatism

Tan Pin Pin’s documentary To Singapore, with Love (2013) opens with a shot outside a London home. Inside, Ho Juan Thai, a former student leader now in his 60s, is cooking char kway teow with prawns, ‘quite different from the Singapore way of doing it’, he laughs. Ho left Singapore in 1977 when he was accused of inciting violence and has lived in the United Kingdom for over 35 years, unable to return to Singapore unless he answers for his past actions. The film offers an intimate portrait of the lives of nine Singaporeans similarly exiled from their home country during the 1960s and 1970s for their alleged involvement in Communist struggles during those decades. Some have not 1 This chapter was f irst published in Senses of Cinema, Issue 76, September 2015, http:// sensesofcinema.com/2015/documentary-in-asia/to-singapore-with-love-documentary/

Chung, Simone Shu-Yeng & Mike Douglass (eds), The Hard State, Soft City of Singapore. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020 doi: 10.5117/9789463729505_ch02

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returned to Singapore for more than 50 years. Like other documentaries made by Tan, the subject of this film is Singapore: its people, their memories and their unquestionable devotion to their country despite its conflicts and contradictions. Shot in Thailand, Malaysia, and the United Kingdom, the film takes an external perspective as evidenced by the opening shot. In a statement released on To Singapore, with Love’s Facebook page, Tan says: ‘Like my other films […] This film is a portrait of Singapore; unlike the others, it is shot entirely outside the country, in the belief that we can learn something about ourselves by adopting, both literally and figuratively, an external view’ (2014). Tan was moved to tell the stories of Singapore’s political exiles after reading Escape from the Lion’s Paw, a book of essays containing first-person accounts by student activists, trade unionists, members of the Christian Left and Communists, all of whom fled Singapore to avoid detention under Singapore’s Internal Security Act (Soh and Low 2012). The use of this legislation was central to what became known as Operation Coldstore, a crackdown in 1963 on alleged Communists carried out by Singapore’s first Prime Minister (PM), Lee Kuan Yew, with the aid of British and Malaysian authorities (Teo 2011). Through arrests made under Operation Coldstore, Lee was able to consolidate the political power of the People’s Action Party (PAP) against left-wing movements, leading the PAP to win 37 seats in the 1963 elections, while the opposition Barisan Sosialis (Socialist Front) won only thirteen. The PAP has retained political power in Singapore since the country’s independence in 1965.2 To Singapore, with Love is not a historical documentary; rather, it provides personal accounts of this formative period of Singapore’s history. However, like Tan’s interviewees, the film itself has been ‘exiled’, banned from public screenings on the island and therefore, unable to be seen by the very people whose history it calls upon. Singapore’s Media Development Authority (MDA) refused to issue the film with a classification rating, instead deeming it NAR (‘Not Allowed for All Ratings’), which means that the film cannot be shown or distributed in Singapore except for private screenings or at tertiary institutions where permission has been granted, making it effectively banned in its home country. In a statement released on 10 September 2014, the MDA said that it had ‘assessed that the contents of the film undermine national security because legitimate actions of the security agencies to protect the national 2 During the 1970s, over 230 politicians, activists and journalists were also arrested and held without trial under the Internal Security Act, some for extended periods. The People’s Action Party (PAP) has governed Singapore since 1959, and from 1968 to 1981, the PAP had no political opposition in parliament.

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security and stability of Singapore are presented in a distorted way as acts that victimized innocent individuals’ (2014a). A petition signed by more than 1000 members of the public protesting the NAR classification and a statement signed by more than 40 prominent members of Singapore’s film and arts community was delivered to the MDA, expressing the signatories’ disappointment and urging the government to reconsider the ban. Tan appealed to the Films Appeal Committee (FAC), which upheld the ban, and received responses to the film from government ministers (including the PM) ranging from personal attacks against the director to comparisons with jihadi terrorism, as this chapter details. In personal correspondence with me, in her typically modest way, Tan described the response to her film in her home country as ‘more interesting than the film [itself]’. Although threatening to overshadow this intelligent and well-crafted work, it is indeed the banning of the documentary that reveals much about the country and its devotion to a certain account of history. The film offers a perspective on Singapore’s past that is fundamentally at odds with the instrumentalist logic of the PAP, and the government’s defence of ‘national security’ belies a fear of a loss of political legitimacy; the film’s personal, individual accounts of history threaten to destabilize the nation’s founding myth of an opposition to Communism on which the PAP government’s legitimacy is established. It is in this context that we can better understand the Singapore government’s drastic action of banning the film. Tan’s previous documentaries on Singapore have been well received in her home country and are beloved by the state. Singapore GaGa, perhaps her best-known work, was voted Best Film of 2006 by the national English language newspaper The Straits Times and is featured on the Singapore Airlines entertainment list. Tan has won awards and critical acclaim in both her home country and abroad for her deeply felt, intimately crafted films, with a sharp but affectionate eye trained on the lives of Singapore’s everyday citizens, including its most marginalized and overlooked. To date, she has been well supported by official channels, receiving funding from the Singapore Film Commission for several projects including Singapore GaGa (2006) and Invisible City (2007). To Singapore, with Love was largely self-funded, with the assistance of a US $10,000 grant towards its US $100,000 budget from the Busan International Film Festival’s Asian Cinema Fund, where it had its world premiere in competition in October 2013. Produced, directed and shot by Tan herself, the film was quietly made, with few aware of its existence until its premiere at Busan. It is the construction of an ‘external’ view presented by the documentary – a perspective of Singapore’s history in opposition to the narrative established by the ruling PAP (in a film supported by external funding, offering reflections

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of Singaporeans living outside the country) – that seems to be the basis of the film’s perceived threat to national security: it falls outside the purview of the PAP’s particular vision for the country. Singapore’s ‘creative city’ discourse is predicated on its openness; in order to attract foreign capital, encourage international companies to set up offices in Singapore and entice professionals to work in the city, the state has heavily invested in its articulation of Singapore as a global city (Chung 2008: 32).3 And yet, paradoxically, while the island state promotes and encourages creative freedom, particularly when it involves international collaboration, it simultaneously seeks to considerably restrict freedom, especially among its own citizens. The legislation governing censorship in Singapore is readily accessible and seemingly transparent: government authorities make their reasons for a decision fairly clear and there is an appeal process. On closer inspection, however, the rules surrounding censorship are more opaque. The government’s instruments to restrict freedom of speech and expression are expansive and elusory, from colonial-era laws such as the Internal Security Act 1960, which gives broad discretion to the Government to detain anyone deemed a threat to national security without charge; the Sedition Act 1948, which criminalizes any act, speech, words, publication or expression that incites disaffection against the government or creates hostility between different races and classes in Singapore; to newer legislation including the Newspaper and Printing Presses Act 2002, which allows the Minister to grant and withdraw press licenses as deemed fit; and the Broadcasting Act 1995, which authorizes the MDA to censor all broadcast media, including Internet sites, videos, computer games, music and films. As such, Terence Lee writes, ‘[t]he governmental application of censorship in Singapore […] has the effect of shielding the ruling PAP government from overt dissident voices, as well as covert criticism, emanating from the artistic and cultural community. The need to position censorship guidelines as a moral regulatory practice for public consumption means […] that the more politicized reason for censorship is rarely invoked in any ‘public’ discussion on the issue’ (2010: 28). This chapter details what is at stake in this specific act of censorship – asking how we can interpret the government’s ban on To Singapore, with Love beyond simply a display of a blunt instrument by a repressive state. 4 3 See also ‘The Regional Culture of New Asia’ (Yue 2006: 17-33) for more on the regional and global aspects of creative industries policies in Singapore since 2000. 4 As Paul Rae notes, ‘too programmatic or absolute an opposition to censorship risks validating or indeed reifying a concept and a practice that possess a high degree of contingency, if not arbitrariness’ (2011: 118).

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Figure 2.1 Publicity image for the film To Singapore, with Love

Taken from Johor Bahru, Malaysia, looking out to Singapore from the other side of the straits. Courtesy of Tan Pin Pin

Singapore’s system of censorship is unique, sophisticated and discursively produced out of a combination of historical need and political pragmatism, which in the case of Tan’s film employs a discourse of ‘national security’ as a means of diverting attention from a perceived threat to political legitimacy. The separation between state and party in Singapore has never been more tenuous than when viewed from the outside, and the internal response to the documentary is tied up in the very questions about political conviction and freedom of speech that Tan explores in the film, reminding us that raising questions about one’s home country is not always or only an act of defiance or dissidence, but also often one of love.

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Film Censorship in Singapore: Documentary (as) Evidence Clarissa Oon (2014) referred to 2014 as the ‘year of bans and boycotts’ in Singapore. In addition to the ban on Tan’s film, in July the National Library Board (NLB) made the astonishing decision to remove and pulp three children’s books from the National Library of Singapore featuring same-sex parents and other alternative family configurations: And Tango Makes Three, a story of two male penguins raising a baby chick at New York’s Central Park Zoo; The White Swan Express: A Story about Adoption, which features a lesbian couple; and Who’s in My Family: All about Our Families, which describes non-conventional family and parenting arrangements (Richardson and Parnell 2005; Aoki and Okimoto 2002; Harris 2012). The decision to pulp the books was later reconsidered, and two of the books were moved to the adult section of the library instead of being destroyed. Oon (2014) notes that the banning of these cultural artefacts (particularly the call for the extreme act of pulping) is a symbolic act intended to make the presence of the Singapore government felt, since it would still be possible to read or buy these books online or overseas. 2015, the year in which To Singapore, with Love was released, was politically significant for Singapore in other ways. It marked the 50th anniversary of independence from Malaysia on 9 August. ‘SG50’ – the logo for the yearlong series of events represented as a little red dot – celebrations began in earnest in January 2015.5 Self-deprecatingly referring to itself as a ‘little red dot’ on the world map, an ‘insignificant’ island nation, this familiar description belies the widespread Singaporean pride in the country’s rapid economic ascent into the ‘First World’ under Lee Kuan Yew. Lee’s death on 23 March 2015 at the age of 91 was met by an outpouring of grief across the country. More than 450,000 people lined the streets of Singapore, some queuing for over 10 hours in heavy rain on the day of the funeral, to pay their respects to Singapore’s founding father for the opportunities he had opened up for them and for future generations of Singaporeans, including a world-class education system and generous public housing allowances. A few days after Lee’s death, a 16-year-old Singaporean named Amos Yee Pang Sang uploaded an 8-minute video to YouTube entitled Lee Kuan 5 Tan is one of seven leading Singaporean directors who, together with Royston Tan, Jack Neo, Eric Khoo, Kelvin Tong, Boo Junfeng and K. Rajagopal, created an omnibus film entitled 7 Letters, funded by SG50. Her contribution to the project, Roots, is her first feature film. Commissioned, funded and approved in the context of the government’s 50th anniversary celebrations, the PAP has deemed this sanctioned product an acceptable version of culture, and the film itself has also been very successful locally.

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Yew is Finally Dead!, lambasting the former PM and making disparaging remarks about Jesus (whom Lee was likened to) and Christianity. Yee was arrested and charged on two counts: for making offensive or wounding remarks against Christianity (in violation of the Penal Code), and for circulating obscene imagery. The prosecution requested that Yee be assessed for reformative training in an effort to ‘rehabilitate’ him (Ho 2015).6 In another incident in May 2015, Singapore’s National Arts Council (NAC) revoked a S$8000 publication grant awarded to comic artist Sonny Liew because his graphic novel The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye was deemed to contain ‘sensitive content’. The graphic novel features Lee and other political figures in its satirical recounting of 60 years of Singapore’s history (Nanda 2015). These events were widely reported in the international media, putting Singapore’s strict censorship regime in the spotlight again. The banning of To Singapore, with Love in particular reveals the degree of control asserted over the cinema, especially targeting films made by Singapore’s own citizens and specifically the documentary as a ‘factual’ form. The degree to which the government saw fit to intervene in the case of Tan’s film demonstrates an anxiety and attitude towards cultural products, especially film, that seems almost retrograde when viewed against recent efforts to liberalize film classification in Singapore. During the nation-building process of the 1960s, tight censorship controls were considered vital by the state. As Jan Uhde and Yvonne Ng Uhde (2010: 175) note, censorship operates as a form of ‘thought control’, banning media that could ‘put ideas into the heads’ of the people. Underlying the task of nation-building during Singapore’s early years of independence was the PAP’s ideology of pragmatism, with the goal of economic growth as ‘the single criterion for both initiating and assessing all state activities. Since it is argued that domestic political and social stability is foundational for strong economic growth, legislation is enacted either to promote or to repress activities which may be presumed respectively to enhance or disrupt this stability’ (Chua 1997: 131). Thus, the censorship regime can be considered an important aspect of the broader social governance of Singapore. Out of this initial historical need, a gradual liberalization of the system took place over the next two decades as the government sought to attract 6 Yee was again arrested, f ined and jailed for six weeks for ‘intending to wound religious feelings’ by posting a photo and videos deemed offensive to Christians and Muslims (Hussain 2016).

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foreign capital to this growing ‘global city’, develop its domestic cultural industries and promote Singapore’s arts and culture to the rest of the world. The link between creativity and the relaxation of censorship has frequently been noted; Uhde and Uhde comment, ‘It is no accident that the revival of local film production coincided with the gradual liberalization of censorship and relaxation of bureaucratic restrictions’ (2010: 174). In 1981, the Minister of Culture appointed a committee ‘to review the existing censorship guidelines and laws so that they would be in tandem with the changing times’ (Uhde and Uhde: 177). The committee recommended a distinction between printed words and visuals (with greater liberalization of the printed word), while censorship standards for television were to be on par with those for films and videos. There was a gradual further liberalization towards the late 1980s, via the move from a system of censorship to one of classification. Film classification was finally introduced in Singapore in 1991; before classification, films were simply passed, passed with cuts, or banned. Under the Films Act 1981 (revised in 1998), responsibility for classifying films and videos rests with the Board of Film Censors (BFC), an arm of the country’s media regulator, MDA. Films for commercial release are classified under six different ratings groups: G (general); PG (parental guidance); PG13 (parental guidance advised for children below 13); NC16 (no children below 16); M18 (for persons aged 18 years and above); and R21 (restricted to persons aged 21 and above). The MDA has stated ‘as far as possible, we would like to move towards classifying films, rather than editing them’ (BBC 2004). In addition to these six classifications, the Films Classification Guidelines state that, ‘in exceptional cases, a film may not be allowed for all ratings when the content of the film undermines national interest or erodes the moral fabric of society’ (MDA, n.d.a). The NAR rating will be applied to films that are ‘deemed to undermine public order, national security and/or stability’ (Ibid.). This includes films with themes that denigrate any race or religion, content deemed to be pornographic or obscene in nature, the ‘explicit promotion and normalization of homosexual lifestyle’ or homosexual activity, and gratuitous depictions of extreme violence or cruelty (Ibid.). While Singapore is not the only country in the world to ban films or to have strict censorship guidelines, it is striking that Singapore has made a particular practice of banning films made by Singaporeans about Singapore. This gatekeeping function against its own citizens is noteworthy in the context of the amount of money and resources it has channelled into developing local talent. Tan Pin Pin’s student short film Lurve Me Now (1998) has also been banned in Singapore, although it is now available online. In 2002 Royston Tan’s 15 was banned but was eventually given an R rating after 27

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cuts were made to the film (this inspired his satirical short film, Cut [2004]). The feature film Solos (Loo Zi-han and Kan Lume, 2007) was banned for its homosexual content. In 2012, Porn Masala, the second story in Ken Kwek’s compendium of three short films, Sex.Violence.Family Values, was banned for being ‘racially offensive and demeaning to Indians’ (MDA 2013). The film was reclassified as R21 after it was edited. More recently, Jason Soo’s 1987: Untracing the Conspiracy (2015), also received a contentious R21 rating, with Soo’s appeal for a PG13 rating rejected. Soo’s documentary concerns Operation Spectrum, the arrest and detention of 22 Singaporeans in 1987 under the country’s Internal Security Act, for an alleged Marxist conspiracy to establish a communist state. Soo reflects on his initial surprise that the film was not banned outright by the MDA: ‘Our reaction itself is an indictment on censorship in Singapore, because in the first place, there’s no reason why an R21 [rating] is necessary at all’ (Yee 2016).7 Several documentaries made by Singaporean filmmakers have also been targeted under a ban on ‘party political films’ that was introduced in 1998 with a revision to the Films Act. Section 33 of the Act criminalizes the making, import, distribution and exhibition of any film that makes biased references to political persons or matter in Singapore. The Act defines a ‘party political film’ as (1) any film or video which is an advertisement made by or on behalf of any political party in Singapore, or (2) made by any person and directed towards any political end in Singapore. Offenders are subject to a S$100,000 fine or two years’ imprisonment. Martyn See’s Singapore Rebel (2004), a 26-minute documentary on opposition leader and Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) chief Dr. Chee Soon Juan, was banned under this provision, and See was under police investigation for 15 months between 2005 and 2006. Another documentary by See, Zahari’s 17 Years (2006), about former journalist Said Zahari, who was detained without trial in Singapore for 17 years for suspected pro-Communist activities, was also banned for undermining security and confidence in the government. Prompted by police questioning of See over his film Singapore Rebel, Tan Pin Pin wrote to The Straits Times on 11 May 2005 on behalf of eleven independent filmmakers, requesting that the government clarify how it would interpret the political f ilms provision in the Films Act: ‘We ask because, as filmmakers, we feel that almost anything could be construed 7 In their advisory, the MDA stated that an R21 rating was justified since the film presented a one-sided account of the events, and ‘maturity will be required to understand the historical and socio-political circumstances surrounding the incident, and to discern that the film presents a perspective by the detainees’ (The Straits Times 2016).

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as a comment on a political matter. […] We feel that the current state of the legislation poses unintended dangers for sincere filmmakers. […] It would be a waste to spend resources making a f ilm only to f ind that it is unlawful because it has inadvertently run afoul of the Films Act’ (Tan 2005). As described by Cherian George, ‘[This letter was] couched as a polite plea from “sincere” f ilmmakers facing a practical dilemma, the letter did not challenge the legitimacy of the ban, or attempt to defend the right of citizens to use their medium for overtly political purposes. By Singapore standards, however, it was an unusually bold intervention’ (2012: 197-198). He further notes, ‘It was not just the content of the letter but also the identity of its authors that gave it impact’, especially the fact that its lead author was Tan. ‘To borrow Bourdieu’s term, Tan Pin Pin was an indubitably “consecrated” cultural producer’ (Ibid.: 198). In the context of the banning of To Singapore, with Love, Zhang Wenjie, co-director of the Singapore International Film Festival, also commented that Tan is ‘viewed as a very reasonable, very logical and very thoughtful person, almost like a public intellectual’ (Chen 2014). What is especially notable is how Tan’s letter to The Straits Times not only refrains from making any argument for freedom of expression or artistic interpretation, but also echoes the PAP’s discourse of pragmatism: ‘It would be a waste to spend resources making a film, only to find out it is unlawful because it has inadvertently run afoul of the Films Act’. Paul Rae (2011: 119) has described similar ‘pragmatic’ strategies amongst Singapore’s theatre practitioners: [I]n their dealings with the authorities, Singapore’s artists have tended to respond in kind: pragmatically, through a combination of negotiation and, where possible, strategic positioning. The first challenge of finding oneself in a censorship situation is to keep things in play. Crying ‘censorship’ is usually a last resort, since an unduly precipitate, public or pointed accusation can polarize an otherwise dynamic situation, and lead to a hardening of positions on all sides. This is not to say that the process is without its difficulties. To be censored by a state agency is to find one’s views, beliefs and way of life under suspicion by representatives of a society one may otherwise have assumed one not only belonged to, but worked in good faith to better.

Rae’s statement captures the essence of Tan’s oeuvre to date; her films are affectionate portraits of the island and have brought it much (positive) attention through international recognition and awards. Still, strategic

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interventions and pragmatic responses to instances of censorship have resulted in only limited and minor victories, since any perceived criticism of the government is usually regarded as necessarily oppositional or negative. One recent noteworthy change was the amendment of the Films Act in March 2009 to allow party political films as long as they are deemed factual and objective, and do not dramatize or present a distorted picture of politics in Singapore. ‘Films with animation and dramatization and [that] distort what is real or factual will be disallowed, as the intent of the amendments is to ensure that these films do not undermine the seriousness of political debate’, said Lui Tuck Yew, then a junior minister at the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts (Wong-Anan 2009). The relaxation of the rules on political films was introduced in response to the spread of videos (including both of See’s films, which had been circulating online for some time) and other news media on the Internet. Following the 2009 amendments, Singapore Rebel was reviewed and reclassified with an M18 rating. However, Zahari’s 17 Years remains banned in Singapore. To Singapore, with Love is not considered a party political film and therefore, does not fall under this section of the Films Act. Filmmakers seeking to challenge a rating issued by the Board of Film Censors may appeal to the Films Appeal Committee (FAC), a fifteen-member panel composed of members of the public, whose decision is final.8 Following To Singapore, with Love’s NAR rating, on 2 October 2014 Tan submitted her film unchanged to the FAC, which upheld the MDA’s decision to ban the film from theatrical release. Nine of the committee’s twelve members voted to uphold the NAR decision, with the other three voting for an R21 rating, which would have allowed the film to screen publicly. The FAC statement noted: ‘While of commendable artistic standard, the FAC found the film to be a one-sided account with minimal attempts to provide a balanced mix of views beyond those of the interviewees featured in the film’ (MDA 2014b). FAC Chairman Tan Boon Huat explained, ‘As real people and events were featured in the film, the FAC felt that viewers who watch it without sufficient knowledge and understanding of the historical context would take the views presented as the truth. This would mean that acts of violence and subversion would appear justified to the uninitiated’ (Ma 2014). The use of the phrase ‘the uninitiated’ speaks volumes about the government’s 8 Members of the Films Appeal Committee (FAC) ‘are chosen for their interest in films and commitment to public service. They represent a cross-section of society and age groups’ (MDA, n.d.b).

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lack of faith in the ability of its citizens to think critically for themselves through their engagement with cultural texts, especially those featuring ‘real’ people and events – that is, documentaries. The banning of To Singapore, with Love was debated at a Parliamentary Sitting on 7 October 2014. Singapore’s Minister for Communications and Information (MCI), Yaacob Ibrahim, responded to questions posed by various Members of Parliament (MPs), including queries about the due process undertaken to ascertain that the documentary undermined national security, which aspects in particular were a threat to national security, what the Ministry’s guidelines or markers were for films containing alternative narratives about Singapore’s history and whether these standards were different for different media formats. The Minister responded to the latter by saying: ‘We do not have specific guidelines on films that deal with historical content, nor do we intend to develop them’ (Ibrahim 2014). Furthermore, Mr. Ibrahim noted that the MDA supported films exploring Singapore’s history, ‘so long as the content does not breach the Film Classification Guidelines’ (Ibid.). In this tautological statement, which gestures towards the illusory separation of state and party in Singapore (the government supports what the government deems by its own guidelines to be acceptable), the banning of the film was sought to be justified through the PAP’s own narrativization of the country’s history. Mr. Ibrahim reiterated that the film ‘must be considered in a historical context’ of the Communist Party of Malaya’s (CPM) attempts to install a Communist regime in Malaysia and Singapore between 1948 and 1989 (Ibid.). ‘The CPM’s aims, its violent means and its organization and membership are well-established historical facts, and have been written about extensively. The film To Singapore, with Love contains untruths and deception about this history. Therefore, it received an appropriate classification which disallowed it for public viewing’ (Ibid.). The Minister continued: The f ilm’s one-sided portrayals are designed to evoke feelings of sympathy and support for individuals who in reality chose to leave Singapore and remain in self-exile and who have not accounted for their past actions squarely. It is not a historical documentary presenting a factual account of what happened. It gives a misleading account of these individuals’ past, and makes no attempt to present an objective account of the violent Communist insurrection that they had participated in and have not renounced. To allow public screening of a f ilm that obfuscates and whitewashes an armed insurrection by an illegal organization, and violent and subversive acts directed at

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Singaporeans, would effectively mean condoning the use of violence and subversion in Singapore, and thus harm our national security. (Ibrahim 2014)9

The Minister emphasized a distinction between films and print publications and the different legislations governing the two. ‘This is because of the difference in the nature and reach of the two mediums, as well as their impact on audiences. A film can more easily arouse emotive responses and is more likely to reach a wider audience than a book’ (Nur Asyiqin Mohamad Salleh 2014). PM Lee Hsien Loong personally weighed in on the debate at a National University of Singapore Society forum, with his comments reported in The Straits Times. PM Lee noted that there were Communists who had returned to Singapore after accounting for and renouncing their actions and there was nothing to stop those interviewed in Tan’s film from doing the same. ‘Well, they have chosen not to do so, so that’s their prerogative. But if they have chosen not to do so, why should we allow them, through a movie, to present an account of themselves not of documentary history, objectively presented but […] a self-serving personal account, conveniently inaccurate in places, glossing over facts in others’ (Ibid.). Stressing again the potentially subversive effects of cinema over print media, the PM continued: ‘A movie is different from a book. You write a book, I can write a counter book, the book you can read together with a counter book. The movie, you watch the movie, you think it’s a documentary. It may be like Fahrenheit 9/11 – very convincing, but it’s not a documentary. And I think that we have to understand this in order to understand how to deal with these issues’ (Ibid.) In an extraordinary statement that dangerously links the film to contemporary fears about terrorism, Minister Yaacob Ibrahim told Parliament: Classification aside, given the reach and impact of the film medium, the Government will clearly challenge and refute attempts by individuals who have broken the law or performed acts which posed a threat to Singapore, like acts of violence or terrorism, but who deny in the film that they had done so. […] Not to take any action against films which contain distorted or untruthful accounts would give the wrong impression that there is truth to their claims and that the Government’s actions against these individuals were unwarranted. This has serious implications because it 9 George argues that Singapore’s theatre and film practitioners have successfully lobbied and achieved (limited) relaxation of censorship rules, but not journalists: ‘Some fields of cultural production are less tied than other fields to the political and economic powers that be’ (2012: 199).

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would erode public confidence in the Government on security matters even as we deal with current threats like jihadi terrorism. (Yap 2014)

Yap Neng Jye, Press Secretary to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Home Affairs (MHA), also published a letter to The Straits Times Forum on 14 October 2014 declaring that allowing a public screening of the film would be akin to ‘allowing jihadi terrorist groups today to produce and publicly screen films that glorify their jihadist cause’ (Ibid.). Ideologically, terrorism is the extreme counter to democracy, thus raising the spectre of terrorism allows the PAP government to buttress its utopian vision for ‘a democratic society in the “final” analysis’ – that is, a society ‘with all that are conventionally taken as the desirable attributes of such a state […] in which the collective good is balanced with individual preferences’, even if the ‘final’ analysis never arrives (Chua 1985: 29). However, as Chua Beng Huat notes, ‘In practice, policies that are rationalized on pragmatic grounds turn out to be undemocratic in serious ways. […] The only ideological justification is a promise that in the end all these policies will contribute to the establishment of a stable, democratic society. How all these policies are to be integrated into a democratic whole will never be logically articulated’ (Ibid.). While the government may have had other courses of action open to it in relation to the film, the ban can perhaps be regarded as consistent with the instrumental rationality which characterizes PAP’s illiberal democracy, governing almost all of its policies and actions (Ibid.: 36).10 ‘This “instrumental rationality”, to the exclusion of all other reasonable arguments, is the conceptual kernel of the PAP’s political pragmatism’ (Ibid.: 31). What To Singapore, with Love embodies is precisely a non-pragmatic response to the PAP’s narrativization of the nation’s past: instead, it provides a set of affective and individual responses to its history in the form of interviewees’ personal stories of exile. It is this voicing of historical silences and the capturing of affective intensities that ultimately proved so unsettling to a political pragmatism founded on ambivalence.11 10 The substance of the PAP’s pragmatism includes policies related to education as human capital, population control, meritocracy, language, multiracialism and generalized social discipline (from crime control to, I would argue, censorship). 11 For another perspective on the ambivalent operation of the PAP’s illiberal pragmatism, see Yue and Zubillaga-Pow (2012), Queer Singapore. They employ the notion of illiberal pragmatism to characterize the emergence of queer Singapore and the regulation of sexual identity on the island, but this ambivalence arguably also characterizes other broad forms of censorship in Singapore, including film censorship.

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To Singapore, with Love: Historical Silences and Affective Intensities Paul Rae has written that in debates concerning censorship in Singapore, ‘the relevant factors tend to be unevenly distributed across a field composed as much of blind spots, silences and affective intensities as of rational discourse and interpretive consensus’ (2011: 117). This field of representation is captured in its broadest spectrum in To Singapore, with Love, and the most open way to understand or theorize the film (or the actions of the on-screen subjects themselves) would be to view it as an act of love. If the film is approached at the level of affect, rather than in terms of historical accuracy (following the PAP’s pragmatic line), what is revealed is a perceived threat to the PAP’s political legitimacy couched as a fear over national security, and of a citizenry calling for more space to debate, voice differences and feel a sense of belonging to a nation that is larger than its official political identity. The life stories of the film’s interviewees are certainly moving – not as a call to incite violence or dissidence, but rather as a call for change and renewal. ‘At least I tried’, says Ang Swee Chai, a surgeon who has been based in London for over 35 years of a life devoted to humanitarian and political aid. Ang is co-founder and Patron of British Charity Medical Aid for Palestinians, an organization that provides medical assistance to Palestinian refugees. She is the widow of fellow dissident and human rights lawyer Francis Khoo, who was sought by authorities under the Internal Security Act after he acted as the trial defence for factory workers and a student leader who were accused of rioting. When Khoo managed to escape to Britain, the police detained his new wife Ang in an attempt to lure him back to Singapore. When they released her, she joined her husband in exile. In the film, she laments, ‘You go to England, you are nobody’. Despite a life of many achievements and immense altruism, for Ang, everything is still measured against, or viewed in relation to, Singapore. Another interviewee, the former student leader Ho Juan Thai, fled to Britain after being charged for ‘playing up issues of Chinese language, education and culture’ to incite violent reactions from Chinese-speaking populations at election rallies.12 Ho married and had two children later in life. He remarks: ‘Having two little kids now […] it is excellent. For Singaporeans who haven’t got children, please try that. It is an excellent thing to do!’ His comment, almost completely without irony, echoes the 12 At the time, the use of the English language was being promoted in Singapore and there was strong anti-Chinese language sentiment. When Ho tried to speak up for the language, he was accused of playing the Chinese card and stoking resentment against other races in Singapore.

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Film stills from To Singapore, with Love (2013); courtesy of Tan Pin Pin

Singapore government’s push to encourage Singaporean couples to produce more children in the face of declining birth rates – so deeply has the PAP’s pragmatism been internalized. Ho is also a strong supporter of the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) and would like his son to become a Singapore citizen so that he can join the SAF. To Singapore, with Love follows Ho’s wife and two sons as they fly to Singapore to celebrate his mother’s 95th birthday, while Ho is installed in a hotel room across the Causeway in Johor Bahru, Malaysia to watch the party live from his laptop on Skype. A relative interjects and asks Ho to stop filming the guests, who are becoming upset. Tan’s camera respectfully cuts to a shot of the rain-splattered hotel room window, trained on the steady stream of cars on the street below. We hear Ho’s voice continue, ‘Please don’t worry’, attempting to diffuse a tense situation by asking when they will cut the cake. Other interviewees, former members of Barisan Sosialis who are now living in Thailand, also speak with deep emotion about the loss of their homeland and those they have left behind. Chan Sun Wing recites a moving poem he wrote upon being granted his Thai citizenship, entitled ‘Thoughts on Changing Citizenship’. Tan Wah Piow, a student leader arrested for ‘rioting’ when standing up for the rights of workers retrenched without pay, sought political asylum in Britain in the 1970s after his Singaporean citizenship was revoked. Tan Wah Piow removes two suitcases from his storeroom: ‘If for nostalgic reasons when I go back, I will try to put all of our belongings into these two little suitcases, which is what we had when we came to this country. […] Two little pieces of nostalgia’. He adds, ‘These two little suitcases represent the beginning of our lives in the UK. Where it will end, I’m not sure at this stage’. Tan Pin Pin responded to the banning of her film by releasing a statement saying, ‘We need to be trusted to be able to find the answers to questions about ourselves, for ourselves’ (2014). While the banning of Tan’s film has

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Figure 2.3 Tan Wah Piow’s ‘two little suitcases’

Film still from To Singapore, with Love (2013); courtesy of Tan Pin Pin

been used for ‘political’ ends, the film itself is not overtly about politics, nor is it primarily, or only, about political exiles. It is mainly about the subjects’ feelings for their long-estranged homeland and their reflections on and conduct of a life lived in exile. Tan writes: Their feelings for Singapore are intense and heartfelt, albeit sometimes ambivalent, even after so long away. Those feelings (more than the circumstances of their exile, or even the historical ‘truth’ that led to such exile) are what my film predominantly focuses on, because I feel that many viewers might relate to those feelings. I made this film because I myself wanted to better understand Singapore. I wanted to understand how we became who we are by addressing what was banished and unspoken for. Perhaps what remains could be the essence of us today. (2014)

Perhaps it is the mere suggestion of ‘alternative’ truths offered by the film that proves a threat to national security, rather than the actual content of those narratives. The very existence of alternative possibilities indicates that the historical narrative of Singapore as it has been presented is not inevitable or foundational, but instead actively created. It is these emotional or affective intensities that give the discourse around censorship a human dimension and mark its relevance beyond its application in this small island nation.

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Touring a Banned Film: Love from the Outside Tan herself has been forced to undertake ‘suitcase tours’ of her film to the United States, London, and throughout Asia: ‘Now, the irony that a film about Singapore exiles is now exiled from Singapore as well – this is not something I ever wanted or hoped for. I was hoping that the film would open up a national conversation to allow us to understand ourselves as a nation better too’ (2014). The ‘national conversation’ Tan hoped to have has now spread outside the borders of the nation. It is being held by Singaporeans online, by diasporic groups and overseas students in tertiary institutions in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Asia, and in dialogue with non-Singaporeans around the world. There is clearly great interest in the film, with its banning bringing it more attention than it might otherwise have received. Within days of the film’s ban, the documentary was shown at the Freedom Film Festival in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. Approximately 350 Singaporeans travelled to see the film at the festival, with four chartered buses carrying 150 people. Tan has travelled extensively and tirelessly to promote her film, and private screenings have been held at festivals and universities in South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, India, the United Arab Emirates, London, Germany, the United States, Australia, Brazil, and at educational institutions in Singapore, where screenings are allowed if the film features as part of an official course syllabus. The film has already had screenings at Nanyang Technological University and Yale-NUS in Singapore. Not all screenings have gone uncontested, however. An October 2014 screening of To Singapore, with Love at the Freedom Film Festival in Kuantan, Malaysia, an event run by the human rights NGO Pusat Komas, was cancelled by Malaysian authorities. At the Freedom Film Festival screening in Penang, Malaysia, fifteen officers from Malaysia’s Ministry of Home Affairs attempted to halt the screening of the documentary, claiming that it had not been vetted and approved by the Malaysian film censor board. After some negotiations with the organizers, who noted that the film was a state-sponsored event and the films were being streamed online and therefore, beyond the jurisdiction of the Film Censorship Act, the officers allowed the screening to proceed (Rakyat Times 2014). A planned screening in Thailand was also cancelled at the last minute. Singaporean students studying overseas have been particularly proactive in seeking to have the film shown in universities outside of Singapore. Groups of students from Georgetown University, Northwestern University, Vassar College and New York University pooled resources to fly Tan to the

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United States for a four city tour of To Singapore, with Love in April 2015. Among younger Singaporeans, there is clearly interest for more varied and nuanced accounts of Singapore’s history. The documentary has also performed well on the international film festival circuit. Tan won the Best Director award in the Muhr Asia Africa Documentary section at the 10th Dubai International Film Festival (2013) and the Best ASEAN Documentary at the Salaya International Documentary Festival in India. The film has also been shown at the Busan International Film Festival, the Berlin International Film Festival, the Lincoln Center in New York, the Seoul International Documentary Festival, the Jogja-NETPAC Film Festival, the International Film Festival of Kerala and London’s South East Asia Arts XFest, among others. Although it cannot be shown publicly in her home country, the debates raised by the film have continued in other public forums in Singapore. As an alternative to Singapore’s SG50 celebrations, ten civil activists, artists and academics formed ‘Project 50/100’ to support events that cast a critical eye back on Singapore’s history as well as look forward toward its future (its 100th year anniversary), with the tagline ‘Alternative Narratives, New Perspectives, Different Truths’. The group is motivated by the slogan ‘Because We Love Singapore’ (Project 50/100, n.d.). An affiliate project of ‘Project 50/100’ is the highly successful ‘Living with Myths’ forum, organized by three historians, Loh Kah Seng (Sogang University), Thum Ping Tjin (National University of Singapore and Oxford University) and Jack Chia (Cornell University) (Ibid.). ‘Living with Myths’ is a series of talks that aims to unpack the taken-for-granted and foundational stories behind Singapore’s history (Living with Myths, n.d.). At the seventh ‘Living with Myths’ forum on 13 February 2015, ‘Discipline and Proscribe’, Chua Beng Huat gave a talk entitled ‘The Banning of a Film’ on To Singapore, with Love. Every inch of the forum’s venue, Muse House – a converted heritage Peranakan shophouse in Katong that is now a private museum and art gallery – was packed. People sat shoulder to shoulder, five rows deep on the floor right up to the entrance, good-naturedly finding more space for every new person peeking through the door trying to gain entry. Chua characterized the banning of Tan’s documentary as a ‘clumsy act’ by PAP, alienating the very demographic of voters it needs to attract and retain. Chua notes that the government may have underestimated the backlash against its unpopular decision to ban the film, which may prove to be a politically costly act: ‘For the government to ban a film is for it to show its hands of repression; consequently, we have to believe that it is not a decision that is taken lightly. […] For a government that characterizes itself

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as “future-oriented” rather than “backward-looking”, why is it so possessive about national history?’ (2015). Chua argues that Singapore has no founding myth and relies on its opposition to Communism to operate as its founding myth. What is therefore at stake in the banning of the f ilm is not national security, but rather PAP’s legitimacy. While the room filled with murmurs of approval, it was difficult not to be disheartened by the fact that outside those doors the film would not be seen by Singapore’s wider public, who would not have the opportunity to continue this dialogue and debate in their living rooms and coffee shops.

Conclusion While it is true that the banning of To Singapore, with Love has brought the film more attention than it might otherwise have received, the cost of this political action – not just to Tan personally but also other filmmakers, especially those trying to establish themselves – cannot yet be counted. Alongside Singapore’s quite broad and ill-defined legislation restricting freedom of speech, a growing culture of self-censorship has developed. ‘Culture’ in Singapore is located at the intersection of governmentality (the regulation of the thoughts and behaviour of its citizens), politics (as a result of the large degree of state funding for the arts and culture) and industry (culture as a commodity to be used in the service of national branding). It is precisely an externally projected image of Singapore that threatens the internal processes of governmentality and politics, and hence what the PAP seeks most forcefully to control. Nowhere in this configuration does culture feature as a creative critical discourse, although To Singapore, with Love embodies this spirit and encapsulates it in its tagline, ‘Some places are better observed from a distance if you want to grasp their inner essence’. The dialogue and debates provoked by the film have moved online and overseas, and are being held by diasporic Singaporeans, students and international film festivalgoers. While the film, ‘a love letter to Singapore, shot entirely outside the country’, has been enthusiastically claimed, and loved, from afar, it is has yet to be returned home, where it belongs. Acknowledgments: The author wishes to thank Tan Pin Pin, Chua Beng Huat, Daniel Edwards and participants of the Hard State, Soft City: The Urban Imaginative Field in Singapore symposium, in particular Simone Shu-Yeng Chung and Mike Douglass.

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Works Cited Aoki, Elaine M. and Jean Davies Okimoto. 2002. The White Swan Express: A Story about Adoption. New York: Clarion Books. BBC. 2004. ‘Singapore Loosens Film Censorship’. 25 Mar. Available at http://news. bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3567789.stm [accessed 27 Oct. 2016]. Chen May Yee. 2014. ‘Banned Film Reunites Singapore with Its Exiles’. The New York Times, 30 Sept. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/01/arts/ international/banned-film-reunites-singapore-with-its-exiles.html?_r=0 [accessed 27 Oct. 2016]. Chua Beng Huat. 1985. ‘Pragmatism of the People’s Action Party Government in Singapore: A Critical Assessment’. Asian Journal of Social Science 13(1): 29-46. —. 1997. Political Legitimacy and Housing: Stakeholding in Singapore. London: Routledge. —. 2015. ‘The Banning of a Film’. Seminar, ‘Living with Myths VII: Discipline and Proscribe’, Muse House, Singapore, 13 Feb. Chung Peichi. 2008. ‘The Creative Industry of Singapore: Cultural Policy in the Age of Globalisation’. Media International Australia 128(Aug.): 31-45. George, Cherian. 2012. ‘Silence and Protest in Singapore’s Censorship Debates’. In Popular Culture and the State in East and Southeast Asia, ed. Nissim Otmazgin and Eyal Ben-Ari. London: Routledge, 189-199. Harris, Robie H. 2012. Who’s in My Family: All about Our Families. Somerville, MA: Candlewick. Ho, Olivia. 2015. ‘Amos Yee Back in Prison for 3 Weeks; To Be Assessed for Reformative Training’. The Straits Times, 2 June. Available at http://www.straitstimes. com/news/singapore/courts-crime/story/amos-yee-back-court-tuesday-morningsentencing-20150602 [accessed 27 Oct. 2016]. Hussain, Amir. 2016. ‘Amos Yee Jailed 6 Weeks, Fined $2K’. The Straits Times, 30 Sept. Available at http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/courts-crime/ amos-yee-jailed-6-weeks-fined-2k [accessed 27 Oct. 2016]. Ibrahim, Yaacob. 2014. ‘MCI’s Response to PQ on “To Singapore, with Love”’. Parliament Sitting, 7 Oct. Singapore: Minister for Communications and Information. Available at http://www.mci.gov.sg/web/corp/press-room/categories/parliamentqandas/content/mcis-response-to-pq-on-to-singapore-with-love [accessed 27 Oct. 2016]. Lee, Terence. 2010. The Media, Cultural Control and Government in Singapore. London: Routledge. Living with Myths. n.d. ‘A Project on Exploring Singapore’s Pasts and Futures’. Available at http://livingwithmyths.wix.com/livingwithmyths#!about/c1enr [accessed 27 Oct. 2016].

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Ma, Kevin. 2014. ‘To Singapore, with Love Appeal Rejected’. Film Business Asia, 14 Nov. Available at http://www.filmbiz.asia/news/to-singapore-with-love-appealrejected [accessed 27 Oct. 2016]. Media Development Authority (MDA). 2013. ‘Sex.Violence.FamilyValues’. 17 Feb. Available at http://www.mda.gov.sg/RegulationsAndLicensing/ContentStandardsAndClassification/Documents/Classification%20Decision/Sex.Violence. Family%20Values.pdf [accessed 27 Oct. 2016]. —. 2014a. ‘MDA Has Classified the Film “To Singapore, with Love” as Not Allowed for All Ratings (NAR)’. 10 Sept. Available at http://www.mda.gov.sg/AboutMDA/ NewsReleasesSpeechesAndAnnouncements/Pages/NewsDetail.aspx?news=639 [accessed 27 Oct. 2016]. —. 2014b. ‘The Films Appeal Committee Upholds MDA’s Decision to Classify “To Singapore, with Love” as Not Allowed for All Ratings (NAR)’. 12 Nov. Available at http://www.mda.gov.sg/Documents/News/2014/Press%20Statement%20-%20 FAC%20Decision%20on%20TSWL%20Appeal%20(12%20Nov).pdf [accessed 27 Oct. 2016]. —. n.d.a. ‘Film Classification Guidelines’. Available at http://www.mda.gov.sg/ RegulationsAndLicensing/ContentStandardsAndClassification/FilmsAndVideos/Pages/default.aspx [accessed 27 Oct. 2016]. —. n.d.b. ‘Consultation with Committees’. Available at http://www.mda.gov.sg/ RegulationsAndLicensing/Consultation/Pages/ConsultationwithCommittees. aspx [accessed 27 Oct. 2016]. Nanda, Akshita. 2015. ‘National Arts Council Withdraws $8,000 Grant for Newly Published Graphic Novel by Sonny Liew’. The Straits Times, 29 May. Available at http://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/books/story/national-arts-councilwithdraws-8000-grant-newly-published-graphic-novel-sonny [accessed 27 Oct. 2016]. Nur Asyiqin Mohamad Salleh. 2014. ‘Exiles in To Singapore, with Love Shouldn’t Get to Air “Self-Serving Accounts”: PM’. The Straits Times, 3 Oct. Available at http:// www.straitstimes.com/singapore/exiles-in-to-singapore-with-love-shouldntget-chance-to-air-self-serving-accounts-pm [accessed 27 Oct. 2016]. Oon, Clarissa. 2014. ‘Year of Bans and Boycotts in Singapore’s Cultural Arena’. The Straits Times, 25 Nov. Available at http://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/ more-lifestyle-stories/story/culture-vulture-year-bans-and-boycotts-singaporescultural-ar/ [accessed 27 Oct. 2016]. Project 50/100. n.d. ‘About’. Available at https://project50100.wordpress.com/about/ [accessed 27 Oct. 2016]. Rae, Paul. 2011. ‘Freedom of Repression’. Theatre Research International 36(2): 117-133.

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Rakyat Times. 2014. ‘To Singapore, with Love Almost No Show at Film Fest’. 26 Oct. Available at http://www.rakyattimes.com/~wolf/index.php/news/1456to-singapore-with-love-almost-no-show-at-film-fest [accessed 27 Oct. 2016]. Richardson, Justin and Peter Parnell. 2005. And Tango Makes Three. New York: Simon & Schuster. Soh Lung Teo and Low Yit Leng, eds. 2012. Escape from the Lion’s Paw: Reflections of Singapore’s Political Exiles. Singapore: Function 8. Tan Pin Pin. 2005. ‘Film Act: Filmmakers Seek Clarification’. The Straits Times, 11 May, 8. —. 2014. Facebook post, 10 Sept. Available at https://www.facebook.com/tosingaporewithlove/posts/585957814848416 [accessed 27 Oct. 2016]. Teo Chee Hean. 2011. ‘Parliamentary Speech on the Internal Security Act – Speech by Mr Teo Chee Hean, Deputy Prime Minister, Coordinating Minister for National Security and Minister for Home Affairs’. Speech, 19 Oct. Singapore: Ministry of Home Affairs. Available at http://www.mha.gov.sg/Newsroom/speeches/ Pages/Parliamentary%20Speech%20on%20the%20Internal%20Security%20 Act%20-%20Speech%20by%20Mr%20Teo%20Chee%20Hean,%20Deputy%20 Prime%20Minister,%20Coordinating%20Ministe.aspx [accessed 27 Oct. 2016]. The Straits Times. 2016. ‘R21 Rating Stays for Documentary on Alleged Marxist Plot Detainees as Filmmaker’s Appeal Is Dismissed’. 9 June. Available at http://www. straitstimes.com/lifestyle/arts/r21-rating-stays-for-documentary-on-allegedmarxist-plot-detainees-as-filmmakers [accessed 27 Oct. 2016]. Uhde, Jan and Yvonne Ng Uhde. 2010. Latent Images: Film in Singapore. 2nd ed. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press. Wong-Anan, Nopporn. 2009. ‘Singapore Eases Law on Political Films’. Reuters, 23 Mar. Available at http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/03/23/us-singaporefilms-idUSTRE52M29320090323 [accessed 27 Oct. 2016]. Yap Neng Jye. 2014. ‘Why Public Screening of Film Not Allowed’. The Straits Times, 14 Oct. Available at http://www.straitstimes.com/premium/forum-letters/story/ why-public-screening-film-not-allowed-20141014 [accessed 27 Oct. 2016]. Yee Kai. 2016. ‘Interview with Jason Soo, Director of 1987: Untracing the Conspiracy’. The Online Citizen, 9 Apr. Available at http://www.theonlinecitizen. com/2016/04/09/interview-jason-soo-director-1987-untracing-conspiracy/ [accessed 27 Oct. 2016]. Yue, Audrey. 2006. ‘The Regional Culture of New Asia: Cultural Governance and Creative Industries in Singapore’. International Journal of Cultural Policy 12(1): 17-33. Yue, Audrey and Jun Zubillaga-Pow, eds. 2012. Queer Singapore: Illiberal Citizenship and Mediated Cultures. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

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About the Author Olivia Khoo is Associate Professor in Film and Screen Studies at Monash University, Australia. She is the author of The Chinese Exotic: Modern Diasporic Femininity (Hong Kong University Press, 2007) and co-author (with Belinda Smaill and Audrey Yue) of Transnational Australian Cinema: Ethics in the Asian Diasporas (Lexington, 2013). From January-April 2015, Olivia was a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore.

3

The City State of Singapore’s Territorial and Social Management Dilemmas Reminiscing about Classical Athens Rodolphe De Koninck

Abstract To better understand, on the one hand, the remarkable and largely commendable transformation that Singapore has undergone over the last century and, on the other hand, its vulnerability, answers should be sought to the following two questions. Does not the relentless overhaul of Singaporean living space, nearly always considered as a fait accompli, yet always subject to being revised by the state, lead to territorial alienation among the city state’s citizens and permanent residents? Just as classical Athens and even classical Rome came to depend on a constant and everincreasing supply of foreign labour, Singapore has reached a point where its dependence on a modern and imported form of lumpenproletariat has become apparently irreversible. Is this sustainable? Keywords: territorial overhaul, territorial alienation, Gramsci

Is Singapore the most successful society since human history began? (Mahbubani 2015) And it is said that in laying down the laws, the legislator must have his attention fixed on two things, the territory and the population.1 (Aristotle, Politics 2.3.20) 1 This statement, drawn from Politics, comes from a section where Aristotle is debating a passage from Plato’s Laws (2.704-709). His reference to ‘territory’, often translated into English as ‘country’, is meant to include the territory of both the nation and the neighbouring countries.

Chung, Simone Shu-Yeng & Mike Douglass (eds), The Hard State, Soft City of Singapore. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020 doi: 10.5117/9789463729505_ch03

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The purpose of this chapter is threefold. It intends, first, to summarize Singapore’s apparently endless territorial revolution, which often involves clearance and relocation, particularly of people, whether alive or dead; secondly, to highlight the growing residential segregation between the city state’s citizens and foreign workers; and thirdly, to relate these and other planning issues to the question of Singapore’s success as a society. Through an analysis of the changing spatial distribution of its population – whether living citizens, limited stay residents or the deceased – and in order to contribute to the understanding of the relationships between civil society and the state embodied in Singapore’s extremely dynamic geography, I summarize the findings of my publication Singapore’s Permanent Territorial Revolution: Fifty Years in Fifty Maps (2017).2

Singapore as Tabula Rasa: Stretching the Land and Levelling the Stage Du passé faisons table rase? (Chesneaux 1976)3

The massive overhauling and remodelling of Singapore began, or, more precisely, accelerated some 50 years ago; that is, in 1965 when the city state became an independent republic. Since then, few components of the very geography of Singapore – whether it be its morphology, hydrology, flora or fauna; its urban, suburban and rural forms; all types of infrastructure, particularly transport; the distribution of residents and their living quarters, as well as the places where they study, work, shop, pray and play, along with their final resting place – have been left untouched. In short, all forms of land use have been and continue to be redesigned and upgraded when not overhauled or even eradicated. Among the numerous transformation programmes, the predominant ones have dealt with the physical landscape, 2 The maps with their corresponding comments in this chapter have been drawn and adapted from my book, Singapore’s Permanent Territorial Revolution. Fifty Years in Fifty Maps, published by National University of Singapore Press in 2017. I wish to thank Pham Thanh Hai and Marc Girard who drafted all the maps in the book and Peter Schoppert, Director of NUS Press, for allowing me to adapt the materials of the book here. 3 In his controversial book entitled Du passé faisons table rase? – which could be translated as Let’s Get Rid of the Past? – French historian Jean Chesneaux debates whether historians should follow Mao Zedong and advocate for making a tabula rasa of the past along with a total overhaul of society. With reference to Singapore’s urban planning, the term tabula rasa was used by the architect Rem Koolhaas (1995) and stirred up quite a debate in Singapore (cf. Lim 1998, 2004; Wee 2007; Tay and Tang 2011).

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including the distribution and redistribution of vegetation cover (Barnard and Heng 2014), as well as population distribution. This redesign of the island, or rather of the archipelago, was initially concentrated on its physical landscape, form and morphology. In 1957, two years before Singapore became a self-governing state, its land mass extended over 581 square kilometres. Between that year and 1965 – when Singapore became a fully independent nation – land expansion at the expense of territorial waters, which already had a long history, continued at a modest pace. But since its independence in 1965, land expansion has accelerated. Over the last 50 years or so, Singapore’s land mass had reached 719 square kilometres in 2017, gaining nearly 135 square kilometres at the expense of the sea. This represents an increase in size of nearly 25 percent. Originally, and until the late 1960s, the main sources of land f ill were local hills. These were levelled to provide the earth needed to ‘stretch’ the island. Since the late 1960s, land fill has increasingly been obtained, or, to be exact, purchased from neighbouring countries, some as distant as Myanmar. Land expansion has thus brought about a radical transformation to the topography and even more to the outline of the main island and its satellites, particularly the Western Islands. These are where most of the country’s petroleum tanks, refineries and other petrochemical infrastructure are concentrated. The striking transformation of Singapore island’s coastline is not solely caused by its continual territorial extension through land filling or reclamation, but also by the closure of the estuaries of the main rivers draining the interior of the island. Applied as well to the swamps encircling part of the island, particularly on the western flank, this dyke construction has also rendered possible the creation of additional fresh water reservoirs, such as those at Kranji and Seletar, after the desalination of the newly created basins. Nowadays, expansion continues unabated, with some of the more striking transformations on the eastern flank of the country, on the increasingly large island of Pulau Tekong and the nearby Changi coastline with the massive expansion of Changi airport.

Putting Everyone in his Place … In their magnitude, these plans speak for themselves. No compromise is made with the pre-existing city; the new cityscape completely supplants its predecessor. (Scott 1998: 104)

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The central target of this reshuffling of the cards, so to speak, has been the population, people, and more precisely where they live; in short, population redistribution and all that it entails in terms of the redeployment and expansion of residential, commercial, industrial and even cultural infrastructure. Consequently, since the early 1950s, the relocation and redistribution of the population of Singapore citizens have been at the core of the overall remodelling of society. Starting in the 1960s, the resettlement of displaced families has brought about a constant geographical redistribution of the national population whose growth has also been held in check, although policies on that front have changed on many occasions. A comparison of population distribution maps for 1957, 1980, 2000 and 2010 (the most recent census year) provides a striking picture (Figure 3.1). 4 In 1957, before the great overhaul began, three-quarters of the colony’s population, which then stood at about 1.4 million, lived within eight kilometres of the mouth of the Singapore River, concentrated in the urban core – notably in Chinatown – or in the nearby suburbs. By 1980 the territorial distribution of the 2.4 million inhabitants already appeared much less concentrated. The urban core and its immediate periphery had lost half of their residents, and the population there has since continued to decline. Conversely, a ring of population nuclei had formed around this zone. These were the New Towns, created by the Housing and Development Board (HDB), whose occupancy has since continued to increase steadily. By 2000, when the resident population had reached nearly 3.3 million, the overall occupation of the national territory appeared even more balanced. The decongestion of the old urban core had continued while several new outlying population nuclei had been created, notably in the north and north-east regions. Concurrently, several areas, including whole districts, had been largely emptied of their inhabitants.5 At the same time, residential dispersion from the urban core has not exempted the city state from the pitfalls of urban sprawl. The core is increasingly more congested in terms of daytime population, floor space and traffic, with commuting increasing its daytime population dramatically. This somewhat confounds the idea of balanced population distribution, a paradox which has not escaped the attention of town planners, intent on achieving an 4 The census figures used here take only Singapore citizens and permanent residents into account. By 2014, in addition to these, who numbered some 3,869,000, there were an estimated 1,599,000 non-permanent residents in Singapore, exactly twice as many as in the 2000 census. 5 The method used to produce these maps does not allow for the representation of small numbers, as one dot accounts for at least 500 persons. This means that some of the peripheral regions which appear totally empty may in fact be inhabited by small numbers of residents.

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Figure 3.1 Putting everyone in their place

Source: De Koninck (2017)

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optimal pattern of population distribution and control. This partly explains the recent efforts to develop Jurong Town as a competing urban nucleus, which will host Singapore’s station for the planned High-Speed Rail (HSR) link with Kuala Lumpur. Meanwhile, the entire western flank of the island, particularly the three districts of Tuas, Western Water Catchment and Lim Chu Kang, and on the eastern side, the areas surrounding Changi airport had been emptied of their resident population. As illustrated by the 2010 map, the extent and pace of residential population redistribution have been considerably reduced since 2000. Is Singapore’s territorial population redistribution programme nearing its end? This appears unlikely, as several of the New Towns, of which there are now more than twenty, are still expanding and additional peripheral areas are devoted to exclusive military use. Perhaps more importantly, a new issue has become crucial over recent years: the need to provide housing for foreign labourers.

… Including Foreign Workers … The workers, who sleep 12 to a room, are free to come and go as they please. But the dorm is about as far from the city centre as you can get. (Glennie 2015)

According to the 1970 census, taken a few years after the creation of the Republic of Singapore, foreign workers accounted for 3.2 percent of the workforce. Today, this proportion has reached nearly 40 percent. What happened over this half century? The answers are as follows: (1) massive and rapid transformation of the entire island’s landscape, whether ‘natural’ or ‘institutional’, calling for huge amounts of labour input; (2) exceptional enrichment of a large number of Singapore citizens, who are increasingly unwilling to provide that labour; and (3) below-replacement fertility of the citizen population, with projections showing that the population will begin decreasing in absolute numbers by 2050. Although the overall improvement of living standards has also increased inequalities among various categories or classes of citizens, even the less favoured classes have become increasingly reluctant to take on menial jobs as demand for labour keeps growing, particularly in the construction industry – notably in the New Towns and private housing estates along with the Massive Rapid Transit (MRT) and Light Rail Transit (LRT) networks – basic services and maintenance sectors. Consequently, foreign workers or employees have gradually filled these jobs. Added to this has been a

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growth in the demand for domestic workers, almost exclusively women, as an increasing number of households are able to afford hiring them. Finally, the relentless demand for talent in several upmarket sectors, such as engineering and finance, that are associated with the city state’s aspiration to become a global player, has led to the recruitment of so-called foreign talent. In fact, over recent years, for example between December 2009 and December 2014, the rate of growth in the employment of skilled workers and professionals (referred to as Employment Pass holders and S Pass holders) has been much more rapid than that of construction and domestic workers, who are referred to as Work Permit holders (Yeoh and Lin 2012). Detailed figures about the national origin of these non-resident workers are not made available by Singapore authorities, who prefer to remain discreet when not evasive about the subject. One thing is certain: unskilled workers come from many countries including China, Thailand, Burma, the Philippines, Indonesia, India and Bangladesh. Construction workers are known to originate predominantly from the Indian subcontinent; domestic workers are from the Philippines, Indonesia and more recently China, while highly skilled workers mostly come from Western countries, China and India. While the first group is transient, i.e. ineligible to apply for permanent residence, the possibility to apply for residence and even citizenship generally exists for the others. But specific rules and regulations are frequently modified, particularly in view of the increasing criticism coming from Singapore citizens who object to the new competition in the labour market, especially for higher-skilled jobs. Another issue has become prominent over recent years: it concerns the housing of foreign workers, particularly the low-skilled ones, as professionals generally are housed in private condominiums. While domestic workers are hosted by the households employing them, the picture is much less clear for construction workers because public authorities, including the Ministry of Manpower (MOM), release very few figures. An undetermined number of such workers have so far been renting rooms, or even whole flats to be shared among many, either in New Towns or even more in Little India and neighbouring areas such as Geylang, and not always under the best conditions. An additional and officially unknown number are housed legally as well as illegally on worksites, particularly those located in peripheral areas of the island. However, a fast-increasing number of unskilled labourers, especially those employed in the construction sector, have been renting beds in private dormitories which are being built all over the island, mostly in peripheral areas, and occasionally near or on industrial or public worksites. Forty-two of

100 Rodolphe De Koninck Figure 3.2 Housing foreign workers on the margins

Source: De Koninck (2017)

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these dormitories have been identified and located (Figure 3.2). The number of beds they provide varies between a few tens to more than 10,000 in the largest dormitories; one of these, the Tuas View dormitory, offers 16,800 beds. In these dormitory compounds, all registered with MOM, labourers are provided with breakfast and dinner, and are generally able to bring their lunch boxes to the various worksites to which they are ferried daily by fleets of buses. The development of these dormitories, of which the largest ones are often found in isolated locations far from major concentrations of Singapore citizens and permanent residents, such as near the western shores of the island or the Straits of Johor, was accelerated following the December 2013 workers’ riots in Little India. By late 2015, it could be estimated that at least 150,000 workers – nearly two-thirds of all Work Permit holders – reside in these nearly all male proletarian towns. Once again in the history of Singapore’s economic expansion, massive relocation has come to the rescue of social management.

… and Mortal Remains Only 2 km west of the entrance to MacRitchie Reservoir Park, the Chinese cemetery at Bukit Brown is imbued with a sense of history, of how Singapore society and customs have changed and are still changing. (Rough Guides, n.d.)

The nature and location of burial grounds as well as sites for ancestor worship are important in most cultures and exceptionally so with the Chinese.6 Yet Singaporean cemeteries have also been the object of curtailment and massive transfers. Their total number, which stood at 113 in 1958, had been reduced to 64 in 1988, 25 by 2005 and 10 in 2014. Exhumations followed by relocations have been most frequent in the central urban area and in the peripheral islands, particularly affecting Chinese and Muslim cemeteries. Although reliance on columbaria and crematoria located in the more densely populated areas did begin to spread rapidly, a sector covering several hectares in the western part of the island has nevertheless been earmarked for cemeteries. 6 Chinese, as well as Indian, Malay and Others are administrative categories inherited from the British colonial administration. They do not truthfully represent the diversity of ethnic groups found in Singapore, but are still used by the government. Such blanket classifications even ignore the various dialect groups within Chinese communities (on this issue, cf. Chua 2017: 123 sq.).

102 Rodolphe De Koninck Figure 3.3 Moving burial grounds out of town

Source: De Koninck (2017)

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This burial ground reserve in the nearly empty Western Water Catchment district is set among low rolling hills and forms one of the most attractive landscapes on the island. By 1988, a dozen cemeteries had already been established in the area and were at the disposal of those who wished and could afford to give their dead a traditional burial, whether they follow Chinese, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Parsee, Baha’i or Christian rites. Since then, the overall number of cemeteries has been further reduced, to as few as ten, with several cleared from most of the island’s regions except the northwest and, more importantly, the extreme west. In 2014, eight of the remaining ones were located, in fact, juxtaposed among the hills in the Western Water Catchment district, with the only nearby settlements those of foreign workers and military personnel. As for columbaria and crematoria, their numbers which had reached sixteen in 2005 had been reduced to eight, with three of them also located amidst the burial grounds of the Western Water Catchment district (Figure 3.3). The redistribution of cemeteries in Singapore has over the years involved the digging up of tens of thousands of graves. While in most cases the remains have been cremated and deposited in columbaria, in some instances reburials were carried out in the cemeteries concentrated in the Western Catchment District. There are also instances of cemeteries that have simply been closed; that is, no new burials are allowed but the existing graves remain untouched. This is the case for the three Chinese cemeteries located just south of MacRitchie Reservoir on the 2005 map. Known as the Hokkien Association, Ong Clan and Bukit Brown cemeteries, they are officially closed – hence their disappearance from off icial government documents and from the 2015 map represented here. But they are still visited by descendants of the deceased as well as by tourists! They – Bukit Brown in particular – have even become emblematic of citizen resistance to top-down planning. Plans to close these cemeteries and remove the burials in order to make space for the development of highways have been repeatedly postponed, following protests by representatives of clan associations and other concerned Singaporeans. Comparing the three maps reveals how both foreign workers’ dormitories (Figure 3.2) and burial grounds (Figure 3.3) are being relegated as far as possible from major population nuclei (Figure 3.1). This constitutes an eloquent depiction of Singapore’s attempt at socio-political management or, in fact, at total management and control.

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Singapore’s Success and Dilemmas Singapore’s success is due to MPH: Meritocracy, Pragmatism and Honesty. (Mahbubani 2015) Our sources leave little doubt that, in Athens, slaves were essential in mining, worked on the rural estates and in the workshops and businesses of the wealthy, and served them in their homes. (Scheidel 2005: 3)

The role of ‘meritocracy, pragmatism and honesty’ in explaining Singapore’s success has long been singled out by numerous authors – among them Ooi and Chiang (1969), You and Lim (1971), Chan (1976), Chen (1983), Mauzy (1987), Sandhu and Wheatley (1989) and Lee (2000) – if sometimes under slightly different wordings, such as ‘honesty, competence and efficiency’. However, things are not that simple; there is a lot more to Singapore’s success than the choices made by those to whom these praises are addressed.7 Rather than considering Singapore’s permanent territorial revolution as a mere inevitable consequence of the planning decisions of the MPH elite, the suggestion here is that it should instead be considered an instrumental yet fundamental factor: a tool of social management, control and political discipline. The Singapore population lives on a movable and rolling territory: The carpet on which people stand, so to speak, is constantly being displaced, or even pulled from under their feet. Landscape transformations are so massive that traditional landmarks, whether cultural or ethnic, social or local, are weakened. Notwithstanding forms of cultural persistence or resistance (De Koninck 1972; Siddique and Shotom 1982; Cheng 1985; Clammer 1985; Li 1989; Tamney 1996; Lim 2004; Wee and Chia 2016), spatial security exists at only one level, one scale: those of the State in its territorial form. Therein lies my central hypothesis, namely that the Singapore population’s adhesion to the Republican project is linked to the permanent spatial insecurity, internal and external, real or only perceived, that characterizes the nation. The permanent upheaval of a community’s spatial basis leaves it in a state of vulnerability, of readiness. This readiness can be maintained, even reproduced, to the extent that some form of external threat – whether political, from neighbouring countries, or economic, from the world market – exists or is perceived to exist. In other words, the interpretation of the hegemony of the Singapore State in Gramscian terms – as proposed by 7 The following paragraph is partly drawn from my article, ‘Singapore or the Revolution of Territory: Part One: The Hypothesis’ (De Koninck 1990: 214).

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John Clammer more than thirty years ago (1985: 160) and never adequately challenged except, at least partly, by Donald Low and Sudir Thomas Vadaketh (2014) – remains insufficient. It must also refer to territorial ‘manipulation’, whether conscious or not, planned or unplanned. This form of control is actually embedded in law, as Singapore’s master plan has the force of law, and represents a form of state violence. This was already evident by the late 1980s. Since then, Singapore’s economic growth and the increasing globalization of its economy have added new features to the territorial revolution. First, the latter depends increasingly on the city state exporting a large proportion of its ever-growing industrial production capacity. In fact, Singapore is globally expanding its territorial revolution in the form of land development schemes such as the Singapore-Tianjin Eco-City and Sino-Singapore Guangzhou Knowledge City, the buying of sand from neighbouring countries, and other appropriations of natural resources.8 Consequently, Singapore ranks eighth in the world in terms of its ecological footprint, just behind Kuwait but ahead of the UK.9 Secondly, the territorial revolution also needs to import more and more foreign labour to ensure that the geographical base of Singapore’s booming globalized economy remains viable, literally. The resulting paradoxes are many and do not only concern the geographical redistribution of nearly all forms of land use and human activity. Two of these paradoxes are emphasized here and lead to two sets of questions and statements that point to two increasingly evident dilemmas. The first concerns what I call territorial alienation, a concept used here with reference to the Marxian concept of labour alienation, according to which the best way to control a labourer is to control his labour process, by expropriating it and excluding the labourer from the design and management of the said process, thereby totally controlling his territoriality (Raffestin and Bresso 1976). Does the relentless overhaul of Singapore’s living space – nearly always considered as a fait accompli, yet always subject to being revised by the state – not lead to territorial alienation among the city state’s citizens and permanent residents? Does the constant reshuffling of all urban and environmental components not contribute to the erosion of citizens’ topophilia (Tuan 1974)? Could this alienation possibly contribute to political resignation among the city state’s population? Can this alienation among an increasingly educated population be sustained forever without threatening the development model? 8 9

About these imports, cf. Plate 7 in De Koninck (2017: 23). National footprints account http://data.footprintnetwork.org [accessed 23 Apr. 2018].

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The second paradox results from what I call the Athenian dilemma. Just as classical Athens, and even classical Rome (Finley 1980, 1983; Scheidel 2005), came to depend on a constant and ever-increasing supply of foreign labour, largely slaves, Singapore has reached a point where its dependence on a modern and imported form of lumpenproletariat has become apparently irreversible. Permanent territorial expansion and urban deployment – notably of housing towers and transport infrastructure – along with the demands for low-cost domestic help by increasingly affluent Singapore citizens, is reminiscent of 4th Century BCE Athens, which could not do without unskilled or low-skilled foreign labourers. The indispensable permanent territorial revolution – indispensable economically, socially and politically – will not be sustained without the contribution of the ‘barbarians’ who, although generally far from being slaves, cannot (or so it seems) be socially or spatially integrated within Singaporean society. While Singapore’s capacity to adapt, redefine itself and renegotiate solutions within and without its geographical realm over the recent half century has been amazing, these two paradoxes cum territorial and social dilemmas represent unprecedented challenges for the city state.

Conclusion Whatever these challenges might be, they bring us back to the more central factors behind Singapore’s apparent success as a territorial state and a society, with the synthesis of Singapore’s territorial revolution allowing for a critique of prevailing notions about Singapore as a ‘model’ of success. This critique allows me to emphasize five essential points. (1) The permanent territorial revolution (PTR) results in people having exceptionally limited power over the production of urban space and, by extension, control over their living environment, in other words the erosion of territoriality. (2) Increasingly, as a growing number of them are housed in dormitories located in peripheral areas, foreign workers appear even more marginalized than citizens do. The issue here is not so much about residential segregation by citizenship status, but rather about the quality of life for everyone, including the less visible and poorer Singapore citizens.10 (3) The PTR is not only closely related to material success for a majority of Singapore’s citizens and permanent residents, it also impacts on the spatial imaginaries of all residents, an issue better dealt 10 On the issue of poverty and inequality in Singapore, see Teo You Yenn’s very recent and remarkable This is What Inequality Looks Like (2018).

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with in other chapters of this volume. (4) This permanent revolution is also about identity and the conviviality of community life as expressed through placemaking and largely denied by Singapore-style master planning. (5) Consequently, it equally concerns the right to the city and spatial justice, which in turn is about disempowerment and loss of political voice through overt state control of territorial space. All these points question Singapore’s success in ways that ‘aspatial’ sector or economic analyses miss. Postcript: Are Singaporeans’ topophilia really eroded by the territorial revolution? This could only be verified convincingly through a massive survey, an initiative I envisaged as far back as the early 1990s, when I began developing this hypothesis (De Koninck 1990, 1992). However, to conduct such a survey, including among the available members of the 279 households I had studied for my Ph.D. thesis in the late 1960s (De Koninck 1970, 1975), approval and even assistance of Singaporean authorities appeared to be indispensable. I attempted to secure that approval but did not get very far. I must also admit that the immense challenge involved in demonstrating the impact of the Singapore PTR appeared too daunting, particularly considering that I was already involved in other major research ventures elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Nevertheless, I do consider the fact that numerous Singaporeans have admitted to me their powerlessness in front of the permanent overhaul, whether they approved of it or not, to be partial evidence of the validity of my hypothesis. To understand Singaporeans’ acceptance of the PTR, we must also consider the consistent delivery by the Singapore government of constantly improved social services, first and foremost access to housing and a record rate of homeownership, along with material enrichment for most citizens.

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Cheng Lim Keak. 1985. Social Change and the Chinese in Singapore. Singapore: Singapore University Press. Chesneaux, Jean. 1976. Du passé, faisons table rase? À propos de l’histoire et des historiens [Let’s Get Rid of the Past: On History and Historians]. Paris: Maspero. Chua Beng Huat. 2017. Liberalism Disavowed. Communitarianism and State Capitalism in Singapore. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press. Clammer, John. 1985. Singapore. Ideology, Society, Culture. Singapore: Chopmen Publishers. De Koninck, Rodolphe. 1970. Chinese Farmers of Singapore: A Study in Social Geography. PhD thesis, Geography Department, University of Singapore. —. 1972. ‘Measuring the Cultural Evolution and Modernism of Chinese Farmers of Singapore.’ Cahiers de Géographie du Québec 38: 242-262. —. 1975. Farmers of a City State: The Chinese Smallholders of Singapore. Montreal: Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association. —. 1990. ‘Singapore or the Revolution of Territory. Part One: The Hypothesis.’ Cahiers de Géographie du Québec 92: 209-216. —. 1992. Singapour. Un atlas de la révolution du territoire / Singapore. An Atlas of the Revolution of Territory. Montpellier: RECLUS. —. 2017. Singapore’s Permanent Territorial Revolution: Fifty Years in Fifty Maps. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press. Finley, Moses I. 1980. Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology. New York: Viking Press. —. 1983. Economy and Society in Ancient Greece. London: Chatto & Windus. Glennie, Charlotte. 2015. ‘Singapore Is Keeping an Eye on Its Migrant Workers.’ BBC, 14 Apr. Available at http://www.bbc.com/news/business-32297860 [accessed 1 Sept. 2016]. Koolhaas, Rem. 1995. ‘Singapore Songlines: Portrait of a Potemkin Metropolis . . . or Thirty Years of Tabula Rasa.’ In Small, Medium, Large, Extra-Large: Office for Metropolitan Architecture, Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau, ed. Jennifer Sigler. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 1008-1089. Lee Kuan Yew. 2000. From Third to First World. The Singapore Story: 1965-2000. Singapore: Singapore Press Holdings. Li, Tania. 1989. Malays in Singapore: Culture, Economy and Ideology. Singapore: Oxford University Press. Lim, William S.W. 1998. Asian New Urbanism and Other Papers. Singapore: Select Books. —. 2004. Architecture, Art, Identity in Singapore: Is There Life after Tabula Rasa? Singapore: Asian Urban Lab. Low, Donald and Sudir Thomas Vadaketh, eds. 2014. Hard Choices: Challenging the Singapore Consensus. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press. Mahbubani, Kishore. 2015. ‘Why Singapore Is the World’s Most Successful Society.’ The World Post, 4 Aug. Available at http://www.huff ingtonpost.com/

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kishore-mahbubani/singapore-world-successful-society_b_7934988.html [accessed 2 Sept. 2016]. Mauzy, Diane. 1987. ‘Lee Kuan Yew and the PAP: Pragmatic Elitists?’ Unpublished paper presented at the Canadian Council for Southeast Asian Studies Conference in Saskatoon, Canada, Oct. Ooi Jin Bee and Chiang Hai Ding, eds. 1969. Modern Singapore. Singapore: Singapore University Press. Raffestin, Claude and Mercedes Bresso. 1976. Travail, espace, pouvoir [Work, Space, Power]. Geneva: l’Âge d’Homme. Rough Guides. n.d. ‘The Bukit Brown Cemetery.’ Available at http://www.roughguides.com/destinations/asia/singapore/northern-singapore/bukit-browncemetery/#ixzz43zXN74SI [accessed 1 Sept. 2016]. Sandhu, Kernial Singh and Paul Wheatley, eds. 1989. Management of Success: The Moulding of Modern Singapore. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Scheidel, Walter. 2005. ‘The Comparative Economics of Slavery in the Greco-Roman World.’ Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics. Available at https://www. princeton.edu/~pswpc/pdfs/scheidel/091003 [accessed 2 Sept. 2016]. Scott, James. 1998. Seeing as a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Siddique, Sharon and Nirmala Puru Shotam. 1982. Singapore’s Little India: Past, Present and Future. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Tamney, Joseph B. 1996. The Struggle over Singapore’s Soul. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Tay, Kenneth and Geraldine Tang. 2011. Singapore: Montage City (This City by any other Name). Available at https://www.academia.edu/28972291/Singapore_Montage_City_This_city_by_any_other_name_ [accessed 23 Apr. 2018]. Teo You Yenn. 2018. This is What Inequality Looks Like. Singapore: Ethos Books. Tuan, Yi-fu. 1974. Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes and Values. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Wee H. Koon and Jeremy Chia, eds. 2016. Singapore Dreaming: Managing Utopia. Singapore: Asian Urban Lab. Wee Wan-ling, C.J. 2007. The Asian Modern: Culture, Capitalist Development, Singapore. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press. Yeoh, Brenda and Lin Weiqiang. 2012. ‘Rapid Growth in Singapore’s Immigrant Population Brings Policy Challenges.’ Migration Policy Institute, 3 Apr. Available at http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/rapid-growth-singapores-immigrantpopulation-brings-policy-challenges [accessed 31 Aug. 2016]. You Poh Seng and Lim Chong Yah, eds. 1971. The Singapore Economy. Singapore: Eastern Universities Press.

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About the Author Rodolphe De Koninck is Emeritus Professor at the University of Montreal (UDM). He taught at Laval University from 1970 to 2002 and from 2002 to 2016 at the UDM, where he held the Canada Chair of Asian Research. His teaching, research and publications primarily concern Southeast Asian agrarian and environmental issues.

4

The Address of Art and the Scale of Other Places Weng Choy Lee

Abstract While the author has lived in Singapore for over 20 years, he has had a complicated relationship with the island city state. He did not receive permission from the authorities to enter Singapore and participate in the ‘Hard State, Soft City’ symposium in person and instead, presented an audio recording in absentia. These reflections consider the role of place in the practice of art criticism, as well as the contrast between contemporary art and digital culture. Keywords: Singapore, art criticism, art writing, place, contemporary art

I have lived in Singapore for over 20 years but, as I explain in a note below, my official relationship with the country has not been straightforward, to say the least. It was especially disappointing for me that I could not attend the ‘Hard State, Soft City’ symposium at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore in March 2016. I am grateful that the organizers were still interested in receiving my contribution, and I decided to share a more personal essay than if I were to present at the symposium. What follows is an edited version of the text of the short audio recording that I sent to be played in lieu of a symposium paper. For this publication, I have included notes to provide more context for readers less familiar with Singapore and my writing.

Meanwhile, the topic of place has become especially important to me and my work as an art critic. Perhaps this was always the case, and it is only lately that I am coming to realize it. You could say that I became an art critic because of Singapore. It has been in and through this island city state that

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I worked out my ideas about art and writing. While I had visited Singapore many times in my youth, it was in 1992 that I moved here, at first with the intention of staying a few years. Then, somehow I kept staying, and somehow this place became what I might call home. Although, as my friends know, there have been obstacles and complications.1 A recent Singapore newspaper article featured a successful, internationally known and travelled local artist. I will not name names here, as I do not want to shift the discussion to this particular person (not that I am against digressions; my writing is nothing if not digressive). ‘Art history has less and less of a hold on the scene, and critics don’t matter anymore […] People are being influenced by things at a much faster pace, and what you put out can be seen on Instagram immediately anywhere in the world’ (quoted in Yusof 2016).2 I am taking the quotation out of context, but for my purposes here, the intention behind it does not matter. There is another context in which it functions. In Singapore, media coverage of the arts often functions to remind readers that there are local artists who have arrived on the world stage. Underlying these seemingly confident assertions is an anxiety – and Singapore seems to define itself more by its anxieties than its aspirations. The nation yearns for arrival. To be a world-class global city or something like that … Yet in the various stagings of this desire, the outcomes are sometimes the erasure of place.3 What does it mean to say that art history has become less important? Let me skip through the various steps of an argument about its importance, fast-forwarding to the part where I make this claim: the demotion of art history implies that not only history, but also ‘place’ has lost its hold, its force. Indeed, the artist made that implication in the newspaper article, 1 As mentioned, I moved to Singapore in 1992. I became a permanent resident in 1993. In 2010, my Re-Entry Permit was not renewed, and I lost my permanent resident (PR) status. I appealed for its reinstatement, but without success. My appeal was supported by a letter signed by many prominent cultural figures and intellectuals from Singapore. Notwithstanding the loss of my PR, I continued to consider the island city state as my home, although I have had to enter and exit as a Malaysian tourist, and follow all the rules by which tourists have to abide. In 2013, I was appointed as the Deputy Director Designate of the then newly opened Nanyang Technological University Centre for Contemporary Art. However, my application for an Employment Pass was eventually denied. In October 2015, I was refused entry into Singapore. I no longer claim the place as home, and have moved to Kuala Lumpur, the city of my birth, to live with my elderly parents and help my mother care for my father. 2 In his article, Helmi Yusof (2016) reported on visual artist Heman Chong, writer Jeremy Tiang and dancer Chua Yun Chun. The quote is from Chong, whom I have known for many years. 3 I have written about the issue of Singapore’s ‘prestige anxiety’ in relation to its participation in the Venice Biennale (since 2001) as well as the organization of its own Singapore Biennale (since 2006). See Lee (2005).

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claiming that, these days, one does not have to be based in a global art capital like London or New York in order to be in high circulation in the art world. 4 There is a contradiction here. To be clear, I am not using the word contradiction to point out an error in logic, but rather, to reveal the complications of desire. A Singapore newspaper article asserts the arrival of our artists. But then, our artists seem to suggest that place – Singapore as a specific place – is not that important after all. How then can a Singapore artist be famous as a Singapore artist? The newspapers do not know how to construct the discourse that will allow their own desire. I think place matters. I also think the term ‘local’ – which was rather trendy years ago – is not the best word anymore to engage with our complex notions of place. I am less interested in the local arts scene of Singapore – if that local is framed as local flavour for global consumption – and certainly not if that local is a stand-in for a national culture. Rather, I am interested in the ways artists who happen to be located in Singapore, or anywhere else for that matter, think about place and location. I want to explore what it means to have a local address. And here, the local seems more interesting, because I especially like the word ‘address’. The word signifies a location, a set of coordinates on a map; it is also a verb for ‘speaking to’ or ‘dealing with an issue’ – one addresses her readers, or one addresses the question of art criticism today. What is art’s address? How does art speak to us? What can it tell us? And how? How does art locate us in the world? – not just a world that we apprehend rather readily, but a world that is always also somehow beyond our reach of understanding; a world that is made not just of our own place, but also of other places. This is what I mean to ask when I write about ‘The Address of Art and the Scale of Other Places’.5 I like to say that as a critic, I may write about contemporary art, but I am less interested in the ‘new’ than the ‘now’. Consider two approaches to teaching history: in one, the teacher prepares the students to go on a trip to the past, as if it were a foreign country. In the other, she guides the students through the present, showing them signs of how history is everywhere. I am 4 In Yusof’s (2016) article, Chong says, ‘Galleries and museums are getting global and sourcing for artists and art across territories. So I don’t believe you have to base yourself in, say New York or London, in order to get noticed’. 5 After a number of years, I have slowly come round to working on a collection of my writing. While I have published widely on a variety of topics, including art theory, I decided to focus on a collection of essays on artists. Conversations with artists have been the cornerstone of my own art education. It will also be a book about Singapore, obliquely so – a way of reflecting on life in that city, and perhaps a way of saying goodbye. The collection will be titled ‘The Address of Art, and the Scale of Other Places’.

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less interested in artworks that are new for the sake of being new. I prefer art that has a deeper sense of time. For me, thinking about the contemporary involves a detour into the historical fullness of our ‘now’. The proper tense of history is not the ‘past’ but the ‘present’. Although, maybe I am getting more old-fashioned as I get older. Is that not the question? How can one be old and not be the enemy? As a middle-aged art critic, am I a retrograde defender of an obsolete practice? Of the contemporary artists that I study, art history and criticism still matter to them. Regardless of whether they are younger or older than me. But maybe my own evidence is too anecdotal. Maybe art history and criticism really are in decline. I have been thinking about decline. I suppose that has something to do with being middle-aged. On the question of decline, it is good to recall Raymond Williams. In his classic Marxism and Literature, Williams (1977) discussed ‘dominant’, ‘residual’ and ‘emergent’ cultural elements. The residual is something formed in the past that once may have been dominant. It continues to remain active in the present, though not as it was in the past. Religion is a good example. Culture is dynamic, always changing. But new challenges to dominant cultural forms and structures are not necessarily emergent. What makes something emergent is when those formations emerge to become part of dominant structures. Social media, Instagram and the Internet – what I would call ‘digital culture’ – are good examples of the emergent. Or have they already become dominant? How do we think about art in an age of digital culture?6 There is a difference between reading art criticism and looking at Instagram. That is saying the obvious. But let me unpack where I believe some of the crucial differences lie. Some might say that if anything characterizes contemporary art, it is that nothing characterizes it. Art today is profoundly diverse. Anything can be and is often used to become part of some art project these days. And yet it makes sense to speak of contemporary art as a field of cultural activity because we have exhibition platforms, university art history and cultural studies departments, arts organizations, museums and independent artist initiatives – a whole range of mechanisms that bridge and connect the diversity of art today. Art makes sense to us, because these mechanisms bring art into context, into art history – into the discourses of art. Art is fundamentally discursive. Reading has a privileged place in how art functions. 6 This discussion derives from an essay of mine about art criticism in the age of digital culture. See Lee (2015).

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In comparison, what do we see when we look at digital culture? Perhaps one could characterize the Internet as a contest between visuality and textuality, or inter-visuality and inter-textuality. Even more than with contemporary art, we are confronted with a vast expanse of differences among websites of all kinds; digitally distributed movies, television, music and video games; the blogs that cover politics, gadgets, graphic design, architecture, food, philosophy and fashion; mobile phone multimedia; online gambling and porn; and also, not to forget, new media art. But this scattered expansiveness is not digital culture’s most pertinent feature. If art, deep down, is discursive and reading-based, then I would argue that digital culture is essentially ‘participatory’. Digitally produced and distributed content may dominate our attention, but not because the overlords of capitalism are churning out material for our passive reception (true as that may be). It is us users who produce a good share of the images, sounds and texts that fill up our devices, which we sometimes broadcast for all to see. What follows is a caricature. The comparison should be more nuanced. But consider the person who browses through a used bookstore, discovers an interesting tome, finds a stool, and sits and reads, absorbed in the old musty pages. Contrast this with the person who spends hours every day on social media. For the latter, at stake is a transactional attention economy. I will look at your Instagram, I will give you attention, if you give me and my Instagram attention too. Instagram: no matter the image, the depths of the landscape or the intimacy of the selfie, it is all presented to us in a standardized format – in the same scale, or perhaps it has no scale. When I think of scale, I think about how scale is about being in the world and being in a place. Different places have different scales. That is one of the first things I notice when I arrive in another country or city. The scale of Singapore is so different from Kuala Lumpur, Beijing or Berlin. As an art critic, I have a fondness for animal metaphors. For one thing, animals are possibly our first others. I suppose, of all things, the opposite of what I am is the whale.7 Of course, the whale and I have some things in 7 I often employ animal figures in my writing because of the suggestive potentials of their imagery. At the conference ‘Nature as Practice’, convened by Lucy Davis and Shabbir Hussain Mustafa and organized by the National University of Singapore Museum (August 2014), I spoke about a Singapore whale (Lee 2014). Or rather, I pointed to a black-and-white photo of a whale skeleton. The picture originates from the old Raffles Museum, which was founded in 1849. The new Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum features a scaled-up reproduction of this photograph in its heritage gallery. The caption, written by Yu-Mei Balasingamchow, states: One of the most memorable sights at the Raffles Museum for much of the 20th century was the 13-metre long skeleton of an Indian fin whale (Balaenoptera). It was displayed

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common. At the least, we are both mammals. But one is enormously large and powerful, while the other can only wish to be less powerless. One lives expansively, all over the waters of the world. The other is trying very hard, without much success, to feel located in a small island city state. One could say the wondrous whale is nature incarnate – an exemplar of the natural sublime. Because nature is in some sense always too large and never fully accessible. The sublime interrupts ‘our’ world profoundly – it is of an other scale, too large for us to apprehend. In contrast, the art critic has a small, modest job – he or she is someone who, I was not going to say, makes a living from writing about art. Instead, this person tries to make a life out of writing on art and culture. A few years back, when writing about global art history and the big world, I evoked an imaginary elderly couple. Both are retired professors; the man studied literature and the woman, film. One day, she had a dream that recalled a moment from when they started dating. Back then, she was doing her Ph.D. at the university where he taught, and once in a while, she would go to his lectures. In her dream, the man, in his mid-30s, is waving his arms, pontificating in front of a class of sophomores, ‘The purpose, the true purpose of literature, of reading novels when you are young, is this: so that they can provide certain images of the world, of life, that will come back and haunt you, if you are so lucky to grow old’. As I imagine them, the elderly couple still live in a university town in the Northeastern United States, and her dream harks back to the late 1970s. The where and when of that scene are very different from what I am talking about here. Here, I am concerned with a local address in Singapore. But perhaps the whys and hows are not unrelated. If not the ‘true purpose’, then is it not at least one of art’s many functions to suggest images, visual or conceptual, that will trouble and delight us for years to come? Yet maybe the more pertinent comparison is this: with the storyteller or the poet, they address the world as something daunting – it is difficult to live in and make sense of; it is too big, too complicated, and too messy. I do not believe good novelists ever presume to fully apprehend the worlds they create; their reach always exceeds their grasp and their perspectives are admittedly partial and personal. It is in this context that they struggle to find something to say. Is it not the same with artists? And what about for those who write about art?8 prominently in the Raffles Museum until 1970, when the zoological collections were removed and the skeleton given to Malaysia. For a number of Singaporeans, this sight remains an enduring memory of the ‘original’ museum, and of their first encounter with zoology and natural history. 8 My discussion of the ‘true purpose’ of art and art writing derives from my essay, ‘Metonym and Metaphor, Islands and Continents: Reflections on Curating Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia’ (Lee 2017).

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As an art critic, I am first of all a being in the world. To be in the world is also to travel it, sometimes widely, and, typically, to compare one place with another. But wherever we are or roam, often we find ourselves periodically crushed with disappointment, whether on an intimate and private register or on a larger and collective scale – from romantic heartbreak to family tragedy, from wars to impending ecological catastrophe. We each have our own tool boxes with which we try to deal with all these, and I suppose the reason I am an art critic is that I happen to like writing essays on art, but, really, it is my own way of trying to speak to a world at large that is too large. Why write about art? Well, one of the things that the best art does rather well is remind us of profound otherness, of radically different scales of reference. No matter how small or personal, art is never just a private enterprise; at its core, it is a public endeavour. And art’s publics are constituted by sincere acts of individuals reaching out to an other. The late David Foster Wallace once opened a university commencement address with this joke (1843 Magazine 2008): Two young fish are swimming along. They meet an older fish swimming in the other direction, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning, boys, how’s the water?’ The young fish nod in return, swim on for a bit, then eventually one of them looks to the other and asks, ‘What the hell is water?’9

Like fish in water, we can sometimes take place for granted. Let me end with how I began, on the word, ‘meanwhile’. What I like about the word is how it puts us in the middle of time and place… as if we were caught unawares.

Works Cited 1843 Magazine. 2008. ‘David Foster Wallace, in His Own Words: David Foster Wallace’s 2005 Commencement Address at Kenyon College’. Available at http:// moreintelligentlife.com/story/david-foster-wallace-in-his-own-words [accessed 6 Dec. 2016]. Lee Weng Choy. 2005. ‘The Public Remainder: Singapore Goes to Venice, and the Biennale Comes to Singapore’. Broadsheet, Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia 34, 2: 87-89. 9 Based on David Foster Wallace’s Kenyon College commencement address in 2005. There are a number of versions of the transcript. See for instance, http://moreintelligentlife.com/story/ david-foster-wallace-in-his-own-words [accessed 6 December 2016].

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—. 2014. ‘The Address of Art, and the Natural Origins of Metaphor’. Paper presented at Nature as Practice, National University of Singapore Museum, Singapore, 3 Aug. —. 2015. ‘Regarding the Reader’. Broadsheet, Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia 44, 1: 27-31. —. 2017. ‘Metonym and Metaphor, Islands and Continents: Reflections on Curating Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia’. In Essays on Art in Southeast Asia: Charting Thoughts, ed. Low Sze Wee and Patrick Flores. Singapore: National Gallery Singapore, 336-348. Williams, Raymond. 1977. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Yusof, Helmi. 2016. ‘Artists without Borders’. The Business Times, 12 Feb. Available at http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/lifestyle/arts-entertainment/artists-withoutborders [accessed 6 Dec. 2016].

About the Author Weng Choy Lee is an independent art critic and consultant based in Kuala Lumpur. He is also the president of the Singapore Section of the International Association of Art Critics. Previously, Lee was Artistic Co-Director of The Substation in Singapore, and has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the Sotheby’s Institute of Art – Singapore.

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Forming Cityscapes Small Interventions and Appropriations in the City Gideon Kong and Jamie Yeo Abstract This chapter presents a photographic documentation project with a particular interest in everyday city life in Singapore. As a theoretical reflection on the project, we examine the interrelationships between the project and related ideas across urban studies, photography and design, while positioning it as a form of ‘artistic research’. Selected photographic findings from Forming Cityscapes are presented alongside a critical discussion on creative forms of appropriation that indirectly critique ‘top-down’ design implementations and suggest other micro-possibilities through actual use. With this, an imaginative representation of Singapore’s cityscape is represented through (1) our creative practice, and (2) photographic findings of creative practices found in the city. Keywords: artistic research, photography, Singapore cityscape, everyday life, creative appropriation

Introduction The following is a description of Forming Cityscapes: This project started as an attempt to make sense of all our snapshots of the Singapore city taken on a daily basis, which progressively became an archive of everyday observations. Some are made through careful observation, but most are just casual and intuitive documentation on things of interest. Through a process of organization, groups of images are presented in an ongoing series of small books, each displaying ideas of a selected theme. The result is a visual documentation of objects and spaces in the urban environment and our relationships with them. (Kong and Yeo 2014: 5)

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This chapter is an exegesis of Forming Cityscapes, a photographic documentation project derived from our artistic and design practice that observes everyday life in the urban environment. The physical outcomes of this project are an ongoing series of photographic booklets (six at the time of writing), each containing selected images from a pool of photographs we have been collecting since 2014. Although many of these photographs capture the minuscule and seemingly mundane, they reveal a potentially overlooked aspect of the city that could be described as creative interventions and appropriations by its everyday inhabitants. This brief study reflects on both the project and its outcomes, in particular, the (1) methods and processes (of gathering, organizing and presenting photographs) adopted throughout the project, and (2) themes surrounding Singapore’s urban environment that have been revealed through the photographic outcomes. In doing so, it examines the project’s growing relationship to areas of visual research, the city, photography, and how these interrelationships might, in practice, alter or affect our understanding of the city. More specifically, and parallel to how the photographed findings might contrast designed city structures or implementations, we consider how the ambiguous processes and arguably artistic nature of Forming Cityscapes is key to the project’s relevance within existing studies and projects about the city in contrast to other forms of visual research found in visual methods discourse. Overall, this chapter portrays an imaginative representation1 of Singapore in two ways: through reflecting on our creative practice, i.e., this project, and through studying its photographic findings of the city. This twofold portrayal posits a self-critical approach, which examines the project’s epistemological nature and characteristics in addition to thinking about and discussing the contents of the project. There are however some limitations to this ‘textual component’2 of the project. It cannot and does not attempt to justify the intuitive (and often arbitrary) decisions made. The photographs and selection therefore also have their shortcomings as materials for general research. It is also important to note that the study does not aim to do what the photographs themselves might do – to communicate imaginative representations of urban Singapore to a broader audience (as art would) – nor does it aim to equip 1 This refers to the representational (or lived) space described Henri Lefebvre (1991), which is denoted as the space experienced by people in the practice of their everyday life. 2 See Boomgaard (2011) for a description of the limitations of the textual component of an artistic project.

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the photographs with the ability to achieve more than what they can on their own.3 Instead, by positioning Forming Cityscapes as a form of research that happens in and through practice, this written account demonstrates how the exegesis of the project – part theoretical and part reflective – can contribute to an articulated understanding, rather than explanation, of it in connection with its observations of the city. As an introductory and general exploration of the work, this chapter is also limited to a broad and brief survey of interconnected ideas that call for more in-depth investigations elsewhere. Even so, one possible signif icance is its attempt to uncover epistemological insights between creative practice and research in the context of the Singapore city. Structurally, the chapter is divided into three sections: (1) background and brief theoretical context, (2) processes and the photographic medium, and (3) outcomes and the Singapore city. The first is an extended description of the project’s background that highlights specific connections between the project and broad ideas about the city, along with the motivation behind the work. The second section elaborates on how the photographic medium is used in the project and how it could be considered as a form of ‘artistic research’ (Sullivan 2005; Wesseling 2016) – a provisional positioning we adopt in distinguishing it from other types of visual research. The third and main section critically discusses the photographic f indings of the project alongside ideas introduced in the first two sections – one loosely tied to the city and the other to photography. We then offer an additional perspective for reading the entire set of images presented throughout this chapter as an attempt to involve the reader in understanding the ideas through direct participation, before concluding with some overall reflections.

Background and Brief Theoretical Context With almost every city dweller now equipped with a mobile phone camera, one of the most common ways we experience (or appear to participate in) a city is through photography (Sontag [1977] 2008). This has only become more apparent with the proliferation of photo-sharing activities on social media platforms. Unsurprisingly, this behaviour is also one of the ways we 3 The two parts that constitute this project – text and practice – exist as different forms of experience and, to borrow Jeroen Boomgaard’s words, ‘irreconcilable outcomes of the [entire] research’ (2011: 69).

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inhabit and ‘consume’ a city, one ‘avid for spectacles and the picturesque’ (Lefebvre 1996: 148) and can thus represent the city users’ lived experiences, or ‘social space’ – the city experienced by people in everyday life (Schmid 2008: 40). Forming Cityscapes is a result of this everyday photographic documentation and relates to ideas and theories on everyday life expressed by Henri Lefebvre ([1991] 2014) and Michel de Certeau (1984). These photographs reveal the actual use and appropriation of urban objects and spaces by ordinary ‘practitioners’, considering their perspectives in the city beyond those of the administrators of urban space. Certeau describes this appropriation of spaces as ‘tactics’ of creative resistance that can be employed by individuals, or consumers, against the ‘strategies’ implemented by structures of power, the State and commercial enterprises. Although the city is primarily governed, communicated and represented by and through larger organizational bodies, it can never avoid being disrupted – and therefore also represented – by smaller, oftentimes overlooked and mundane, interventions by its inhabitants. As a result, the photographs from Forming Cityscapes represent the city not only from our point of view as observers, but also as a place directly lived through associated images and symbols from the city’s inhabitants and users, including us, through the photographic medium. Inhabitants of the city are entitled – and need – to take part in creative activities beyond the realm of ‘commodified space’ (Parker 2004: 20). As photographers, we can be understood as inhabitants engaged in this manner, but are also simultaneously involved in looking at and documenting other ordinary practitioners and their interactions with the city. Here, ‘everyday practices’ or ‘tactics’ refer to both the process and the subject of this project. We are interested in documenting and communicating everyday phenomena that may act as a critique on the urban structures implemented by the state by bringing together the otherwise fragmented ‘practices’ of consumers that ‘do not cohere with the constructed, written and prefabricated space through which they move’ (Certeau 1984: 34). These observations also challenge popular ideas and infamous claims that Singapore is an ‘inauthentic’ city. With this emphasis on the interventions of everyday practitioners, we argue that ‘authenticity’ cannot be measured only by the state’s urban design implementations, but also by the common activities of inhabitants, since ‘social space’ is informed by lived experiences and power structures cannot entirely define the raison d’être of the city. According to Lefebvre (quoted in Schmid 2008: 40), the lived experience of a city or space cannot be ‘exhausted through theoretical analysis’: there will always be a vital gap that can only be addressed through

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artistic means. 4 This idea perhaps works to strengthen and validate the positioning of creative practice in parallel with other established forms of research for understanding the city.5 In this sense, Forming Cityscapes, as a project that is primarily practice-driven and motivated by subjective interests, occupies a paradigm outside or independent of the traditions of ‘research’, even those of disciplines such as the social sciences that are familiar with photography and other visual approaches. Although it may be contentious – especially within academia – to assert that such a project can potentially contribute to research, we hope this brief theoretical background is able to situate the project within the wider field of research or practice surrounding the city and provide an appropriate context for shared reflection and discussion.

Processes and the Photographic Medium Photography has often been accepted and discussed as a tool of research in the study of human behaviour and culture (Collier and Collier 1986), and more recently in visual methods discourse (Pink, Kürti, and Afonso 2004; Margolis and Pauwels 2011), under a myriad of terms such as visual methodology, visual ethnography, visual anthropology, visual sociology (see Pink 2001, 2004; Rose 2001; Banks 2001; Harper 2012; Heng 2017) and in design research discourse.6 This section addresses how the way photography is used in this project may be distinguished from the above examples through an introspective examination and analysis of the project’s processes, in comparison to how photography is commonly understood and employed in visual methods or research.7 Although this project is not a form of sociological or anthropological visual research (from where visual methods originate), knowing its relationship to them is useful for understanding the project’s contextual relevance given its overlapping 4 An example of this is Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space ([1958] 2014), which taps into the domain of poetic imagination to carry out a phenomenological investigation of lived space within the home. 5 This is especially relevant to recent efforts to legitimize research in artistic practice within an academic framework (Wesseling 2011). 6 For example, this is seen in the book Design by Use (Brandes, Stich and Wender 2009), where photography is employed mainly as a tool for documenting investigations in ‘non-intentional’ design, as well as a chapter on visual methods in the design process by Prasad Boradkar (2011). 7 Although this is a retrospective account describing our thoughts, intentions and approach, they have been present since the beginning of this project.

126 Gideon Kong and Jamie Yeo Figure 5.1 Selected page spreads from Forming Cityscapes

interests and methodologies. Given that developments in visual methods or research also contain diverse epistemological positionings and at times contradicting views and approaches (Margolis and Pauwels 2011), this may be an appropriate opportunity to reconsider a broader form of ‘visual research’ that is driven by, rather than supplemented with, photography. In most cases, methods of photography in visual methods or visual research involve incorporating the photographic (or visual) process or material as part of the research; it is usually employed in a supplementary way – even if it is key to the study’s outcomes or findings8 – and is primar8 For example, in specific methods like photo-elicitation, photography is used to facilitate collective inquiry and therefore plays a larger and more serendipitous role in leading investigations (Margolis and Pauwels 2011; Pink 2004). There are also cases when there is an emphasis on reflexivity in visual methods, where the subjective elements of the researcher and the research

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ily intended to be read and understood alongside textual explanations, descriptions or narratives of various lengths (Pink 2001, 2004; see also Banks 2001). This is also the case for photo essays (Banks 2001; see also Heng 2017), which is the format that comes closest to Forming Cityscapes.9 Also, photographic materials used in visual research may or may not be generated by the researcher.10 Instead of responding to a preformulated inquiry or proposed study of phenomena by way of photographic representation or interpretation, Forming Cityscapes approaches photography itself as a way of formulating an inquiry into observable phenomena.11 The key distinguishing factor is that visual methods and visual research – as they are mostly defined within the social sciences – use photography in research, rather than practise photography as research. The latter requires acknowledging the artistic nature of the image-based medium. For this, we propose to provisionally situate Forming Cityscapes as ‘artistic research’ – an eponymous, emergent field that describes a form of research that happens ‘in and through’ artistic practice and is distinct from traditional definitions of (scientific) research (Wesseling 2011, 2016; see also Sullivan 2005; Klein 2012; Borgdorff 2012; Elkin [2009] 2014; Butt 2017). It is provisional in the way this section is largely inconclusive: it does not argue or justify the projects’ artistic value, nor provide an in-depth explanation of how it is artistic research.12 To some extent, this is a hypothetical stance that emphasizes its role in the early stage of the search for alternative trajectories in ‘research’, as opposed to neatly fitted frameworks – given the incompatibility between ‘artistic research’ and ‘visual methods’ (see below). The following paragraphs in this section draw a broad and immediate connection between artistic research and the photographic process as used within Forming Cityscapes, process largely influence and frame the research and the resulting knowledge (Harper 2012; Pink 2001; Margolis and Pauwels 2011). 9 Banks (2001) describes the photo essay as an unconventional format some social researchers experiment with to communicate an argument or analysis primarily through images, supplemented with shorter texts that are introductory or descriptive. 10 For example, Gillan Rose’s Visual Methodologies (2001) focuses on the use and reading of images in research and not necessarily on how to create them as part of research, which Heng (2017) does. 11 In the case of visual ethnography, the use of photography is informed by anthropological theory and embedded in anthropological research questions (Pink 2004). 12 In brief, Forming Cityscapes can be described as a form of artistic research in that: (1) its objective is to affect human understanding through and for cultural production, rather than for commercial or practical applications; (2) its process is reflexive and open-ended; and (3) the outcomes are emphatically incomplete and not solution-focused.

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sufficient to reveal the intertwinement between the project’s process and outcomes; in other words, its implications for understanding the city. The photographer chooses the events he photographs. This choice can be thought of as a cultural construction. The space for this construction is, as it were, cleared by his rejection of what he did not choose to photograph. The construction of his reading of the event which is in front of his eyes. It is this reading, often intuitive and very fast, which decides his choice of the instant to be photographed. (Berger 2013: 66)

This description from John Berger describes the nature of photography in two ways. First, the bias introduced by a photographer’s choice contributes to a subjective construction in which the isolation of subjects is vital. Secondly, because the reading of the situation happens intuitively and quickly, we argue that the process of that construction is not entirely or consistently deliberate or conscious, and hence, is reflexive and open-ended. Here, we see a continuous process of oscillating between ‘seeing’ and ‘documenting’ when engaged in photographing a particular phenomenon or subject. However, in many instances tied to visual research, the process of documentation comes only after deciding on a specific subject or area of study: ‘seeing’ happens mostly before ‘documentation’, as it sets the direction for the photographerresearcher to begin the work. Here, seeing and documenting are understood as two separate procedures in an interdependent relationship. Forming Cityscapes, on the other hand, takes a reflexive and open-ended approach: photographing occurs spontaneously in our everyday encounters with the city without any clear research agenda other than the broad aim to construct a shared Singapore ‘cityscape’.13 This act of documentation becomes a way of making sense of (or ‘seeing’) the city.14 Reflexivity in this case differs from the notion of ‘reflexivity’ used in visual methods, which better describes a back-and-forth relationship. Reflexivity here is a serendipitous, intuitive and simultaneous process of making sense through making or doing. This nature is inherent in artistic research, where neither action (in this case, ‘documentation’) nor thought (in this case, ‘seeing’) can exist without the other; thinking or ‘seeing’ happens when we actively create or ‘document’. 13 The title ‘Forming Cityscapes’ hints at the incomplete nature of this project, denoting both the ongoing additions to the pool of photographs and the possibilities of its ‘research’ being applied or used in/for other artistic forms of production. 14 This also applies to other projects that involve photographic documentation, depending on their degree of reflexivity and the extent to which ‘documenting’ is used as a way of ‘seeing’.

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To elaborate further, when ‘documenting’ or making becomes an equally significant part of the process, photographic research is no longer a linear or multilinear course of action but instead a continuous and extemporaneous act. This approach provides a valuable quality to the research that is otherwise absent in non-visual or non-photographic approaches: the ability of images to be open-ended, to become ‘epistemic things’ that may allow the production of what we do not yet know or what could be collectively discovered through their indeterminacy and openness.15 The basis of this value also lies in this statement: ‘oftentimes what is known can limit the possibility of what is not and this requires a creative act to see things from a new view’ (Sullivan 2011: 82). This explains why and how ‘documentation’ precedes ‘seeing’ in Forming Cityscapes, as well as its difference, in terms of approach, from photographic methods that are common in the related forms of visual research listed above. The creative act of intuitively taking photographs as an almost daily ritual opens up new perspectives or triggers unexpected discoveries that are otherwise obscured in less open-ended photographic processes.

Outcomes This third and main section presents and discusses photographic examples from the project alongside the ideas introduced earlier. It develops these ideas in two subsections. The first subsection examines the photographs individually in relation to Lefebvre’s and Certeau’s ideas about the city and the implications of these ideas for reading them. The second subsection considers and examines clusters or aggregates of photographs in relation to ideas about artistic research and the photographic process and the implications of these ideas for understanding them. Any interpretations or accompanying descriptions of the photographs are quick provisional readings meant to facilitate discussions that are specific to this chapter, and are not the only way to read them. Primary Outcomes: Photographic Documentation The photographs in Forming Cityscapes are mostly, if not always, documented during our day-to-day walks and travels in the city as its 15 Henk Borgdorff (2012) argues that in artistic research, artworks and artistic processes are ‘epistemic things’ that embody knowledge that is not yet known. This quality of openness relates to how art is generally seen to produce ‘knowledge’ in artistic research – knowledge that is visual, tacit, affective, propositional, practical or phenomenal (Elkin [2009] 2014).

130 Gideon Kong and Jamie Yeo Figure 5.2 All the subjects serve a communicative function

All the subjects in these images serve a communicative function, but their original messages were all met with a layer of interference from city inhabitants; improvised notices that communicate something else entirely were pasted over them.

inhabitants. As mentioned earlier, they are incidental in the way they are documented and in the subjects they document. These subjects are mainly the result of repeated encounters in the city space with (1) everyday things, e.g., street posts of various kinds, trash bins and litter; (2) people interacting with their surroundings, e.g., sitting, squatting and leaning; and (3) forms of communication, e.g., street signs, advertisements and notices. The locations where these observations are captured are also often easily accessible areas and are frequently used for activities: playgrounds, open areas within built structures, common areas, streets and pathways, and public interior spaces. Contained within these photographic documentations are responses, or ‘tactics’, in Certeau’s words (1984). The simple act of pasting notices (Figure 5.2 and Figure 5.3) that promote the inhabitants’ agendas over other existing notices – often larger and more important – is an example of such ‘creative’ interventions. They act as a layer of interference against the more formal forms of communication established between the state and inhabitants through public signs or notices (Figure 5.2, ‘A’ to ‘C’), tapping into their pre-existing effectiveness as already familiar meeting points when moving within city spaces. To avoid the possible consequences that come with leaving a non-permitted mark on public property, some others chose to paste notices onto temporary structures and objects instead of permanent ones (Figure 5.2 ‘C’ and Figure 5.3). Together, these acts become secondary uses or operations that interweave themselves into the ‘first level of use’ (Certeau 1984: 30) – as secondary communicative devices that tap into existing (primary) forms of communication, or creative acts that

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Figure 5.3 Improvised notices pasted on temporary objects

Instead of permanent urban structures, improvised notices are pasted on temporary objects that remain within sight of everyday passers-by. These objects may or may not belong to those who pasted these notices.

manipulate established mechanisms by introducing a way to turn things to their advantage while still obeying pre-existing rules. These ‘tactics’ also reveal actual interactions between people and the city environment. The documentation of these practical activities investigates the actual use of things by city dwellers themselves and compares the inhabitants’ needs with the ‘goods’ provided by the city (see Lefebvre [1991] 2014). Figure 5.4 depicts an absurd but uncommon example of an occasion where the design of an information sign does not consider its actual use: not only is the directional post placed too far from the pathway, but it is also small and separated by an additional fence. One typical example of how people’s needs affect the urban environment is the ‘desire path’ – trails that are formed spontaneously, mainly as shortcuts on an unpaved route, and made permanent over time. Such observations can be hardly surprising for Singapore, a country that boasts friendly urban and built environments with accessible routes laid out in an interconnected system of pathways. The photographic documentations in Figure 5.5 are the very few examples of alternative pathways designed by use, likely found in less ‘developed’ areas within the country. Figure 5.5 ‘A’, in particular, shows a desire path likely formed by bicycle users who needed an easier alternative to moving up and down a slope. Although minor, these simple observations do matter and play a part in transforming the city – in this case, through the fabrication of alternative routes, networks or wider pathways. There are also examples of images that reveal other forms of behaviour beyond functional or practical needs. This facilitates a study of how

132 Gideon Kong and Jamie Yeo Figure 5.4 A directional map; and the map in use

Figure 5.5 Desire paths that have resulted from various practical needs

everyday objects and spaces are experienced, which could reveal a deeper understanding of the consumption or use of the city. Figure 5.6 depict several acts of leaving marks on city signs and objects, actions that may be considered a form of ‘creative ownership’ of city spaces. Whatever the reason may be, these interferences neither destroy nor mutilate public property and hence cannot really be considered acts of vandalism. If we look closer, these stickers do not interfere with the original messages and are mostly pasted around and not over them, especially in Figure 5.6 ‘C’ and ‘E’. The French philosopher Gaston Bachelard’s ([1958] 2014) belief that things born in relation to (or cherished by) people attain a greater level of reality than ‘indifferent’ objects that are (only) defined by physical reality

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Figure 5.6 Stickers as visual interferences to urban objects and signs

is useful for describing this elusive ‘secondary’ layer of needs – a desire for the inhabited city to attain ‘authenticity’ and genuineness through direct experience and participation. As Lefebvre ([1991] 2014) has argued, we see that these small observations of everyday city life are sometimes where insights and ideas reside. Many of these observations are also psychologically complex (see Bachelard [1958] 2014). As authors interested in the large amount of trivial sights we commonly miss or ignore amid distinct, superior, specialized and highly structured activities, Forming Cityscapes emphasizes that a psychology of the imagination – which is intrinsic to the artistic process – must take note of everything. Secondary Outcomes: Thematic Photographic Clusters This subsection focuses on the outcomes as photographic aggregates within the cumulative pool of photographs. Instead of viewing individual photographs as images independent of one another, as in the previous subsection, we now consider an amalgamation of related photographs as a ‘singular’ image that denotes a mental and imaginary entity. W.J.T. Mitchell describes these entities as the ‘visual content of dreams, memories

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and perception’ (2005: 2). This shift allows the discussion to return to the nature of the photographic medium and how that affects the secondary processes in this project – the arranging and rearranging, as well as the reading and re-reading of photographs in booklet form. Through this, we deliberate on our interference and intentions as creative individuals working with the collected photographic content and translating them into secondary outcomes, which are a series of booklets put together thematically. As mentioned earlier, Berger (2013) describes the nature of photographs as ambiguous. This applies even more to the photographs in Forming Cityscapes, which do not include any geographical or chronological information. Because of this ambiguity, the photographs can be used and interpreted subjectively beyond what they depict.16 Although this may seem undesirable, we consider it an important characteristic of the secondary outcome for this project and, through it, ask: How can photographic ambiguity bring about another way of telling or reading? The arbitrariness of the image comes through the things or events that are not depicted in the photograph (refer to Figure 5.8). A likely response when seeing the image of an ‘uncertain’ wooden board placed over a curb (Figure 5.7) will be to conjure up possible scenarios, or mental images,17 that precede or proceed from that photographic moment towards a logical flow of events and reasoning that support its photographic existence. In this case, whether it was left there as litter, deliberately or accidentally, or served a practical purpose, are valid questions that this single photograph can never answer. There are multiple interpretive possibilities in each photograph. The fact that there can be more than one way of reading a photograph means that the multiplicity of its readings can be directed through or constructed by placing it alongside a larger set of photographs; placing the same image alongside a different set of photographs can influence the interpretation (refer to Figure 5.9 ‘A’ and Figure 5.10 ‘A’). This happens when photographs from the project are put together and published as booklets, through a process of organizing and reorganizing in a back-andforth manner. There are no strict rules behind their categorization and each photograph ‘lends itself’ to various interpretations depending on the 16 Shore ([1998] 2007) describes the nature of a photograph as consisting of three levels: the physical, depictive and mental levels. Accordingly, they generally refer to the physical print or medium of the photograph, the subject it depicts, and the potential ideas or narratives it suggests or brings to mind. The third level is what this text refers to. 17 This is defined as the mentally constructed image that ‘elaborates, refines, and embellishes our perceptions’ of any depictive picture (Ibid.: 97).

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Figure 5.7 A thin wooden board placed over slightly elevated ground

Its slightly curved and warped surface reveals the possibility that it was used as a dry surface for sitting on the previously wet ground.

chosen context – or, in this project, its booklet. These units of thematically organized images achieve a more optimal degree of openness than a single, individual image can; meaning can be constructed in an open-ended manner without being entirely arbitrary. They become what we earlier described as ‘epistemic things’ in artistic research and allow understanding to develop. Rather than being dependent on how we arrange, organize, or present the photographs, a crucial part of this subjective reading comes from the viewer. This relates to Mitchell’s (2005) idea that images are ‘quasi life-forms’ that demand, desire or need something from its viewers. This is not to be confused with what its creators (we) want; the reading of the photographs cannot be fully determined by its authors despite their interferences, and what the viewer might see or interpret falls beyond the intentions of the photographer. We now focus on the latter part of this double mediation and reflect on how the viewer’s role in Forming Cityscapes affects this project’s imaginative projections of the city. When photographs exist in ‘clusters’ and are read as such, they become fragments – traces of moments – taken out of continuity from their original narratives and repositioned as something else, of an entirely different time and place. As a selection of photographic fragments, Figure 5.8 shows that what are consistently absent – the events that resulted in this series of uncommon scenarios – is where the photographic ambiguity now sits. This differs from reading only a single image, as the photographic ambiguity

136 Gideon Kong and Jamie Yeo Figure 5.8 Instances where the absence of people or actors in a photograph strengthens their imagined presence

present in a series of pictures form a kind of ‘imaginary space’ that allows for ‘themes’ or meanings to surface and develop, informed by the selection and dependent on the viewer. The reading of this particular set of photographs triggers mental images that are associatively linked, which in this case might be the various human activities and their intentions behind each act. To further illustrate this, in Figure 5.9 and Figure 5.10, similar subjects are present in both sets of photographs, yet when viewed separately, the ‘imaginary space’ or mental image of the two sets differs quite significantly. The selection in Figure 5.10 appears to trigger broader recollections, as there is a larger ‘mental gap’ between the range of pictures, and this affords a

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Figure 5.9 Selection of photographs with similar photographic ‘subjects’

broader mental or abstract space for envisaging missing events or possibilities that bring together as well as broaden the imaginary entity. These two different set of images allow different ways of reading the same photograph (see Figure 5.9 ‘A’ and Figure 5.10 ‘A’). From these examples, we see how groups of images viewed alongside each other demand the viewer to mentally construct images to complete the work (Mitchell 2005) and put them back into some kind of imagined ‘continuity’, in which the faculty of memory plays a key role. Memory is an element of reconstruction, of ‘fill[ing] in the gaps’ between things (facts) by reconstructing experienced events and occurrences. In the case of Forming Cityscapes, the viewers’ memories, which exist in parts because they are never exact reconstructions of history (Foster 2009), interweave themselves with the photographic fragments and in turn create personal ‘imaginative projections’ of the city. In this sense, Forming Cityscapes works with a reader’s memory to realize an understanding of the city that is not analytical or objective, but one built on the knowledge of intimacy and experience through oneiric recollections (see Bachelard [1958] 2014) that are arguably only possible through artistic means.

138 Gideon Kong and Jamie Yeo Figure 5.10 Selection of photographs with similar photographic ‘themes’

Appropriation as Active Participation in the City 18 This section extends the previous three sections into another iteration of the project by inviting the reader to view the entire set of photographs shown thus far (Figure 5.2 to Figure 5.10), along with some additional photographs (Figure 5.11), as a whole and independent of the earlier texts. This section title and brief description provides another way to read the aggregate of images, which now – when viewed in a different context – also works to support and ‘illustrate’ the earlier discussions in this study on its own (visual) terms. This time, the reading and re-reading of the pictures occur through the viewer’s interpretation and, as a result, demonstrate and reflect on the double mediation present in this project. The active participation of a city’s inhabitant refers to his or her everyday acts in ‘redesigning’ or repurposing objects and structures in the city space (Brandes, Stich and Wender 2009). This idea forms a possible ‘lens’ with 18 This heading is a recurring theme that underpins the entire project beyond the selection of photographs in this chapter.

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which to read these photographs and see how the everyday ‘practitioner’, in Certeau’s (1984) terms, plays a crucial role in the ‘design’ of a city. This focus on the effects on designed objects or structures through use is also a specific area of interest in the field of design research – sometimes referred to as ‘non-intentional design’. As a result, this re-reading also explores the project’s connection to or applicability in another relevant field. More specifically, the group of images, especially those in Figure 5.11, can be further understood as the appropriation of objects, structures or spaces in the city for the purposes of communication, needs and habits, or collective activities. They exemplify the creative adaptations of the inhabitants in determining alternative or secondary uses since the possibility of appropriating objects for one’s use is not purely reliant on the object’s designed form (Norman [1988] 2013). This also applies to the appropriation of spaces, as almost everything in the public space is regulated and prescribed, from artificially built nature parks to designated play areas (Brandes, Stich and Wender 2009), especially in Singapore. These forms of appropriation endow objects and spaces in the city with personal meaning through simple improvisation while also fulfilling various incidental desires or needs in the city.

A Reflective Summary The city that might have been ‘lost’ through rapid advancements and developments by power structures can be recreated and understood through personal imaginative recollections and memory, with the help of the photographic fragments we keep. This calls for a critical examination of the photographic ‘memories’ that we select and capture so conveniently on an everyday basis. Forming Cityscapes responds to this by bringing our own photographic ‘memories’ of the city into question and exploring their potential to relate to a broader community. This chapter demonstrates the ongoing nature of this project, describing an incomplete path that viewers or readers have to pursue further for themselves. The open-ended outcomes do not cater to any specific interests but instead seek connection with the imagination of a broader community – both the everyday and the creative practitioner – by bringing together multiple ways of understanding the project and its images of the city. This creates a personal yet collective authenticity that cannot be determined by the certainty of fixed knowledge forms such as history and geography – just like how the real city is not the one represented in maps.

140 Gideon Kong and Jamie Yeo Figure 5.11 Loose selection of additional images

This chapter also contributes a provisional example of artistic research specific to its use of photography for documenting the city. As its subjects are minor and incidental, there is perhaps really no need to present them as photographic ‘evidence’, therefore, nullifying the need for a conventional approach or scientific method while still establishing its insights or findings as a form of knowledge (Boomgaard 2011). Forming Cityscapes’ approach to documenting and communicating everyday observations in the city is, perhaps, largely appropriate and sensitive towards the subjective nature

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contained within personal everyday experiences. After all, the aim of communicating an ‘authentic’ cityscape of Singapore is arguably an artistic endeavour in itself. Finally, this chapter has examined the interrelationships between otherwise isolated themes and areas of study and demonstrated how they come together in practice to explore an alternative Singapore cityscape through both its subject matter and process/medium.19 We now draw a concluding comparison between this project and the subjects of its documentation. Just as the minor creative interventions of city inhabitants – insignificant compared to the towering city structures – have their place in developing an understanding of the city, this work – its methods perhaps appropriative of or insignificant in comparison to other established research methods – also contributes to the same understanding on its own terms, as a form of creative practice and research. In other words, the attempt to deviate from traditional notions of research and practice is in itself a critical response towards how we commonly see and understand our city, where we sometimes fail to notice these distinctive and charming agglomerates of creative practices.

Works Cited Bachelard, Gaston. [1958] 2014. The Poetics of Space. New York: Penguin Books.

Banks, Marcus. 2001. Visual Methods in Social Research. London: SAGE Publications. Berger, John. 2013. Understanding a Photograph. London: Penguin Classics. Boomgaard, Jeroen. 2011. ‘The Chimera of Method’. In See It Again, Say It Again: The Artist as Researcher, ed. Janneke Wesseling. Amsterdam: Valiz, 57-71. Boradkar, Prasad. 2011. ‘Visual Research Methods in the Design Process’. In The Sage Handbook of Visual Research Methods, ed. Eric Margolis and Luc Pauwels. London: SAGE Publications, 150-168. Borgdorff, Henk. 2012. The Conflict of the Faculties: Perspectives on Artistic Research and Academia. Netherlands: Leiden University Press. Brandes, Uta, Sonja Stich and Miriam Wender. 2009. Design by Use: The Everyday Metamorphosis of Things. Basel: Birkhäuser. Butt, Danny. 2017. Artistic Research in the Future Academy. Bristol: Intellect Books. Certeau, Michel de. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. 19 Jeroen Boomgaard’s view that ‘artistic research is primarily characterized by its specific angle of approach and not by the presence of a field framed specifically by discipline within which the research is conducted’ conveys this same sentiment (2011: 63).

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Collier, John and Malcolm Collier. 1986. Visual Anthropology: Photography as a Research Method. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Elkin, James. [2009] 2014. Artists with PhDs: On the New Doctoral Degree in Studio Art, second edition. Washington, DC: New Academia Publishing. Foster, Jonathan. 2009. Memory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harper, Douglas. 2012. Visual Sociology. London: Routledge. Heng, Terence. 2017. Visual Methods in the Field: Photography for the Social Sciences. London: Routledge. Klein, Julian. 2012. ‘What is Artistic Research?’ Research Catalogue. Available at https://doi.org/10.22501/rc.15292 [accessed 31 May 2019]. Kong, Gideon and Jamie Yeo. 2014. Communications 01: Forming Cityscapes (Apr.). Singapore. (self-published). Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The Production of Space. Translated by Donald NicholsonSmith. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. —. 1996. Writings on Cities. Translated by Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. —. [1991] 2014. Critique of Everyday Life. London: Verso. Margolis, Eric and Luc Pauwels. 2011. The Sage Handbook of Visual Research Methods. London: SAGE Publications. Mitchell, W.J.T. 2005. What Do Pictures Want?: The Lives and Loves of Images. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Norman, Don. [1988] 2013. The Design of Everyday Things. Rev. and expanded ed. New York: Basic Books. Parker, Simon. 2004. Urban Theory and the Urban Experience: Encountering the City. London: Routledge. Pink, Sarah. 2001. Doing Visual Ethnography: Images, Media and Representation in Research. London: SAGE Publications —. 2004. ‘Introduction: Situating Visual Research’. In Working Images: Visual Research and Representation in Ethnography, ed. Sarah Pink, László Kürti and Ana Isabel Afonso. London: Routledge, 1-10. Pink, Sarah, László Kürti and Ana Isabel Afonso, Eds. 2004. Working Images: Visual Research and Representation in Ethnography. London: Routledge. Rose, Gillian. 2001. Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials. London: SAGE Publications. Schmid, Christian. 2008. ‘Henri Lefebvre’s Theory of the Production of Space: Towards a Three-Dimensional Dialectic’. In Space, Difference, Everyday Life: Reading Henri Lefebvre, ed. Stefan Kipfer, et al. Translated by Bandulasena Goonewardena. London: Routledge, 27-45. Shore, Steven. [1998] 2007. The Nature of Photographs. London: Phaidon Press.

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Sontag, Susan. [1977] 2008. On Photography. London: Penguin Books. Sullivan, Graeme. 2005. Art Practice as Research: Inquiry in Visual Arts. London: SAGE Publications. —. 2011. ‘The Artist as Researcher: New Roles for New Realities’. In See It Again, Say It Again: The Artist as Researcher, ed. Janneke Wesseling. Amsterdam: Valiz, 79-101. Wesseling, Janneke. 2011. ‘Introduction’. In See It Again, Say It Again: The Artist as Researcher. Amsterdam: Valiz, 1-15. —. 2016. Of Sponge, Stone and the Intertwinement with the Here and Now: A Methodology of Artistic Research. Amsterdam: Valiz.

About the Authors Gideon Kong and Jamie Yeo make up gideon-jamie, a Singapore-based studio involved in design, research and learning as interdependent modes of engagement. Situated at the margins of design practice, the studio searches for critical responses to issues in design, culture and education by utilizing alternative modes of production, communication and distribution.

6

The Sinophone as Lyrical Aesthetics Redefined The Case of Contemporary Singapore Chinese Language Poetics Chow Teck Seng

Abstract This chapter attempts to demonstrate how Sinophone studies, Sinoscripts and lyrical aesthetics can help interpret contemporary Singapore Chinese poetry. Three interconnected case studies are used to highlight how various virtual ‘spaces’ of the city state are actualized as poetics. They include Liang Yue’s ‘To the Bronze Statue of Raffles’, which highlights how poetics is created with multicultural historical resources that are utilized as cultural symbols; ‘LOST’ by Xi Ni Er, in which different written scripts, modernist and post-modernist rhetoric, and visual meta-poetics are used; and Chow Teck Seng’s ‘We Speak to Fish using National Languages’, an ekphrasis which sees dialogues between languages, media and art forms, and layered historical contexts. These various poetic spaces complete the poems, giving them second lives through unlimited reincarnations. Keywords: Sinophone, lyrical aesthetics, Singapore Chinese language poetry, Liang Yue, Xi Ni Er, Chow Teck Seng

Consider the following avant-garde poem ‘LOST’ 怅然若失 (Figure 6.1), taken from the pages of the collection 轻信莫疑 [Stretched Credulity] by Xi Ni Er 1 希尼尔 (2001: 36-37; cf. 1989), a contemporary Singaporean poet and novelist, and former president of the Singapore Writer’s Association: 1 Also well known as Chia Hwee Pheng, his official English name, which appears in various publications. Xi Ni Er is his pen name.

Chung, Simone Shu-Yeng & Mike Douglass (eds), The Hard State, Soft City of Singapore. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020 doi: 10.5117/9789463729505_ch06

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Figure 6.1 Left, part 1 of Xi Ni Er’s ‘LOST’. Right, part 2 of ‘LOST’

Courtesy of Xi Ni Er

The pictorial poem on the left attempts to impress the reader by hybridizing both English (‘LOST’) and Chinese scripts or Sinoscripts – as it consists of modern, regular scripts in Song (‘怅然若失’, Line Six) and Kai (‘ ’, Line One) – as well as pictorial scripts of ‘Moon’, ‘Sun’, ‘Water’ and ‘Mountains’ (Lines Two, Three and Four), which appear to be translations of one another in different script fonts within the text. However, the intertextuality between the poem on the left (which appears to be the poem’s title) and the footnotes (of two other poems) on the right also allow deeper interpretation of the text(s). An ideal example of how Singaporean Chinese poets have been experimenting with poetry genres, ‘LOST’ showcases the diversity of ethnicities and languages that evidences how the poet has, through his lyrical self or subjectivity, responded to the legacy of (or confrontation with) Singapore’s highly transnational and transcultural history. This chapter attempts to demonstrate how discourses of the emerging field of Sinophone studies (which consists of Sinoscripts in my framework) and lyrical aesthetics can help interpret contemporary Singapore Chinese poetics. Three interconnected case studies are presented, to highlight how various virtual ‘spaces’ of this hard city state, which range from geopolitical and cultural spaces (Moretti 2005) and translingual scripts to trans-genre interpretations, are actualized as poetics. After I outline my theoretical framework, I analyse ‘LOST’ together with two other examples in greater detail, while also providing English translations.

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Literature and poetry – the artistic forms of collected memories or individual experiences – may be considered as higher-order constructs of the identities of a community. In comparison to concrete material cultures, which can be more directly disseminated as commodities through trade and commerce, literatures and poetries use languages and scripts as both materials of construct and mediums for circulation. Thus, for a language to be transformed into literature or poetry with deeper constructs, a new geographical location to become a literary field, or a centre or place of literature production with its own distinct identity to amalgamate different traditions (Bourdieu and Johnson 1993; Bourdieu 1996; Shih 2007), it has taken – in the case of Chinese-language literature in the city state of Singapore – almost a century to achieve this. The term ‘Xinhua Wenxue’ 新华文学 [Singapore Chinese literature], the official term coined to refer to the Chinese literature of Singapore, only appeared and gained popularity around 1970, five years after Singapore’s independence and separation from Malaysia in 1965 (Huang and Xu 2002; Wang 1994). While the earliest diasporic free-style Chinese language poem dates back to as early as 1920, Chinese poetry, including literature, in pre-independence Singapore was seen as part of Mahua Wenxue 马华文学 [Malayan or Malaysian Chinese literature] and often regarded by scholars as a diasporic and migrant literature (termed Qiaomin Wenxue 侨民文学 in Chinese academia) (Ibid.). Due to various waves of Chinese diaspora moving outward since the late Qing dynasty (the earlier wave was in the Ming dynasty), the formation of new postcolonial nation-states and acknowledgement of Austronesian native speakers (such as Malay and Taiwanese aboriginal languages) during the last century, many new centres of Chinese language literature reception and production outside mainland China have emerged or are emerging. These include Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia (specifically Johor, Malacca, Penang, Kuala Lumpur and Sarawak), Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Myanmar, and even Canada, Europe and the United States. They are made up of communities using different languages – such as English, Malay, Vietnamese, Thai, Japanese, the Indian languages, Chinese (including Mandarin, Min, Cantonese, Teochew, Hakka and Shanghainese, all under the larger Chinese language or Sinitic linguistic families, i.e., the Sinophones) – and scripts, or are becoming increasingly multilingual. New or traditional centres in China such as Beijing, Shanghai, Canton and Sichuan have also witnessed waves of renewed Chinese language poetics. This multilinguistic geopolitical context has resulted in the formation of new identities through Sinophone articulations in a city state nation like Singapore, where the ‘nation’, her languages and literatures are constantly

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reimagined in new discourses of history and renewed modernity. I therefore suggest placing texts of Singaporean Chinese language contemporary poetry in a geopolitical interpretive framework, comprising the narratives of three water routes set beside the narrative of literary lineage (in this case, the classical lyrical aesthetics or tradition 抒情美典 or 抒情传统 [Ke and Xiao 2009]). This framework perceives the production of Chinese language poetics at various centres along the Yellow River (north) and Yangtze (south) in mainland China, in addition to – and more importantly for Singapore – the ‘Silk Road of the Sea’ further south (Miksic 2013) which comprises the modern networks of Sinophone literary centres.2 In this respect, Singapore, in her different historical times, has always been situated in a maritime hub where the north, south, east and west converge, linking China, India, Europe, Japan, and later, the Americas. It continues to be a space where forces of attraction gather humans, goods, new ideas and cultures, making it a city under successive and different political systems in a network of various linguistic and cultural influences. By 1965, when Singapore gained independence as a nation-state in the tides of postcolonial discourse, not only had Chinese language poetry become an independent and integral part of wider Sinophone articulations, but it had also, in my view, reconstructed and renewed ‘Chineseness’, ‘modernity’ and the traditional ‘lyrical aesthetics’ in a multilingual duality, as a nation and a transnational global city. Amidst the city state’s multi-layered dialogues with modernity as well as postmodernity, alongside increased global connectedness and multilingualism, my interpretation of Singaporean Sino-poetics is intertextual and discursive. The various Chinese classical literary concepts, which are linked to the ‘lyrical aesthetics’ 抒情美典 discourse reconstructed by modern scholars (Ke and Xiao 2009), are beneficial to the interpretation of Chinese poetry, not only because they provide insightful perspectives on how Chinese poetics has been understood through the traditions of Shijing 诗经 (Classics of Songs), Chuci 楚辞 (Verse of Chu), and renewed poetry lineages such as those from the Tang, Song and later eras (whereby poetry developed similar yet disparate relationships with musicality, paintings, inscapes 2 There are currently no common understanding if Mainland China should be included or excluded in the Sinophone literary articulations. Academics such as Shih (2007) would strategically exclude China, i.e., the sites along the two rivers in my framework, in her attempt to refute the diasporic framework, reflect the demographic power reconfigurations at work in the changing world situation, and resist marginalization and dominating homogenizations of cultural productions in her particular version of the Sinophone. In contrast, Wang (2006) would exclude China inclusively 包括在外 in his mapping of Sinophone literary world, but extend it in a dialogue with China’s literary productions.

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and performances), but also because they emphasize the essentiality of subjectivity in the lyrical self for poetry-making. In terms of Sinophone articulations, I highlight the research of Shih Shu-mei (2007; Shih, Tsai and Bernards 2013), Tsu Jing (2005, 2010) and David Wang Der-wei (Tsu and Wang 2010), while also providing my own input on this theoretical structure in relation to its application in Singapore Chinese poetry. In this chapter, the important narrative of ‘lyrical aesthetics’, which I infuse together with the emerging field of Sinophone studies as an interpretive framework, is actualized together with my close readings of the three case studies of poetry – by Liang Yue 梁鉞 on Raffles (2011; Thumboo 2009, 2010), Xi Ni Er 希尼尔 on Sinoscripts and Chinese culture (2001), and myself on national language(s) (Lianhe Zaobao 2015; Pang and Shankar 2015; Kon 2015: 37-48), to cover the geographical imagery to linguistic and genre spaces mentioned earlier. With regard to perceiving Sino-poetics as the realization of the lyrical self via poetry genres, I do not dispense with Aristotle’s (384-322 BCE) traditional notion of ‘poetics as creation’ (2012) that extends beyond poetry, or his division between the epic, lyric and dramatic genres that set the fundamentals of comparative literature studies. This serves as a bridge or dialogue between the Western lyricism that has been reconstructed in the discourses of post-Enlightenment and Romanticism, and the Chinese lyrical shuqing 抒情 (Ke and Xiao 2009; Průšek and Lee 1980), which has been reconstructed from a very different tradition in a vastly different academic background. Modern scholars have also expanded the application of Chinese lyricism to classical novels and drama (Plaks 1996), as well as a marginalized body of modern vernacular fiction (Wang 2008) since the May Fourth divide.3 Not basing my research solely on current popular academic paradigms rooted in Western literary context, I also perceive Sino-poetics as something that has roots in Chinese literary thought (wen 文 and dao 道), where poetics is an actualization of human agency (traditions of ‘poetry as voice of human intent’ 诗言志 and ‘poetry is evocative by emotion’ 诗缘情), with input from the Daoist school of binary opposition-and-complementary philosophical structure (which correlates with the cosmic ecosystem), and additionally, the appropriation of the Buddhist yijing 意境 (vision or inscape) into poetics (Wang S. 2002). This narrative of lyric aesthetics regards ‘poetics’ as a product of human agency that is psychologically inbuilt (Jung 1971) with the birth of human 3 The May Fourth Movement was an anti-imperialist, cultural and political movement which grew out of student protests in Beijing on 4 May 1919.

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languages. Discussing what poetics was, the Han dynasty editor of the Mao version of Classics of Songs (compiled in the Zhou dynasty and traditionally credited to Confucius) announced in ‘The “Great Preface”’: Poetry is where the intent is, and the mind (心 heart) is where the intent lies. The intent will employ the language to become poetry. From within, the emotion is evoked and actualized as language. The imperfection of linguistic expression results in groaning, moaning and sighing, yet if through moaning and groaning, we are not able to express fully, we chant and sing songs; if chanting and singing is still insufficient, then we dance unconsciously, waving our hands (wu舞) and stepping, jumping and tossing our legs (dao蹈); the emotion is expressed through the sounds or audio and musical messages (sheng 声), the sounds become physical language (wen 文); and when sounds become language, we named it yin音, the language of the heart. (my translation; cf. translation in Owen 1992: 37-56)4

According to Wen Yiduo’s interpretation (2005: 151), shi 诗 (poetry) and zhi 志 (intent or unexpressed thoughts, memories or record) were etymologically the same word,5 but varied slightly phonetically to indicate the subtle differences in their meanings in the era when the writing system was still not in place. By employing shi as a phonetic variation of zhi, zhi could be transformed into concrete spoken words (or yan [language], identifiable by the sense of hearing), to become shi, thus denoting that early shi-poetry held an oral tradition. With the introduction of wen (writing; originally means Chinese pictorial characters, literature or culture), poetry gained further concreteness via the sense of sight that is needed to read written words. Therefore, if ‘language’ is perceived as not only an imagined construct that shapes how we think, but also one that reflects the patterns of our thoughts, then ‘poetry’ is one’s subjectivity actualized into words and sentences. A common understanding in classical Chinese poetic criticism 4

The original description and Stephen Owen’s (1992: 40) translation to English is as follows: 詩者。志 之所之也。在心為志 。發言為詩。 ‘The poem is that to which what is intently on the mind (chih*) goes. In the mind (hsin*) it is “being intent” (chih*); coming out in language (yen), it is a poem.’ 5 Inspired by the etymological analysis of the relation between shi and zhi by Wen Yiduo 闻一多, scholars such as Zhang Lu (2016) have further highlighted the nature of musico-poetic synthesis using the concept of geshi 歌诗, so as to question the current paradigm of neglecting musicality in Chinese poetics through the study of modern Chinese art songs and infusing it with traditional Chinese poetic criticism.

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and philosophy – such as Wenxin Diaolong文心雕龙 (Liu 2003), Classics of Songs 诗经 (Waley 2005), Canglang Shihua沧浪诗话 (Yan 1986), Renjian Cihua人间词话 (Wang G. 2002), modern theories of translational studies (Baker 2006; Bassnett 2002) and C.G. Jung’s psychological literary theory (1933, 1971) – is that ‘poetics’ is fundamentally what ‘poets’ express with their conscious and unconscious mind (Jung 1933, 1971) in poetic language patterns or linguistic forms (Hollander 1988), through aesthetics, texture, imagery, semiotics, sound and the metric of poetic language. In addition, from a reader’s perspective, poetics is where the reader finds resonance, identifies and derives pleasure from reading. The poetic concept of yijing or ‘lyric vision’ (Kao 1977) further establishes a mental pictorial space evoked through the reading or writing of poetry, which as an aesthetics extends to other genres such as classical novels and dramas, in which one’s subjectivity (including zhi志, yi意 and qing情) or the allegorical ‘self’ unites with the external world as context(s), through the aesthetics of abstraction probably influenced by Buddhism (besides Confucianism and Daoism). Poetics can also be regarded as a fluid construct: evolutionary in the collective understanding of poetry genre(s), and circulatory, in its spread through media, time and geographical domains. It can be appropriated, reframed and shaped by various institutions. Thus, ‘poetics’ can be perceived very much as an imagined construct, one that in some ways parallels Benedict Anderson’s (1991) concept of imagined communities. In terms of lyrical aesthetics, I argue that this deeper construct of poetics, or meta-poetics, is woven by a crystallized conception of ‘poetics’ through the reception of a chosen collection of poems – which usually evolves into an aesthetic preference, e.g., the Han Confucius Shijing-poetics; the momentary ethereal poetic vision embraced by Yan Yu (1986) , Sikong Tu (1979) and Wang Shizhen (2002); the obscure poetics of Misty poetics, modernists’ ontological poetics (Melaney 2001; Longenbach 1987; Călinescu 1987); and postmodernist poetics (Hutcheon 1988; Călinescu 1987) – involving the author’s and readers’ psychological poetic experiences. As a form of conceptual knowledge (Foucault 1972), ‘poetics’ is constructed by millions of poems that have been created and read since the beginning of civilization (as ‘literary or poetic history’), and is constantly challenged and revolutionized by later generations of readers. With regard to Sino-poetics in Singapore, poems can therefore be read as part of a reimagined ‘body of poetry or literature’ in relation to the social or cultural reality of that era or the present, or as part of a culture of different space(s), perhaps through translation. Often, this imagination is the outcome of various discourses, such as ‘national literature’, ‘poetry from China’ or ‘Chinese poetry’, ‘overseas Chinese literature’, ‘postcolonial literature’, ‘the

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difference between “poem (shi)” and “lyrics (ci)” and “classical and modern poetry” that uses classical and vernacular Chinese respectively’, ‘women’s poetry’, ‘modern and postmodern poetics’, and even ‘Sinophone poetry’. Thus in terms of urban imaginaries in Singapore Sino-poetics, we see the author’s lyrical self-actualizing in each individual poem, dialoguing with mental spaces such as the memories of other collected selves, experiences of the text’s current and future readers, forefathers in previous literatures, the linguistic forms of the genre, and the physical and imagined geopolitical spaces where the poem is rooted, produced or reimagined. I explain below how the Sinophone is materialized as spatial poetics geopolitically and linguistically in the case of Singapore. Utilizing the models of ‘paradigms’ and ‘paradigm shifts’ reinvented by the science historian Thomas Kuhn (1962), I describe how the different combinations of national, aesthetic, cultural and linguistic identities in poetry account for the existence of contesting interpretive paradigms in literature as well. The current model of interpreting poetics in Chinese, such as ‘Chinese literature’, ‘Chinese poetry’ or ‘world Chinese literature’ (cf. discussions of world literature in Damrosch 2003, 2014) may be inadequate for the reading of poetry produced outside of Greater China. This is especially important given the problematic complexities of conceptual terms like China, Chinese, Zhongguo中国, Zhonghua 中华, Huaxia 华夏, Han汉, and even Sino- and Huayu Yuxi 华语语系, which all have conflicting meanings in different communities. Nevertheless, the emerging paradigm of the Sinophone articulation, which takes ‘Sinophones’ as the common (yet variant, so that differences will not be unseen) linguistic denominator, seems to address certain parts of this inadequacy, though its understandings remain diverse. More importantly, this framing sets literature and poetry in Chinese into a dialogical network with the Anglophone, Francophone, Nippon-phone, Malay-phone and Tamil-phone, to form a more coherent world literature framework with Singapore as a possible centre of focus. However, as the Sinophone model originated from a postcolonial framework (Shih 2007), one of the major differences lies in how one sees the power relationship between the centre and margins, e.g., whether to include or exclude China (Shih 2007; Shih, Tsai and Bernards 2013). While both options remain contested by different scholars, in my theoretical framework, I choose to instead place various centres of Chinese literature production and reception, including China and Taiwan, in a dialogical structure with Singapore and other centres. Beyond the existing Sinophone framework (which focuses on the sounds or does not highlight the differences between sound and scripts), I also include Sinoscripts and Sinograph (Hanzi-inspired scripts such as Japanese, Korean and classical Vietnamese characters) to complement the transnational model. Figure 6.2

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Figure 6.2 The three circles of influences of the Sinophone articulation network

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The three circles of influences of the Sinophone articulation network with Singapore in the middle circle. Placed in the innermost circle are centres of literary production with a majority of Chinese-speaking population or literature producers writing mainly in Chinese languages and scripts.

and Table 6.1 summarize the different variations of Sinophone literatures and poetics within a dialogical model of multiple concentric circles based on geopolitical affiliations, including the influence of Hanzi 汉字 [Chinese characters] and other linguistic and cultural civilizations. This can either challenge or complement a China-centric model which perceives mainland China (whether inclusive or exclusive of Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan) as the centre of Chinese literature, with other Sinophone literatures considered ‘Overseas Chinese literature’, or a model that contains multiple centres of Chinese literatures without highlighting their power relationships. Table 6.1 further explains the three circles in six areas. 6 Though taking the Sinophone perspective in various literary centres in the three circles, the diagram does not dismiss the fact that Austronesian lineages of languages and literatures exist in the communities of indigenous Taiwanese people in Taiwan, and Malays (or Proto-Malays) in modern Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines. Other minority literatures also exist in various Sinophone centres, including in mainland China. Thus, if this diagram was drawn from the Austronesian-phone, Malay-phone or Anglophone perspectives, the placing of the centres in the three circles would be different.

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Table 6.1 Relations in the Sinophone with respect to language, script and geopolitical affiliations Greater China Extent of influences Chinese- Inner Circle speaking?

Middle Circle

Outer Circle

Political Concerned Affiliation with “Nation state” of “China”

Ex-British colonies

Historically tribute states of imperial China/ Sphere of Confucius civilisation Partial Hanzi sphere

Hanzi sphere

Hanzi sphere

Orient/ Western Country/ Region

Asia Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong (?) Macau (?)

Semi-Hanzi sphere for ethnic Chinese

(With exile and migrated poets)

Outside Asia Hong Kong (?) Singapore, Malaysia (Nanyang)

Japan, Korea (partial); Vietnam (used to, but stopped completely)

Europe, Thailand, Cambodia, the America, and other regions Philippines, Indonesia

With these models in mind, the three case studies presented below illustrate how multiple discourses work together to shape our understanding of their poetics. Placed within the Singapore context, they portray how poetics is created with historical resources utilized as the subject matter and poetic cultural symbols, while lyrical subjectivity is infused differently in different places, thus forming new identities of Singaporean Chineseness and poetics. Both the Chinese original and English translation of ‘To the Bronze Statue of Raffles’ by Liang Yue 梁钺, a Singaporean Chinese poet, is found in Fifty-50 (cf. trans. by Ho Chee Lick in Thumboo 2009: 47-49). A project commissioned by the National Arts Council of Singapore (NAC), this anthology offers poetry works in the four official languages of Singapore (English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil), with translations presented in parallel with the original texts. In ‘To the Bronze Statue of Raffles’, the lyrical self and voices of the poet are ‘fictionalized’ and even ‘dramatized’, integrating the historical factual and poetic imaginary, to allegorize their poetic intents. Figure 6.3 shows my retranslated version and the Chinese original.

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Figure 6.3 ‘Words dedicated to the Bronze Statue of Raffles by Liang Yue’

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Thumboo 2009: 47-49; cf. other poems in Liang 1984, 1997 and 2011; translation by Zhou Decheng and Joshua Ip

In this poem clearly affiliated with the nation-state and postcolonial literary discourses, the ‘body’ of Sir Stamford Raffles – the ‘founder of modern Singapore’ and a historical figure of British colonial origins – is used as a symbol of declined power. The poet narrates in a mocking and satirical tone that the standing position of ‘Raffles’ is ‘awkward’, displaying ‘arrogance’, yet ‘he’ fails in seeking attention from both the ‘camera flashes’ of tourists and ‘passers-by’ in the postcolonial era. By suggesting to the readers that perhaps colonialism has been replaced by modern consumerism, the text deconstructs the seriousness of the power of historicity in a jovial manner, thus highlighting an irony towards the historicity it portrays. Employing the voice of a historian as his rhetoric and using hyperbole, which is the lyrical aesthetics the poet employs, the poem becomes a dramatized dialogue with ‘Raffles’. Through spatial poetics, the poet has extensively designed various scenes which are interrelated and dialogical in terms of actual imaginary dialectics: Raffles standing (statues standing in reality); the Merlion visited by tourists (real, unable to move and enjoying unreal glamour); statues in Europe (existing in reality, but written through imagination; physically fixed and each dominating a square); the immortal Zhang Guolao (imaginary and nonexistent in reality, but free to roam around); the split-self of Raffles (existing in reality, signifying double torture) and the two stone lions (existing in reality, but devalued). Through comparing and contrasting these poetic

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spatial bodies, the reader discovers that these various pairs of symbolic objects of historicity and civilization are also in constant dialogues among themselves and with the author. The play of doubles, like Western statues, clones of Raffles (there are in fact two statues of Raffles in Singapore, one black and the other white), the Merlion and the pair of stone lions, allows the author to use personification to eliminate the differences between the epic and imaginary, East and West, past and present, and of course, the destinies of these statues. The reader realizes that even if the author seems to place the Western statutes and the Merlion in higher regard, they are in fact no better than the stone lions and, when compared with the legendary Chinese immortal, the author’s attitude towards historicity eventually becomes his verdict on history. These spatial lyrical images in the poem are in fact compressed symbols of geohistorical discourses, e.g., British Colonialism (both statues of Raffles, symbolizing the colonial past), Western civilization (the warrior statue symbolizes a glorious past and still honourable present), Chineseness (Zhang Guolao symbolizes both the imagined and imaginary past, and the stone lions represent the ‘classical’ in modern times), Singapore-ness and consumerism (the Merlion and a pair of stone lions), whereby the author redefines our understanding of ‘Chineseness’ and reassesses ‘colonial power’ from the perspective of the present. Appearing to be merely a mockery of historicity and human civilization, this poem also reveals a deeper significance: the various objects are selfallegories of the author. The difficult conditions encountered by Raffles, the Merlion and stone lions are actually what a modern man, especially one in Singapore, faces when confronted by modernity. In this way, I argue that the poet has infused his lyrical compassionate self into his redefinition of historicity by highlighting the non-eternity of the once-powerful colonial imperialism, and performing the ‘historicity’. This therefore constructs a sense of poetic depth by drawing our attention to the cosmic irony (cf. ‘irony of fate’, in Preminger and Brogan 1993: 633-635) of human existence in this universe. Moving away from spatial images as self-allegory that symbolize geopolitical and cultural narratives, the second case study (briefly discussed before), ‘LOST’, returns to written scripts, where the medium facilitates a dialogue between Sino-scripts and Roman scripts. This poem, in which innovation in multilingual rhetoric is used to construct Chinese poetics using both modernist and postmodernist approaches, is illustrated in Figure 6.4. It presents itself as a pictorial or visual poetry (tuxiang shi图像诗), actively engaging the reader’s encoding and decoding processes of the poem(s) to render multiple interpretations. Meta-poetic in nature, the poem also reveals an admirable reflexivity about the form of its poetry

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Figure 6.4 A pictorial multilingual meta-poem ‘LOST’ by Xi Ni Er

genre, the writing systems used and their relationships with the rootedness of the Chinese civilization in Singapore, which characterizes a cultural and linguistic identity crisis between ethnicity and modernization in Singapore. Multilingualism is first portrayed in the use of the systems of Chinese written scripts – both in its earliest pictorial forms象形字 from the Shang商 and Zhou 周 dynasties, and the modern form that dates to as early as the Jin 晋 dynasty. The system uses Chinese characters that have symbolic semiotic references – for example, even just by looking at the visual shapes, there is a clear evolution from to , to , to and (T) to , where the latter forms preserve the pictorial meanings of the original characters, until the ‘final stage’ of ‘LOST’, where the English Times New Roman font (and traditionally read from right to left, ) is seen. This taps into the prior knowledge of readers in the Sinosphere: this evolutionary chart is familiar to them, as it is usually learnt in their character-recognizing process but appears here in reverse order. Someone with knowledge of Chinese philology would also know that, until the Qin 秦dynasty when the Chinese writing system was unified with small seal script小篆, the earliest

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pictorial characters did not have fixed directions and orientations, and depended on earlier geographical state boundaries and the period when the characters appeared. The poet has exploited this philological context with playful wit to create poetic irony, critically making contextual references to the linguistic-cultural landscape of Singapore. In the name of pragmatism, what was ‘evolutional’ and ‘progressive’ in Chinese civilization in the form of her language-scriptbased culture in yesteryears is now seen as an ‘outdated tradition due to be subverted’ – ‘simplification’ and ‘accommodation’ are necessary in today’s modern Singapore context. By identifying the ironic similarities between ‘LOST’ and the simplified and disoriented 月日川山, through the introduction of the third language script (English) and the type of fonts used, the poet finds profound poetic ‘flavours’ (趣味) that are related to the poem’s deeper significance. As a relatively more reader-responsible system (Qi and Liu 2007), the visual form of the Chinese characters is generally more central to meaning-making by a Chinese reader than dictated by the writer, compared to that of the European languages, in which the alphabetical writing system generally correlates with the sound system of the spoken languages. By preserving the approximate structure of ancient pictorial characters 象形字 in the radical’s 部首 of the pic-phonogram 形声字and pictorial characters in the modern writing system, strong semantic references are intuitionally produced by looking at the Chinese characters as visual symbols. Upon further interpretation with reference to the social-historical linguistic context of Singapore when the poem was written in 1989, this work could also be seen as part of the phenomenon of ‘Singapore Chinese Scar literature’ (Zhang 2012) or a response to the ‘cultural trauma’ produced by Singaporean Chinese writers during the 1980-1990s. Following the closing down of Nanyang University in Singapore, the then only Chinese-medium university in South East Asia in 1980, and the complete switch to English medium for all educational institutions in Singapore in 1981, the Chinese language was seen as further marginalized; many Chinese-educated Singaporeans have perceived this as a ‘loss of roots and heritage’ (although Singapore has always embraced bilingualism, it is an institutionalized form of non-parallel bilingualism, in which English is employed as the dominant language with the three other official languages – Chinese, Malay and Tamil – relegated to second languages). Nonetheless, the complexity of the poetics evoked does not merely rest in the poet’s avant-garde attempt and the poem’s relationship with the social context. The poet has the intention to integrate the ideology of postmodernist ‘playfulness’ with the inclination of ‘seriousness’ that belongs to modernist literary aesthetics, through the play of words with pluralistic

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or double meanings – for example, 失/ 怅然若失 or ‘LOST’ would mean the loss in the simplification of the characters, loss of roots and ‘lost’ as a mental state (i.e., lost in terms of geographic coordinates). The two footnotes might appear redundant, as they clearly spell out the intent of the author, thus leaving less room for imaginative input by the readers; however, on closer reading, the two footnotes are written using rhetorical language that are just as poetically rich as the ‘evolution chart’ portion of the poem. The reverse word-order play of xingxiang 形象 (referring to loss of image or identity) and xiangxing 象形 (pictorial); the double meaning of qing 青, green in colour of the water or mountain, and being evergreen and lasting; and the paradoxes in oxymorons such as ‘Clearly one’s identity becomes ambiguous’ and ‘To be in silence with a rational mind’,7 all exhibit attention given to the linguistic aesthetics to maximize the poetic effects. While employing parallelism with the same number of characters in each line, and identical punctuation and sentence structures in both stanzas of the notes, there is a pseudo-parallelism found in ‘结构文化’ (it can mean ‘structure the culture’ or ‘structured culture’) and ‘颠覆传统’ (‘subvert the traditions’). Both look like verb-noun phrases based on the norms of poetry, and the reader only realizes that ‘structure/culture’ is an adjective-noun (meaning ‘structured culture’) by the second or third line. This parallelism results in a greater ironic effect: when the writer continues to say that they have no image or identity, it has a similar meaning as ‘subvert the traditions’ – thus ‘structured’ here carries a negative connotation, instead of a positive one. Of course, in the poet’s view, it is possible that these changed pictorial characters also symbolize the young Chinese Singaporeans who have switched to using English entirely due to pragmatism while giving up their heritage learning of Chinese. I would argue that perhaps the most innovative part, easily neglected by readers, is the meta-poetics within the poem itself – this ‘poem’ witnesses a self-reflexivity not towards the author, but rather to its ‘poetry genre’; by making it look like conventional poetry, it attempts to subvert our convention of what a poem looks like. On the surface, the main body of the poetry is an avant-garde pictorial representation of evolution and the two stanzas merely serve as explanatory footnotes; but if the reader changes his or her 7 In the line ‘清醒地沉默自己’ (To be in silence with a rational mind), ‘移屈’, ’清醒’ or rationalminded, describes the state of one (including the author) being clear-headed 清and awake 醒, but has to paradoxically force himself to be ‘displaced’ from his heritage (移屈) and remain a silent person (沉默自己). His conflicting awake 清醒 and silent 沉默 selves thus form an oxymoron, while the 清 (clear-minded) in this line also parallels 清 (clear without ambiguity) in the previous line.

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Figure 6.5 Chua Mia Tee, National Language Class (1959)

Oil on canvas, 112 x 153 cm. Gift of Equator Art Society & Collection of National Gallery Singapore. Permission given to the author by National Gallery Singapore to reproduce image of the painting; cf. Zou 2016: 55-60.

perspective, the poem will resemble the form of a conventional poetry, whereby the two footnote-stanzas now become the main body with two subtitles, ‘Note 1’ and ‘Note 2’, while the evolution portion transforms to become a bilingual title ‘LOST/ 怅然若失’. In this way, it becomes a poem about a poem. While expressing the subconscious mind, the lyrical self in the poem innovates a philosophical front. Combining different rhetorical linguistic orders that the poet favours, different dimensions of poetics (perhaps indicative of different poetic paradigms) are fused into one. The last case study is an ekphrasis in response to an iconic oil painting ‘National Language Class’ by Chua Mia Tee 蔡名智 in the poem by Zhou Decheng 周德成 ‘We Speak to Fish using National Languages’ (Kon 2015; cf. Zhou 2012). Not only are dialogues established between different media and art forms, but multiple imagined and reimagined spaces of layers of time and historical contexts of the city state are also constructed through amalgamating different languages and marrying poetics (through images and sound) with visual art.

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Figure 6.6 ‘We Speak to Fish using National Languages’ by Zhou Decheng aka Chow Teck Seng

Kon 2015; Pang and Shankar 2015; Lianhe Zaobao 2015; cf. other poems in Zhou 2012

The poem was penned together with another poem ‘Love’s Best Language is To Be With You’ and a flash fiction (Kon 2015), and translated into English simultaneously, as part of a collaborative project curated by Singaporean English-language poet Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, with the Singapore National Gallery and Singapore Writers Festival in 2015. The poems were first recited interactively as a poetry performance, in front of the actual painting during a tour of paintings at the National Gallery in November 2015 as part of the Singapore Writers Festival. During this performance, the participating audience listened and read after the poet in STANZA 5, as though they were attending a ‘National Language Class’. The same poem was performed by the author in a Singapore and Malaysia Chinese Poetry Conference in April 2016 and as a duet with another poet

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at the opening of the Singapore Poetry Festival in July 2016. These readings provide a meta-narrative in a frame-within-a frame structure: a poem (read) is placed within a poem (performed), and a narrative within two other outer layers of narratives, made up by the author, performer, and the audience; the ‘I’, ‘we’, ‘fish’, ‘tongue’ and ‘fishbowl’ in the poem, and, in addition, the various characters and Malay words on the whiteboard in the painting. As a meta-narrative, not only do the characters in the painting and the participants in the performance allude to the ‘I’ (STANZA 1), they also symbolize the collective selves ‘we’ (in the title and STANZA 6) shaped by the various imagined communities in addition to the human race, through the various dialoguing scenes between the performer (I) and the audience (we): STANZA 1: Looking at the fishbowl speaking national language, STANZA 2: Looking at the watch (time), STANZA 3: Narrating the linguistic history of Singapore, STANZA 4: Looking at the map (geographical spaces), STANZA 5: Reciting vocabulary of words associated with nation-building and geopolitical constructs related to Singapore of various times, STANZA 6: Synthesis of two imagined spaces – sitting at the round table practising the national language, and the fish in the round bowl with a round mouth, STANZA 7: Using the image of fish8 (symbolising our existence bounded by the institutions constructed) in the bowl, to parallel the image of the tongue (symbolizing language) in the mouth, and the squirming snake (both ‘tongue’ and ‘snake’ have the same shé sound in Mandarin, thus suggesting that language can cause a man to fall from innocence), STANZA 8: Pronouncing the ü (Chinese version) or u (English version) sounds of fish, Melayu and language with rounded lips, STANZA 9: Pronouncing the i sound in ‘ikan’ (fish in Malay, symbolizing our prehistoric existence), English (symbolizing using English as the official common language) and Inilah Singapura (symbolizing the imagination of independent Singapore using Malay as the national language). These stanzas altogether form an allegory with reference to the prehistory of the nation-state through the lens of language constructs. The ‘I’ and ‘we’, 8 Imageries of fish have various references, one of which suggests that all mammals (including humankind), birds or amphibians, have a common prehistoric f ish ancestry by examining anatomical clues (Mosley 2011). Thus, the fish in the transparent artificial bowl can symbolize how mankind has been trapped and bounded by various imagined geopolitical constructs in the form of different names used in different languages during different historical times (refer to stanza 5) to form their identities.

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situated in the poem as both insider and outsider, manifest as the lyrical self that connects with the above-mentioned images, scenes and deeper significance (the symbolism stated in the above stanzas) in irony. What is/ are ‘national’ ‘language(s)’? What is a nation? Thus, the mental constructs that bound an individual’s subjectivity is what this poem aims to question. When the poem actualizes as a performance with a performer, audience, sounds and a narrative (storyline), it returns to the fundamental concept of poetry as part of a drama, ritual, dance or song – an important understanding held by scholars celebrating lyrical aesthetics (Ke and Xiao 2009). As the poetry genre developed, both Western and Chinese ekphrasis traditions emerged, employing poetic texts to describe works of art with or without the pieces on display. ‘We Speak to Fish Using National Languages’ is an attempt to reinvent and reconstruct the original painting. With elements of the original painting, the poem relooks at the ever-changing concept of national and official languages, including Malay, English and Mandarin (Guanhua 官话, which means the official language of the Qing dynasty in China). The poem also plays around with the phonetic and visual metaphors of tongue (shé), snake (shé), fish (yu, fish in hanyu pinyin), ikan (fish in Malay) and the i sounds. From the perspective of Sinophone articulation, the poem also witnessed an interesting publishing history, as it was disseminated via translations as well as possessing multilingual characteristics. Compared to Xi Ni Er’s employment of English and various types of Sinoscripts, the sounds in this poem, i.e., the various Sinophones, Anglophone and Malay-phone (Chinese words and terms are read or recited in Mandarin, Cantonese and Hokkien, while Malay, English and phonetics or hanyu pinyin are presented in Romanized scripts) are embedded in the text to allude to how Singapore was imagined in different historical times and how the Chinese diaspora identified themselves, using the following terms in STANZA 5: Lianbang 联邦 (in Malayan-toned Mandarin, Straits Settlements), Chew Hoo 州府 (in Hokkien, Federation of Malaya), Malaya马来亚 (in Malay, Malaya), Ma Lai Sai Nga 马来西亚 (in Cantonese, Malaysia), Dai Wan 台湾 (in Hokkien or Taiyu 台语, Taiwan), Zhong Hwa Min Gok 中华民国 (in Taiwanese Mandarin with rushing or entering tone 入声 in Republic of China), Silat Po 石叻坡 (in Malay for Silat, and Chinese dialects such as Hokkien, Cantonese and Teochew for Po; Silat Po is the ancient name of Singapore where Silat means straits, and Po 坡/ 埗/ 埠 usually refer to a place, and it probably means ‘city port’ here. In the English-translated version,

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Temasek or Tumasik, meaning sea port, the Javanese name for Singapore in the thirteenth Century is used instead), Sin Chew 星洲 (in Hokkien or Teochew, meaning island of Singapura), the name used to refer to Singapore by Chinese during the Malayan era. In the English version, Singapura (Singa is derived from the Sanskrit word siṃha, which means ‘lion’, and pūra means ‘city’), the ancient name that first appeared during the thirteenth century Indianized Malay Hindu-Buddhist Kingdom of Singapura era and later entered the Malaylanguage word-stock, is used instead. Singapura is therefore seen as an Indianized kingdom of the Indosphere of Greater India before the 1400s. Guojia 国家 and Guo 国 Jia 家 (in Standard Mandarin, where guojia and guo both means nation or country and jia means home. In English, ‘Nation’ and ‘NAT-ION’ are used as their respective translations, signifying that there is a pause in between ‘Nat’ and ‘ion’ and both words are read louder). In conclusion, the above case studies illustrate how Singaporean poetry – through translations, its performative and cross-platform aspects, and a reconsideration of the poetic form including the language and scripts used – can contribute to both Sinophone literature and the field of Singapore literature and studies, reimagining its identity(ies) and reshaping the genre. To better understand the uniqueness of these poetry texts beyond the general hybridity of Singaporean poetics, the Sinophone lens, Sinoscript and lyrical aesthetics can be applied. In these works, the subjectivity of the lyrical self is often seen as an allegory of or a response to the historical and multicultural contexts of the nation. In so doing, we place Singapore Chinese poetry in the context of Singapore, in relation to other satellites of the Sinophone spheres. Thus, the various mental spaces within a poetic text – be they images, scenes, geographical locations or narratives – serve as media for the author’s subjectivity to be actualized as poetics, while external media such as intertextuality with visual art, music and drama serve as platforms where new readers or audiences can engage with the text, thus completing the poems and giving them second lives through unlimited reincarnations.

Works Cited Anderson, Benedict R. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Rev. and extended ed. London: Verso. Aristotle. 2012. Poetics. Edited by Leonardo Tarán and Dimitri Gutas. Leiden: Brill. Baker, Mona. 2006 Translation and Conflict: A Narrative Account. London: Routledge.

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Bassnett, Susan. 2002. Translation Studies. London: Routledge; Taylor & Francis Group. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1996. The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Bourdieu, Pierre and Randal Johnson. 1993. The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature. New York: Columbia University Press. Călinescu, Matei. 1987. Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Damrosch, David. 2003. What Is World Literature? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. —. 2014. World Literature in Theory. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Foucault, Michel. 1972. The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. New York: Pantheon Books. Hollander, John. 1988. Melodious Guile: Fictive Pattern in Poetic Language. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Huang Mengwen黄孟文 and Xu Naixiang徐迺翔, eds. 2002. Xinjiapo huawen wenxueshi chugao 新加坡华文文学史初稿 [The History of Singapore Chinese Literature: A Preliminary Manuscript]. Singapore: Department of Chinese Studies, National University of Singapore; Global Publishing. Hutcheon, Linda. 1988. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. New York: Routledge. Jung, Carl G. 1933. Modern Man in Search of a Soul. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. —. 1971. The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kao Yu-kung. 1977. ‘Lyric Vision in Chinese Narrative Tradition: A Reading of HongLou Meng and Ju-Lin Wai-Shih’. In Chinese Narrative: Critical and Theoretical Essays, ed. Andrew Plaks. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 227-243. Ke Qingming 柯庆明 and Xiao Chi萧驰, eds. 2009. Zhongguo shuqing chuantong de zaifaxian 中国抒情传统的再发现 [Rediscovery of Chinese Lyrical Tradition]. Taipei: National Taiwan University Press. Kon, Desmond Zhicheng-Mingde, ed. 2015. Eye, Feel, Write: Experiments in Ekphrasis. Singapore: Squircle Line Press. Kuhn, Thomas S. 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago. Liang Yue 梁钺 (Neo Choon Hong). 1984. Charu shishuo 茶如是说 [So Says Tea]. Singapore: May Poetry Society; Seven Oceans Publications. —. 1997. Fusheng sanbian 浮生三变 [Three Vicissitudes in Life]. Singapore: May Poetry Society. —. 2011. Nide mingzi 你的名字 [Thy Name]. Singapore: Lingzi Media.

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Lianhe Zaobao 联合早报. 2015. ‘Wenyi cheng 文艺城’ [Literature]. Singapore: Singapore Press Holdings. Liu Xie 刘勰. 2003. Wenxin diaolong 文心雕龙 [The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons]. Beijing: Waiyu jiaoxue yu yanjiu 外语教学与研究. Longenbach, James. 1987. Modernist Poetics of History: Pound, Eliot, and the Sense of the Past. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Melaney, William D. 2001. After Ontology: Literary Theory and Modernist Poetics. Albany: State University of New York. Miksic, John N. 2013. Singapore and the Silk Road of the Sea, 1300-1800. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press. Moretti, Franco. 2005. Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History. London: Verso. Mosley, Michael. 2011. ‘Anatomical Clues to Human Evolution from Fish’. BBC, 5 May. Available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13278255 [accessed 6 Oct. 2016]. Owen, Stephen. 1992. Readings in Chinese Literary Thought. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University. Pang, Alvin and Ravi Shankar, eds. 2015. Union: 15 Years of Drunken Boat, 50 Years of Writing from Singapore. Singapore: Ethos Books and Drunken Boat. Plaks, Andrew H. 浦安迪. 1996. Zhongguo xushixue 中国叙事学 [Chinese Narratives]. Beijing: Beijing University Press. Preminger, Alex and T.V.F. Brogan. 1993. The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Průšek, Jaroslav and Leo Ou-fan Lee. 1980. The Lyrical and the Epic: Studies of Modern Chinese Literature. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Qi Xiukun and Liu Lida. 2007. ‘Differences between Reader/Writer Responsible Languages Reflected in EFL Learners’ Writing’. Intercultural Communication Studies XVI(3): 148-159. Shih Shu-mei. 2007. Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations across the Pacific. Berkeley: University of California Press. Shih Shu-mei, Tsai Chien-hsin and Brian Bernards. 2013. Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader. New York: Columbia University Press. Sikong Tu 司空图. 1979. Shipin 诗品 [Classification of Poetry]. Shi Jia Zhuang, China: Hebei renmin 河北人民. Thumboo, Edwin, ed. 2009. Fifty on 50. Singapore: National Arts Council. —, ed. 2010. & Words: Poems Singapore and Beyond. Singapore: Ethos Books. Tsu Jing. 2005. Failure, Nationalism, and Literature: The Making of Modern Chinese Identity, 1895-1937. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. —. 2010. Sound and Script in Chinese Diaspora. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Tsu Jing and David Der-wei Wang, eds. 2010. Global Chinese Literature: Critical Essays. Leiden: Brill. Waley, Arthur, trans. 2005. The Book of Songs. London: Routledge. Wang, David Der-wei. 2006. ‘Wenxue xinglu yu shijie xiangxiang 文学行旅与世 界想象’ [Literary Circulation and Imagining the World]. Lianhe bao 联合报 [United Daily], 9 Aug. —. 2008. ‘Youqing de lishi shuqing chuantong yu zhongguo wenxue xiandaixing 有情的历史抒情传统与中国文学现代性’ [A History with Feeling: Lyrical Tradition and Chinese Literary Modernity]. Zhongguo wenzhe yanjiu jikan 中 国文哲研究集刊 [Bulletin of the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy] 33: 77-137. Wang Guowei 王国维. 2002. Renjian cihua 人间词话 [The Commentaries of Song Lyrics in the World of Men]. Shanghai: Shanghai guji 上海古籍. Wang Runhua 王润华. 1994. Cong xinhua wenxue dao shijie huawen wenxue 从新 华文学到世界华文文学 [From Singapore Chinese Literature to World Chinese Literature]. Singapore: Chaozhou bayi huiguan潮州八邑会馆. Wang Shizhen 王士祯. 2002. Daijing tangshihua 带经堂诗话 [The Commentaries of Poetry of the Hall with Classics]. Shanghai: Shanghai guji 上海古籍. Wen Yiduo 闻一多. 2005. Shenhua yu shi 神话与诗 [Myth and Poetry]. Shanghai: Shanghai renmin 上海人民. Xi Ni Er希尼尔 (Chia Hwee Pheng). 1989. Bangjia suiyue 绑架岁月 [The Kidnapped Years]. Singapore: Seven Oceans Publications. —. 2001. Qingxin moyi 轻信莫疑 [Stretched Credulity]. Singapore: Singapore Association of Writers. Yan Yu 严羽. 1986. Canglang shihua 沧浪诗话 [Canglang Poetry Commentaries]. Taipei: Jin Feng. Zhang Lu 张露. 2016. ‘The Tradition and Modern Transformation of “Geshi”’. (unpublished). Zhang Senlin 张森林. 2012. ‘The Emergence of Contemporary Scar Literature in Singapore’. Huawen wenxue [Taiwan, Hong Kong and Overseas Chinese Literature] 2 (Feb.). Zhou Decheng周德成 (Chow Teck Seng). 2012. Nihewo de gushi 你和我的故事 [The Story of You and Me]. Singapore: Lingzi Media. Zou Lu 邹璐, ed. 2016. Jinxi binfen: Xinjiapo 50 wei zhiming yishujia fangtanlu 金禧缤纷: 新加坡50位知名艺术家访谈录 [Bounteous Golden Jubilee: Interviews with 50 Singapore Renowned Artists]. Singapore: Federation of Art Societies (Singapore).

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About the Author Chow Teck Seng is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Cambridge researching on Sinophone and comparative literature, literary theory and bilingualism. He has lectured at the National University of Singapore and National Institute of Education, and translated art and literary texts. Writing poetry primarily in the Chinese language, he is the recipient of the 2014 Singapore Literature Prize and 2009 Golden Point Award (Poetry).

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Noisy Places, Noisy People Trouble and Meaning in Singapore Steve Ferzacca Abstract Making noise in a basement corner of an ageing mall in Singapore affords a small community of musicians, family and friends a gathering place to meet, eat, drink, smoke and jam loud amplified music. The Doghouse is a ‘device of saturation’, a way of making sense of self and others: it exists so that this sonic community can exact possibilities and creative potential within the limits of official use of public space. Bodily scales are realized in cosmopolitan spaces where local and global interrogations in dialogue, in space, and among things, make trouble and meaning. And so some noisy people have, for now, found a playground where their urban dreams and aspirations are imagined and realized. Keywords: Singapore, rock music, sonic ethnography, heritage

Introduction ‘These are atypical Singaporeans’, he said to me as we gulped down glasses of whiskey with belinjau chips. ‘This whole thing is not usual here’, he continued. ‘These are noisy people’. This conversation took place among a group of 20 or so Singaporeans, gathered together for food and drinks in celebration of the final day of Chinese New Year. The gathering point was located in the basement of an ageing mall in Singapore’s Central Business District (CBD). At the dead end of a hallway is a diminutive storefront neighbouring a drum studio attached to a storeroom. This dead end is affectionately referred to as ‘The Doghouse’. Named after the habitat of its proprietor, Lim Kiang, a rock and blues musician who was the founder of a legendary 1960s psychedelic band The Straydogs, the Doghouse is the

Chung, Simone Shu-Yeng & Mike Douglass (eds), The Hard State, Soft City of Singapore. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020 doi: 10.5117/9789463729505_ch07

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occasional home of a small community of amateur and semi-professional musicians, family members, friends and fans. Complete with a makeshift bar, guitars, guitar amplifiers and a few chairs, The Doghouse hosts this group on Mondays and Fridays for happy hour jams at the end of the work day. The group of mostly men congregate until the early evening hours to play music or jam, drink, smoke, eat and make a little trouble in this out-of-the-way place, deep in the basement of a bargain mall known for its overwhelmingly Burmese clientele. Coincidently, not long after this gathering, a story appeared in The Straits Times (2016: D5). The article outlines the ‘spirited debate’ emerging over the future and identity of one of Singapore’s ‘few independent art spaces’, The Substation. Some feared that the new director would move The Substation in a direction that would add to the ‘“dearth” of spaces available for live music, especially noisier events’. The promoter Shaiful Risan was quoted as saying, ‘The noisy people are part of society and they, too, need a playground’. ‘Music is prophecy’, Jacques Attali (1985: 3-5) once said. Thus, it was obvious to me I should be ‘listening to the noise’ in the basement of the mall for ‘echoes’ of local everyday assemblages of social organization in which states and the governed listen to each other with ‘fascination’. The Doghouse’s images, activities, and associations assembled among networks of human and non-human forces not only foretell and echo classic struggles between states and their peoples, but as a mode of cultural production, The Doghouse also troubles the state effect, affording possibilities for the kinds of ‘cultural diplomacy’ Chua (2012: 119) associates with ‘soft power’. State authoritarianism in Singapore severely restricts the influence of cultural diplomacy in the name of security concerns that are referred to as racial harmony. However, as a ‘refuge for residual irrationality’ (Attali 1985: 8), The Doghouse offers this community of musicians, friends, family and fans a ‘space of hope’ (Harvey 2000) where the logic of capitalism is circumscribed by a gift economy that governs the social in this ‘vernacular milieu’ (Pickering and Green 1987). In the following, I explore The Doghouse as one of these ‘playgrounds’. It is, as Cox (1998) suggests, a site of and for a kind of ‘local politics’: a ‘space of engagement’ located in a state-designated, -administered and -controlled ‘space of dependence’. In other words, this playground where a community of noisy people who celebrate the rocker and the rock-and-roll lifestyle, sharing in the value of a ‘cosmopolitan conviviality’ (Mignolo 2000), is a playground in which the past is anchored in the present, providing the potential for cultural diplomacy to occur in various forms – in this case, various forms of Singaporean ‘heritage’. It is within this frame that the potential for cultural

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diplomacy exists as a local experience, anchored in the Singaporean state’s spatial administration and accompanied by regulated modes of conduct. Zoning laws and restrictions against public performances, i.e., making noise, are not sanctioned by the Singapore Public Entertainment Act administered by the Media Development Authority (MDA). The hardness of this state presence is visible, obvious, and strictly managed, and has been since the formation of statehood. The Doghouse celebrates the rocker and the rock-and-roll lifestyle as it existed and is configured in both the past and present. Doghouse celebrations – happy hours, jam sessions and holiday celebrations – are emergent modes of cultural production that have ‘recourse to the past’ (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1995: 369). Presently, in the authoritarian atmosphere surrounding cultural production in Singapore, ‘heritage’ is a form of soft power. Unlike the ‘soft power’ of the cultural industries in the region as forms of ‘cultural diplomacy […] influencing the opinions and attitudes of transnational audiences’ that Chua Beng Huat (2012: 119-121) examines, The Doghouse assemblages are poorly positioned to shift audience perceptions, but instead are well-positioned to celebrate a cosmopolitan conviviality anchored in heritage and in the present that is local experience. It is the centrality of this cosmopolitanism embodied in the 1960s rock-and-roll images, activities and associations that are reproduced in the current local experience that becomes a focus for alternative forms of interaction and identity formation. It is this troubling of the state effect and the discursive projects of self and person in Singapore that the activities described here intend to explore (Butler 2006).

Noisy Places If music is organized noise, as Attali (1985: 4) suggests, then the Peninsula Shopping Centre located in the CBD of Singapore is a resemblance: the Mall is an organization of noisy urban space and urbanity itself that are thoroughly Singaporean and reflect Singapore’s location in both the Southeast Asia region and the world. There are noisier malls, especially in the noisier areas of town (Little India comes to mind). Focusing on sonics, this basement area of the Peninsula Shopping Centre is noisy – as noisy as one might expect, given the quantity and density of guitar shops. The jingle-jangle and abrupt explosions of amplified guitar chords and riffs are commonplace. Pyro-technical guitar wizardry featuring familiar styles of guitar play and various levels of skill loudly spill out of the doorways of the many shops.

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Figure 7.1 The Coleman Street entrance to the Peninsula Shopping Centre

Photograph by the author

Some of the shops are more user-friendly than the others, allowing customers to try out guitar gear at unlimited volume levels for unlimited periods of time. The largest and most successful guitar shop is the least guitar player friendly, while the smaller, boutique-like shops specialising in a limited number of brands and the shops featuring used gear are the most user friendly, and therefore, also the noisiest. Like many of the ‘veteran shopping malls’ in Singapore, the Peninsula looks aged and perhaps ‘forgotten by time’ compared to the new, sparkling shopping mall palaces complete with ice skating rinks, cineplexes, and so forth that are necessary for the contemporary shopping experience in this glistening Asian city. The guitar shops deal in new and used gear with all major internationally known brands represented. Some shops share brands, but the major shops have exclusive rights to certain internationally known brands, such as guitars and band gear made by Fender, Gibson or Ibanez, to name a few. The lesser shops deal in band gear made in the region, imported from China, Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand. Finally, global brands crafted in Japan are in abundance. While the overall collection has a regional flavour, the availability of the newest gear on the global market

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make these shops of special interest to musicians of all kinds from Singapore as well as Southeast Asia. An afternoon in any of the shops is an afternoon with the world. And an afternoon in the basement of the Mall affords everyday heterogeneous movements and the reassembling of humans and sonic things: a local site for making community.

Noisy People Among the emergent connections that not only haunt but also make up this place, some of the noisy people make a community – a vernacular community of musicians and friends who share in the love of sounds, in this case, cosmopolitan sonics locally performed and experienced at ‘The Doghouse’. The conventional wisdom that Singaporeans are uncritical conformists, risk averse and compliant participants in functional ensembles orchestrated by government or commercial enterprises is suspended in time and place when a group of atypical Singaporeans make noise and community. Noisy people in noisy places engage a cosmopolitan conviviality (Mignolo 2000) meant to challenge conventional wisdoms of the Southeast Asian city state. The Doghouse located in this basement is literally an offspring of Guitar 77, Kiang’s guitar shop which recently closed down. It is named after The Straydogs and, as Guitar 77 did, hosts happy hour jam sessions every Monday and Friday beginning around six in the evening. Guitar 77 jam sessions were well known in this basement crossroads and mostly tolerated rather than celebrated by the store’s neighbours. The time of the day when the sessions occurred helped foster tolerance, as many of the tailors, massage parlours, used electronics shops and CD stores would have closed for the day by the time the sessions began. Noise and temporality were symbiotic in this case, and the same symbiosis is crucial for The Doghouse sessions as well. If you make your way to this subterranean sonic marketplace when sessions are ongoing, the noise is unmistakable. Emanating from a corridor, the often explosive sounds of blues and rock music are played at high levels, significantly distorted for the listening pleasure of those Doghouse participants who frequent these weekly sonic gatherings. The participants at the Guitar 77 sessions and now those at The Doghouse are a group of men of various ages and backgrounds. Class is not a defining feature, although most are working men. Salesmen, shipping container brokers, schoolteachers, investment bankers, retail sales personnel, retirees, un- and underemployed individuals, and even professors are just a small sample of the occupations present at any one session.

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Figure 7.2 The Doghouse

Photograph by the author

Ethnic and religious backgrounds vary as well, although most of the men would be Chinese Singaporeans, and most would say they are Christians to varying degrees. Young and old alike can and do show up. The sessions are lively, and the sonics are always accompanied by copious amounts of alcohol and prepared finger foods purchased from stalls and restaurants nearby, or gastronomic contributions picked up by the participants on their way from work. There is no need for participants to bring their own gear – guitars and amplifiers are available on site for use. The gear is not the best of the best, as can be found in the other shops: they are mostly cobbled together, homemade, repaired guitars and amplifiers, even though some of the finest guitars and amplifiers available for retail sale are at hand in the storeroom. Participants plug into 1970s Ibanez tube screamer distortion pedals, Fender Twin Reverb amplifiers and other old-school gear while jamming to a musical genre equally old-school, be it rock classic like Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Little Wing’, AC/DC or Van Halen. At times, players jam to more contemporary tunes, but for the most part rock-and-roll classics dominate. Volume levels are generally high, as most players attempt to reach sonically orgasmic climaxes with each tune and with varying degrees of skill. In fact, this is the sonic structure for each jam. False starts and stopping mid-stream are common, though

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Figure 7.3 The Doghouse bar

Photograph by the author

they disrupt the flow. Sonic completions are celebrated with applauses and exclamations of ‘Wah’. Listening is accompanied by conversation, drinking and eating. No one is expected to simply sit down and passively listen. I participated as a guitar player in the Guitar 77 jam sessions. Nearly every Saturday during a year spent in Singapore, I made my way to the Peninsula Shopping Centre to jam with Kiang and others. The Saturday afternoon sessions resulted in a group of regulars, both the jammers and an audience who frequented the sessions. A regular set list of songs was developed as well. After several months we decided to form a band with the intent to play public performances at venues in Singapore. We named the band Blues 77, after the shop where we met. Since these early sessions, Blues 77 has performed at numerous locations in Singapore, as well as going on the road and performing in Malacca, Malaysia, and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The Doghouse jam sessions share forms of performativity with onstage jams and performances in Singapore. While onstage during our first performance as Blues 77 in 2012, Kiang approached the microphone just as we finished the first song of our set and announced to the crowd that ‘everyone here is talking cock’. In fact, Kiang often took these onstage opportunities to remind the crowd that the performance – which included us, the music, the audience,

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amplified sonics, alcohol, smoking, intoxication, loud boisterous crowd calls and responses, and the contained spatio-sonic scale, which threatened to sonorously escape all limits, physical or otherwise – contributed to the noisy affair as ‘talking cock’. ‘Talking cock’ is a visceral pleasure among men in Singapore, which Yao Souchou characterizes as ‘exuberant talk and masculine boasting, lubricated by delicious food and abundant alcohol’ (2007: 123). Intense, sometimes fiery and often explosive language and ideas are conjured, mostly in reference to the demands of the Singapore state and daily urban life in an intensely engineered cityscape. As Yao describes, in talking-cock sessions ‘the visceral and the public, the realm of the senses and the garrulous affairs of power, merge and assume a fetishistic form’ (Ibid.): ‘In the depth of alcoholic stupor, as dishes come and go, recollections of the salacious delight of the Bangkok massage parlour riotously meet reflections on the grand promises of the State and the wealth and power of the Lee family. The wild merging of subjects, the free marrying of the serious with the quotidian: these are the delights that have brought the men together’ (Ibid.: 132). These are the very ‘delights’ at the centre of many of the activities that Kiang, our associates and I f ind so pleasurable and meaningful. I f irst encountered these ‘delights’ as they were nurtured at the end of the workday during the guitar shop’s jam sessions. After the guitar shop was closed down, these ‘garrulous affairs of power’ were reproduced in The Doghouse with differing degrees of sonic and experiential intensity. Assembled over and over again, these Doghouse talking-cock sessions are composed as personal, but at the same time collective, cultural festivals of masculine performativity. The rocker or rock-and-roll lifestyle is the social category celebrated at these events. Kiang of course authentically embodies this social category – he was a founding member of Singapore’s perhaps most well-known 1960s rock band, The Straydogs. He himself is living heritage and embodies the rock-and-roll cosmopolitanism celebrated at these events. In The Doghouse, stored away safely in a battered green guitar case, is the group totem: an early 1970s white-ageing-to-cream coloured Fender Stratocaster guitar once owned by the legendary Singaporean guitarist and former Straydog Jimmy Appadurai. The guitar is a material embodiment that extends the cosmopolitanism celebrated during the jam sessions. The guitar has been signed by every person who has been an official member of the band across the years. I am proud to say that the guitar includes my signature. There is talk of donating the guitar to a museum or selling it for outrageous amounts of money because of its aura, history and significance for the history of The Straydogs and rock-and-roll in Singapore. The multiple inflected heritage embodied in the guitar, a heritage that includes both personal and national

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Figure 7.4 The Straydogs guitar signed by all members of the band

Photograph by the author

histories in one of the most iconic rock images and material objects – a white Stratocaster guitar – centres the energy of this community of musicians and friends. Kiang never has to bring the guitar out of the case; it sits locked up in a corner of the storeroom. Occasionally, the guitar is put on display as friends arrive for afternoon drinking and jamming. Whether we see it or not, everyone knows it is there. The material presence of the guitar signifies, despite mostly remaining stored away.

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The social that emerges around the afternoon happy hour jam sessions connects with cosmopolitan sonic history as a way of thinking and feeling embodied in the guitar – one that, as Steven Feld (2012) might say, is an acoustemology organized around a ‘convivial cosmopolitanism’ (Mignolo 2000: 721-748) anchored simultaneously in both history and the present. While this local community of interests and place is clearly assembled and re-assembled self-consciously among friends and family, the fluid, permeable and open-ended nature of this group means that anyone, at any time of any day – especially if that individual can recognize the not entirely nor always coherent ‘cultural biography’ (Koptytoff 1986: 64-91) embodied and projected in things and by the activities in the store, such as drinking, the blues, guitars, men talking cock and jamming heritage – can join in. Singaporeans of several generations, as well as non-Singaporeans, are welcome, as in my case. This small community in the vernacular milieu of The Doghouse endures with each new actualization and representation of itself, and so performs memorably. As Jacques Attali (2009: 8) argues, ‘any organization of sounds’ is ‘equivalent to the articulation of a space’, indexing ‘the limits of a territory’ and a ‘refuge for residual irrationality’. Like the Fender guitar made in America, the rocker way of thinking and knowing, and at times being in the world, become quintessentially Singaporean: a raucous, noisy, fiercely Singaporean cosmopolitanism sonically expressed in the Monday and Friday jam sessions where men can talk cock, drink, smoke and behave as atypical Singaporeans for a few hours of the day and week, in a space to the side of the proverbial road, out of the way of the mainstream (Koptytoff 1986). Upon closer examination, the entire affair is organized around exchanges. The group assembles and adheres through related reciprocal exchanges that are central to the fashioning of this cosmopolitanism. One can exchange and engage in cosmopolitan conviviality sonically – playing guitars or drums, singing, sharing unique experiences and stories, simply showing up and being present, or adding one’s voice to the sonics of these afternoon jam sessions. Reciprocity also involves things – alcohol, cigarettes, band gear, food, as well as other appropriate items of consumption that may add to the after-work activities that now take place in this out-of-the-way space in the basement of the mall. Those who travel outside of Singapore for business or pleasure are expected to use their duty-free limits on alcohol purchases as they make their way through the airport. These bottles of alcohol, mostly whiskey and scotch, are contributed to the Monday and Friday sessions. The most significant exchanges involve the songs themselves and the time involved in jamming. Songs everyone knows carry great value as methexic,

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Figure 7.5 A Doghouse gathering

Photograph by the author

rather than mimetic, vehicles for action through ‘covers’ that help move the action and community. Even though players may try to copy the chord changes and solos as they sound on recordings, ‘mutations are audible’ and expected (Attali 2009: 4). These opportunities to mimic and mutate hold great sonic, and therefore, community value. The time involved, as each participant is given a chance to jam, a chance to play music, is reciprocal as well. Hoarding jam time, such as by playing too many songs or taking up too many of the solo opportunities, can spoil the flow of events. In either case – whether participants play well-known or obscure music, play too long or too much – tolerance is the most valuable of all in The Doghouse regime of value. To exchange tolerance is to perform ‘ritual murder’, to sacrifice oneself for the collective – and to do so is proof of membership in the group. In this way, the sonics of The Doghouse sessions reach depth as deep sound. Community membership and fun are measured by the flow of the event and these exchanges. Johan Huizinga (1950) long ago noted the centrality of ‘fun’ in the flow of play. The noisy happy hours are play: significant events actualizing rule-bound, non-ordinary realities, temporally and sequentially emplaced in which participants are absorbed in the suspension of normal life (Ibid.: 13). As Geertz (1973) found in the deep play of the Balinese cockfight,

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in these talking cock sessions reciprocal exchanges are fundamental to the rules of membership that evoke masculine forms of conviviality: sonically charged, spatially organized, masculine cosmopolitan festivals of flow and fun, made more so by reciprocal exchanges small and large, deep and shallow, as Geertz (1973) perhaps would note. On a spatio-sonic scale, the noisy Doghouse activities reach beyond the physical spatial limits designated by their location in this out-of-the-way corner of a mall basement. The reach of the noise attracts attention, engaging in a ‘politics of noise’ (Donald 2011: 31-52). The reciprocal exchanges also attract attention and hold the potential for reaching beyond the event, as the potential for enduring relations forged through obligations are socially reproduced beyond The Doghouse space. This capacity to attract attention on various levels, involving various scales increases the stakes: as in the deep play of the cockfight, the sound or the noise becomes deep (Ferzacca 2012). As Aaron A. Fox notes for the honky-tonk bar scene of country music performers and fans, social relations and conduct in such communities are ‘mediated primarily by ritualized forms of intimate social interaction’ (2004: 30). E.P. Thompson (1993: 467-538), in his history of the use of ‘rough music’ as a form of social control and cultural critique in nineteenth-century working-class neighbourhoods and villages in England, illustrates how such communities of interest in vernacular milieu employ ritualized forms as a ‘mode of life in which some part of the law still belongs to the community and is theirs to enforce’ (Ibid.: 530). The guitar shops, basement, gear and people form the context in which those who gather for jam sessions at The Doghouse assemble as a ‘community of interest’ within a ‘vernacular milieu’ (Pickering and Green 1987: 1-38). Echoing Thompson with their concern about the ‘penetration of capital’, Pickering and Green describe the vernacular milieu as: The local environment and specific immediate contexts within which, as an integral part of their everyday life, people participate in non-mediated forms and processes of cultural life. By definition that cultural life is non-official and while it is at times assimilated into the national culture it is experientially felt and understood by its participants as quite distinct. (Ibid.: 2)

However, in the case of The Doghouse sessions, the music business and therefore, the penetration of capital, is essential to the network of things and people that assemble at The Doghouse on Monday and Friday evenings in this monument to bargain shopping. In fact, as a crossroads of local and

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global things and people, the mall charges the gatherings at The Doghouse in specific, or even ritualized ways, in spite of the central presence of business and music capitalism. It is this music capitalism that provides the cover for the jam sessions held at The Doghouse, as such activities border on the fringes of illegality: the jam sessions are disguised as business affairs rather than merely drinking, eating, socializing and playing loud music in a public space. Thus, for the vernacular milieu in this case, the penetration of capital is crucial and operates as a cover tune – a familiar and recognisable sonic expression that represents, while at the same time disguises, the affairs at hand. Without the other guitar shops and small storefronts, these activities would not be allowed to exist by the state authorities. Mall security and state-managed zoning and licensing ensure the public’s safety from such noisy disturbances.

Singapore The noisy use of public space, even an out-of-the-way public space, in the mall can easily be seen and heard as a ‘device of saturation’ (Foucault 2007: 45) in which the social fabric of this small community of musicians and friends is rendered. Michelle Duffy and Gordon R. Waitt argue that sonic experience ‘assembles and re-assembles relationships’, in particular ‘relationships that comprise home’ (2013: 472). In their considerations, sound and ‘sonorous assemblages’ afford ‘spatial and temporal experiences’ in making sense of the self and social identities through the performativity of social practices (Ibid.). In The Doghouse, Kiang and our friends reconfigure and resound the spatiality and temporality of a vernacular community as a noisy, sonorous assemblage anchored in both past and present networks of relations. However, while participation and membership in this community are validated by the noise and noisy activity in sensuous terms as a call to the human feeling of community, as an intensification in local experience in a vernacular milieu, the vital organization of the state effect is ever present – present, as Lily Kong illustrates for popular music in Singapore, through ‘both discursive and legislative acts’ (2006: 103-111). In fact, the presence of the state, its heritage and participation in past moral panics that help define the noise at play, is crucial to the spirit of the community. Legislation directed at limiting public performances, the use of noise in public space, and the possession and consumption of alcohol and drugs threaten participation in evening Doghouse activities. In this specific case, the real estate rates and rental policies of this shopping centre play a central role in containing

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‘the performative aspects of music embodying the sensual and the violent’ (Kong 2006: 103). The state and past moral panics haunt, and so afford, the normative social roles that in this case perform as noisy social identities and practices. In this way, The Doghouse’s images, activities, and associations assembled among networks of human and non-human forces present or afford ‘spaces of dependence’ (Cox 1998: 1-23). Sonic parameters and tolerances translated into spatial dimensions and proximities depending upon the prevailing allocations of designations at any one time constitute an ontology for spaces of dependence, organized according to state-sponsored urban and social planning in a ‘politics of scale’ in which sound is a crucial determining feature (Harvey 1985; Cox 1998; Judd 1998). Recently, Kelvin Low (2014), Jim Sykes (2014) and others have explored the spatial politics of noise in this city state. Their work highlights the role of the state in urban affairs in terms of the legislative and licensing procedures that manage social conflicts between different kinds of sonic activities – through the organization of both socio-spatial presences and absences. The local live music scene in Singapore assembles spatio-sonic scales within reach of the state, the durations of which are responses to access to public space for live music performances on one hand, and the difficulties of establishing, maintaining and sustaining a live music venue in a challenging business environment on the other. These ‘spaces of engagement’ are crucial sites ‘in which the politics of securing a space of dependence unfolds’ (Cox 1998: 2). The images, activities and associations that are the Doghouse-ascommunity verge on the cusp of legality. In fact, some of what goes on could lead to criminal charges. The community bar, the smoking and the use of public space for musical performance are all illegal activities, literally and figuratively speaking. The out-of-the-way location protects the community to some extent, but the noise also draws curious others who make their way to The Doghouse to see what the noise is all about. Drum students and instructors from a nearby drum studio shuffle past the group quickly without anything being said. Kiang and his fun time are well known by now in this basement, and therefore, tolerated. Complaints are infrequent. Nevertheless, this space of dependence haunts and so charges the activities and images that are composed during the afternoon Doghouse sessions with alternative ways of knowing, feeling and being in the world. The emphasis on reciprocal exchanges and the irrationality of economic values involved are sonic expressions of a political economy at odds with the rational, developmental state that is Singapore. In fact, The Doghouse exists because Kiang’s ‘business model’, a mirror image of his gift-based approach

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Figure 7.6 Jamming

Photograph by the author

to life made manifest in retail affairs, is flawed from the perspective of best business practices that ensure economic profit and gain. He often attributes his ups and downs in life to his unsound business practices. And while The Doghouse houses atypical Singaporeans and others involved in atypical Singaporean activities, being and behaving as noisy people in an out-of-the-way playground are not the only troubling characteristics of Kiang and his group of friends. The Doghouse sessions create memories, and it is this creative potential and actualization that troubles conventional images of typical Singaporeans. The state effect, embodied in these spatio-sonic engagements, is ever present. Talking cock, drinking and smoking, sonic expression and noise operates as a ‘vicarious image’ central to the play of The Doghouse sessions ‘beholds’ this community (Attali 2009: 5).1 As the opening comments attest, it is an image at odds with the imagination of typical Singaporeans – stereotypical ones I have encountered in conversations with professors characterising the manner of student achievement in their classrooms, expatriate businessmen complaining about the lack 1 In his political economy of noise, Attali notes that ‘for a genuine poet, metaphor is not a rhetorical figure but a vicarious image that he actually beholds in place of a concept’ (2009: 5).

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of entrepreneurial spirit, and Singaporeans themselves complaining of the absence of creativity in the city state. These national character studies agree on several personality traits exhibited by Singaporeans: Singaporeans are kiasi or risk averse; Singaporeans are kiasu or afraid of losing out; Singaporeans emphasize family, hierarchy and face; and finally, Singaporeans are stingy and rule-bound. Much of what I have experienced participating in activities and associations that take place in the guitar shop when it was open, in band performances in and outside Singapore, and at The Doghouse do not line up well with these stereotypes of Singaporeans. Expatriate and local images paint the Singaporean as a rather dull, dour character with little creative potential. Foreign talent, therefore, is required for innovation. Risk aversion is seen as a sign of this submissive, passive personality that obstructs true, authentic creativity. Many Singaporeans I have come to know cite numerous excuses for these stereotypical personality traits, with the state embodied in educational institutions and approaches to pedagogy, work-related incentives, real estate prices, authoritarian management of daily life and behaviour, and so on. In this way, the state effect is present as an exercise in ‘affective containment’ (Chua 2016) in Singaporean and other imaginations of Singaporean selves and persons.2 Whether risk averse or not – and The Doghouse sessions certainly prove otherwise – the drama here narrates the space of dependence the engagements reference and draw meaning from. As works of the imagination that provide some level of cultural critique in the context of social practice, the sessions trouble the state effect in creative ways. Making trouble and meaning in an out-of-the-way basement corner of an ageing mall in Singapore affords a small community of musicians, family and friends who gather to meet, eat, drink, smoke and jam to loud amplified music, the opportunity to transform the storeroom and small office space referred to as ‘The Doghouse’ into a ‘space of hope’, where making sense of self and others exact possibility and creative potential within the limits of the official use of public space. Bodily scales are realized in cosmopolitan spaces where local and global interrogations in dialogue, in space and among things make for trouble and meaning. And so some noisy people have, for now, found a playground where their urban dreams and aspirations can be imagined and realized. 2 This notion of ‘affective containment’ was proposed by sociologist Chua Hui Ching Emily during a presentation of this paper at a symposium organized by the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore, entitled ‘Hard State, Soft City: The Urban Imaginative Field in Singapore’ on 18 March 2016.

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Works Cited Attali, Jacques. 1985. Noise: The Political Economy of Music. Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Butler, Judith. 2006. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Oxford: Routledge. Chua Beng Huat. 2012. Structure, Audience and Soft Power in East Asian Pop Culture. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Chua Hui Ching Emily. 2016. ‘The Invisible Electorate: Political Campaign Participation as the Production of an Alternative National Space’. Paper presented at Asian Research Institute’s Symposium on ‘Hard State, Soft City: The Urban Imaginative Field in Singapore’, National University of Singapore, 17-18 Mar. Cox, Kevin. 1998. ‘Spaces of Dependence, Spaces of Engagement and the Politics of Scale, or: Looking for Local Politics’. Political Geography 17(1): 1-23. Donald, James. 2011. ‘Sounds like Hell: Beyond Dystopian Noise’. In Noir Urbanisms: Dystopic Images of the Modern City, ed. Gyan Prakash. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 31-52. Duffy, Michelle and Gordon R. Waitt. 2013. ‘Home Sounds: Experiential Practices and Performativities of Hearing and Listening’. Social and Cultural Geography 14(4): 466-481. Feld, Steven. 2012. Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra: Five Musical Years in Ghana. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Ferzacca, Steve. 2012. ‘Deep Sound, Country Feeling: Kroncong Music in a Javanese Neighbourhood’. ARI Working Paper Series No. 180, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. Foucault, Michel. 2007. Security, Territory, Population, Lectures at the College de France 1977-1978. Translated by Graham Burchell. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Fox, Aaron A. 2004. Real Country: Music and Language in Working-Class Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. Harvey, David. 1985. The Urbanization of Capital. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. —. 2000. Spaces of Hope. Berkeley: University of California Press. Huizinga, Johan. 1950. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. Boston: Beacon Press. Judd, Dennis R. 1998. ‘The Case of the Missing Scales: A Commentary on Cox’. Political Geography 17(1): 29-34. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. 1995. ‘Theorizing Heritage’. Ethnomusicology 39, 3 (Autumn): 367-380.

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Kong, Lily. 2006. ‘Music and Moral Geographies: Construction of “Nation” and Identity in Singapore’. GeoJournal 65: 103-111. Koptytoff, Igor. 1986. ‘The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process’. In The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 64-91. Low, Kelvin. 2014. ‘The Spatial Politics of Noise’. Paper presented at the 18th World Congress of the International Sociological Association, Yokohama, 13-19 July. Mignolo, Walter D. 2000. ‘The Many Faces of Cosmo-polis: Border Thinking and Critical Cosmopolitanism’. Public Culture 12, 3 (Fall): 721-748. Pickering, Michael and Tony Green. 1987. ‘Towards a Cartography of the Vernacular Milieu’. In Everyday Culture: Popular Song and the Vernacular Milieu, ed. Michael Pickering and Tony Green. Buckingham: Open University Press, 1-38. Sykes, Jim. 2014. ‘Towards a Malayan Indian Sonic Geography: Sound and Social Relations in Colonial Singapore’. Paper presented at ‘Transitions in Indian Music and Dance in the Colonial Indian Ocean, c. 1750-1950’, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA, 26-27 Apr. The Straits Times. 2016. ‘Debate over Future of Substation’. 1 Mar., D5. Thompson, E.P. 1993. ‘Rough Music’. In Customs in Common: Studies in Traditional Popular Culture. New York: The New York Press, 467-538. Yao Souchou. 2007. Singapore: The State and the Culture of Excess. Oxford: Routledge.

About the Author Steve Ferzacca is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Lethbridge, Canada. He conducts ethnographic research in the field of medical anthropology, but is currently researching a community of musicians in Singapore who congregate around several Singaporean 1960s rock music ‘legends’. He has received Senior Research Fellow appointments at Cornell University and the Asia Research Institute, and served as editor of Medical Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies in Health and Illness (2007-2009).

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Place Management/Making The Policy and Practice of Arts-Centred Spatial Interventions in Singapore Hoe Su Fern Abstract This chapter examines the role of the arts and artists in rejuvenating urban spaces in Singapore, where place management ideas are currently being used to rejuvenate parts of the city centre. Coexisting alongside state-driven initiatives are artist-led strategies where local art practitioners and organizations activate latent and/or under-utilized spaces. Through an analysis of policy documents and qualitative ethnographic fieldwork, this study explores the interplay between top-down aspirations and formal place management efforts, and the organic ways artists have activated and engaged with spaces. Ultimately, I argue that there is a need to balance formal governance structures with more support for artists engaging in organic, ground-up initiatives. Keywords: place management, arts-led urban rejuvenation, spatial intervention, placemaking, arts and culture

Introduction Singapore has won numerous accolades and garnered global attention for its physical infrastructure and iconic architecture. Despite these achievements, its government has recognized that certain parts of the city still lack a certain human vitality and buzz. Additionally, like other post-industrial cities, the production of a positive urban experience has been identified as that critical competitive advantage that would differentiate Singapore from other cities. Consequently, the Singapore government adopted a strategy called ‘place management’ in 2008 to inject ‘heart and soul’ into the city, and deliver a

Chung, Simone Shu-Yeng & Mike Douglass (eds), The Hard State, Soft City of Singapore. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020 doi: 10.5117/9789463729505_ch08

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liveable, globally competitive and amenity-rich urban environment for its increasingly educated and upper middle-class population. Currently, place management ideas are being used to rejuvenate areas within Singapore’s city centre, including the Civic District, Marina Bay and Bras Basah.Bugis precincts. Beyond aesthetic improvements such as restoring historic buildings, greening the streets and widening pavements, place management efforts have also harnessed arts and culture to animate public spaces. For instance, public art installations, arts-centred night festivals and concerts have been staged across Singapore’s downtown precincts, livening up public spaces there. Coexisting alongside these state-driven initiatives are artist-led strategies in which local arts practitioners and organizations have been activating latent and/or under-utilized spaces through site-specific performances, pop-up events and temporary takeovers. This chapter critically examines the nature, extent and implications of the emergence of place management as a place governance strategy for artistic and cultural production in Singapore. More specifically, I am interested in the stakes, tensions and implications of the role played by artists and the arts in rejuvenating urban spaces in Singapore. Through an analysis of policy documents and qualitative ethnographic fieldwork, this study explores the interplays between top-down aspirations, formal urban planning efforts, market-driven forces and the organic ways artists have activated and engaged with spaces. The chapter is organized into four sections. I begin by contextualizing place management within the emergence of arts-led urban rejuvenation in Singapore. In recent years, arts-led rejuvenation has come to be a key feature of cities, especially those that aspire to establish themselves as globally competitive cities. The arts has been reified as a resource crucial to the (re) imaging and branding of cities and regions (Bell and Jayne 2004; Evans 2005). Singapore is no exception. Yet, although there has been a wealth of literature examining the increasingly ubiquitous use of arts-led urban rejuvenation as a form of urban planning in cities across the globe, as well as a growing body of research on urban planning in Singapore, there is a critical lack of scholarship analysing the impact of arts-led urban rejuvenation on the arts in Singapore. This first section is therefore a timely intervention, briefly tracing the evolution of arts-led urban rejuvenation in Singapore from the mid-1980s to the present day, and highlighting the key trends and factors that led to the identification of place management as a key place governance strategy. The second and third sections determine some key features of place management today and demonstrate how place management has changed urban policy and practice by diversifying stakeholders and expanding its

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scope and potential. This has facilitated the growth of arts-centred spatial intervention projects. Broadly speaking, these interventions fall into three basic types: (i) state-initiated, (ii) commercially driven, and (iii) artist-led. A key aim of these two sections is to examine the reception and negotiation of the top-down place management strategy from the perspective of the arts and cultural practitioners. The final section concludes with some reflections on the stakes, outcomes and possible tensions arising from the utilization of place management as a place governance strategy. Ultimately, this chapter is but a starting point to develop a more open and enabling vision of artistic and cultural production in Singapore, as well as new terms for thinking about the relationships between the government, artists and space. It is but a humble attempt to identify and map the impact and interplay of policy with cultural intermediaries, arts practitioners and creatives.

Policy Background: Contextualizing Place Management within the Emergence of Arts-Led Urban Rejuvenation in Singapore The urban landscape in Singapore has garnered global recognition for having undergone tremendous change. Within less than half a century, the island city state has transformed from a third-world nation in the 1960s to a city that ranks positively in international city indices, especially in terms of efficiency, safety and cleanliness. Singapore’s urban development may be summarized by two key characteristics: (i) economic pragmatism and (ii) impermanence. First, its urban planning is firmly rooted within, and rationalized through, the rhetoric of pragmatism and economic survival. Economic use of the land is often given the highest priority and land-use policies are often rationalized through practical considerations such as efficiency and cost. According to Chua Beng Huat, governing Singapore with an ideology of pragmatism enables the government to respond to situations ‘at hand rather than in ideological commitment’ (1995: 1). This means that, as long as continuous economic growth can be ensured, some of the techniques and activities of the government may be ‘discrete and discontinuous’ acts: a ‘particular intervention in a particular region of social life may radically alter the trajectory that an early intervention may have put in place’ (Ibid.: 69). Similarly, in an article examining the post-1997 future of the Singapore economy, Linda Low argues that this ‘strategic pragmatism’ enables the Singapore government to implement the necessary changes for ‘continuous self-renewal to manage

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change and continuity’ (2001: 437). In particular, the emphasis on the need for economic survival justifies the ‘highly interventionist approach’ (Shaw and Ismail 2006: 188) of the government, including the Land Acquisition Act which enables the government to maintain near-monopoly of the land, and a highly coordinated bureaucratic structure that controls land use. Secondly, although this logic of pragmatism may be beneficial for state maintenance of economic growth and has enabled an accelerated path to becoming a developed ‘f irst-world’ nation, it has also resulted in an ever-changing urban environment where the only constant is change. As Rodolphe De Koninck, Julie Drolet and Marc Girard aptly describe, Singapore is in a ‘perpetual production of territory’ (2008: 80). To them, this constant redefinition of spatial and environmental bearings is a concerted form of control. More importantly, as William Lim has pointed out, this constant change has resulted in a devastated urban fabric that is ‘left with no distinct visual identity to speak of’ (2005: 133). Hence, although Singapore has won numerous accolades and garnered international attention for its physical infrastructure and architecture, its government recognized that parts of the city may still lack certain human vitality and buzz. The start of this recognition may be traced back to the mid-1980s, and was triggered by the need for Singapore to focus on the qualitative aspects of its living environment. Arts and culture were identified as expedient resources to transform and rejuvenate Singapore’s landscape into a culturally vibrant living environment. Like the majority of government plans, this identification was also firmly based on economic rationales. By 1980, Singapore had achieved rapid industrialization and sustained economic growth, with real per capita income doubling in the 1970s. This was also a period when many of the post-independence challenges, such as unemployment and housing, had already been effectively resolved. With this change in socio-economic status, the Singapore government in January 1985 announced Vision 1999, which aimed to achieve a city of excellence by 1999, defined as a ‘developed country’ with a ‘cultivated society’.1 Importantly, Vision 1999 recognized that cultural activities and facilities would influence the development of Singapore’s physical environment and the cultivation of a culturally vibrant society. This resulted in the formal allocation of space for arts and culture. In 1985, the first Conservation Master Plan was released to ensure the preservation 1 Vision 1999 was f irst publicly introduced as part of the campaign strategy of the ruling party, the People’s Action Party (PAP), in the 1984 General Elections. See PAP (1984).

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of heritage buildings. The 1991 edition of the Concept Plan – Singapore’s strategic land use and transportation policy – outlined plans to help Singapore ‘make a quantum leap’ in the quality of its living environment (Urban Redevelopment Authority [URA] 1991: 3). It also reiterated Vision 1999’s recognition of the need for ‘facilities to help a culturally vibrant Singaporean society to grow’, and formally identified the need to allocate land for art exhibitions and performance venues, as well as working spaces for artists to express their creativity (Ibid.: 26). This formal allocation of land for the arts eventually resulted in two key programmes – the Arts Housing Scheme (1985), which allocates subsidized workspaces to arts practitioners and organizations, and the Heritage Link project (1986), which was essentially a trail of historic buildings in the Civic District that would house both arts and heritage activities. Today, about 46,000 square metres have been allocated for arts housing, and there is a distinct cluster of museums and galleries – including the National Museum of Singapore (NMS) and Singapore Art Museum (SAM) – in the Civic District and Bras Basah.Bugis Precinct. During the 1990s, there was a more rigorous pursuit of policies and programmes to harness the arts for city branding and global competitiveness; that is, the arts were viewed as that factor that would give the city ‘that extra dimension of attractiveness’ (Ministry of Information and the Arts [MITA] 2000: 33). A notable programme was the Global City for the Arts project, first conceptualized in 1992 as a means to raise Singapore’s international profile as an important node in the global network of cities.2 This positioning is exemplified by a speech made by the then Minister for the Arts George Yeo about the importance of the arts for the economic development of Singapore: As our economy becomes more advanced, the arts become more important. We should see the arts not as luxury or mere consumption but as investment in people and the environment. We need a strong development of the arts to help make Singapore one of the major hub cities of the world […]. We also need the arts to help us attract talented individuals to come, work and live here […]. We also need the arts to help us produce goods and services which are competitive in the world market. (National Archives of Singapore [NAS] 1991) 2 This led to the launch of a policy roadmap in 1995 that was jointly released by the then Ministry of Information and the Arts (MITA) and the Singapore Tourism Promotion Board (STPB), followed by the three-part Renaissance City Report which was launched in 2000.

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A visible consequence of this top-down instrumentalization of the arts to create a culturally vibrant and globally competitive city is the growth of physical infrastructure. This includes the establishment of major arts institutions like the Esplanade, a performing arts centre that was developed at a cost of S$600 million. There have also been land-use zonings and demarcations for the arts. For instance, in 1995, Waterloo Street was identified as an arts belt, and Bugis-Rochor (which is known today as Bras Basah.Bugis) was positioned as the arts and entertainment district. While these are commendable feats for a land-scarce island whose ex-Prime Minister once claimed that poetry is a luxury Singapore is unable to afford, local scholars like Lily Kong (2000; Kong, Ching and Chou 2015) and arts practitioners including theatre doyen Kuo Pao Kun (1999), have raised questions about this instrumentalization of the arts as an urban cosmetics policy, and the potential for the construction of mega facilities like the Esplanade to marginalize local production and participation. In the mid-2000s, there was a heightened push towards cultivating a softer and more people-friendly cityscape. During his second National Day Rally speech in 2005, Singapore’s Prime Minister (PM) Lee Hsien Loong mapped out his vision to remake the city state into a vibrant city-home, which he defined as ‘a city which is full of life and energy and excitement, a place where people want to live, work and play, where they are stimulated to be active, to be creative and to enjoy life’ (Prime Minister’s Office [PMO] 2005). Importantly, Lee emphasized the importance of ‘heartware’ – the intangibles of society such as national identity, social cohesion, sense of belonging – which he related to the need for software, such as heritage buildings, art spaces and a vibrant street life. For Lee, software like arts spaces would attract global talent and tourists, as well as ‘anchor Singaporeans in Singapore’ (Ibid.). This emphasis on the critical role of the arts for transforming Singapore into a more attractive place to work, live and invest was formalized in the 2008 Master Plan, which had four key thrusts: enhancing Singapore as a home of choice, a magnet for business, an exciting playground, and a home to cherish (URA 2008).3 To achieve these thrusts, place management was proposed as a key strategy to inject cultural vibrancy and soul into the city. The next section outlines some of the key features and impact of place management. 3 The Master Plan is a land-use policy that translates the broad long-term strategies of the Concept Plan into detailed plans to guide physical development in Singapore in the medium term (10-15 years).

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The Emergence of Place Management as a Key Place Governance Strategy The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) broadly defines place management as ‘a coordinated, multi-stakeholder approach to improving precincts and making them more attractive for the benefit of its users’ (Chen quoted in Hoe and Liu 2016: 4). In 2009, the Place Management Coordinating Forum (PMCF) was established as an interagency group comprising the URA, National Arts Council (NAC), National Heritage Board (NHB), Singapore Tourism Board (STB), National Parks Board (NParks) and Sports Singapore (SportSG). In the same year, a National Place Management Framework was jointly developed and officially endorsed as a whole-of-government strategy. According to Jason Chen, Director of the Place Management Department from URA, there are f ive key drivers of place management (Ibid.). The first driver, government policy, is critical in defining the parameters of a precinct and determining its identity and vision. The second driver is the people; they are important in ensuring the vision for the precinct will be realized and that the precinct will be well utilized. The third driver is projects and programmes that inject activity into a precinct. The fourth driver is partnerships and ‘multi-stakeholder involvement’. Finally, the fifth driver is performance measurement through tools such as key performance indicators (KPIs), to ensure that place management efforts are effective and successful in creating a ‘positive experience’ for residents, users and visitors. As Chen elaborates, the overall aim of place management is to achieve ‘a very high level of operational competitiveness’ (Ibid.). Hence, place management efforts have mostly been operational in nature and are concerned with the fundamental and basic factors of a place. Some place management initiatives include urban design, installing wayfinding signage and ensuring pedestrian accessibility. For Chen, ensuring operational competitiveness would also enable the place to be more responsive to user needs and issues from the ground. Effective place management could also help generate economic gain, as investments would be drawn to a well-managed place. A key place management strategy is the earmarking of areas in the city centre for place management, where lead agencies in the PMCF are identified as the place managers. For instance, NAC and NParks are the co-place managers for the Civic District; NHB is the lead agency for the Bras Basah. Bugis precinct; URA is the lead agency for Singapore River, Marina Bay and Kampong Glam; and STB is the lead for Orchard Road, Chinatown and Little India. It is worth noting that in 2015, the government announced a S$740 million plan to revitalize the Civic District into ‘an integrated arts,

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culture and lifestyle precinct’ (Nanda 2015). The most visible result would be the opening of the National Gallery of Singapore, first announced in the 2005 National Day Rally Speech, and officially opened to the public on 24 November 2015. Developed at a cost of S$532 million, this visual arts venue consists of two national monuments – the former Supreme Court Building and City Hall. Other highlights of the Civic District revamp include renovations to key arts institutions such as the Victoria Theatre and Concert Hall, and the development of the Jubilee Walk, which is an eight-kilometre trail that wraps around public art features and arts landmarks such as NMS and the Esplanade. 4 Another key strategy is the deliberate planning and designation of certain areas as people-friendly public spaces. This is most evident in the design and planning of the Marina Bay Waterfront Promenade. Opened in 2010, the Promenade is a 3.5-kilometre waterfront route in the city centre that was built at an estimated cost of S$35 million. Built into the Promenade are several public spaces such as the Promontory, the Lawn, and the Event Square. Another key public space is the Youth Olympic Park, Singapore’s first art park that was developed to foster a greater sense of community ownership and connection with Marina Bay. The Park includes art installations made from different mediums by local youths. According to URA, there was a deliberate effort to create spaces that the community could go to (Hoe and Liu 2016). Unfortunately, unless there are site-specific events held in public spaces like the Youth Olympic Park, they are otherwise mostly empty spaces with manicured lawns devoid of social life. To encourage more activity in these public spaces, URA has introduced several programmes including the PubliCity initiative, which was first announced as part of the Draft Master Plan 2013. PubliCity, which has been renamed Our Favourite Place programme since 2016, provides support for projects initiated and implemented by the community to celebrate and enliven public spaces across Singapore. Other agencies, such as the Housing and Development Board (HDB), have also introduced similar initiatives. Beyond government agencies, URA has also been encouraging stakeholder associations to take the initiative to promote and create vibrancy in their respective precincts. One method utilized by URA is the Business Improvement District (BID) model. A BID is operated by the stakeholders in the area, including businesses and local residents, who vote to invest as a group 4 In 2014, the Government pledged S$65 million for the revamping of key cultural institutions and museums. This includes NMS, Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM) and the Esplanade. See Hon (2014).

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to improve their local environment. Where there is majority support, the stakeholders contribute to pay for these place-improvement initiatives. An example of a BID is the Singapore River One (SRO) association, a private sector-driven initiative by the major business operators active in Boat Quay, Clarke Quay, and Robertson Quay. Established in 2012, the funding for SRO will come from voluntary contributions from the stakeholders in the Singapore River precinct, together with co-funding from URA. Other precincts testing the BID model include Orchard Road, the Sentosa-Harbourfront area and Ann Siang Hill-Club Street. The Orchard Road Business Association (ORBA) has been working closely with members to launch initiatives including a membership card for employees, road closures and car-free zones. These initiatives hope to increase lively activities and opportunities to draw consumers to the businesses along Orchard Road. The whole-of-government shift towards place management has also influenced key arts and cultural policies and programmes. In particular, the latest cultural policy document – the Arts and Culture Strategic Review (ACSR) – identifies the synergy between the arts and place management efforts (Ministry of Information, Communication and the Arts [MICA] 2012: 94-95). This identification is part of the ACSR’s vision for the arts and culture to play a key role in strengthening the ‘software’ aspect of national identity, belonging and unity: ‘A nation cannot inspire and endear its people through infrastructural sophistication and material wealth alone. What binds a nation to its people are the softer things in life: family, friends, places, communities, memories. In the years ahead, social challenges […] will increasingly take centre stage. Arts and culture can play a key role defining Singaporean-ness in a globalized world [and] promoting social cohesion across population segments’ (Ibid.: 9-10). To achieve this vision, the ACSR aspires to broaden access and increase participation in the arts. This has resulted in government programmes placing (renewed) importance and emphasis on ‘community arts’ as an important cultural activity. According to Rebecca Li, Deputy Director of the Precinct Development Division at NAC, place management is a viable strategy, as ‘it is all about making the arts easier to access because it is now in a public realm, instead of being inside an institution’ (Li, personal communication, 16 March 2016). The use of place management as an urban rejuvenation strategy is not entirely unique to Singapore. As shared by the then PM Goh Chok Tong, in order to transform Singapore into a world-class city, the government would ‘study and match the distinctive features of the best cities in the world, adapting these to suit Singapore’s needs’ (The Straits Times 1998).

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This is also not uncommon. As noted by Aihwa Ong, a striking aspect of urban transformations in Asia is the ‘seemingly unavoidable practices of inter-city comparison, referencing or modelling’ (2011: 4). The BID, for instance, is a tried-and-tested place management model that has been utilized in numerous cities since the 1970s, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom. Indeed, as acknowledged by Chen, place management shares similarities with another globally popular strategy known as placemaking, which is a community-driven process to transform disused or under-utilized spaces into lively and authentic places that people are attracted to, and have ownership over, as a community (Hoe, Liu and Tan 2016). However, while place management and placemaking have similar goals of transforming spaces into places that have a distinct identity and vitality, where they differ is that place management is top-down, deliberately planned, and results-oriented. These differences can be observed in the different types of spatial intervention projects. Significantly, since the emergence of place management as a place governance strategy, there has been a growth of spatial intervention projects that are centred on arts and culture. Broadly speaking, there are mainly three types of arts-centred spatial interventions: (i) state-initiated, (ii) commercially driven, and (iii) artist-led. It is critical to bear in mind that the three types are not mutually exclusive: they commonly overlap and intersect. The categorization is meant to serve as a framework towards a better understanding of place management and the stakes, tensions and outcomes involved. The next section elaborates on these three types and their interplays.

Impact of Place Management: Three Types of Arts-Centred Spatial Interventions State-Initiated Spatial Interventions To activate the place management precincts, the Singapore government has organized and facilitated spatial intervention programmes, many of which feature and/or involve the arts and artists. These programmes are mostly event-centred and may be broadly categorized into two types: signature arts festivals and car-free zone events. Many of the place management precincts now feature a signature arts festival. The most popular and long-lasting is the Singapore Night Festival (SNF), which has been a major place activation event for the Bras Basah.Bugis

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precinct since 2008. For two weekends every August, the SNF celebrates the precinct’s heritage, arts and culture through a themed series of nocturnal events, art installations and performances. Stakeholders such as museums are encouraged to extend their opening hours and organize public events. In the earlier editions, the streets were also closed to motor vehicles.5 Since its first edition in 2008, the number of visitors has risen from 40,000 over one weekend to 680,000 over two weekends. Since then, other precincts have developed similar festivals, such as the i Light Marina Bay Festival and the Singapore River Festival. These festivals follow a similar format – they are nocturnal, open-air events featuring arts performances and installations. Light and video projections on the façades of buildings are a particularly popular feature. Although local arts practitioners and organizations are included, the more prominent and elaborate showcases have been those by international artistic producers. For example, the main acts for SNF 2016 and the light projections on the two main buildings – SAM and NMS – were mostly produced by non-local groups.6 There has also been an increasing growth of arts festivals held at the arts spaces and centres managed by NAC. The two newer arts housing centres – Goodman Arts Centre and Aliwal Arts Centre – hold at least two arts festivals a year. Gillman Barracks – a state-designated visual arts cluster that opened in 2012 – also organizes regular arts festivals. NAC has commissioned Arts House Limited (AHL) as place manager of the two centres.7 Aliwal Arts Centre holds two arts festivals a year: the Aliwal Urban Art Festival, usually in January, and the Aliwal Night Crawl in July. While tenants are strongly encouraged to participate in these festivals, not all do, mainly because of the small remuneration fee and/or their inability to work with the festival theme. Increasingly, tenants from all of the arts housing spaces managed by NAC are encouraged to participate and/or initiate place activation activities. 5 In the 2016 edition, only Armenian Street, which is a smaller non-main street, was closed to motor vehicles. 6 A main act was ‘Invasion’ by Dutch street theatre group Close-Act. It featured an aerial encounter between giant dinosaur-like creatures measuring at least three metres in height. The light projection at SAM was by NOVAK, a group from the United Kingdom. The piece is a re-imagination of science fiction novelist Jules Verne’s stories. The light installation at NMS was by Groupe LAPS from France. Titled ‘Keyframes’, it is a part-animation and part-moving sculpture piece that featured LED figures clambering up, down and across the building façade. 7 AHL is also the holding company that runs The Arts House, a multi-disciplinary arts centre with a focus on literary programming and the exhibition and performance spaces located at Artrium@MCI, a government building. It also organizes the Singapore International Festival of Arts.

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However, as aptly pointed out by Robin Loon, a founding board member of Centre 42, an arts centre under NAC that is dedicated to providing a conducive environment for the creation, documentation and promotion of text-based works for the Singapore stage: ‘It cannot be a directive […]. You raise the profile of the space but it is entirely [self-]generated. You throw money at me, I do it grudgingly […]. Then how are you ever going to uncover a sustainable kind of emotional link and bond with the community?’ (personal communication, 26 November 2015). Apart from festivals, an increasingly popular type of state-initiated spatial intervention is the activation of temporary car-free zones. To encourage a pedestrian-friendly and car-light city, URA has earmarked certain roads to be closed to vehicles during certain periods. URA has also initiated the Streets for People programme, aimed at encouraging the public to submit ideas and implement activities that reclaim roads and surrounding spaces for people. Thus far, most of the regular car-free zones are commercial streets lined with shops and food and beverage (F&B) options in downtown areas such as Bugis, Little India, and Kampong Glam.8 This includes Circular Road, Club Street, Ann Siang Road, Keong Saik Road, Bali Lane, Bussorah Street and Haji Lane. URA has also pilot-tested closures for major streets such as Orchard Road.9 In 2016, URA initiated a pilot-testing of the concept of Car-Free Sundays, which closes off roads around the CBD and Civic District to vehicles every last Sunday morning of the month.10 Although these state-initiated spatial interventions do offer artists more platforms to showcase their work, the type of work tends to be more celebratory and spectacular in nature. Apart from light and video projections 8 One example of an event that was supported by the URA’s Streets for People Programme is the Serangoon Gardens Street Festival, which was first held on 12 September 2015 and then again on 30 April 2016. Maju Avenue, a lane in the largely residential neighbourhood of Serangoon Gardens, briefly became the site of a ground-up arts festival organized by eZoo School of Music and Fine Arts. This child-friendly festival consisted mainly of music, performances and art involving the children from the School and residents in the area. 9 There have been two attempts to organize Pedestrian Nights at Orchard Road. Unfortunately, the trials were not successful because the key stakeholders of the area – the shop and mall owners – were not supportive of the idea, as their business did not improve from the extended opening hours and additional activities. In fact, many of the business owners felt that the road closure drew consumers away from their shops. It also meant hiring manpower for the extended opening hours. 10 Car-Free Sundays was meant to be a six-month trial. At the penultimate session, the government announced that the initiative would be extended from October 2016, with URA stating that it has not decided how long the practice would continue.

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on building façades, acrobatic acts and fire art stunts are also popular features of the nocturnal arts festivals. Additionally, although the spatial interventions may be art-centred or take place within an arts space, not all visitors will be interested in the arts offerings. For example, quite a number of Car-Free Sundays in early 2016 involved utilizing the National Gallery of Singapore as a mere venue for sports activities like yoga. Based on participant observation, I noted that the crowds at the nocturnal arts festivals tend to congregate around the pop-up F&B stalls. Finally, as these state-initiated spatial interventions have to achieve certain key performance indicators (KPIs) such as a targeted number of footfall, the type of arts activities favoured tends to be those that will attain mainstream or popular appeal. Commercially Driven Spatial Interventions The growth of state-initiated, arts-centred spatial interventions has resulted in commercial partners who are interested in capitalizing on this top-down recognition of the arts as an effective programming tool to activate spaces. To activate precincts like Chinatown and Bras Basah.Bugis, the state has also called for and even commissioned placemaking events and activities. This has resulted in the establishment of commercial organizations such as Shophouse & Co, Getai Group and Lope Lab. Generally, these organizations function as intermediaries that source, curate and present activities to activate spaces. For example, in April 2016, Getai Group was engaged by NAC to produce the Pop-Up Noise: Riverside Flow Festival, which featured about 30 young musicians and bands over two days. Meanwhile, Shophouse & Co has a retainer fee with the National Design Centre to promote and activate the space in the Centre as the nexus for all things design-related, and Lope Lab has been organising Urban Ventures, a street festival that activates Keong Saik Road when the road closure is in place. Most of these spatial interventions are marketed as events that enable re-imaginings of public space through the transformative powers of the arts and creative industries. However, while there are arts and creative activities such as music performances, art installations and craft workshops, in reality the majority of the activities are profit-driven. Like car-free zone events, many of these events also take place within commercial areas. Pop-Up Noise took place at Clarke Quay, a riverside place management precinct that houses mainly upmarket restaurants and night clubs. Meanwhile, Urban Ventures, as well as Keong Saik Carnival which was co-presented by Potato Head Folk (an F&B organization), took place at Keong Saik Road and Jiak Chuan Road – streets known for trendy cafes,

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chic eateries and bars. Spurred by declining retail sales and increasing vacancies in malls, real estate developers and retail landlords have also started to approach these commercial organizations to activate their spaces. For instance, from 28 to 29 May 2016, Shophouse & Co organized an ‘OYay Summer Weekend Market’ at Wheelock Place, an office tower with retail facilities sited in the middle of Singapore’s busiest shopping street – Orchard Road. These events also seem to follow a prescriptive formula for success. Most include an ‘arts market’ with stalls selling bespoke and artisanal commodities such as personalized jewellery and terrariums, kitsch nostalgic items such as cushions in the shape of old-school gem biscuits, and tote bags featuring traditional local food such as kuehs. Apart from this section that commodifies arts and crafts, there will also be food and beverage stalls selling novelty and trendy items such as truffle fries, salted egg yolk items, specialty coffees and craft beer. Although this prescriptive formula has successfully attracted footfall, members of the public access the spaces mainly as consumers engaged in conspicuous consumption. Although these commercially driven spatial interventions do generate greater awareness and appreciation of local heritage and cultures, it is questionable whether these organizations take into account the site-specificity and history of the spaces. There is also concern about whether these spatial interventions contribute to some form of gentrification, and in the process transform the original social-spatial fabric of these places. For example, in 2014, Shophouse & Co took over a shophouse for four weekends in King George’s Avenue, which is situated within an older public housing neighbourhood occupied primarily by an elderly community, with hardware resellers, small automotive shops and temples. Today, the shophouse is occupied by The Refinery, an upmarket grill bar with a co-working workspace. The takeover also occurred during a period where many trendy cafes, design and music studios were moving into the surrounding areas. Artist-Led Spatial Interventions Coexisting alongside these state-initiated and commercially driven initiatives are artist-led strategies and tactics in which local arts practitioners and organizations have been activating latent and/or under-utilized spaces through site-specific performances, pop-up events and temporary takeovers. It is critical to note that although the term ‘place management’ is relatively new, many of the artist-led spatial interventions and their processes, ideas and tactics are not.

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One example of a temporary takeover is the Latent Spaces project initiated by the local visual artist Chun Kai Qun. This project was first conceptualized when Chun was in search of a venue to exhibit his artwork at Haw Par Villa, a less-visited theme park depicting scenes from Chinese history, mythology and folklore. Chun decided to cold-call Haw Par Villa through Singapore Tourism Board (STB), to enquire about the possible use of the Jade House, a disused site within the theme park. After STB granted Chun use of the theme park’s unused spaces, Chun involved his twin brother, artist Chun Kai Feng, and the arts educator Elizabeth Gan in the takeover and curation of the site. The Latent Projects team undertook the renovations of the disused spaces themselves. They also curated exhibitions and activities, many of which were experimental art project showcases and socially conscious projects. The first exhibition was entitled Nameless Forms, which featured works responding to the site’s defunct and idle spaces and materials. Another exhibition – Looking Closely at Things – featured still-life drawings of abandoned sculptures in Haw Par Villa. Latent Spaces also hosted the Awaken the Dragon workshops, a community arts project by the art collective Post-Museum to raise awareness and knowledge about the two remaining dragon kilns in Singapore.11 Latent Projects occupied Haw Par Villa for a period of two years. The Chun brothers have since converted Latent Spaces into a broader, more fluid model whereby they hope to adopt more idle spaces in Singapore and reinvent them as platforms for experimental art and social entrepreneurship. Instances of artist-led site-specific performances include those organized by Drama Box, a leading socially engaged, contemporary theatre company. Drama Box has been actively producing site-specific community theatre projects. A key project is the IgnorLAND series, conceived to study the shared memories and forgotten stories of significant spaces in Singapore. This series was staged at Labrador Park and the old Nantah University Arch in 2007, Geylang in 2010, and Bukit Ho Swee in 2014. In 2010, Drama Box started to conceptualize a mobile performance space that could be transported around Singapore and thereby hopefully bring art to more people. The end product is GoLi, which consists of three inflatable pop-up theatre structures. GoLi was most recently used in July 2016, for the fourth edition of IgnorLAND at Dakota Crescent, one of Singapore’s oldest public housing estates that was earmarked for redevelopment in 2014. Drama Box invested more than six months researching and connecting with the 11 For more information on dragon kilns, please see: http://www.fom.sg/Passage/2012/​ 01dragonkilns.pdf [accessed 13 Aug. 2016]

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residents of Dakota Crescent. The performance included a self-guided tour and interactions with several residents, with the intention of challenging audiences to reflect on the impermanence of the urban living environment. An example of a pop-up art project is the Kapor Chatparty by the Octopus Residency, a ground-up initiative aimed at connecting community and creative energies to create space for meaningful conversation. The main site of the initiative was the Singai Tamil Sangam (STS) building, a community building that houses the headquarters of Singai Tamil Sangam, a registered Tamil volunteer organization, and Maya Dance Theatre, a contemporary dance theatre company started in 2007.12 The STS building is situated within Kampong Kapor in Little India, a conservation district that is today better known as an area frequented by migrant workers from India.13 Kapor Chatparty took place from 19 June to 13 August 2016, and encompassed a variety of community and arts programmes, most of which were open and free to the public on Sundays. Examples of programmes included free community services for migrant workers, including health assessments, art workshops, walking trails, community picnics and games. Post-Museum also organized an edition of their Singapore Really Really Free Market (SRRFM), a temporary pop-up market where nothing is for sale and everything is shared for free.14 Participate in Design (P!D) was also invited to provide a platform for the community of Kampong Kapor and Little India to appreciate the positive strengths and assets that diverse individuals, such as local residents, migrant workers and businesses, bring to the neighbourhood. Over three weeks, P!D conducted activities that ranged from a mapping event where the community was asked to share their favourite place in the neighbourhood, to a community potluck party where 12 Unfortunately, in 2016, the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) designated the land for commercial use. Unable to compete with commercial tender bids, the remaining tenants moved out of the building in September 2016. 13 In recent decades, Singapore’s population has increased dramatically due to a liberal immigration policy. The influx of foreigners, who now make up around two out of five residents, has put a growing strain on jobs, housing and infrastructure. It has also triggered public concerns about the dilution of Singaporean identity and resulted in growing social tensions. Today, the Little India district is best known as the site of the Little India Riot. On 8 December 2013, about 300 migrant labourers from India were involved in a two-hour long riot that started after a fatal road traffic accident in which a private bus killed a migrant construction worker. 14 The SRRFM is the Singapore chapter of the RRFM, a movement that is based on the concept of giving and building a community based on sharing resources, caring for one another, and improving the collective lives of all. For instance, the SRRFM features ‘stalls’ where people voluntarily share their goods such as books, toys and food, or services like yoga, story-telling, singing and tarot card-reading. Since 2009, the SRRFM has been run by Post-Museum.

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everyone was invited to share a meal, including dishes with ingredients sourced from Little India. A key common feature amongst these artist-led spatial interventions is the effort made to engage and interact with the local community and/or history of the site. Arts and culture are used to build connections between people and places. The focus is not just on the tangible outcome of activating the space, but also on the process of deriving that outcome and the ability of everyday citizens to be involved in the process. Regrettably, although the number of artist-led spatial interventions is growing, challenges and hurdles do remain. Though Latent Spaces managed to occupy Haw Par Villa for about two years, their exit from the space was not an ideal process: They [STB] wanted something closer to what they are used to, like F&B or a history museum. They thought we didn’t fit in the plan. So they made things very difficult for us. They practically forced us out. On a daily basis, the place manager will make a lot of complaints. For instance, there is a flower pot somewhere, they will complain there will be mosquitoes. Or if you have a female coming to the show, and she sits on the staircase. And the place manager will come and say, don’t sit until like that. That’s the thing. The people there are not arts-oriented. The ground people really hate art, and it makes it very difficult for us. The thing is, the higher level up are maybe okay. But the lower down people – they have a fear of artists, they think we are all irresponsible types, troublemakers. But no, we are people who can write grants and proposals. How trouble­maker can we be? But the ground people have this kind of impression of you – the moment they know you are an artist, they have a stigma against you. Any problem, they will think it’s you. (Chun K. F., personal communication, 19 February 2016)

Another challenge is the need to overcome state regulations on the initiation of arts projects in public spaces. In Singapore, all arts activities and events, including plays, music and dance performances, art exhibitions and concerts, require an Arts Entertainment Licence granted by the Media Development Authority (MDA). For their week-long GoLi festival at Serangoon in 2015, Drama Box received the licences for two performances just one day before the festival’s opening. As both performances received an advisory licence for mature content, Drama Box had to place canvas flaps over the entrances to the inflatable theatres so that the shows could take place in an ‘enclosed space’. They also had to place signs outside the theatres indicating the

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advisories given. This contradicted their initial plan, which was to give the public easy access to arts performances, especially since these two had an interactive element.

Conclusion: Making Sense/Cents of Arts-Led Urban Rejuvenation in Singapore The arts and artists need space to thrive. However, as much of the land and existing arts infrastructure in Singapore are state-owned, the lack of space – literally and figuratively – remains a key challenge. At a conference on ‘Space, Spaces and Spacing’ organized by The Substation in 1995, Cultural Medallion winner T. Sasitharan noted that the ideology of Singapore as a ‘spatially-impoverished nation’ is ‘a narrative designed to foster a controlled hysteria, a siege-mentality, a perpetual crisis of survival pegged to the fact that we are small, devoid of resources and with a future too rueful to contemplate’ (quoted in Lee 1996: 54).15 He also astutely identified how this narrative is tied to the notion that there is limited space for the arts in Singapore, which many arts practitioners have bought ‘without subsequently learning the strategies of reclamation’ (Ibid.: 55). According to Henri Lefebvre, ‘space is never empty: it always embodies a meaning’ (1991: 54). People create space, and the built environment is structured through social interactions and relationships. Thus, the production of space is an inherently dynamic and political project. Spaces are neither neutral nor static. To engage in what Sasitharan calls the ‘strategies of reclamation’ (quoted in Lee 1996: 55), one must understand the changing and contested notions of space. This includes an understanding of the state’s urban planning strategies and programmes. This chapter has demonstrated how place management has changed urban policy and practice in Singapore by diversifying stakeholders, and expanding its scope and potentialities. This has opened up more opportunities and sites for arts practitioners and organizations to engage in strategies of reclamation, or at least have greater access to what urban sociologist William Holly Whyte calls the ‘huge reservoir of space yet untapped by imagination’ (1989: 75). While state-initiated and commercially driven initiatives do present opportunities for arts practitioners to utilize and activate public spaces, 15 Instituted in 1979, the Cultural Medallion is Singapore’s highest accolade honouring individuals whose artistic excellence as well as contribution and commitment to the arts have enriched and made a difference to Singapore’s arts and cultural landscape.

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many of the current initiatives tend to be profit-oriented, opportunistic and prescriptive. A key challenge is the risk of homogeneity, where similar formulas are used to activate multiple spaces. There is also a danger that these spatial interventions will foster a city where ‘economic spectacle replaces cultural substance and aesthetics replaces ethics’ (Kong 2000: 423). They also risk ignoring issues such as how heritage and narratives of local experiences are coming together with the state discourse of place management as a motor of urban regeneration, and the impact on local residents of organizing programmes aimed at increasing visitor footfall in the neighbourhoods. Meanwhile, artist-led spatial interventions tend to fall into the realm of what Mike Lydon and Anthony Garcia term ‘tactical urbanism’: an ‘approach to neighbourhood building and activation using short-term, low-cost and scalable interventions and policies’ (2015: 2). To them, tactical urbanism has no one-size-fits-all solution, but instead encompasses a rich array of ‘decentralized, bottom-up, extraordinarily agile, networked, low-costs and low-tech’ responses to building social capital between people and places (Ibid.: xii). The term ‘tactical urbanism’ itself highlights a distinction from strategic urbanism. In The Practice of Everyday life, Michel de Certeau (1984) notes that there are two types of power: strategy and tactic. He defines strategies as those produced by institutions and formal structures of power, while ‘consumers’ utilize tactics within the boundaries set and defined by strategies (Ibid.: 28-29). For Certeau, tactics are the means used by those who lack formal power to effect change and alter their everyday experiences (Ibid.: 30). Artist-led spatial interventions also highlight people’s collective power to reshape the city, or what Lefebvre (1991) calls ‘the right to the city’. According to Lefebvre, the production of space is a ‘trialectical process’ in which conceptions, perceptions and lived experiences of space interact (Ibid.: 20). He argues for the importance of ground-up spatial appropriations. His ‘right to the city’ concept highlights the importance of allowing all citizens to participate in the use and production of urban spaces so that the social value of urban space is weighted equally with its exchange value. To him, when economic systems value urban space mainly for its exchange value, the true potential of urban life is suppressed. Indeed, the artist-led spatial interventions showcased in this chapter assert the importance of use values, rather than the exchange or economic values of spaces. Additionally, artist-led spatial interventions are fertile grounds for new modes of artistic expression, cultural citizenship and community development. More importantly, they provide a social infrastructure that possesses the capacity to soften hostile architecture and build connected communities.

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Thus, although the recent shift in governmental focus towards place management has laudable policy goals and has offered local artists and creatives more tools, sites and opportunities for art-making and creative activities, there is also a need to further balance formal governance structures with more support for artists to engage in organic and ground-up initiatives. In an early reflective piece, Kuo Pao Kun raised pertinent questions about the state’s decision to provide more funding to state arts institutions such as the Esplanade than for people-initiated projects: ‘Is not the people’s spontaneous involvement and active participation of the arts the ultimate objective of state promotions? Why is the state giving priority and overwhelmingly larger support to projects controlled by its own agencies instead of giving such resources to beef up down-up people-initiated ones? Why has it been necessary for the state to expand and strengthen its domination in the arts, instead of enabling the non-government enterprises to grow with state assistance?’ (1999: 19) Kuo’s questions highlight how polices and institutionalized practices are in and of themselves insufficient to adequately support the development of spaces conducive to artistic and creative practices. This is not to discount the role that policies and state programmes like place management play in nurturing creative spaces. For instance, regulation is required to protect spaces from the twin effects of gentrification and cultural commodification. Rent control and funding policies also help offset some of the risks involved with producing arts-centred spatial interventions, while initiatives that create festivals celebrating heritage, social diversity and creativity contribute to fostering an overall landscape of acceptance and difference. Policies should therefore ensure that there will be sufficient room for flexible use. As the architect Herman Hertzberger suggests, ‘the measure of success is the way that spaces are used, the diversity of activities which they attract, and the opportunities they provide for creative reinterpretation’ (1991: 170). In this way, place management as a strategy will be better placed to accommodate social dynamics and vernacular creativity.

Works Cited Bell, David and Mark Jayne, eds. 2004. City of Quarters: Urban Villages in the Contemporary City. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing. Certeau, Michel de. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Chua Beng Huat. 1995. Communitarian Ideology and Democracy in Singapore. Oxon: Routledge.

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De Koninck, Rodolphe, Julie Drolet and Marc Girard. 2008. Singapore: An Atlas of Perpetual Territorial Transformation. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press. Evans, Graeme. 2005. ‘Measure for Measure: Evaluating the Evidence of Culture’s Contribution to Regeneration’. Urban Studies 42(5/6): 959-983. Hertzberger, Herman. 1991. Lessons for Students in Architecture. Rotterdam: Uitgeverij 010 Publishers. Hoe Su Fern and Jacqueline Liu. 2016. IPS-SAM Spotlight on Cultural Policy Series Two: Full Report on Roundtable on Place Management and Placemaking in Singapore. Available at http://lkyspp.nus.edu.sg/ips/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/09/ Full-Report_Roundtable-on-Place-Management-and-Placemaking-in-Singapore_150316.pdf [accessed 13 Aug. 2016]. Hoe Su Fern, Jacqueline Liu and Tan Tarn How. 2016. ‘Getting to the Heart of Great Public Spaces’. The Straits Times, 7 Jan. Hon Jing Yi. 2014. ‘Govt to Invest $65 Million Revamping Singapore’s Museums and Cultural Institutions’. TODAY, 11 Mar. Kong, Lily. 2000. ‘Cultural Policy in Singapore: Negotiating Economic and Sociocultural Agendas’. Geoforum 31: 409-424. Kong, Lily, Ching Chia-ho and Chou Tsu-lung, eds. 2015. Arts, Culture and the Making of Global Cities: Creating New Urban Landscapes in Asia. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. Kuo Pao Kun. 1999. ‘A Field of Dreams: Repositioning the Arts’. The Arts Magazine (Nov./Dec.): 19-20. Lee Weng Choy, ed. 1996. Space, Spaces and Spacing. Singapore: The Substation. Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The Production of Space. Translated by Donald NicholsonSmith. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Lim, William S.W. 2005. Asian Ethical Urbanism: A Radical Postmodern Perspective. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing. Low, Linda. 2001. ‘The Singapore Developmental State in the New Economy and Polity’. The Pacific Review 14(3): 411-441. Lydon, Mike and Anthony Garcia. 2015. Tactical Urbanism: Short-Term Action for Long-Term Change. Washington, DC: Island Press. Ministry of Information and the Arts (MITA). 2000. Renaissance City Report: Culture and the Arts in Renaissance Singapore. Singapore: MITA. Ministry of Information, Communication and the Arts (MICA). 2012. The Report of the Arts and Culture Strategic Review. Singapore: National Arts Council. Nanda, Akshita. 2015. ‘Singapore Budget 2015: $740 Million Invested on Civic District Revamp’. The Straits Times, 12 Mar. National Archives of Singapore (NAS). 1991. ‘Speech by BG (RES) George Yeo, AG Minister for Information and the Arts and Senior Minister for Foreign Affairs,

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at the 1990 Cultural Awards Presentation Ceremony at the Marina Mandarin on 25 March 1991 at 8.00 pm’. Transcript. Ong Aihwa. 2011. ‘Introduction: Worlding Cities, or the Art of Being Global’. In Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global, ed. Ananya Roy and Aihwa Ong. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 1-26. People’s Action Party (PAP). 1984. ‘Join Us to Build a City of Excellence’. Petir (Dec.). Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). 2005. ‘Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s National Day Rally 2005’. Transcript. Shaw, Brian J. and Rahil Ismail. 2006. ‘Ethnoscapes, Entertainment and ’Eritage in the Global City: Segmented Spaces in Singapore’s Joo Chiat Road’. GeoJournal 66(3): 187-198. The Straits Times. 1998. ‘S’pore as World-Class City – 4 Areas of Focus’. 19 Jan. Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA). 1991. Living the Next Lap: Towards a Tropical City of Excellence. Singapore: URA. —. 2008. Master Plan 2008. Singapore: URA. Whyte, William Holly. 1989. City: Rediscovering the Center. New York: Doubleday.

About the Author Hoe Su Fern is currently Assistant Professor and Assistant Program Lead of Arts and Culture Management at the Singapore Management University. She holds a Ph.D. in Culture and Communication from the University of Melbourne. Her research areas include arts and cultural policy studies, urban cultural economies, arts spaces and creative placemaking.

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Conviviality in Clementi The Flowering of a Local Public Housing Community Goh Wei Leong Abstract There exists in us a desire for creative expression and for autonomous intercourse that material comforts cannot replace or satisfy. This desire for convivial interactions, Ivan Illich persuades us, cannot be satisfied by mere industrial productivity. Inspired by Lisa Peattie’s stylized description of community as pointing to the human need for roots and conviviality as pointing to the human need to flower, I set off in search of roots and flowering in my neighbourhood – Clementi, Singapore. In this endeavour, I analyse how Clementi’s roots – physical characteristics of shared spaces, community norms, and public characters – have enabled its flowering: the bubbling of social energy in small, sometimes dissenting ways, the ebb and flow of sociable pleasure, and the development of social capital. Keywords: conviviality, third places, mixers, neutral grounds, sorting areas, public characters

Conviviality, Community and Clementi New Town ‘Conviviality’ refers to ‘the autonomous and creative intercourse among persons, and the intercourse of persons with their environment’, which stands in contrast to ‘the conditioned response of persons to the demands made upon them by others, and by a man-made environment’ (Illich 1975: 24). A white-collared worker personalising his work desk with photographs of friends and family, fellow commuters having a conversation over a newspaper article, retirees tending to their community garden of their own accord – these autonomous and creative intercourses are all examples of convivial interactions in the city. While these activities might seem mundane and

Chung, Simone Shu-Yeng & Mike Douglass (eds), The Hard State, Soft City of Singapore. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020 doi: 10.5117/9789463729505_ch09

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trivial, Ivan Illich persuades us otherwise, asserting that, ‘as conviviality is reduced below a certain level, no amount of industrial productivity can effectively satisfy the needs it creates among society’s members’ (1975:  24). What might we desire that industrial productivity and, by extension, material gains cannot effectively satisfy? We might probe further by questioning whether convivial interactions are indeed necessary for members of human society, and furthermore, are non-substitutable by industrial productivity and its accompanying material gains. Intuitively, I think the answer is yes: convivial interactions are necessary for members of society, as they contribute to a unique sense of happiness and fulfilment. I find the following comparisons helpful when considering Illich’s proposition that a minimum level of conviviality is essential for individual happiness and, by extension, the well-functioning of society: – Living in a neighbourhood where individuals are able to autonomously and openly engage in conversations, as opposed to living in a neighbourhood where individuals are inhibited from doing so by spatial or social elements, or by the laws of the land. – Working in an environment where one’s creative input is appreciated and encouraged, as opposed to working in an environment where creative expressions are curtailed. – Having the freedom to exert creative influence over one’s living environment, such as decorating one’s public housing block during festivities or conducting activities in nearby parks and woods, as opposed to interacting with these built and natural spaces only in predetermined, non-negotiable ways. Applying this insight to the city, conviviality becomes all the more important given the city’s role as a nexus of sociopolitical activity, where bodies of the state reside and where sociopolitical decisions are negotiated. Should members of society from various walks of life and different socioeconomic classes be engaged in convivial interactions in their living, working and recreational environments, they could find themselves better informed of one another’s sociopolitical interests. When negotiating the country’s sociopolitical consensus, these more informed members of society could then leverage their past convivial experiences with one another to articulate their interests and work towards creative solutions of partial, if not comprehensive, inclusion. Reflecting on these and other examples of convivial interactions in my everyday life, I find myself agreeing with Illich’s proposition that there

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exists a desire in us for creative expression and autonomous intercourse, which material comforts cannot replace or satisfy. Community as Roots for Conviviality If conviviality bears such significance in our pursuits of happiness and the well-functioning of society, how then might it be encouraged, especially in a city state like Singapore? Lisa Peattie’s conception of the relationship between conviviality and community facilitates this inquiry: ‘Where “community” points to the human need for roots, “conviviality” points to the human need to flower, to create out of the mundane materials of life a special occasion, whether it is a dinner party or a piece of political theatre presenting a vision of the future’ (1998: 247). When considering Peattie’s description, I see community as the foundation for human flourishing. In this conception, the fertility or barrenness of the community is key. How then, might our roots lead to our flowering? Having made the connection that conviviality is situated within and related to community, in the way flowers are related to roots, Peattie astutely recognizes that government or other urban planners from outside a community cannot deterministically plan conviviality into existence, since a community – with its constituent physical spaces, norms, activities and public characters – consists of dynamic, voluntaristic arrangements among autonomous individuals. These arrangements or social agreements possess both temporal and territorial characteristics – spaces within a housing estate can be reconfigured and utilized differently by different groups of individuals at different times of the day. This complexity makes deterministic planning an ineffective, and potentially futile, enterprise. As noted, autonomy and creativity are at the heart of conviviality; approaching with the intent of planning conviviality into being would be misguided. Instead, we should focus our efforts on creating environments that are conducive for conviviality through the open design of physical spaces and by facilitating the development of the relevant norms and activities in a community. Inspired by Peattie’s stylized description of community and conviviality, I set off in search of these roots and flowerings in my neighbourhood – Clementi New Town (henceforth referred to as ‘Clementi’). Anchoring this study is an interplay between two reasoning processes. The f irst is inductive reasoning, through which I first seek out convivial interactions in Clementi before postulating what community characteristics might have formed the roots of the flowering observed. Specif ically, to locate

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convivial interactions between persons and their environments, I search for examples where individuals have exerted creative inf luence over their environments. As for autonomous, creative intercourse between persons, I search for what Peattie describes as ‘sociable pleasure’, or ‘social energy in all sorts of small or dissenting manifestations’ (1998: 247). Here, ‘sociable pleasure’ should be understood as autonomous interactions between persons undertaken as an end in themselves, not towards an economic transaction, with a clear emphasis on use value rather than exchange value. In both types of conviviality, specific acts of dissent, such as acts of non-compliance with government regulations or non-conformance with prevailing community norms, can serve as useful markers of conviviality, as these acts are likely to have been motivated by the individual’s desire to interact in new, creative ways with his or her living spaces and other members in the community. Secondly, I rely on deductive reasoning to identify the ‘third places’ conceived by Oldenburg (1999) and ‘public characters’ described by Jacobs (1961), and to examine the degree to which these spaces and individuals have contributed to conviviality in Clementi. Throughout the study, I make full use of my personal history and connections with this neighbourhood, drawing upon anecdotal and personal experiences in my analysis. Hence, this piece takes on a semi-autoethnographical stance, for I believe this brings us closer to the community we are studying and yields far richer insights. Through this, I seek to better understand how the roots – the physical characteristics of shared spaces, community norms and activities, and the presence of public characters in a community – have influenced the flowering in this town of mine – that is, the bubbling of social energy in small, sometimes dissenting ways, the ebb and flow of sociable pleasure, and the development of social capital. Before exploring the roots and flowering of this public housing community, however, an introduction to public housing in Singapore and Clementi is in order. Public Housing in Singapore Set up in 1960, the Housing and Development Board (HDB) was tasked to tackle overcrowding concerns in Singapore’s slum-littered Central Area and to provide permanent housing, both for the residents affected by the clearance of the slums and in preparation for Singapore’s future population growth (Choe 2016). Specifically, HDB was expected to plan and provide

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Figure 9.1 Aerial view of a part of Clementi New Town

Aerial view of a part of Clementi New Town that illustrates the juxtaposition of low-rise land uses and high-rise residential areas. Source: Calvin Teo (2005). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode. Accessed 27 December 2016

147,000 housing units in the decade between 1960 and 1970. To satisfy this housing demand quickly, it focused on building smaller units while ensuring their liveability in terms of amenities and size. To further expedite these construction projects and save on costs, HDB chose to ‘standardis[e] the floor plans as well as sourc[e] for affordable and easy-to-assemble construction materials’ (Choe 2016: 10). These early challenges and the associated decisions gave rise to ‘housing designs [that] were kept simple and utilitarian’ (Cheong 2016: 101) and the ‘slab block’ design characteristic of HDB flats in Singapore. In the typical slab block, households share a common exposed corridor that connects their homes to several stairwells and, for taller buildings, a shared central lift. Clementi New Town Built based on the New Town Structural Model in the late 1970s, Clementi was designed to be self-sufficient with the inclusion of a wide range of amenities, such as commercial spaces in the town and precinct centres, interspersed with green and recreational spaces, primary and secondary schools, and light industries on its fringes (Liu 2016). As part of the HDB’s drive towards creating greater liveability in Singapore’s housing estates, these New Towns were designed, as Cheong (2016: 103) explains, to ‘relieve the impact of the high rise, high density public housing environment’ by juxtaposing low-rise, low-intensity land uses, such as schools, sporting facilities, parks and religious sites with residential blocks.

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Remaking Our Environment after ‘Our Heart’s Desire’ The urban sociologist Robert Park (1967) provides an important insight into the space-forming, space-contingent nature of human relationships with the built environment. He says: […] man’s most successful attempt to remake the world he lives in more after his heart’s desire. But, if the city is the world which man created, it is the world in which he is henceforth condemned to live. Thus indirectly, and without any clear sense of the nature of his task, in making the city man has remade himself. (quoted in Harvey 2008: 23)

The intercourse between persons and their environments is a manifestation of conviviality, a sign of our ability to remake ourselves – to flower – through the remaking of our environments. When reflecting on how we have autonomously remade our living spaces in Clementi since I started living in the area over ten years ago, a few instances immediately come to mind. Among them, I identify the following community characteristics as key to conviviality: – Accessibility to spaces of collective or ambiguous ownership, often as extensions of privately owned real estate. – Sufficient distance from state surveillance to allow for forms of selfgovernance of the environment in which interactions occur. – A climate of tolerance or a culture of measured response towards out-ofthe-norm behaviours and activities, accompanied by a clear willingness by an individual to negotiate the usage of a space with co-users. Corridor Gardening – An Extension of Privately Owned Spaces Corridor gardening is an activity that happens in every public housing block in Singapore. Different individuals engage in it for various reasons: some do it for leisure, while others do it for better air quality, or to grow the occasional herb or spice for cooking (Chitty 2016; Koh 2016). There are also those who go one step further and engage in what has become known as ‘urban farming’, with explicit aims such as providing ‘good food for [the] family’ or promoting the ‘kampong spirit’1 (The New Paper 2014). In Clementi, 1 ‘Kampong spirit’ refers to the community spirit in a village in the Malay-speaking region in Southeast Asia.

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Figure 9.2 Examples of corridor gardening in a public housing block in Clementi

Photograph by the author

most of the corridor gardening that I have seen has been for leisure and the occasional herb or spice. While I have personally never questioned the enterprise of gardening at one’s doorstep (probably because my grandparents are farmers in Malaysia, with vegetable plots at their doorstep), I wonder if corridor gardening might be less naturally undertaken by future generations. Most of the existing corridor gardeners in Clementi seem to be elderly or middle-aged folks, who hail from the time of kampong living or have spent part of their childhoods in kampongs, where household plots were not uncommon. An understanding of the past experiences of existing corridor gardeners is crucial for explaining how conviviality in this form has continued to manifest in a new housing arrangement without attracting public ire or the state’s regulation, especially given the risks of violating fire-safety guidelines (Singapore Civil Defence Force 2015) and the fact that corridor spaces are not privately owned. Old habits truly die hard, and in this case, the norms of old have withstood the test of time and maintained a basic level of conviviality. Drawing lessons from this phenomenon, the accessibility of corridor spaces as extensions of privately owned real estate, and the distance between the state and the environment due to the high costs of state surveillance and enforcement of fire-safety guidelines, combine to provide fertile ground for convivial interactions between residents of these housing units and their immediate environment. Corridor gardening may die out as the previous generations depart, but conviviality might just persist in other forms in these ‘fertile’ corridors. Given the rise in popularity of the ‘point block’ design, instead of the traditional ‘slab block’ design in Singapore’s public housing, my optimism might be justified. With four to

220 Goh Wei Leong Figure 9.3 Christmas decorations on the parapet overlooking a playground in Clementi

Photograph by the author

six households sharing an exclusive lift landing space equidistant from each of their apartments, rather than an open corridor that links as many as 10 housing units linearly, there is a higher degree of collective privacy with this more intimate configuration, and greater impetus for residents to interact more creatively with one another with these ambiguous plots of real estate at their doorsteps. Christmas on the Parapet – State Proximity and Responsible Conviviality Just as corridor spaces are ambiguous extensions of privately owned spaces, parapets provide sites for autonomous, creative interactions between persons and their environments. Every Christmas season, one particular household in the housing estate would put up elaborate Christmas decorations, complete with a synthetic Christmas tree and lights, on the parapet overlooking a playground. What differentiates ‘Christmas on the Parapet’ from corridor gardening is that the former is less common and thus, less of a norm among the residents of Clementi and Singapore in general. As a resident, I once wondered if this decorating was in violation of some safety guideline, but because this annual installation induces much delight and pride in me as a member of this community, I have never spoken up against it. On the contrary, I look forward to it every year. The ambiguity of these untested waters – decorating the parapet attached to one’s housing unit – has provided a space for convivial interactions between persons and their living environments, and an opportunity to add a much-welcomed vibrancy to the housing estate.

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That said, I wonder if residents in this estate would be as welcoming should these ambiguous (neither entirely privately nor publicly owned) spaces be used in ways that generate negative outcomes for them. An example that quickly comes to mind is that of a business owner drying his frozen stock of salted fish at the bottom of his public housing unit in another housing estate in May 2016 (My Paper 2016). While the ‘creativity’ of such an interaction between him and his environment is questionable, it is certainly autonomous. However, because of the unpleasant sight and smell of this autonomous activity, residents of the housing estate immediately spoke to the household and the press about it, and the activity was stopped. Perhaps the silver lining is that these residents gained an opportunity to negotiate the norms of use in their shared spaces, which in itself is a demonstration of conviviality among persons. As we interact creatively and autonomously with our environment, we sometimes generate unintended knock-on effects on others. These knock-on effects, it appears, create opportunities for convivial interactions among users of a particular space – be it in the way they take pride in their neighbour’s installation of festive decorations, or the ways they negotiate the usage of a shared space to exclude the drying of salted f ish. This is especially the case in spaces with ambiguous ownership claims that are located at a suff icient distance away from state surveillance and intervention, where users find it necessary to assume a degree of collective governance instead of awaiting the judicial management of the town council and other regulatory bodies. Returning to the description of conviviality as ‘social energy in all sorts of small or dissenting manifestations’ (Peattie 1998: 247), the interactions described above do carry a degree of dissent in them – not in an overt, political sense, but simply by displaying subtle out-of-the-box thinking and actions that are out of the norm. On reflection, such creative, boundary-pushing uses of shared spaces might occur only in a climate of tolerance and a culture of measured responses (as opposed to reactive or judgmental responses) towards the actions of others, which Singapore has professed to have and inculcated in its population through public education and policies undergirded by a multiracial and multicultural conception of society. More recently, I had the idea of putting up posters and comic strips in the lift that serves my public housing block, just to liven up one of our living spaces. While I have yet to act on it, past examples of conviviality have helped me to identify the potential legitimation for what I saw as an opportunity to liven up our living spaces. With sufficient distance from

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the state, and existing as an extension of privately-owned housing units, these lifts might just be suitable holding sites for individual residents to autonomously and creatively make and remake their living spaces. As with the man drying frozen salted fish, agents of convivial interactions with their environments have to be willing to take responsibility for their actions and negotiate the use of these spaces with co-users. If I were to put up posters and comic strips in the lift, I must also be prepared to receive criticisms from my neighbours regarding my use of this shared space. It is, after all, through interactions amongst considerate users of a shared space over time that convivial norms might be developed, and spaces brought to life.

Enjoying Sociable Pleasure Peattie mentions with delight Ray Oldenburg’s work on ‘third places’ and commends it for ‘[seeing] the essence of the convivial experience’ (1998: 248). In searching for convivial interactions between persons in Clementi, I find Oldenburg’s description of the characteristics of ‘third places’ in our communities especially helpful.2 Oldenburg (1999) describes third places as, among other things: – ‘Mixers’, where members of a community inevitably meet and interact, however fleetingly, and eventually become familiar with everyone else. – ‘Neutral grounds’, where a person is made to feel welcome in a space that does not appear to reflect any definitive ownership and where individuals can come and go without feeling beholden to anyone or any cause. – ‘Sorting areas’, where individuals form elective affinities and further associations with those they meet. Beyond these characteristics, Oldenburg (Ibid.) further impresses upon us that third places provide spaces for those whom Jane Jacobs (1961) calls ‘public characters’ – individuals who are well connected with members of the neighbourhood and who care deeply about the neighbourhood – to emerge. It appears that spaces with the above characteristics and the presence of such public characters could form reliable predictors or crucibles of 2 Third places come after homes and workplaces, which are considered ‘first’ and ‘second’ places, respectively.

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Figure 9.4 Lift spaces are currently used only for health and safety-related notices

Photograph by the author

conviviality in a town like Clementi. With these in mind, I have identified the following sites for analysis: (1) common corridors and void decks in public housing blocks; (2) neighbourhood stores; and (3) the town’s hawker centres and coffee shops.

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Corridor Chatter and Void Deck Activities When I first moved from a private housing estate in Serangoon to Clementi New Town in 2004, I experienced quite a culture shock. While in our private housing estate, housewives chattered in the backyards and children came out to play with the occasional elderly resident strolling down the streets, the households in these public housing blocks appeared to keep to themselves, doors shut and bolted. As newcomers, my family followed suit and learned to keep our doors shut and bolted. However, I quickly learned about ‘corridor chatter’, a phenomenon that happens every day due to the design of public housing in Singapore. In my block of ten levels with ten units per floor, one common lift served three floors – the first, fifth and ninth – on which common corridors ran from the first to the tenth units. I would think that the common lift and these common corridors fit what Oldenburg describe as ‘mixers’. These are spaces that residents inevitably passed through almost daily when traveling between their homes and workplaces, and thus form fertile grounds for autonomous and creative interactions among users. Living on the seventh floor, I would walk down the stairwell to the fifth floor to take the lift. En route to school, I might bump into other residents who used the same stairwell or residents who lived along the common corridor on the fifth floor. On my way home, I would take the lift to the ninth floor before walking two floors down. I came to notice that households on the ninth floor always kept their doors open and I sometimes stopped for a chat with the semi-retired middle-aged folks in the afternoon. It may sound dramatic, but this conviviality came to a halt after the completion of the Lift Upgrading Programme (LUP),3 which installed new lifts that enabled access to every floor to improve accessibility and mobility for the elderly, the disabled, and families with young children (HistorySG 2014). With five unique lifts that each stopped on our own floors in five different stairwells along the corridor, what once was inevitable became no longer necessary. The LUP, while showing great consideration for the ageing population of public housing residents in Singapore, was not without its disadvantages and trade-offs. Not all is lost in public housing, though. Void decks, which are iconic in Singapore public housing, continue to provide opportunities for individuals to have fleeting moments of conviviality. While a permit from the town 3 ‘The LUP was introduced in 2001 to offer direct lift services to flats, where technically and economically feasible […] Over 13 years (2001 to 2014), HDB has brought lift access to some 5,000 blocks, benefitting over 500,000 households’. (Cheong 2016: 106)

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council is required when a resident intends to host private events on the void deck, these common spaces are always available for spontaneous use by residents of that housing block and are frequented by different types of users at various times of the day. The retirees enjoy sitting on the benches while greeting and chatting with passers-by,4 while migrant workers working on infrastructural projects, such as road-widening and sewage improvement work, often have their lunches together and take short naps in areas of the void deck that have less human traffic. Occasionally, children play simple ball games on the void deck and sometimes, play in puddles in the small garden nearby. Resembling a blank canvas that is available for use at any time of the day, the void deck, by virtue of its ‘void-ness’, invites individuals to use bits of the space, for their own purposes and with one another. Although I have always taken it for granted, I now think that the general sentiment that we ought to clean up after ourselves instead of leaving signatures of our presence, contributes greatly towards maintaining the usability of this space. In effect, the void deck, with the help of its users, acts like a self-cleaning canvas that avails itself to new users, who then temporarily customize the space to suit their own needs. In Clementi, and probably in most of Singapore too, there is a noticeable degree of consideration given to would-be users of shared spaces. In the absence of an intervening authority, such community norms have helped maintain the availability and liminality of these void deck spaces. Neighbourhood Stores as Neutral Grounds In contrast to the corridors and void decks, neighbourhood stores are not places that one inevitably passes by each day. However, they do provide neutral spaces for individuals to fully immerse themselves in interacting with one another and socialize without the burden of playing host or guest to one another. This underlines the ‘necessary and even mutually reinforcing’ relationship between commerce and conviviality, as proposed by Peattie (1998: 251). In a commercial setting, individuals are freed from their roles (and burdens) in the workplace and in their households (be it as hosts or guests) and can fully enjoy each other’s company and conversations among themselves. Moreover, these stores serve virtually anybody and 4 It even appears that since the LUP, there is perceptibly a few more individuals sitting in the void decks in the afternoons, though I personally feel that the loss of corridor chatter still outweighs the gains in void deck interactions.

226 Goh Wei Leong Figure 9.5 Example of a void deck with benches and tables in Clementi

Photograph by the author

often provide food, entertainment and other paraphernalia that augment convivial interactions. At a bicycle shop that I frequent, the owner never fails to sit me down for a chat whenever I pass by. He even puts out chairs for non-customers to sit on – usually, two retirees who live in the area are present from noon onwards. When asked, the owner explains that he has known the retirees for years and they provide good company, especially when business is slow. Stores run by business owners instead of franchises seem to anchor this observed neutrality and welcoming nature of a space. Those who work at these stores enjoy the benefit of spontaneous and leisurely conversations throughout the workday, even though the stores primarily operate for commercial profit. Whatever the motive, places of commerce in Clementi have provided fertile grounds for convivial interactions among the residents of this community. Hawker Centres and Coffee Shops: Where We Sort Our People Besides neighbourhood stores, hawker centres and coffee shops also contribute to the conviviality of Clementi. The experiences that I base my analysis

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on in the following section are not my own, but instead lived vicariously through my father. As a semi-retiree, he spends a significant amount of his time in hawker centres and coffee shops. In the few times I have passed by in the morning, he would be reading the day’s newspapers or engaged in discussions with his fellow coffee shop-goers, whom we colloquially refer to as ‘kopi kakis’.5 Based on conversations with my father, these coffee shop discussions can generally be categorized into ‘lifestyle’, ranging from the latest technology fads to the best foods in town, and ‘governance’, as these coffee shop-goers comment on Singapore’s socioeconomic policies. While I might not share their interests or political views, I still find their willingness to engage one another on trends and policies remarkable. At times, I even find myself overwhelmed by the normative perspectives shared within this group of semi-retirees and the richness of their understanding of current affairs that is collectively constructed based on their individual work expertise and life experiences. These feelings are compounded by their willingness to share and listen to new interpretations and ideological positions, though not without some posturing and biases. Indeed, it is in the hawker centres and coffee shops of Singapore – places where individuals can enter and mingle, regardless of their socioeconomic status or political inclinations – where we f ind great diversity and perceptiveness in the understanding of societal issues. A peripheral benef it of kopi kaki groups like this is collective sensemaking, especially on issues related to governance and politics. Granted, while they might sometimes indulge in out-of-this-world theories about how certain cabinet ministers and high-ranking government officials got to where they were, these elderly men were also the ones who alerted my father to an ambiguous section regarding CPF withdrawal rules for the Retirement Account.6 Without going into the technicalities of it, suffice to say that we became wiser through the process of clarifying that specific section with CPF’s service officers. At one point, my father came bounding into my room with a policy recommendation that he and his kopi kakis came up with regarding CPF LIFE7 – that while a mandatory life annuity scheme 5 ‘Kopi kakis’ is literally translated from Malay as ‘coffee friends’. 6 The Retirement Account is one of four accounts administered by the Central Provident Fund, or CPF – Singapore’s social security system. The Retirement Account is created for each CPF member on his or her 55th birthday for the specific purpose of saving and investing for his or her years in retirement. 7 CPF LIFE, or Central Provident Fund (CPF) Lifelong Income For the Elderly (LIFE) refers to a life annuity scheme managed by the Central Provident Fund. (Central Provident Fund Board 2018)

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would likely do more good than harm, the state could have given individual retirees-to-be greater flexibility regarding the amounts they wished to contribute to such a scheme. Doing so, from their perspective, would successfully bring together their desired objectives of both state-coordinated retirement planning and individual autonomy. In their discussion, these kopi kakis went as far as to construct three different retirement financing options based on their differing retirement goals and present-day needs. Facilitated by sorting areas such as these, where individuals feel welcomed to share their perspectives and form associational groups with one another based on shared interests and views, I find that Clementi’s residents have developed an admirable degree of conviviality. Public Characters and Social Capital When I began this inquiry on how ‘community’ might provide fertile grounds for ‘conviviality’, thus operationalising Peattie’s (1998) analogy of our need for community as the human need for ‘roots’ and our need for conviviality as the human need to ‘flower’, I focused solely on the community’s physical and social characteristics, such as the extension of privately owned real estate and prevailing norms and attitudes towards shared spaces. However, as I read about third places as spaces from which public characters emerge, I soon realized that public characters, situated within a community, have an important role to play in fostering conviviality. Emerging as products of conviviality and as nodes of their community, public characters often go on to facilitate further convivial interactions among individuals. They introduce newcomers to the norms of this community, link individuals up for various reasons, and have enough of a stake in this neighbourhood to keep an eye out for one another. In so doing, they build up the community’s social capital (Putnam 1995: 67), particularly in terms of networks, norms (of goodwill and reciprocity), and trust within their community that ‘facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit’. With these in mind, the following invididuals in my immediate neighbourhood qualify as public characters: the supervisor of the supermarket (NTUC FairPrice) in Clementi Avenue 2 who lives in the vicinity; the owner of the aforementioned bicycle shop; the owner of the noodle stall in the hawker centre, who represented the hawkers in requesting for an automated external defibrillator (AED) kit to be installed in the housing block closest to the hawker centre due to the elderly demographics in the area; and the retiree who sits in the void deck almost every afternoon and greets the residents of my housing block.

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The coffee lady in the hawker centre calls me the CEO. She always jokes with me, saying, ‘The CEO is here!’ and she would make ‘CEO coffee’ for me, which would be more bitter and less sweet than the usual. ‘I’m not young anymore [so] I must take less sugar’, she adds.

I find Q, the supervisor of the supermarket in my housing precinct in Clementi who provided this anecdote, most intriguing because she does not own the supermarket she works in and is most certainly not a ‘CEO’. In a conversation, Q shared that most of her company’s employees are like neighbours and friends to her, as they live around the area and are mostly semi-retired. That the branch is a small outfit has made it easy for her and her employees to feel a stronger sense of ownership and camaraderie – though not without arguments – which is often difficult to come by in a bigger franchise. As I read up more on the formation of social capital in HDB neighbourhoods in my attempt to identify how public characters like Q could have come about, I came across a hypothesis of four different community orientations or degrees of commitment within HDB neighbourhoods that proved helpful (Tan 2016): – Rental tenants, who are visually visible in the housing estate but possibly least committed to the local community, given their transitory nature. – Foreign domestic workers, who are likely to contribute to communitybuilding, given that they spend much of their time in the housing estate caring for their charges. – Elderly persons, housewives and young children, who spend much of their time in the housing estate and have established stronger social networks than foreign domestic workers, by virtue of their ownership of the housing units and an associated sense of ownership for their community, and their years of living in the estate. – Older teenagers, the young and working adults, who spend the least time in the estate but could potentially commit themselves to the growth of the local community when it involves the application of their expertise and leadership skills. Applying these community orientations, I propose that public characters can arise from individuals possessing the second, third and fourth community orientations. In terms of Q’s reach and strength as a public character in this part of Clementi, I attribute it to her unique position at the intersection between the third and fourth community orientations, as a working adult who lives nearby and plays the role of a housewife during her days of rest. Moving forward, I intend to pay closer attention to how the foreign domestic

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workers – those in the second of the four community orientations outlined above – in my neighbourhood have contributed or could contribute to Clementi’s convivial interactions.

Conviviality in Action Through a mixture of theoretical analysis and empirical evidence, I have examined how a community, with its constituent physical spaces, norms, activities and public characters, gives rise to convivial interactions in various forms – the bubbling of social energy in small, dissenting ways, unbeholden sociable pleasure, and the development of social capital among its members. Yet, on reflection, conviviality as a concept ultimately leaves us wanting (in a good way). It introduces us to a state of being that transcends industrial productivity, encourages us to relate to one another and our environment autonomously and creatively, and promises a unique fulfilment arising not from consumption or the possession of wealth but from our ability to collectively ‘create out of the mundane materials of life a special occasion, whether it is a dinner party or a piece of political theatre presenting a vision of the future’ (Peattie 1998: 247). It does not tell us how to get there, however – perhaps rightly so, since that would not be in the spirit of convivial autonomy and creativity. Thankfully, many have pondered this and, while we cannot plan conviviality into existence, we can, through the application of various concepts – of roots and flowering, of third places and public characters, of social capital and community orientations – make our physical and social spaces more conducive for convivial interactions to occur. This chapter is one such attempt at studying the operationalization of conviviality as a concept, and I hope it serves as a good reference for those seeking to to do the same.8 May we continue to reflect deeply on the roots and flowering of our own communities and, in so doing, be encouraged to tend to these gardens of ours and ultimately, flourish in this concrete jungle we call home.

8 As a complement to the operationalising and nurturing of conviviality, the potential nestedness of conviviality is an aspect that I find worthy of further study. As I examined conviviality in Clementi, I noticed that public characters, who are often agents of convivial interactions in the public domain, tend to display a similar inclination in interactions with their family members. At the risk of falsely or overly classifying conviviality as a personal attribute, we could study the personal traits and experiences that encourage individuals to partake in convivial interactions, and thereafter assess whether these traits and experiences can be encouraged among the general population.

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Works Cited Central Provident Fund Board. 2018. ‘CPF LIFE’. Last updated 21 March. Available at https://www.cpf.gov.sg/members/schemes/schemes/retirement/cpf-life [accessed 21 Mar. 2018]. Cheong Koon Hean. 2016. ‘The Evolution of HDB Towns’. In 50 Years of Urban Planning in Singapore, ed. Chye Kiang Heng. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 101-126. Chitty, Christopher. 2016. ‘Indoor & Outdoor Plants for Your Flat’. Property Guru. Available at http://www.propertyguru.com.sg/lifestyle/article/5/indoor-outdoorplants-for-your-flat [accessed 2 Nov. 2016]. Choe, Alan F.C. 2016. ‘The Early Years of Nation-Building: Reflections on Singapore’s Urban History’. In 50 Years of Urban Planning in Singapore, ed. Chye Kiang Heng. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 3-21. Harvey, David. 2008. ‘The Right to the City’. New Left Review 53(Sep.-Oct.): 23-40. HistorySG. 2014. ‘Lift Upgrading Programme Is Introduced’. Singapore: National Library Board. Available at http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/history/events/7144a2bf3ff8-4d1f-a7b1-824493296b5a [accessed 4 Nov. 2016]. Illich, Ivan. 1973. Tools for Conviviality. New York: Harper & Row. Jacobs, Jane. 1961. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House. Koh Wan Ting. 2016. ‘HERBS: 5 Types to Grow in your HDB Flat’. The Middle Ground, 14 June. Available at http://themiddleground.sg/2016/06/14/herbs-5-types-growhdb-flat/ [accessed 2 Nov. 2016]. Liu Thai Ker. 2016. ‘Planning & Urbanisation in Singapore: A 50-Year Journey’. In 50 Years of Urban Planning in Singapore. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 23-44. My Paper. 2016. ‘Who Left That Many Salted Fish Out to Dry?’ AsiaOne, 26 May. Available at http://news.asiaone.com/news/singapore/who-left-many-saltedfish-out-dry [accessed 4 Nov. 2016]. Oldenburg, Ray. 1999. The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press. Park, Robert Ezra. 1967. On Social Control and Collective Behavior: Selected Papers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Peattie, Lisa. 1998. ‘Convivial Cities’. In Cities for Citizens: Planning and the Rise of Civil Society in a Global Age, ed. Mike Douglass and John Friedmann. London: John Wiley, 247-253. Putnam, Robert D. 1995. ‘Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital’. Journal of Democracy 6(1): 65-78.

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Singapore Civil Defence Force. 2015. ‘Community & Volunteers: Fire Safety Guidelines for HDB Estates – Guidelines On The Use of Common Areas in HDB Estates’. Last updated 1 July. Available at https://www.scdf.gov.sg/content/scdf_internet/ en/community-and-volunteers/community-preparedness/fire_safety_guidelinesforhdbestates.html [accessed 2 Nov. 2016]. Tan Ern Ser. 2016. ‘Public Housing and Community Development: Planning for Urban Diversity in a City-State’. In 50 Years of Urban Planning in Singapore. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 257-272. The New Paper. 2014. ‘Farming on Their HDB Flats’ Doorsteps’. 30 Nov. Available at http://www.tnp.sg/sunday-blog/farming-their-hdb-flats-doorsteps [accessed 2 Nov. 2016].

About the Author Goh Wei Leong grew up in the towns of Serangoon and Clementi, and considers himself a Singaporean local. He is deeply interested in the idea of the city and often writes in Mandarin to capture his daily interactions with people, spaces and ideas. Goh graduated with a Master in Public Policy from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore.

10 Mediating Community in Bukit Brown Natalie Pang and Liew Kai Khiun Abstract This chapter seeks to illustrate the authors’ initiative of deploying mobile communication technologies through the ‘iBBC’ app to locate and reference tombstones of prominent historical personalities in Singapore’s Bukit Brown Cemetery. The densely vegetated, 80-year-old former Chinese municipal cemetery filled with more than a hundred thousand graves has been largely neglected, and the traditional Chinese inscriptions written on many of the tombstones are inscrutable to many contemporary visitors. As part of the process of digital interventions, iBBC helps visitors obtain encyclopedic information immediately on-site by using Augmented Reality (AR) to recognize selected tomb monuments. Such interventions are critical in sensitizing the public to the cemetery’s cultural heritage. Keywords: digital heritage, Augmented Reality (AR), computer-mediated community, heritage engagement, Bukit Brown Cemetery

Introduction: Locating Bukit Brown Cemetery A municipal cemetery established in colonial Singapore for the ethnic Chinese community almost a century ago, Bukit Brown Cemetery has been the final resting place for a number of prominent Chinese community leaders and public personalities. With the passing of time, public knowledge of the location of these sites was gradually lost as tropical jungle reclaimed the premises. On 18 November 2017, the Singapore Heritage Society (SHS) launched the Bukit Brown Wayfinder Trail to direct users to some of the more prominent ethnic Chinese community leaders and public personalities buried at the Bukit Brown Cemetery. Before the development of the WayFinder Trail, there have been several attempts to support the effort to save Bukit Brown Cemetery from being redeveloped, including developing

Chung, Simone Shu-Yeng & Mike Douglass (eds), The Hard State, Soft City of Singapore. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020 doi: 10.5117/9789463729505_ch10

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guided walks for the public in the cemetery. Many of the tombs are either severely weathered beyond recognition or, if identifiable, are often marked with vestigial cultural-linguistic references that are unfamiliar to the contemporary public. More than the heritage value inherent in the cemetery, however, it was the government’s announcement of an eight-lane expressway project that would destroy the cemetery that attracted public interest in the site. Since its announcement, citizens and civil society groups have taken action, from advocating for alternative development plans to volunteering to document the cemetery, in light of its impending end. This chapter details one of the many attempts to support this activism and engagement of the public with the cemetery using iBBC, a mobile application (app) purposed to harness innovations in AR to assist the general public as they navigate through a densely forested area of tombstones. As societies grow more techno-social (Chayko 2014), connections between people are increasingly mediated and facilitated through the ‘triple revolution’: adoption of the Internet, advances in mobile devices and computing, and the growth of social networking sites. In other words, practices of remembering are taking place in a ‘culture of connectivity’, in which social interactions and cultural products are inseparable from their technological systems (van Dijck 2011). The ‘triple revolution’ described by Chayko (2014) encourages the documentation and dissemination of instantaneous experiential moments that are captured using mobile devices in the form of photographs, videos, and text, and disseminated using social networking sites. This implies that the everyday life and memories of the spaces, and artefacts around us, are digitized and remembered somewhere, by someone. The promises of connectivity, accessibility, ownership, and transmission of knowledge brought about by the digital revolution are also apparent in the field of digital heritage. Facilitating a new kind of knowing by supplementing the understanding of otherwise dispersed material objects through imaging tools, digital heritage augments real-life engagement with material cultures. In the process, it forges new forms of public spaces, participatory cultures and citizenry (Amakawa and Westin 2018; Smith, Lewi and Nicols 2018; Were 2008, 2015; Westin, Foka and Chapman 2018). Singapore, like many other modernized postcolonial societies, is susceptible to rapid change. As one of the world’s most densely populated and land-scarce cities, Singapore’s rapid urbanization and developmental changes often came at the expense of its heritage and cultural sites. Tensions often arise when sites that are recognized as community and heritage spaces are also regarded by the state as opportunities for urban redevelopment. Nonetheless, the sense of threat often spurs conservationist initiatives seeking

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to raise public awareness, which spring from the anxieties of stakeholders about the cultural site’s potential erasure by urban infrastructural plans. Conventionally, the approach has been to organize public talks and tours conducted by stakeholders, activists and academics. This is followed by some efforts in documentating the heritage site, often culminating in book publications and video documentaries. For cemeteries in Singapore, such efforts were seen, for example, in the decade-long book project with chapter contributions from academics and researchers on individual cemeteries in Spaces for the Dead: A Case from the Living (Tan 2011). Following the announcement of the highway project in 2011, public interest on Bukit Brown Cemetery and its premises have been growing, and a similar trend of public tours and talks has arisen. Adding to these ‘traditional’ methods, the utilization of new tools afforded by innovations in digital and mobile communicative technologies help a more general public decipher otherwise dated tombstones using their smartphones. In this chapter, we first describe the social and political tensions surrounding Bukit Brown Cemetery, followed by the context that gave birth to these technologies, their features, and how they mediate memory practices and facilitate the building of a community.

Background From its first recorded history, when the land was apparently acquired by the English plantation owner George Henry Brown in the 1840s to its evolution into a municipal Cemetery in 1922, Bukit Brown Cemetery has experienced a fate similar to its counterparts in the postcolonial city state. Cemetery sites are often seen as being in the way of urban redevelopment (Tan 2011; Yeoh 2003; Yeoh and Tan 1995). Since 1973, there have been no new burials in the cemetery, and residents from the surrounding Kheam Hock and Lorong Halwa Villages were resettled a decade later (Huang 2014). Apart from the annual Qing Ming memorial month of ancestral grave visits and the daily routine of jockeys from the adjoining Singapore Saddle Club casually riding their horses along its main tracks, Bukit Brown Cemetery has effectively become invisible to the public eye. But unlike other cemeteries like Bishan and Bidadari, which have been completely redeveloped and assimilated into public housing, only a part of the 160-hectare Bukit Brown site has so far been reused in road infrastructure projects. The two projects, namely, the Pan-Island Expressway project, begun in the 1960s, and more recently, the Lornie Road Flyover in 2019 (Channel News Asia 2019).

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Using the truism of whether the state should look after ‘your dead grandparents or your future grandchildren’ established by postcolonial Singapore’s f irst National Development Minister Lim Kim San (Barker 2012) as a rationale, the state has been systematically clearing cemeteries. With the move towards suburbanization, cemeteries that were located on the municipal fringes of colonial Singapore found their graves exhumed to make way for new public housing towns, as seen in the case of Bishan, once a Chinese Cemetery. As pressure for more land grew alongside a burgeoning population, newer cemeteries like Lim Chu Kang, located on the western edges of the country, were re-zoned and more spatially economical columbaria like Mount Vernon and Mandai were introduced. However, by 2020, even parts of Lim Chu Kang Cemetery and Mount Vernon Columbarium will be re-zoned for redevelopment (Au-Yong 2017, 2018). Given the normalization of these trends of relocation and removal, the general public has grown accustomed to cemeteries as not just conventionally tabooed, but also as transient spaces that eventually make way for housing and industrial development, leaving behind heritage markers for museum exhibitions. A case in point are the preserved tombstones of twenty public personalities and a gate from the former Bidadari Cemetery that have been carved from the Mount Vernon Columbarium and assimilated into housing estates, and can now be seen along heritage trails and pathways (The Straits Times 2013). There is also the Kwong Wai Siu Pek Sang Theng Heritage Gallery, which opened in 2018 in the existing Pek Sang Theng temple in Bishan, that references the former cemetery as well (Chen 2018). As stated by the then Minister of State for National Development Tan Chuan Jin, while it is important to recognize its potential heritage value, a site the size of Bukit Brown Cemetery could house about 15,000 homes for about 50,000 residents (Barker 2012). Material development considerations framed as pragmatism have thus tended to outweigh the recognition of intangible emotional investments, which in Singapore are often dismissed as sentimentalism. Given this political and cultural landscape, the Singapore government seemed surprised at the surge in vocal public reactions to the 2011 announcement of plans to expand an eight-lane vehicular highway into parts of Bukit Brown Cemetery, affecting approximately 5000 graves. Reservations about urban redevelopment plans have generally been formally articulated through official statements from NGOs like SHS and Nature Society of Singapore (NSS), in addition to expert comments provided by the architectural and academic communities (Huang 2014). The concerns of stakeholders are mainly amplified through mainstream media and dialogue in government feedback channels. In this respect, this concerted effort by otherwise ordinary citizens

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from different social backgrounds to craft a more informed narrative about Bukit Brown’s potential heritage and cultural values that could be placed parallel to the state’s cultural discourses, was an unprecedented development in the discourse of urban conservation in Singapore. Responding to this public pressure, the government moved to set up a Working Committee for the documentations of the graves. Headed by Dr. Hui Yew Foong, the committee included authors who aimed to go beyond just listing the affected graves, and instead wanted to study Bukit Brown Cemetery more holistically as an organic socio-cultural space (BukitBrown. info; Tai 2014). As part of the challenge of persuading the larger public about the cultural significance of the site, conservationists have also independently started to conduct research on and documentation of the cemetery. This included not only the historical evolution of the site, but also, and more critically, recording tombstone inscriptions, related archival materials as well as oral histories. The growing commercial availability of media and mobile technologies afforded activists greater leverage in conducting innovative documentation and research and making these findings more convenient to publicly avail. The digital innovations fall into three interrelated areas: digital photographic documentation, spatial mapping by the geo-tagging of individual tombs, and connectivity through social media. The digitization of photography has critically intensified the portability and transferability of images as an element in the pixellated network. This has given greater ease to volunteers surveying gravesites and, with the subsequent introduction of drones that can conduct aerial photography, it is now possible to capture the layout of larger monuments within the densely forested cemetery. Geo-tagging is the process of adding location identification to metadata and adds a dimension of findability to these otherwise forgotten tombsites, which have subsequently been networked through QR codes and mobile apps. Last but not least, it is the agglomeration of social media sites such as Facebook that has given greater visibility to Bukit Brown Cemetery, drawing the larger public into the discussions, activities and events organized by volunteers and conservationists (Liew, Pang and Chan 2014). The historical trajectory of Bukit Brown Cemetery reflects a multiplicity of narratives of colonial migration, cultural hybridization, spatial contestation, and more recently, heritagization. Yeoh’s (1991) account of the historical geographies of tensions between British colonial authorities and their Asian subjects in Singapore flagged the social significance of cemeteries for scholarly literature on Singapore society. Understanding the development and management of cemeteries must be set from the perspective of

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their colonial setting to their modern context so as to examine the issue holistically in postcolonial Singapore. Adding to the enduring issues of spatial contestation within the rapidly urbanising landscape are the shifting socio-cultural practices brought about by modernization and development in contemporary Singapore (Yeoh and Tan 1995; Kong 1999, 2012; Tan 2011; Muzaini and Yeoh 2007). With the announcement of the new highway cutting through Bukit Brown Cemetery, scholarly trends have since then turned towards the study of advocacy, documentation, heritage and technology. In terms of publicaton speed and scholarly participation in documentation and advocacy work in alliance with conservationists, recent scholarship has benefitted from the authors’ intimate knowledge of the changing developments in Bukit Brown Cemetery. In less than a decade, a historiographical contextualization of the cemetery was developed by Huang (2014), alongside ethnographic accounts of the transformation of social advocacy in Singapore through new activities that create a collective commons with the use of social media (Hong 2018; Liew, Pang and Chan 2014; Pang and Liew 2014). Publications drawn from scholarly participation in the documentation and mapping of Bukit Brown Cemetery began to surface with Heng’s (2018) photographic project on the rituals at the premises, reflecting a mixture of new visual technologies and ethnographic insights. This chapter follows the existing scholarly trends, focusing on the use of new technologies and new applied research methods to find fresh perspectives for mapping Bukit Brown Cemetery. The following sections detail the process of deploying technological innovations to facilitate the navigation of Bukit Brown Cemetery, as part of mapping the deeper cultural cartographies of the premises.

Digital Interventions When visitors started flocking to Bukit Brown Cemetery after plans to construct an eight-lane carriageway were confirmed in 2011, the opportunity to create interactive installations and interventions in the cemetery was immediately apparent. An active community of volunteer guides, comprising a largely informal group called the ‘Brownies’ that interacts via Facebook, have been regularly conducting thematic guided walks at the cemetery. As public interest in Bukit Brown Cemetery grew, more visitors also independently frequented the cemetery. With hopes of encouraging more unguided visits, we worked with the Brownies and the official documentation team to help potential visitors navigate the premises and identify tombs of historical and cultural significance. Here, the digital revolution opened

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up new approaches towards developing such navigational tools. With the high level of smartphone penetration in Singapore, a mobile app provides an interactive solution for encouraging self-exploration, discovery, and navigation within the cemetery. As early as 2010, activists and volunteers of Bukit Brown Cemetery had already started using social media tools such as Facebook and blogs. However, these platforms are designed for different purposes that may not always contribute to engaging with features of the physical site. For example, while Facebook is useful for facilitating social interactions between visitors and volunteers, many of the posts and photographs documented using Facebook can be lost in the sheer volume of postings. Facebook as a platform is also limited in the ways the posts can be archived, and much knowledge ‘found’ and shared in the community may therefore not be easily discoverable. While blogs are more appropriate as a platform to capture and share knowledge, they are not designed for real-time documentation and interaction in the cemetery. The iBBC system was designed to address these gaps. We first introduce the design concepts driving the development of iBBC, a mobile AR app launched on 6 March 2013. This chapter documents the process of developing the functional requirements for the application, the interaction concepts driving the eventual design, and the later evolution of the application. We show how the visual and cultural aspects of the tombs (such as the unique typologies of the design of the graveyards, the aesthetics and symbolic features of each tombstone, and the historical backgrounds of famous figures) can be incorporated into the design of the mobile app, which offers users the opportunity to interact and engage with the cultural information and internalize the heritage value of the cemetery. The application of AR technology to cultural heritage evokes questions about what is being transferred. Beyond the images of tombs and their respective inscriptions, physically being in Bukit Brown Cemetery evokes meanings associated with spirituality, sacredness and also guardianship – as it is a resting ground for many important pioneers of Singapore. None of these meanings can be truly ‘transferred’ in their original sense as properties of AR, since they are intangible and closely intertwined with the physical environment. However, with AR, new layers are introduced to the environment that can produce new meanings as well as re-create the environment of Bukit Brown Cemetery. To develop the functional requirements of the application, researchers carried out a number of field walks between 2012 and 2013 to gain realistic insights into how people would interact with the features of the cemetery and what kinds of information they would demand from it (Lee and Ingold

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2006). The walks were led by Dr. Hui Yew Foong, who heads the larger documentation project of Bukit Brown Cemetery. During each walk, features of the cemetery were discussed in the context of how they could shape the design and interactivity of the mobile app.

Design and Interaction Considerations As a heritage site, Bukit Brown Cemetery comes with its own unique attributes. Each tomb is deeply rooted in traditional beliefs, such as geomancy, and the use of guardians or deities to watch over the dead. Using methods such as markers or QR codes placed near the tombs would therefore be considered too intrusive and disrespectful. This highlights the importance of prioritising cultural values in the development of iBBC. These norms of interaction within the site were noted as main considerations in coming up with the design of iBBC. In response to these needs, a natural feature tracking technique (Neumann and You 1999), which does not require modifications to the physical site, was adopted instead of the commonly used marker-based tracking system (Zhang, Fronz and Navab 2002). This method recognizes specific landmarks using the natural features of the place. Given that each tombstone is inscribed with a unique set of Chinese characters bearing the title(s), name and death year of the deceased, and the names of their surviving children and grandchildren, the inscriptions became the basis for visually recognising each grave (object). The field walks and development of the mobile app helped the development team gain insights into the diversity and richness of interactions within Bukit Brown Cemetery. From these insights the following interaction concepts were developed. Discovery and Interpretation While there is much to be learned from the histories of the pioneers buried in the cemetery, Bukit Brown is also enriched with natural heritage and biodiversity that is often difficult to locate in land-scarce Singapore. Additionally, there are many artefacts, rituals and cultural practices associated with the cemetery, some of which are unique to Singapore’s multicultural context. In other words, there are multiple layers of information to discover at different levels of interactions with the cemetery, and it was determined that the application should support such inputs, discovery, and interpretations.

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Navigation This refers to the controls by which users navigate their surroundings, whether digital or non-digital. Each platform comes with its own affordances for the purposes of navigation, and at the time of writing, there are already multiple platforms developed by volunteers and civil society groups. For example, in October 2017, SHS launched the Bukit Brown WayFinder, a self-guided walk to 25 tombs within Bukit Brown Cemetery comprising a 115-page online booklet (Hio 2017). Other than serving the navigational needs of visitors, iBBC was a project that aimed to test the feasibility of AR in an outdoor site that is rich with heritage. AR is defined by three technological attributes: it layers virtual information or ‘realities’ against the real, it is interactive and in real time, and is registered in 3D (Azuma 1997). Such features hold much potential for visitor navigation in Bukit Brown Cemetery, as users would be able to navigate their surroundings while viewing virtual renditions of the tombs on their mobile devices. They would also be able to retrieve relevant information about the tomb they are viewing, including rich multimedia objects such as photographs, videos and maps. Selection and Filtering Another finding from the field walks that informed the design of the application concerns the arrangement and clustering of related information objects. This meant that users should be able to identify an object and the objects associated with it. In the cemetery, this is especially important because the tombstone with its inscription is only one part of each grave. It is quite common to find other related informational objects, such as the layout of each grave annotated with fengshui practices and beliefs, spiritual guardians and other artefacts. Mass Personal Interactions One main theme that came from the participation in both the field and guided walks was the value and knowledge that emerged from interactions with the community of volunteers, guides and other visitors. Therefore, the application should be able to support not only one-to-one personal interactions between people, but also one-to-many or many-to-many interactions, as knowledge and heritage value can be nurtured and developed through such interactions.

242 Natalie Pang and Liew K ai Khiun Figure 10.1 The first version, iBBC, released on Google Playstore

Image from the authors’ application

Mediating Community Figures 10.1 through 10.3 provide screenshots to illustrate key features of downloading and using the mobile app in the cemetery. The mobile app, named iBBC, was first released on Google Playstore on 6 March 2013. In the first version there was limited data available, as documentation work was still ongoing. While the initial response to and feedback on iBBC was encouraging, with many lauding the AR feature as refreshing, a key constraint was the limited number of documented tombs at the time of the launch. Hence, the extent to which the application initially supported self-navigation was limited. Nothwithstanding the effort needed to comprehensively document each grave, the application was also limited in its ability to support the rich volume of multimedia objects associated with each tomb in real time. Still, because of the nature of interaction that iBBC set up between visitors and the cemetery, the application brought visitors closer to the tombs, making them pay attention to the inscriptions and features of each grave. On site, visitors relied on taking notes and/or recording the narrations of the volunteer guides to help them in their learning, so features to support adding inputs (via audio, note-taking, or adding comments and photos) marked by their locations should further support on-site engagement. This finding supported the aim of discovery and interpretation, a main interaction theme of the mobile app. More than self-learning, the application contributed to visitors gaining a greater appreciation of heritage. Specifically, the clustering and contextual presentation of informational objects contributed to a greater understanding of the interconnection between the tangible aspects of heritage and intangible aspects of the site.

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Figure 10.2 A visitor uses iBBC to recognize the tomb and retrieve related records

Photograph by the author

After the launch of iBBC, users suggested a number of other improvements, which alluded to the ways they engage with the cemetery, and learn about heritage as a whole. For instance, a common request was to allow users to save information related to the route taken using the application to support post-trip learning and engagement. Given the pervasiveness of mobile devices and connectivity in Singapore, the experience demonstrated the potential for digital technologies to support heritage activism and learning. Such activism and learning is no longer limited to engagement in physical heritage sites, but can now be extended beyond space and time – beyond the guided walks happening at the cemetery at certain points in time, beyond the people that are only available at the site at certain times. Tagging was another common suggestion, indicating how digital technology could help support post-trip activism and learning, as well as mediating interactions within the community. The central concept is based on the function and features of tagging on existing social media platforms such

244 Natalie Pang and Liew K ai Khiun Figure 10.3 Background information, related images and other links on iBBC

Image from the authors’ application

as Facebook, to allow people to be ‘alerted’ or highlighted, and posts to be organized under common tags. To a large extent, these digital initiatives opened the possibility of technologically enabled processes and tools to be used in the digital mapping and networking of physical heritage sites, and their connection with relevant knowledge repositories that are readily available on mobile apps. The provision of an AR mobile app has effectively layered the otherwise neglected Bukit Brown Cemetery with critical knowledge and informational nodes, envaluing the sites with illustrations of their historical and cultural significance.

Conclusion Since the early 2010s, the authors have observed the now normalized trends of digital technologies in defining contemporary Singapore active citizenry in fields ranging from political arenas to civil society movements, including that of conservation and heritage (Liew, Pang and Chan 2014; Pang and Liew 2014). Complementary to the portability and transferability of digitized content for the documentation and recording of events, it is important to connect such data to the larger electronically networked public. This chapter has described the baseline research that helped inform the design and development of iBBC, an AR mobile app launched

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to support and enhance visitor experience in Bukit Brown Cemetery. The main interaction themes of this app were developed from the results of a user test which revealed the potential of mobile features for supporting on- and off-site engagement and interactions. There still remain some challenges, most signif icantly poor connectivity and lags in retrieving information. Once seen as parochial and concerning only the affected relatives and clans, it was a mixture of social activism and digital intervention that made Bukit Brown Cemetery the centre of a national debate concerning meaningful land use in Singapore. This can be seen in two areas: the appropriation of digital and communication technologies for the more intangible goals of meaning-making and conservation, and the reconstruction and propagation of alternative narratives. Measured often in the material terms of IT infrastructure and ownership of digital devices, for the Singapore state the role of ICT has been defined using instrumental terms of technological and economic advancement. The development of iBBC and subsequent applications have visibly demonstrated the meaningful case for digital interventions in re-illustrating and remapping the otherwise forgotten Bukit Brown Cemetery and rendering its historical and cultural contours visible to general visitors. The premises may not share the institutional recognition of off icially gazetted conservation sites like the Singapore Botanical Gardens, which the Singapore government actively pushed to be granted UNESCO status in 2015. However, in terms of navigation aids and content provision, digital intervention has played a levelling role for the largely grassroots initiatives in staging Bukit Brown Cemetery as an alternative heritage site, one that the Brownies feel strongly deserves recognition equal to the Singapore Botanical Gardens. Rather than driving the trajectory of state-civil society relationships in a government-versus-activist and heritage-versus-development binary, this digital intervention has demonstrated the possibility of a less adversarial climate. The earlier iBBC app and subsequent Bukit Brown Wayf inder reflected the engendering of a more politically fluid common ground for the state and its counterparts in civil society to work together for the heritagization of the otherwise spatially ambigious Bukit Brown Cemetery. With a fully equipped undergound train station named Bukit Brown already constructed, future plans for the premises include a pragmatic ‘residential’ estate. Meanwhile, since it is tagged unofficially as ‘Bukit Brown Heritage Park’ on social media and has the relevant apps to guide visitors around the site, within the hard state, Bukit Brown Cemetery stands as one of the parts of the soft city of Singapore.

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The work documented here reveals the potential of technologically mediated modalities through which individuals may derive new meanings during their encounters with and explorations of heritage sites. The project demonstrates and challenges the tradition of ‘theatre-inspired’ museums as the primary means of cultural engagement (Brown 2010), where learning about artefacts and their contexts happens in a relatively confined space and from a distance. Future work could explore more of such modalities and the meanings that emerge from these encounters. Finally, it is worth noting that all these applications have been supported by multiple agencies from the government in collaboration with conservationists and activist groups. In many ways, such support signals a more reconcilatory state-civil society relationship following tensions over the building of a highway across part of Bukit Brown Cemetery. It is also the accumulation of technologically enabling efforts, including that of the authors, to envalue an otherwise elusive space. The ambition is to reflect on the deeper cultural significance of cemetery spaces in Singapore, to change them from redundant and tabooed ‘spare land’ to sites of meaning and heritage within the city state.

Works Cited Amakawa, Jonathan and Jonathan Westin. 2018. ‘New Philadelphia: Using Augmented Reality to Interpret Slavery and Reconstruction Era Historical Sites’. International Journal of Heritage Studies 24(3): 315-331. Au-Yong, Rachel. 2017. ‘Singapore’s Biggest and only Active Public Cemetery will Shrink by One-third to Make Way for Tengah Air Base Expansion’. The Straits Times. 18 July. Available at https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/singaporesbiggest-and-only-active-public-cemetery-will-shrink-by-one-third-to-make-way [accessed 12 Apr. 2018]. —. 2018. ‘New Funeral Parlour to Replace Mount Vernon Columbarium’. The Straits Times, 10 Jan. Available at https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/new-funeralparlour-to-replace-mount-vernon-columbarium [accessed 12 Apr. 2018]. Azuma, Ronald T. 1997. ‘A Survey of Augmented Reality’. Presence 6(4): 355-385. Barker, Victoria. 2012. ‘Tan Chuan-Jin vs Janice Koh on Bukit Brown’. Asiaone. 6 Mar. Available at http://www.asiaone.com/News/Latest%2BNews/Singapore/ Story/A1Story20120306-331785.html [accessed 12 Apr. 2012]. Brown, Deidre. 2010. ‘Digital Cultural Heritage and Indigenous Objects, People, and Environments’. In Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage: A Critical

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Discourse, ed. Fiona Cameron and Sarah Kenderdine. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 77-91. Bukitbrown.info. n.d. ‘The Bukit Brown Documentation Project’. http://www. bukitbrown.info/index.php [accessed 25 May 2018]. Channel News Asia. 2019. ‘Lornie Highway, new underpasses to fully open on Apr 19’. 19 March. Available at https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/ lornie-highway-new-underpasses-to-fully-open-on-apr-19-11358420 [accessed 20 Jan. 2020]. Chayko, Mary. 2014. ‘Techno-social Life: The Internet, Digital Technology, and Social Connectedness’. Sociology Compass 8(7): 976-991. Chen Yinhong 陈莹纮. 2018. Hangai liuda zhuti bishanting zhanchu 200nian huazu nanlaishi涵盖六大主题 碧山亭展出200年华族南来史. Lianhe Zaobao 联 合早报. 16 Apr. Available at https://www.zaobao.com.sg/zlifestyle/culture/ story20180416-851076 [25 May 2018]. Heng, Terence. 2018. ‘Photographing Absence in Deathscapes’. Area 00: 1-10. Hio, Lester. 2017. ‘Follow New Trail to Bukit Brown Landmarks’. The Straits Times. 19 Nov. Available at https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/follow-new-trailto-bukit-brown-landmarks [accessed 12 Apr. 2018]. Hong, Danielle. 2018. ‘Building the Urban Commons in Singapore: The Cemetery, Red-Light District and Public Housing Estates as Sites of Contestation’. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 19(3): 404-418. Huang, Jianli. 2014. ‘Resurgent Spirits of Civil Society Activism: Rediscovering the Bukit Brown Cemetery in Singapore’. Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 87(307): 21-45. Kong, Lily. 1999. ‘Globalisation and Singaporean Transmigration: Re-imagining and Negotiating National Identity’. Political Geography 18, 5: 563-589. —. 2012. ‘Ambitions of a Global City: Arts, Culture and Creative Economy in “PostCrisis” Singapore’. International Journal of Cultural Policy 18, 3: 279-294. Lee, Jo and Timothy Ingold. 2006. ‘Fieldwork on Foot: Perceiving, Routing, Socialising’. In Locating the Field: Space, Place and Context in Anthropology, ed. Simon Coleman, Peter Collins and Henrike Donner. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 67-86. Liew, Kai Khiun, Natalie Pang and Brenda Chan. 2014. ‘Industrial Railroad to Digital Memory Routes: Remembering the Last Railway in Singapore’. Media, Culture & Society 36(6): 761-775. Muzaini, Hamzah and Brenda Yeoh. 2007. ‘Memory-Making “from below”: Rescaling Remembrance at the Kranji War Memorial and Cemetery, Singapore’. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 39(6): 1288-1305. Neumann, Ulrich and Suya You. 1999. ‘Natural Feature Tracking for Augmented Reality’. IEEE Transactions on Multimedia 1(1): 53-64.

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Pang, Natalie and Kai Khiun Liew. 2014. ‘Archiving in the Wild, the Wild Archivist: Bukit Brown Cemetery and Singapore’s Emerging “docu-tivists”’. Archives & Manuscripts 42(1): 87-97. Smith, Wally, Hannah Lewi and David Nichols. 2018. ‘”PastPort”: Reflections onthe Design of a Mobile App for Citizen Heritage in Port Melbourne’. Australian Historical Studies 49(1):103-125. Tai, Janice. 2014. ‘Artefacts from Bukit Brown goes on Display’. The Straits Times. 19 Jun. https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/artefacts-from-bukit-browngraves-go-on-display [accessed: 25 May 2018]. Tan, Kevin. ed. 2011. Spaces of the Dead: A Case from the Living. Singapore: Ethos Books. The Straits Times. 2013. ‘Bidadari Estate to Retain Public Tombstones’. 6 Sep. Available at http://www.asiaone.com/singapore/bidadari-estate-retain-pioneerstombstones [accessed 16 May. 2018]. van Dijck, José. 2011. ‘Flickr and the Culture of Connectivity: Sharing Views, Experiences and Memories’. Memory Studies 4(4): 401-415. Were, Graeme. 2008. ‘Out of Touch? Digital Technologies, Ethnographic Objects and Sensory Orders’. In Touch in Museums, ed. Helen Chatterjee. Oxford: Berg, 121-134. —. 2015. ‘Digital Heritage in a Melanesian Context: Authenticity, Integrity and Ancestrality from the other side of the Digital Divide’. International Journal of Heritage Studies 21(2): 153-165. Westin, Jonathan, Anna Foka and Adam Chapman. 2018. ‘Humanising Places: Exposing Histories of the Disenfranchised through Augmented Reality’. International Journal of Heritage Studies 24(3): 283-286. Yeoh, Brenda. 1991. ‘The Control of “Sacred” Space: Conflicts Over the Chinese Burial Grounds in Colonial Singapore, 1880-1930’. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 22(2): 282-311. —. 2003. Contesting Space in Colonial Singapore: Power Relations And The Urban Built Environment. Singapore: Singapore University Press. Yeoh, Brenda and Tan Boon Hui. 1995. ‘The Politics of Space: Changing Discourses on Chinese Burial Grounds in Post-War Singapore’. Journal of Historical Geography 21(2): 184-201. Zhang, Xiang, Stephen Fronz and Nassir Navab. 2002. ‘Visual Marker Detection and Decoding in AR Systems: A Comparative Study’. In Proceedings of the 1st International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR ’02). IEEE Computer Society: Washington, DC, USA.

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About the Authors Natalie Pang received her Ph.D. in Information Technology from Monash University where her research on participatory technologies won her two awards. Her teaching and research are focused on community informatics, studying and developing new media modalities to support cultural and civic engagement. She has published widely in peer-reviewed journals such as Computers in Human Behavior and New Media & Society. Liew Kai Khiun is Assistant Professor at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at the Nanyang Technological University. His research interests include media and heritage in the context of Singapore. Liew has published several journal articles on social media and activism in Bukit Brown Cemetery and Instagram portrayals of the former railway corridor in the republic.

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Collaborative Imaginaries Social Experiments, Free Schools and Counterpublics in Singapore Huiying Ng Abstract In a climate of growing ecological awareness and a rising ‘counterpublic’, spaces to imagine a different city are emerging against an entrenched culture of competition, materialism and forms of alienation. Three case studies (Growell, Babel and Foodscape Collective) offer counter-narratives to Singapore’s image as an ahistorical, politically apathetic city. The role of capital and consumer culture is examined by looking at spaces that attempt to offer alternatives to capitalist alienation. I discuss the case studies in terms of the way imaginaries offer transformative experiences and the form that these initiatives took, considering the temporal and spatial needs they addressed by enabling new niches for fledgling efforts and cultures to form. I frame these within discussions of the capacities needed for collaborative imaginaries and participatory co-governance in Singapore. Keywords: commoning, collaboration, imaginaries, niche formation, participatory co-governance

Introduction In the early 2010s, Singapore underwent a political maturing of sorts. This was the time of the post-2008 financial crisis, Wall Street protests and renewed anti-capitalist fervour, and as Singapore’s 2011 General Election threw up public rumblings about labour, the environment and transport, the public began to tap into alternative media to express

Chung, Simone Shu-Yeng & Mike Douglass (eds), The Hard State, Soft City of Singapore. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020 doi: 10.5117/9789463729505_ch11

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their frustrations. Half a decade on, Singapore’s public sphere now has a greater number of citizen groups, higher expectations of governmental accountability, and more public discussion about the merits of government policies. But to what extent do these emerging imaginaries reflect a growing investment in building creative and collaborative practices that are independent of the state? In this chapter, I use Arjun Appadurai’s (1996) conceptualization of imagination as a social practice to ground my theoretical frame. He argues that the imagination itself is ‘an organized field of social practices, a form of work (in the sense of both labour and culturally organized practice), and a form of negotiation between sites of agency (individuals) and globally def ined f ields of possibility’ (Ibid.: 31). New imaginaries grow steadily, circulating through practice in the city, and only become visible at points of disjuncture, which happen as part of global cultural shifts when different imaginaries bring embodied ideologies into contact with one another. In this chapter, I look at three vignettes featuring civic participation in Singapore, that intentionally inhabit the city’s other space-times. I consider how people rework space and time in these examples to counter the psychological and material structures that constrain civic and creative spaces. Asserting that the treatment of nature, particularly in Singapore, offers a critical opening – a point of disjuncture – into the problems of and possibilities for the urban imaginary, I suggest lessons that may be gleaned from the practices of these three example projects.

Singapore as Backdrop A close examination of change in Singapore first requires an understanding of how its space has been shaped through time, via the sweeping socioenvironmental programming instituted over years of urban planning policy. While these ‘administrative exercises’, as described by the first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew (Barnard and Heng 2015), sought to curb undesirable behaviour such as littering, they also shaped a pragmatic landscape that deprioritized the use of spaces for affective, expressive display. Simultaneously, a self-consciousness about Singapore as a ‘world-class’ nation, ‘first-world’ city or ‘global city’ has become pervasive across scales, with the resulting idealization of specific modes of behaviour that befit such terms. Yuen comments that in Singapore, the past – expressed through

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metaphors of space1 – ‘is regarded as sullied, or at the very least unbecoming of a world-class nation, and it is necessary to sanitize the nation through a determined purge of the hodgepodge of elements which have defined its existence up till the 1960s’ (2013: 1). With the introduction of social, housing and media policies during the 1960s, ‘this hodgepodge of elements’ was set in order. Environmental greening campaigns introduced landscape changes and social measures (for example, via educational campaigns about courtesy, and fines and punishments for littering and the uprooting of trees) to shape a landscape and people more able to display the characteristics of cleanliness, greenery and health (Barnard and Heng 2015). These measures habituated – and naturalized – Singaporeans’ preferences for and understandings of civility and citizenship, nature and control, as people grew to identify beauty, properness, and aesthetics with the heavily managed and regulated lawns and parks surrounding them (Hwang and Roscoe 2015). Today, an image of nature as ordered, neat and controlled, inflects the imaginaries that guide and percolate through daily life in Singapore. It is within this context that I examine three spaces where collective horizons are extended. I focus on how spatial practices enable the ‘extension’ of imaginaries, and thereby also the extension of bodies to act, feel and think in new ways (Ahmed 2006). Imaginaries of possible worlds are largely sketched out for the Singaporean public by state-supported projects. My argument is that imaginaries are not only textual or verbal, but are also emotive, practiced, and temporal, and that their sustained circulation depends on people’s ability to read and transmit their proposed orientations.

Possible Worlds of Collaboration Collaboration by no means exists solely in spaces of alterity. In the years after the 2011 elections, a push towards citizen engagement occurred, with terms like ‘co-creation’ and ‘participatory’ entering bureaucratic discourse, accompanied by national-level funding for work done with the ‘community’. Against the backdrop of alienation in relational and built spaces in Singapore, a mass of creative projects have recently become common: participatory projects, interactive workshops, communities of 1 As in ‘Weeds, attap, kampong / and five-foot way fell away as the towers rose, / pushing out above the temples’ (Pang 2010: 21).

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practice and archival projects centred on citizen stories. The emergence of this field has been rapid, producing a dense number of largely homogeneous projects in a short span of time. Communities may now be said to proliferate wherever state money can be found – in community arts grants, youth communities, neighbourhood communities, and a new generation of communities fostered through a year’s worth of SG50 community events, celebrating 50 years of nationhood, in 2015. Ideas about community from other ‘elsewheres’ often serve as sources of inspiration. For instance, the *SCAPEnodes team within *SCAPE – an organization which worked with the National Youth Council to build the youth landscape in Singapore – tapped into the idea of ‘communities of practice’2 for their work in 2015 and early 2016. Despite this splurge of funding for community events, a so-called sense of community remains elusive. For instance, has Singaporean society become more community-centric or f illed with ‘kampong spirit’, as is sometimes reported in the newspapers? A National Values Assessment conducted in 2015 showed ‘[a] disconnect between how [Singaporeans and Permanent Residents] describe themselves compared to how they view society. While respondents describe themselves with words such as caring, responsibility, honesty, compassion and positive attitude, words used for society were more negative and include kiasu, kiasi, competitive, materialistic, self-centred and blame – which were also selected three years ago’ (Fang 2015). These disjunctive perceptions reflect a relational and spatial alienation both amongst people and with the built environment – individual imaginaries that map poorly onto shared societal or cultural practices. The government’s pivot towards public consultation, participation and ‘futures’ over the recent half-decade opens a space to ask how practices of sharing and imagining, which inherently draw on capacities to feel, express and witness emotion in shared space-times, might be performed and interpreted by government officials, NGOs, corporations and the public alike.

Structure of this Chapter To examine people’s involvement in creating alternative public imaginaries, I consider their role as audience, participants or organizers in the three 2 This term emerged in anthropology (Lave and Wenger 1991) and has since been taken up by practitioners.

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Figure 11.1 *SCAPEnodes’ Same Same But Different festival poster (2016)

Credit: *SCAPEnodes

vignettes that follow. Michael Warner (2014) introduces the notion of a public and counterpublic, in part to recognize the role of the counterpublic in introducing new politics to the public sphere. Not merely subaltern, the counterpublic is a public that acquires its uniqueness through deliberate

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separation from rational-critical discourse: rather than rationality, they allow their emotional, ‘creative-expressive functions’ to seep into their praxis. A counterpublic does more than read the news: it romps, ‘throws shade, prances, disses, acts up, carries on, longs, fantasizes, throws fits, mourns, “reads”’ (Warner 2014: 89). It has an embodied sociability that reaches beyond print and text. However, once a counterpublic gives these up to adapt to the performativities of rational-critical discourse, entering the temporality of politics (as a social movement, for example), it is then, Warner argues, that it loses its ability to transform policy and public life as a non-rational, emotive, intuitive and creative force. As a body of variable intensities, a counterpublic brings together various imaginaries in multi-directional ways that are contingent on the agency of each individual, at each particular moment in time. With this in mind, in this chapter I consider the spatio-temporal characteristics that influence how collaborative imaginaries develop. I then conclude by discussing the lessons these offer, as forms of ‘transformation’ (Pine II and Gilmore 1999) and ‘autonomous research’ (Schultz 2014). Interviewees for my study include participants and producers involved in the projects, and reflect a range of imaginaries. Pseudonyms are used for individuals who did not occupy public positions.

Case Studies The Growell Pop-Up Description The Growell Pop-Up (‘Growell’ for short) was housed at 107/109 Rowell Road, which was primarily used by the Edible ‘Garden City’ Project to store farming tools, equipment and shelves of microgreens illuminated by LED lights. Six weeks of events were scheduled for Growell, which led to a surplus exceeding its creators’ expectations. Starting with a two-week series of fermentation workshops titled Squat and Grow – a collaboration between three individuals based in Singapore and Lifepatch (a citizen initiative in art, science and technology from Indonesia) that included workshops on DIY (do-it-yourself) electronics, DIY smoked cocktails, night foraging, biosynthesizers and soylents – it continued on an arc that included a 24-hour food pop-up, ticketed workshops, a photography exhibition, talks, brunch sessions and neighbourly sharing which, according to the pop-up organizer Michelle Lai, aimed to involve the neighbourhood in the events.

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Table 11.1  Overview of each case study The Growell Pop-Up Timeline

February 2015 to midMarch 2015 (extended into April 2015) Locations A two-storey shophouse at 107/109 Rowell Road, in the Little India and Jalan Besar neighbourhood Objectives To bring together ideas and practices on food eating and urban farming in accessible ways, in order to appeal to those with an interest in food and open to exploring new ideas despite their busy schedules Organizers A small team of two individuals working loosely with and within a larger organization, joined by others at different times Demographics 20- to 40-year olds; of participants financially comfortable, with some events attracting a more middle-class, HDB flat-dwelling middleaged crowd

Babel

Foodscape Collective

October 2015 to January 2016

March 2015 to present

Ground-Up Initiative at Various places across 91 Lorong Chencharu Singapore; gardens, homes and market venues To provide a series of experiences that explores different scenes of life in Singapore through the talents of local youths growing their craft

To explore the pathways of food resilience and security; growing one’s own food in Singapore; finding like-minded others and finding ways to make this roughly defined community visible

Author in collaboration with hosts and speakers

Author in partnership with a small team; fringe activities organized with the support of others

15- to 30-year olds: pre-university students, university students and recent graduates

Students and mid-20to 50-year olds; individuals with some financial stability with free time and desire to explore. A regular group with porous boundaries open to newcomers.

The topics included food hacking, foraging for edible weeds, salads and smoothies, urban farming in HDB flats, salting, the science of fish farming, film nights, edible flower arrangement (with a neighbouring flower shop), cooking with fire, natural remedies, honey tasting, and distillation and propagation. By mid-March, the pop-up had officially ended, but the spillover events continued to be spurred by a momentum of people returning to the space for more. For those wanting a space to share about their work, Growell’s

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Figure 11.2 Growell Pop-Up schedule in 2015

Credit: Michelle Lai

rent-free, pay-as-you-will policy allowed public workshops and meetings to be held. This brought together all sorts of unplanned uses of the space, including a trash(y) food competition that used food trash, an ArcGIS mapping workshop, yoga, an ‘open source’ Fermentation Guthub meeting, a coding meetup, a talk on social innovation, the Post-Museum Green Drinks Reunion and a ‘How to Document Events’ workshop by the engineer group Engineers.SG.

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Figure 11.3 Ground floor of Growell

Credit: Growell

Impression Growell was striking for its temporality, people and space. To those who are intimately familiar with it, Growell is rooted in a meandering temporality, sweeping through intense phases of unbounded time (there was never a clock in the space) that intermittently crystallized into the furious pace of public-facing events. Growell was simultaneously public and private, with an inner topology of mysterious nooks and crannies covered in the fine red dust that never stopped falling. Space in Growell was tight but mutable. People tended to cluster, linger and spread out as the space permitted. Walls were whitewashed and painted with poetry, and makeshift living quarters made out of reused pallets housed visitors. Soil was constantly being swept up and emptied into the climbing blue pea and herb planters outside; at night, the house creaked in odd places and a whisker of shrews scurried in dark corners. During events, the place was kept open for as long as people stayed. One visitor, R (pseudonym), a regular on the social and tech start-up cultural circuit, explained the logic of the space to me during my early visits there: ‘One thing about this place is [the organizers] not managing things too much. […] They leave things to happen on their own’. Many

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things ‘were not optimized for fast experiences. […] Event plans were the backbone, the reason for people to turn up, but people know that other things may happen along the way’. With Growell, events often took shape or (e)merged spatially and temporally, from one to the other, in a way that reflected encounters in the present as ‘constitutive acts of future-making’ (Johnson 2015: 309). Observation In our ‘monoculture of linear time’ (de Sousa Santos 2004: 12, quoted in Johnson 2015), the continuity of background activity – and the inf inite potentials they reveal – is often overlooked. Growell’s workshops were squeezed into weekday afternoons, weekends (back-to-back throughout the day) and evenings, at times stretching into the early hours of the morning. It became a mélange of topics, issues and people meeting or just missing one another, noticing each other and introducing themselves. These accidental encounters took place visually, physically, affectively and intellectually. Another participant, W (pseudonym), who had helped in the initial preparations for the pop-up, mentioned: There was possibility there; you could come in and out, things were set up fast – you could transform the space into something you needed. There was no formal commitment, you didn’t need anyone’s permission to do it, you just did. Things were planned out in a month; we went in every weekend from November to January to fix things and set up. The moment you formalize something into something like a ‘social innovation programme’, you lose some of the spontaneity.

Intersections in Time Nearing its closure, Growell witnessed an intersection of past, present and future times. The Post-Museum and Green Drinks Reunion was held at Growell on 25 April 2015. Post-Museum had been located in the exact same shophouse, two businesses ahead of Growell. At that point, Post-Museum operated Food #03, a small café frequented by civil society groups and art practitioners. This reunion brought two generations of shophouse tenants into the same space, introducing participants from the Growell phase of the shophouse’s life to the previous tenants, and the Post-Museum and Green Drinks alumni to the work that Growell had done and was attempting to do.

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As a direct participant in this event, I here recount my version of this incident. This came at a point when many future possibilities for Growell beckoned and ideas for the future of the space were being discussed amongst a small group of individuals, including myself. The encounter with the alumni of these two other organizations that had substantially impacted the social and civil society scene in Singapore was inspiring and motivating. The alumni shared their stories of the space in the years that Post-Museum had been a tenant. Their affection for the space awakened me to the undercurrent of passionate activist work that Singapore still harboured. Whereas Growell had shown me the creative potential and emergent possibilities that well-curated unstructured time could provide, this reunion threaded two distinct points in linear time and looped them together so that, for a moment in time, the hearth of 107/109 Rowell Road danced with younger selves, present ones, and future hopes for the space. Co-mingling, their presence ensured a shared attention that strengthened the coherence of each narrative. Attention work – the work of bringing people to ‘cultivate attention as care’ as Wilson (2014: 187) puts it, so that ‘[r]esponsibility is shared through attention formation, and this sharing is the grounding condition for solidarity’ (Stiegler 2010; cited in Wilson 2014: 188) – retains a key role in a culture of action. This line of thinking argues that the significance of a collective that acts, comes not from the work or form of its partnerships but from the ability of these partnerships to pay attention to multiple aspects of a struggle, enabling shared visibility and shared responsibility. In this moment of shared attention, 107/109 Rowell Road witnessed a re-formation of a counterpublic that was self-consciously different from the dominant publics in Singapore, and solidified a disjunctive imaginary of life in Singapore, extending individual horizons. Babel Description By June 2015, it was clear that 107/109 Rowell Road was no longer available for use. But I had met individuals with unique talents and interests that showed me, as Raban (1974) would put it, a different path through the city, and felt that their approaches to life should be shared with a discerning public. I talked to friends about these ideas, and Babel emerged as a deliberately short, open-ended series of sessions exploring craft and labour, connecting a larger public with practitioners. Babel was proposed

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Table 11.2  Schedule of the completed Babel sessions as of March 2016 Dates of sessions conducted

Description

4 October 2015

Pottery Histories: Addressing Soil from A Potter’s Perspective A public talk and hands-on clay-building workshop-by-payment with materials provided; about 16 participants attended the talk and 11 attended the workshop. Dark Sun Designed as two 1.5-hour slots of four to six people each; about eight individuals attended, sitting in at different times. Dark Sun Rerun Designed as a 3-hour long session for four to six people; three people registered and two could not attend.

12 December 2015

24 January 2015

to be held between late August and early September 2015 and designed to be spatially mobile. Two of these sessions were Pottery Histories and Dark Sun. Pottery Histories was a talk and workshop conducted by Elizabeth Gan (EG), a young potter who turned a side interest into a living. Dark Sun, a Dungeons and Dragons game, was designed with and run by Tan Shao Han (SH), who had been working with role-play gaming methods to create educational games for laypeople, including underprivileged students. The aim of Dark Sun was to simulate an alternate world of ecological damage and resource scarcity, and to introduce people to a different form of labour and experiential learning. I interviewed three people involved in Babel. All three interviewees were involved from the early stages when we discussed related ideas, although one of them, E (pseudonym), was not involved in the execution of the project. Impression The experimental nature of Babel provoked thoughts on the autonomous space allowable for failure and creativity in Singapore. Each interviewee had their own take on entrepreneurship, collaborative play, and instinct. Observation In contrast to SH and EG, E had more faith in the individual entrepreneur’s ability to create and innovate without grounding their ideas in the needs of others. Yet his words reflect SH’s picture of the clockwork world of atomized individual labour and play – one where individuals interact with one

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Table 11.3  Selected interviewee quotations Interviewees Quotes The open idea of Babel breaks the comfort zone of subcultures. SH (co-designed The industrial logic of workforce specialization is usually put into a game . . . so and ran one if person A doesn’t show up, the game can’t move. People in Singapore like this session) structure … They know the challenges, they are competent with it, it’s a passive consumption mindset versus a productive mindset in order to deal with an uncertain world. In a structured scenario, everyone has a structured role. In a very disciplined environment of high risk and high reward, imagination isn’t seen as necessarily good. It’s not an environment that supports trust. This actually makes you less efficient. In Singapore, due to the emphasis on maintaining emotional and social resources to optimize efficiency, there are no resources given to imagination. People who come out of entrepreneurship programmes in Singapore would thus still be slower, less agile, with the assumption that one has resources to fall back on, that there is another organization in your start-up that can support you. We end up with bureaucratic specialization—entrepreneurs become more akin to administrators. The practical reality is that we are still in the bigger ecosystem. You can learn what to specialize in, perform well in that role—that’s good if the role is relevant in the world. But the world is shifting, and to assume that the system is greater than the world’s real issues, that’s not appropriate. EG (co-designed and ran one session)

There is a lack of creativity in this generation. Art projects now are like school projects. It almost feels like we haven’t really left school. There is the same structure of committees, grants to apply for. We are a generation that grew up with the idea that formal education is the ticket to everything. Art now seems not to be “this is my life experience and I need to get it off my chest in a way I know how—through materials and visuals”. The way art now is done is not borne out of necessity but out of safety ... Art shouldn’t be about how “new” it is, but about having a genuine voice. There needs to be an urgency to it, as something that needs to be done. Practising art here is not about pushing boundaries but learning self-administration, which has got nothing to do with art. Artists are conforming to societal expectations. If we look at the ones getting state funding, it’s because they can signal they are administratively strong. Art conforms to a certain business management logic here. Look at Jimmy Ong (a Singaporean artist based in Indonesia), he had no academic reasons for the art he created, it’s “just do”. And his work was fantastically executed, interesting, with no specific method. It’s as if we don’t trust our own instincts—we want validation; everything is very scientific, there is a precision to everything—you never have poetic execution in Singapore. We are all technical and there’s too much homogeneity.

E (observed and assisted in the conceptualisation of Babel)

For something to be truly entrepreneurial, it has to get from idea to money-making. No one can think collaboratively. You can bounce ideas off people but only one person comes up with an idea, only one person brings original views to the table. It’s very rare to have a discussion where original ideas come out because a few people are speaking.

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another through material rather than social relations.3 While the process of art-making can be an individual, intensive process, it is important to note how this orientation is directed away from the possibilities SH and EG articulate, of creating shared, intersecting imaginary worlds, through a larger ecosystem of dialoguing voices. Foodscape Collective Description Foodscape Collective began in March 2015 as a project to explore the pathways of food resilience, security, and growing one’s own food in Singapore. As a collaborative project involving individuals from different starting points, defining its main aims became a matter of repeated refinement: was it about finding like-minded others, creating artefacts that could shift the dialogue on food security in Singapore, about mobilizing collective knowledge production of garden spaces and local food production in Singapore, or perhaps all these and more? From the perspective of the team behind Foodscape Collective, of which I was a part, it was clear that urban farming was rapidly gaining interest among a subset of the population. From virtually no interest in 2010 (with the exception of a few lone articles on food security and resilience by Paul Teng and colleagues at Nanyang Technological University), interest in urban farming had stayed on the fringes of mainstream consciousness until 2014. 4 Foodscape Collective’s early interest in gardens thus settled into three foci: to map gardens in Singapore, to visit and collect stories from different homes and community gardens, and to facilitate collaborations between individuals and organizations. Despite the quantity of public data that is ostensibly available in Singapore, information about food was and remains a black hole. Not much is known 3 As David Harvey notes in Limits to Capital (1982), citing Marx ([1887] 1967: 73), the fetishism of commodities describes a state in which ‘the relations connecting the labour of one individual with that of the rest appear, not as direct social relations between individuals at work, but as what they really are, material relations between persons and social relations between things’. 4 Now, urban farming is on the radar of newspapers and conferences, and private and social enterprises. On a policy level, from a near silence on food security, the government and government agencies have started to share horticultural knowledge in response to waves of interest. The Agri-Food and Veterinary Association (AVA), for example, updated their website in 2015 to encourage support for local produce and signal a commitment to increasing levels of local production of eggs, dairy and poultry (AVA 2016).

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Figure 11.4 Foodscape Collective’s crowdsourced map of home gardens, based on ArcGIS

Image by the author

about one of the closest sites of nature-human interaction in Singapore – home gardens – prompting questions about how people use gardens, why, and what they grow. Impression In Singapore, nature is often represented as being kept in submission by bureaucratic and political forces (Barnard and Heng 2015; Kong and Yeoh 1996). It has been accorded quantifiable qualities and been turned into an utilizable asset for tourism. The disciplining of nature has mirrored the disciplining of the populace in terms of becoming cleaner, better stewards of a civilized urban environment (Barnard and Heng 2015), and desiring structure and order. Community gardens have been introduced and utilized as a way of engaging the community, with various critiques of exclusion, politicization and token participation (Tan and Neo 2009; Chua 2015). Foodscape Collective’s project of visiting and speaking with the gardening community provided many opportunities to understand gardens in Singapore as products of, and a stage for, the micropolitics between people and the political landscape. While gardens might be critically read as sites of disciplined nature and the legacies of a colonial enterprise, the public’s imaginary of a garden is vastly different. To the average person born and

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raised in Singapore after the 1970s’ land redevelopment and rehousing of kampong residents, fenced-up nature is often an overlooked natural and neutral space. Used as a conversation-opener between the elderly and younger folks, the garden removes suspicions and barriers. Still, the ‘garden logic’ under which people operate has its demarcations – one might ask how a garden grows, but there is some cautiousness in terms of the legality of things relating to gardens. This includes the harvesting of fruits from public trees, whether residents of one Resident Committee (RC)’s community garden might legally be able to work in the garden of a different RC, and growing things along public housing corridors and on rooftops. Observation In discovering people’s hopes and the limits of their aspirations when faced with the blank garden fence or final decision of the residential committee, Foodscape Collective found both a disempowering withdrawal from public participation and a desire to effect change in one’s surroundings or environment. The cautiousness towards the physical and political boundaries of gardens may be better understood by recalling the years of fines and penalties enforced through the ‘greening and tree planting campaigns’ instituted most heavily through the years of redevelopment (Barnard and Heng 2015). Differentiating it from traditional disciplinary forms of power, Kevin Grove (2014) calls this ‘environmental power, ‘the power not simply to govern life but to produce entire life-worlds so as to govern the possibilities for emergent life’ (Anderson 2012; Massumi 2009; cited in Grove 2014: 247). As a planned city built on a vision of high modernism (Wee 2007), Singapore is a prime example of how ‘environmental power attempts to influence how the complex of people and things that form a milieu relate to one another’ (Grove 2014: 247). This practical caution exists alongside a curiosity and drive to create. Much quieter and harder to coax out, this curiosity is present in every public housing sidewalk garden that has somehow escaped the bonds of national roadside legislature, in small innovations that residents have independently created to fix problems and in everyday parlance as people speak of ‘asking for forgiveness rather than permission’. It also became apparent – from the familiar faces returning for Foodscape Collective’s garden visits, potlucks, gatherings and farmers’ market booths – that people were interested in finding a learning and sharing space.

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Discussion of Findings Imaginaries Offering Transformative Experiences? Against the backdrop of other events that have sheer size, reach and scope to their advantage, these case studies call on people to be participants and contributors through active involvement in co-creating a world, a workshop idea, or thinking through a problem. They exist within a changing economy of business continually morphing to absorb new value. B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore’s (1999) distinction between experience and transformation economies is increasingly pertinent as progressive and socially conscious ideals begin to seep into Singapore society. Examples of both economies exist locally – from the buzzing world of design entrepreneurs and start-ups that focus on the creation of unique experiences, to companies that promise individual transformation and guidance that charge expensive course fees. Beyond the corporate sector, ‘learning’ programmes are increasingly spearheaded by local government-linked agencies in an attempt to revitalize a flagging workforce. Unlike previous economies, the transformation economy centres on customer aspirations, and the ‘transformation elicitor must understand customer aspirations before hoping to affect any change in the particular traits – whether they be along physical, emotional, intellectual, or spiritual dimensions’ (Ibid.: 255). Viewed through this framework, each economic offering must exist within an imaginary that supports different social relations, methods of supply and ‘factors of demand’ that presuppose different socio-temporal orientations and thus, imaginaries. Growell, Babel and Foodscape Collective offered services, experiences and transformations to differing extents and to different numbers of people. Often, change was only apparent in the longer term for both the people aspiring to change, and the people eliciting change – the individuals behind Growell, Babel and Foodscape Collective. Transformative experiences are highly personal and subjective, and their effects extend an individual’s perceived horizons. With the interplay of work and play during Growell, for instance, the notion of labour took on new meaning to me. On a personal level, I experienced how labour undertaken for intrinsic instead of extrinsic motivations did not feel like work. Its structural connotations were interesting too. Barely scraping by, I had become much more conscious of the amount that could be done on a small budget and the different standards by which I made daily decisions, from my social interactions with others, the value of the work I did, the unexpected help I received, and what I gave in turn (and my worries about their equivalence). I assessed the quality of things and their value beyond

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Table 11.4  Economic distinctions and their relevance to each case study Economic Offering

Services

Experiences

Transformations

Economy Economic function Nature of offering Key attribute Method of supply

Service Deliver Intangible Customized Delivered on demand Provider Client Benefits Growell: Majority of participants who attended workshops and talks Babel: No rendering of services

Experience Stage Memorable Personal Revealed over a duration Stager Guest Sensations Growell: Participants who came for the parties and “supper club” events Babel: Participants who attended pottery workshop and role-play game Foodscape Collective: Garden visits

Transformation Guide Effectual Individual Sustained through time Elicitor Aspirant Traits Growell: Organizers and individuals participating in FoodLab

Seller Buyer Factors of demand Relevance to each case study with examples of activities and participants

Foodscape Collective: Individuals who visited farmers’ market and event outreach booths

Babel: Co-designers

Foodscape Collective: Some closely involved participants outside the core team

their immediate use and began to track things in terms of the transactions that went into getting me through the day, emotionally, financially, or through someone else’s help. I write this to illustrate the way individual subjectivities, in Ahmed’s (2006) terms, transform and extend themselves by orienting toward nearby activities and interests, and how these influence future actions and roles, which in turn form new imaginaries. Form: Morphology Imaginaries are also shaped by the spaces they are enfolded within. Heath Schultz introduces forms of autonomous research that allow us a look into ‘new ways of producing knowledge collectively that reject logics of strictly individualized study, competition, and the privatization of knowledge’ (2014: 88). The intention here is not to limit each example to one form, but rather to formulate a lens with which to pick out traits that are less obvious – weaknesses and strengths.

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Table 11.5  Models of autonomous research platforms Infrastructural Experiments are platforms to help facilitate self- and co-education projects. They often use networked forms to connect individuals with shared interests of inquiry and usually function through the establishment of a website or other common site of exchange, enabling those interested to find each other. The Free School is a space for experimental research as well as non-traditional ways of expanding public engagement with knowledge production and their respective communities. The Free University is more academically driven than a Free School, based on a commitment to advance a theoretical and/ or analytical engagement with contemporary struggles, geopolitical configurations, or other leftist and anti-capitalist concerns [...] With many free university projects, the form of self-organization is important due to the realization that the ways we produce knowledge also generate ways of knowing and being. Source: Schultz (2014)

From the highly location-centric space of Growell, the spatially mobile and temporally irregular meetings for Babel to the spread of Foodscape Collective over the island – with no home, existing only in the physical space of gardens and much like Raban’s (1974: 120) communities, remaining ‘in a state of locomotion in the city’ – these three vignettes trace a physical rootedness in a historically layered space to a combination of digital space and physical meetings that are used to keep a community together. These have created attention spaces (following Johnson 2015; Wilson 2014) of different forms, with their accompanying strengths and weaknesses, and implications for the communities that have arisen. Of all the cases, Growell most resembled the ‘free school’ and Foodscape Collective was more of ‘an infrastructural experiment’. Whereas the latter worked with different modes of communication to create platforms for individuals to meet, Growell had a base of sorts that evolved into future work (for instance, Babel). As something meant to engage and interest a mass public, Growell framed its ideas in an accessible way that emphasized the heart instead of the head – feeling and enjoyment, rather than rational discourse. The plethora of ideas and activities that emerged from Growell were experimental and invited surprise, curiosity and enthusiasm. One of the more consciously experimental groups that formed and met three times during Growell’s short stint was FoodLab, which discussed alternative cheese fermenting methods using papaya enzymes, amongst others. Exploring these case studies’ use of space and time to nurture experimental forms can clarify how investments that are ostensibly meant to support the growth of creative practices actually fail to create supportive

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environments for them. Transformations of the sort described by Pine II and Gilmore require a sustained supply of guidance over time. Such long-term investment also requires space, which many ground-up initiatives in art and creative work lack. The following section considers the structures that these projects set up, with the intention of nurturing emergent social formations and infrastructure while also navigating the affordances and constraints given by macro-level (societal) structures. Structures and Niches Each of these three case studies balances structure and looser forms of organization in a different way. This balance of control in participatory projects is of theoretical and practical concern, especially as interest in participatory projects gains momentum. ‘Giving voice’ still requires that decisions be made, at any scale of project design and implementation, over whom to include or exclude; projects constantly run into questions of when to assert control, when to listen, and when to facilitate. Participatory action research methodologies recognize a continuum or ladder of participation, acknowledging that different levels of participation are necessary at different points in the process or for different groups of individuals (Kindon, Pain and Kesby 2007). The projects’ structures opened different lines of extension through which individual orientations and imaginaries could take form. Given that time and space in Singapore is tightly bound and segmented into functional, practical units, creative acts that encourage a habitus of active participation and take place intermittently throughout the city help to trigger change. Their vulnerability to disruption suggests the importance of providing niches to shelter them until a critical mass forms. Specifically, we might consider the quality of their spacetimes. For instance, compared to the background social time that the spatially grounded Growell had in excess, Babel and Foodscape Collective’s nomadic form meant that it had neither the space nor the time to support extended bouts of socializing. Such social time is important incubation time: research on Indonesian art spaces has looked at the concept of nongkrong, or nonproductive social time, and the way it enables creativity and innovative practice to form (Dahl 2015). Growell’s physical base was significant in this regard. In its dusty abode, Growell created structure and enabled imaginaries to extend into one another through new connections of ideas, people and activities – not through labour, but through ways of exploring shared interests with people they trusted and enjoyed being with. For example, R (pseudonym) noted

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how the Squat and Grow workshops saw participants becoming contributors of ideas and resources: ‘With creative people and no time limits, there were scarily good outputs’. The two-week period, he noted, ‘was a continuous flow of time instead of discrete time’. Over time, it attracted individuals who were keen to take some form of ownership over the place, which included managing, coordinating and designing ideas for the space. On the other hand, Babel and Foodscape Collective, in their nomadic movements across the city, required more time to create a community of like-minded individuals. Even so, much of social time occurred outside of the planned events – with Foodscape Collective, for instance, event planning that involved contributors with busy work-lives also required social time to sustain fascination and organic growth within the community. These insights bear wider implications. The move towards participative citizenship in local government rhetoric recalls a global shift towards consultative governance in progressive city centres, with societal actors viewed as agents of change. However, whether this is expressed as ‘self-governance and co-governance, deliberative or participatory governance […] these forms of governance and planning are often framed in optimistic terms’ (Buizer, Elands and Vierikko 2016: 5). A more realistic approach, as Alice Mathers, Nicola Dempsey and Julie Frøik Molin (2015) suggest, would be to ask what citizen traits are needed to support such forms of governance and how relevant imaginaries – with their aspirational horizons – can be nurtured: whether citizens, for example, could be motivated to take ownership of projects or spaces, and how to encourage such forms of motivation. If cogovernance is indeed the future that Singapore wishes to see, then it is vital that both government and civil society groups ask what scaffolds – in space, time and policy – are needed, and how to work towards realizing them.

Final Thoughts: Alternative Participatory Forms and Creative Production in Singapore In the active uptake of attention and mutual visibility, the projects described here have ‘allowed for alternative modes of communication and learning, the articulation of alternative visions, and the crafting of solidarity’ (Sziarto and Leitner 2006: 389). The communities they formed are perhaps primed for experiences, having undergone a transformative change or having had their aspirations elicited. They are counterpublics that speak with many voices and move in different directions that come to know one another through diffused, heterogeneous chance encounters across time and space. Theory

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might suggest that these counterpublics are networked and resilient, able to come together when called, and to react to situations. This chapter has tried to explore both the micro and macro, individual and structural levels, in the belief that binaries mislead theory and practice. In all the imaginaries created, transformations of the individual through access to new tools and connections allow for a broadening of representational spaces and new aspirational horizons. Simultaneously, the form of each project influences the imaginaries that take shape and the methods of inquiry needed to attend to their benefits or outcomes. There are weaknesses in these projects and gaps in this study’s coverage of them. While the transience of Growell was perhaps also its strength, this meant that experiences were highly personal and could not be easily shared with others. While Foodscape Collective has created opportunities for as-yet intangible knowledge to become visible, codifiable, translatable and clear to others, it is a long way from fully realizing its vision – in which the structure would become naturalized and participants could co-create organically. With Babel, shorter interviews with participants of the sessions are not covered here; thus analysis is limited to the intentions driving the project. Value is created and realized in its circulation (Harvey 1982). Similarly, collaborative imaginaries can only be created and realized when our methods of inquiry are oriented towards how they circulate – their conditions of production. This requires a shift from research-as-observation to research that stands with the users and creators of these imaginaries. A public needs the voluntary uptake of attention in order to be ‘participated into being’ (Warner 2014). This chapter has focused on the conditions that produced these collaborative imaginaries, focusing on how they rework temporal and spatial constraints to extend new, shared orientations. Perhaps it is not space for a public that is needed in our city state of multiple flows, audiences and cultures, but instead the recognition of the multiple counterpublics already emerging in our midst, as well as their imaginaries.

Works Cited Agri-Food and Veterinary Association (AVA). 2016. ‘Meeting Singapore’s Food Supply’. Last updated 27 July. Available at: http://www.ava.gov.sg/explore-bysections/food/singapore-food-supply/meeting-singapores-food-supply [accessed 3 Oct. 2016]. Ahmed, Sarah. 2006. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Durham: Duke University Press.

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Anderson, Ben. 2012. ‘Affect and Biopower: Towards a Politics of Life’. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 37(1): 28-43. Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. ‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy’, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalisation. Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press, 27-47. Barnard, Tim and Corinne Heng. 2015. ‘City in a Garden’. In Nature Contained. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 281-306. Buizer, Marleen, Birgit Elands and Kati Vierikko. 2016. ‘Governing Cities Reflexively – The Biocultural Diversity Concept as an Alternative to Ecosystem Services’. Environmental Science & Policy 62(August), 7-13. Chua, C.Y. 2015. ‘Growing “Community”, Planting Responsibility, Sowing Governmentality: Singapore’s Community Gardens as Spaces of Inclusions and Exclusions’. Master’s thesis, National University of Singapore. Dahl, Sonja. 2015. ‘Nongkrong and Collectivity in Yogyakarta’s Contemporary Arts: In Praise of Non-Productive Time’. Paper presented at PARSE Conference 2015, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, 4-6 Nov. de Sousa Santos, Boaventura. 2004. ‘A Critique of Lazy Reason: Against the Waste of Experience’. In The Modern World System in the Longue Durée, ed. I. Wallerstein. New York: Paradigm, 57-197. Fang, Joy. 2015. ‘Singapore Society Becoming More Caring: Survey’. Channel News Asia (CNA), 24 July. Available at: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/ singapore/singapore-society/2004546.html [accessed 13 October 2016]. Grove, Kevin. 2014. ‘Agency, Affect, and the Immunological Politics of Disaster Resilience’. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 32(2): 240-256. Harvey, David. 1982. The Limits to Capital. London: Verso. Hwang Yun Hye and Charlie Roscoe. 2015. ‘Session 1R : Evaluating Native & Wild Green Roof Performance & Desirability’. Paper presented at the Cities Alive: 13th Annual Green Rood and Wall Conference, New York, USA, 5-8 Oct. Johnson, Elizabeth R. 2015. ‘Of Lobsters, Laboratories, and War: Animal Studies and the Temporality of More-than-Human Encounters’. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 33: 296-313. Kindon, Sara, Rachel Pain and Mike Kesby. 2007. ‘Participatory Action Research: Origins, Approaches and Methods’. In Participatory Action Research Approaches and Methods, ed. Sara Kindon, Rachel Pain and Mike Kesby. New York: Routledge, 9-18. Kong, Lily and Brenda S.A. Yeoh. 1996. ‘Social Constructions of Nature in Urban Singapore’. Southeast Asian Studies 34(2): 402-423. Lave, Jean and Etienne Wenger. 1991. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marx, Karl. [1887] 1967. Capital, ed. Frederick Engels. Translated by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling. Moscow, USSR: Progress Publishers.

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Massumi, Brian. 2009. ‘National Enterprise Emergency Steps Toward an Ecology of Powers’. Theory, Culture & Society 26(6): 153-185. Mathers, Alice, Nicola Dempsey and Julie Frøik Molin. 2005. ‘Place-Keeping in Action: Evaluating the Capacity of Green Space Partnerships in England’. Landscape and Urban Planning 139: 126-136. Pang, Alvin. 2010. ‘To Go to S’pore’. In City of Rain. Singapore: Ethos Books, 19-21. Pine II, B. Joseph and James H. Gilmore. 1999. The Experience Economy. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press. Raban, Jonathan. 1974. Soft City. Glasgow: William Collins Sons. Schultz, Heath. 2014. ‘Autonomous Research within and/or beneath the Ruins; Or, We Are Finally Getting Our Feet Wet’. Artleaks Gazette, 85-96. Stiegler, Bernard. 2010. Taking Care of Youth and the Generations. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Sziarto, Kristin M. and Helga Leitner. 2006. ‘Immigrants Riding for Justice: SpaceTime and Emotions in the Construction of a Counterpublic’. Political Geography 29(7): 381-391. Tan, Leon H.H. and Harvey Neo. 2009. ‘“Community in Bloom”: Local Participation of Community Gardens in Urban Singapore’. Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability 14(6): 529-539. Warner, Michael. 2014. ‘Publics and Counterpublics’. Public Culture 14(1): 49-90. Wee, C.J. Wan-Ling. 2007. The Asian Modern: Culture, Capitalist Development, Singapore. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press. Wilson, Matthew W. 2014. ‘Paying Attention, Digital Media, and Community-Based Critical GIS’. Cultural Geographies 22(1): 177-191. Yuen Sin. 2013. ‘Changing Spaces: The Extended Metaphor of Singapore’s Urban Transformation on the Interpellation of Outside and Inside’. Quarterly Literary Review Singapore 12(1). Available at http://www.qlrs.com/essay.asp?id=977 [accessed 13 October 2016]

About the Author Huiying Ng is a scholar-practitioner exploring rural-urban agricultural learning networks, sustainability and community resilience. She is a founding member of the Foodscape Collective, TANAH and soft/WALL/studs, and holds a Masters of Social Science (Research) from the Department of Geography, National University of Singapore. She has presented individual and collective work in the Netherlands, Canada and Singapore.

12 The Invisible Electorate Political Campaign Participation as the Production of an Alternative National Space Emily Chua Hui Ching Abstract This chapter explores the opposition campaigns during Singapore’s 2015 General Elections, to suggest that elections in this one party-dominant state can fruitfully be thought of as a site of contestation between what Lefebvre calls ‘lived’ and ‘abstract’ space. While the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) seeks to situate the country’s elections in the abstract space of calculative reasoning, which it administers and dominates, I argue that the opposition campaigns conjure a parallel terrain of lived space, in which the alienating and inhuman logic of the PAP’s mode of governance can be – if only momentarily – subverted and denied. Keywords: elections, opposition rallies, alienation, Singapore, Henri Lefebvre

Elections are different things in different places. In Singapore, one may think of them as a People’s Action Party (PAP) satisfaction poll. Due to the historical absence of a comparable alternative party, elections in Singapore are less the means by which citizens decide which party will govern their nation than a survey in which people indicate how happy they are with the way the PAP has been governing. Votes for opposition parties are widely referred to in both popular and official discourse as ‘protest votes’ against the PAP. Indeed, it is so generally assumed that the PAP will and should form each successive parliament that the alternative possibility – of ‘protest votes’ outnumbering votes in support of the PAP – is commonly referred to as the possibility of a ‘freak result’.

Chung, Simone Shu-Yeng & Mike Douglass (eds), The Hard State, Soft City of Singapore. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020 doi: 10.5117/9789463729505_ch12

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The 2011 General Election (GE) almost ended in a freak result, when PAP satisfaction ratings hit a record low of 60.1 percent (Tan and Lee 2011). The most recent GE in 2015, however, saw the index leap back up to 69.9 percent. This result came as a surprise to many. PAP candidates said the outcome was better than they had even dared to hope. On the other side, many opposition candidates said that the warmth and encouragement they received from residents had led them to expect a greater share of votes. Whether elated or dismayed, all parties were left asking: What caused this unexpected ‘swing’ towards the PAP? Why was there such a marked discrepancy between the atmosphere ‘on the ground’ and the result that showed up on paper? More broadly, what insights might GE 2015 offer into the apparent paradox of Singapore’s popular authoritarian state? One explanation of the outcome that quickly surfaced was what came to be called ‘the feel-good factor’ in popular discourse. 2015 was the 50th year of Singapore’s independence. From January onwards, a continuous string of public celebrations were orchestrated around the idea of the nation’s ‘golden jubilee’, emphasizing the developmental progress it had achieved. These celebrations culminated in a lavish National Day parade on 9 August, from which public spirits remained ‘high’ on GE Polling Day on 11 September. The death of Singapore’s founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew in March of the same year, and the public mourning rituals which had been organized around it, added to this collective sense of sentimentality. While these events may have done something to blur the line in citizens’ minds between parliamentary elections and national commemoration, they are unlikely to have been the decisive determinant of voting behaviour, however. Indeed, the exchange I had with one voter suggests that they were rather cynically seen as state-funded emotional ploys: ME: Why do you think there was such a swing towards the PAP? T: The feel-good factor lah! LKY, all those SG50 celebrations… ME: Is it really so easy to influence voters? T: It’s not easy! They had to spend so much money. They even gave us an extra public holiday! Do you know how much that costs?

Another explanation put forth by the Post-Election Survey by the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) suggested that Singaporeans had become less ‘pluralist’ and more ‘conservative’ in their political views. A third explanation, favoured by old-time PAP critics, attributed the ruling party’s victory to its usual manipulations of gerrymandering the election-system, announcing various

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perks and bonuses just before the election, and promising public facility upgrades that were contingent on the PAP’s electoral victory. While all of these explanations are persuasive in their own way, I suggest that by interpreting the increase in votes for the PAP as a decrease in support for the opposition, they miss one of the more interesting aspects of Singapore’s electoral politics. The energy and enthusiasm that coalesced around the opposition parties’ activities during their nine days of campaigning were palpable and real. And although the number of votes that opposition parties won decreased compared to 2011, the number of volunteers they attracted is reported to have significantly increased. What is interesting about GE 2015, and what I explore in this paper, is not the so-called ‘swing to the PAP’ but the simultaneity of these two apparently contradictory developments – a greater show of support for opposition on the ground and a greater number of votes for the incumbent party on paper. In thinking through this issue, I find it useful to set aside conventional theories of democracy, which often come with built-in imaginaries of elections as a contestation among multiple parties, representing different ideological standpoints and different interest groups within a country’s population. Applying such a framework to the analysis of elections in Singapore tends to produce normative critiques which are not optimally tailored to Singapore’s particular situation. Instead, I adopt a favourite concept of geography and urban studies – Henri Lefebvre’s distinction between ‘abstract’ and ‘lived’ space (2009). While Lefebvre is best known as a Marxian theorist of urban space, my understanding of his concepts draws from Japhy Wilson’s (2013) recent rereading of Lefebvre as a theorist whose primary concern is not with space per se, but with the problem of alienation in modern society and with space insofar as it works as a medium of alienation. ‘Abstract space’ in this reading is not merely the space of capital accumulation, but also and more importantly, the space of instrumental rationality and technocratic governance – the space conjured by those quantifying, calculating and profit-maximizing approaches to the world, which alienate people from their inherent creativities. The opposite of this ‘abstract space’ is ‘lived space’, or the space of ‘disalienation’, in which individuals are able to experience their environs as creations of their own and themselves as unique, world-making beings. I suggest that elections in Singapore can be fruitfully analysed as taking place in two simultaneous and overlaid spaces. The first is an abstract space, represented by the Singapore Elections Department’s Map of Electoral Divisions. This space, as I explain in the following section, is the one in which we are registered as voters, and the one in which we vote. However,

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it is not the only political space involved in our elections, for parallel to the electoral map is a second space – a lived space that I call ‘campaign terrain’. This is the space of rallies and door-to-door visiting that candidates and citizens create by envisioning their ideal community. While the PAP dominates in abstract space, winning 70 percent of the votes, the opposition parties thrive in campaign terrain, where they win moral and ideological support. I begin by introducing the institution of general elections in Singapore. I then present a reading of Lefebvre’s concepts and show how they can be applied to an analysis of the 2015 elections. My analysis draws from rally speeches, media coverage and personal interviews with opposition party volunteers. By way of conclusion, I then discuss the implications of the political dualism that appears to be emerging.

Elections in Singapore Since its exit from Malaysia and birth as an independent nation-state in 1965, Singapore has been a unicameral parliamentary democracy with representative constituencies, led by a Prime Minister and a cabinet constituted by elected Members of Parliament (MPs). Modelled on the British Westminster system, with general elections called at a maximum of five-year intervals, Singapore’s parliament is theoretically available for multiparty contestation. Yet, in all twelve general parliamentary elections that the young nation has seen, the PAP has consistently been returned to power by an overwhelming margin. Even as the size of the electorate and the number of parliamentary seats available have continuously grown, the PAP’s share of votes won has not fallen below 60.1 percent and its share of parliamentary seats has not fallen below 93.1 percent (see Table 12.1). The reason for the ruling party’s continued electoral dominance has long been the subject of much local discussion. Supporters see it as an effect of the PAP government’s successful policies – in particular, its ability to cultivate a strong sense of national identity, its skill in managing differences between ethnic groups and its focus on practical issues of governance over ideological programs and debates (Singh 1992). Like PAP MPs themselves, proponents of this view read each PAP victory as an extension of the ‘mandate’ that the people of Singapore give to the PAP to govern them on their behalf. Critics of the system, meanwhile, attribute the phenomenon to a combination of popular fear and popular apathy (Lam 2007; Lim 2011; Mutalib 2004). Voters are said, on the one hand, to be too timid to give up the only ruling party

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Table 12.1  Results of all of Singapore’s general elections as an independent nation Year

Elected seats in parliament

PAP seats Non-PAP seats

PAP seats (%)

PAP votes (%)

1968 1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 1991 1997 2001 2006 2011 2015

58 60 69 75 79 81 81 83 84 84 87 89

58 65 69 75 77 80 77 81 82 82 81 83

100 100 100 100 97.5 98.8 95.1 97.6 97.6 97.6 93.1 93.3

84.4 69.0 72.4 75.5 62.9 63.2 61.0 63.0 76.0 65.3 60.1 69.9

0 0 0 0 2 1 4 2 2 2 6 6

Source: Lam 2007; Chiang 2015; Singh 1992; The Straits Times 2015a

they have ever known or fear that voting against the PAP will somehow result in personal recriminations. On the other hand, decades of one-party rule are also said to have left voters politically apathetic, prone to voting unthinkingly for the status quo. Theories and claims that Singapore’s electoral system is designed to work in the PAP’s favour also circulate, particularly around the institution of the Group Representation Constituency (GRC) system. As opposed to Single Member Constituencies (SMCs), which are each represented and contested by an individual candidate, GRCs must be represented and contested by teams of four to six candidates. GRCs are said to disadvantage opposition parties, as these parties are hard pressed to find strong candidates with the right demographic particulars to form credible challenger teams. As the Singapore Elections Department, which is housed under the Prime Minister’s Office, is in the practice of redrawing the nation’s electoral boundaries before every election, theories also abound about how each redrawing is shrewdly calibrated to ensure the PAP’s victory. I suggest in this paper, however, that there is another explanatory factor behind the ruling party’s electoral popularity that existing discourses have not fully explored. This is that over the past five decades the PAP has achieved great economic and developmental success in Singapore by approaching the country as a site of what Lefebvre calls ‘abstract space’ and conscripting it into what he terms the ‘State Mode of Production (SMP)’. PAP dominance in elections today is a result less of popular fear and political

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gerrymandering than of the party’s effectiveness in situating the nation’s elections within this ‘abstract space’ in which its governance has succeeded. To present this argument more fully, I first turn to Lefebvre.

The Abstract Space of Alienation In the 1844 Manuscripts, Karl Marx (1992) argued that the modern institution of private property alienated the human individual by constituting it not as the creative being that it ought to be, but as the owner of its body’s commodified labour power. In the German philosophical tradition that nourished the young Marx’s thought, the human being was seen as a creature creative by nature – a creature whose life consisted of expressing its inner self by transforming its outer world. Whereas monkeys and elephants simply lived off the land, the human being worked on its surroundings: it planted, built, decorated and otherwise, pressed its surroundings into accord with its mind’s ideals. In transforming the environment it lived in, the human being necessarily transformed its way of life; in transforming its way of life, it necessarily transformed itself. The human being, in other words, was not so much a being as a ‘becoming’ – a creature whose life consisted of the continuous transformation of itself, by way of the continuous transformation of its environs, a subject that actualized itself in and by its creative work on the world. Subscribing to this lofty idea of humanity, Marx argued that the modern institution of private property prevented human beings (or rather, human becomings) from realizing this true, self- and world-making nature of their species. He argued that when food and land were treated as the property of some and not of others, those who did not own these basic means of subsistence were not free to work as their inner selves desired. They had to instead work ‘for a living’ – that is, to sell their labour and work as the purchaser dictated, in exchange for food, shelter and survival. Marx called human labour that was bought and sold on the market ‘abstract labour’ because it ignored the real particularity of every individual’s different talents and capacities, and conceptually converted all human beings into owners of the same generic substance – abstractly conceived, bought and sold human labour. Lefebvre (2009) developed this idea by asking whether a similar alienation might result from modern spatial practices as well. Perhaps it was not only who owned the land, but also how the land was represented, controlled and inhabited that barred people from self-actualization. Lefebvre argued that whether through the drawing of property lines, the planning of commercial

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districts or the construction of new highways, all techniques of urban governance worked by conceptually converting unique human environs into units of homogenous ‘abstract space’. In the imaginary dimension of this scarce and economically valuable substance, he argued, businessmen and bureaucrats drew up plans and blueprints. Contractors and workmen then materialize these plans, thereby paving over the existing lifeworlds which people had created through their accumulated acts and memories of inhabiting the place. Condominiums, business districts and highways – these physical materializations of ‘abstract space’ become the new environs which we are compelled to live in. They are landscapes not of creativity, but of measurement – of distance, time, speed, cost, efficiency and liability; landscapes in which people themselves become calculations – the distance over time of a hurried commuter, the salary minus living expenses of an underpaid worker and the multiplying bills of an insatiable shopper. In these spaces of numerical relations, the human being cannot be a uniquely world-transforming, self-transforming subject. ‘Abstract space’, in other words, is by its very nature, the space of alienation. While orthodox Marxists designated alienation a disease of the capitalist world, Lefebvre did not regard ‘abstract space’ as unique to capitalism. Rather, he saw it as a characteristic of what he called ‘productivist’ modes of production, which pursued infinite economic growth by subjecting all dimensions of life to a utility-maximizing, technocratic rationality. Lefebvre saw productivism as a trait common to both state capitalism and state socialism, and hence called it the ‘State Mode of Production’. ‘Abstract space’ was, for him, a world conceived of and constructed in measurable, priceable and tradable quantities – a space that the State placed its citizens in, to structure their lives around the rationalized pursuit of infinite economic growth (2009). Bringing these ideas to Singapore, it seems difficult at first to identify any part of the island that is not some form of abstract space. Every inch has its proprietor and its purpose in the Urban Redevelopment Authority’s Master Plan. Scholars have examined the diverse ways state ownership and control of land have functioned as a vital lynchpin of the ‘Singapore model’ (Shatkin 2014) – enabling the PAP government to manage the housing of some 80 percent of the population, plan and implement transport and telecommunication infrastructures, and seed new industries by coordinating zoning regulations with official discourses and economic policies (Wong and Bunnell 2006). By working hard and effectively in these capacities, the PAP has effectively transformed governance in Singapore into a depoliticized practice of engineering and administration (Chan 1975). Through the state’s

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management of land as abstract space, the political domain of contestations over rights and resources has to a great extent been marginalized, or forced to make way for an economically coordinated pursuit of biopolitical and technocratic excellence. While many analysts have commented on this emergent ‘Singapore model’, one thing few have attended to is the work the PAP government does to locate Singapore’s elections – that quintessentially political practice – within this depoliticized and abstract space. The next section looks at how the PAP’s GE 2015 campaign worked to achieve this.

Defining the Vote GE 2015 saw Singapore divided into 16 GRCs and 13 SMCs, all of which were contested. Of the eight parties and two independent candidates that ran against the PAP, the most credible challenges came from the Worker’s Party (WP) and the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP). Both opposition parties ran their campaigns on critiques of the PAP government’s politically conservative and economically liberal approach to managing the country. WP underscored the weakness of Singapore’s democracy and called on voters to reclaim their sense of country and home, by exercising their right as citizens to choose their own leaders. SDP focused more on the PAP’s economic policies, criticizing them for prioritizing growth over human well-being, and arguing that the economic pressure that citizens had to live under made Singapore a heartless place, lacking the human qualities of compassion and communitas. SDP promised to help make Singapore back into a community where citizens could develop and flourish as holistic, fellow-feeling humans. In contrast to the emotively appealing and morally uplifting tenor of these campaigns, the PAP’s campaign was strikingly unromantic. While opposition candidates invoked transcendent ideals of justice and humanity and asked voters to vote not as selfish individuals but for the good of their greater community, the PAP campaign downplayed the question of moral values and ideological beliefs. By addressing voters as individuals with personal stakes and interests vested in the nation’s continued success, it sought to define the election as a strictly technical process, by which citizens chose and appointed the most qualified experts to manage their economy and society. Prime Minister (PM) Lee Hsien Loong captured this message well when he likened the PAP to a jaga – the Malay term for a groundskeeper or security guard. ‘We are not the bosses of Singapore’, he said, ‘We are not

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the commanders or the owners of Singapore, we are the trustees and the stewards of Singapore, we are like the jaga’ (Heng 2015a). The PAP, in this narrative, safeguards the country, not in a spectacularly valiant or heroic way, but in a quiet, steady and highly technical manner, tirelessly servicing, maintaining and upgrading its complex socio-economic functions. Citizens must decide whether or not the PAP is the service provider most likely to deliver the jaga service they want. No contentious questions of moral or political principle need be involved in the election, for reason and common sense alone make it obvious that the PAP is the only experienced party and hence the only one qualified for the job. Minister for National Development Khaw Boon Wan cast the elections in a similar light by likening the act of voting to the calmly and rationally considered process of purchasing a flat: The GE requires voters to objectively assess if the party has a credible plan and whether the party is able to implement the plan. We all do such due diligence when we want to buy a new apartment. In every BTO (Built to Order) launch, HDB (Housing Development Board) puts up very detailed information about the layout, the facilities, the size of the apartment. What is the distance between your apartment and the nearest train station? Are there good schools nearby? And potential home buyers comb through all these details and they pose very tough questions to our HDB staff. This is the correct approach. GE is even more important than buying an apartment. (People’s Action Party 2015)

Reminding citizens of the complex sums they have to balance when choosing a home – weighing the inconvenience of their work commutes against the quality of their children’s education, their proximity to amenities against their distance from kin – Khaw positioned the voter in a matrix of costs and benefits that had to be shrewdly assessed. The citizen, in Khaw’s construction, was an unavoidably alienated individual, who needed to constantly calculate and rationalize the various components of his or her life so as to achieve optimal returns. Was the PAP not the only party whose track record showed that it could maintain Singapore’s socio-economic system? Were citizens not direct stakeholders in the system, and beneficiaries of its success? It would be irrational for such individuals to vote against the facts. As Emeritus Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong put it, ‘Our people understand how to work the system. You decide which is best in your own interest’ (Chow 2015). Minister for Law K. Shanmugam had confidence in voters’ ability to do this: ‘Singaporeans will assess for themselves not based on (post-) National Day mood, but based on what has happened in their lives for the

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last four and a half years. Has there been improvement? And over the next five years, who do they trust to run their lives?’ (Saad 2015). The PAP campaign thus steered its course to avoid the truly political question of whether Singaporeans might prefer an entirely different approach to governance, premised on a different vision of life than the PAP could offer. It constructed the voting nation as a stretch of abstract space – a technorational complex where citizens were constantly negotiating economies of time, space and opportunity, and where the PAP was their best bet to obtain the desired results. The campaign was also careful to warn voters not to be taken in by opposition candidates who might speak to them as though elections were about grander or loftier issues. However poignant or uplifting an opposition rally speech might be, the PAP campaign reminded voters that these were only words and not actions – empty talk, or worse, rhetorical performances intended to trick voters into protest voting. PM Lee explained: ‘When it comes to an election rally, wah, the tiger comes out. So fierce: PAP heartless, this, that, the other, don’t care about people […] [but] what have they done? What are they trying to do? Well, they are trying to make people unhappy, unhappy over the Government, they look for subjects which they think will annoy people, rile people up, so they dredge them up and make a fuss in elections’ (Heng 2015b). Conceding that the opposition parties did sometimes have compelling things to say, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office Lim Swee Say urged voters not to be distracted by their ‘good politics’, but to keep in mind the PAP’s ‘good policies’ (Ong et al. 2015), i.e., politics without policies on the opposition’s side, and policies without politics on the PAP’s. Determined to frame the elections as a matter of costs and benefits, qualified and unqualified experts, and ultimately the difference between a successful and a failing technocracy, the PAP declined to substantively engage with the opposition parties’ moral-political claims. It construed them uniformly as complaints constructed only to disturb the otherwise quarrel-free relationship between the people and the state. Thus, the PAP campaign worked to situate the Singapore voter in an abstract space of socio-economic risk and investment, looking for the candidate best qualified to maintain the State Mode of Production that assures its profitability. For those who might remain unconvinced, threatening portraits of Singapore’s socio-economic failure were also painted. Minister of Education, Heng Swee Kiat highlighted one possible scenario: ‘What do our students do when they finish school? Do they have jobs to go to? Do they have continuing opportunities to train, to learn? It all depends on one thing. It depends on whether Singapore succeeds. If Singapore fails, the best education we give to our children will just mean

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one thing, that they have to go to other countries to find opportunities. Do we want that?’ (The Straits Times 2015b). In other words, if they want to keep their children, Singapore’s voters should recognize elections for what they are – not conflicts of principle or venues for ‘politics’, but rather the procedure for appointing the most qualified team of jagas to protect Singapore’s success. This understanding of the vote – as an act of rational self-interest, within a space of economic abstraction – undergirds the PAP campaign. The next section of the paper argues that it is also woven into the electoral map itself.

The Electoral Map By dividing the population by residential address into constituencies that are each independently contested, elections in Singapore remind voters that they are voting not only as citizens of the country as a whole, but also (and perhaps more immediately) as the owners or occupiers of particular homes, in particular housing estates, with particular concerns and calculations. This effect is achieved particularly by the institution of the HDB Town Council system. Created in 1989, this system puts the local estate management of each electoral constituency under the leadership of its elected MPs – thereby conflating the question of whom a voter would like to be represented by in parliament, with the question of whom that voter would like to place in charge of the day-to-day upkeep of his or her residential estate. According to the Town Councils website (2010), the responsibilities of a town’s representative party include: Cleaning works to maintain estate hygiene Sweeping of lift cars, lift lobbies, void decks, corridors, surroundings of HDB blocks and open spaces Routine maintenance works to ensure proper upkeep of property and the living environment Building maintenance, horticultural maintenance and grass-cutting works Cyclical maintenance works to manage wear and tear over time Re-roofing and repainting of HDB blocks, and cyclical replacement of lifts Estate improvement works to improve the living environment Covered linkways, precinct pavilions and sheltered drop-off points

To vote a party into parliament is thus to hire it to service one’s water pumps and build one’s ‘precinct pavilions’. While much has been made of

286 Emily Chua Hui Ching Figure 12.1 Map of the GE 2015 electoral constituencies

Source: Huaiwei (2015). Available at: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/ Electoral_boundaries_during_the_Singapore_general_elections_2015.svg [accessed 7 Nov. 2016]

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the PAP’s tendency to use the promise of HDB estate upgrades to bargain with voters for votes, it is perhaps not such ad hoc tactics so much as the systemic integration of parliamentary representation with housing estate upkeep that works so effectively in the PAP’s favour, by constituting the vote as a measured judgment of techno-administrative ability, rather than a public expression of political principles and ideologies. To further reinforce this distinction, the laws regulating the staging of election rallies are also designed to temper the role that affect and emotion might play in voters’ decisions. Rallies can only be held within the constituency being contested during a designated period of approximately ten days prior to the election. They must be held at specific times and sites designated by the Singapore Police Force, to which contending parties must apply for permission to hold their events. No political advertising is permitted at any time on any mass media platform. Campaign posters and banners can be displayed only within the contested constituency and must meet the Election Department’s strict limits on size, number and place of display. The ratio of posters to voters in a constituency cannot exceed 1:50, and total campaign expenses are capped at S$4.00 per voter. As opposition parties tend to contest fewer and smaller constituencies than the PAP, the numerical limit and spatial reach of their publicity work is inherently much smaller than that of the PAP. Their ability to excite political passions and conjure the sense of a political movement around them is thus very effectively limited. Just in case even these measures did not suffice to remove the irrational factor of political excitability from voters’ decisions, the day before Polling Day has been designated ‘Cooling-Off Day’ – a 24-hour period during which all campaign activities must be suspended, so as ‘to give voters some time to rationally reflect on issues raised during the election before going to the polls’ (Elections Department of Singapore 2016). In his final rally speech, PM Lee disclosed his wish that Cooling-Off Day would have the effect of turning voters’ minds away from the opposition parties’ provocative, perhaps even inspiring, words: ‘Spend the time well, examine what each party has promised you, what plans they have, look at their track record’ (Ong et al. 2015). Since most parties running in GE 2015 did not have any track record to speak of, for they had never been in parliament, the PM’s remark must be understood less as a piece of literal advice than as a last-minute reminder to voters to approach the election as a practical decision, rather than a question of political stances and ideals. Carving the island into bounded constituencies and propagating instrumentalist understandings of the vote, Singapore’s electoral map thus

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charts a rationalized space of scarce resources and infinite desires, whose inhabitants must vote shrewdly and pragmatically to secure their own best interests. The fact that 70 percent of citizens voted within this plane of abstraction for the PAP suggests that many Singaporeans do consider this party best qualified to manage the nation’s resources. This does not mean, however, that Singaporeans do not support political opposition. Turning now to examine the WP and SDP campaigns, as well as popular responses to them, I suggest that political opposition in Singapore is strong even though voting is not its primary means of expression. Instead, it is manifested during opposition party campaigns, when candidates and supporters collaboratively enact an orientation towards Singapore that runs counter to the logic of rational self-interest and instrumentality espoused by the PAP government. By acting in and on Singapore, not as a space of calculable variables to optimize but as a community in selfformation, opposition candidates and supporters momentarily reappropriate the island from its State Mode of Production – creating an alternative nation in which alienation is not the precondition for existence. The next section highlights several key moments of the GE 2015 opposition campaigns that arguably materialized the ‘disalienating’ or ‘lived space’ of a Singapore that was not a nexus of people hawkishly pursuing their own best interests, but instead a community of people working on themselves to make themselves what they believed they should be.

On Campaign Terrain The first thing that strikes an observer of opposition party rallies in Singapore is the number of people who attend. Streaming in from all corners of the island, supporters of WP and SDP especially join in the events, even if they do not reside in the relevant constituency and thus cannot vote for their preferred parties. Popular and academic writers, documenting the intense feeling of excitement that pervades the atmosphere at these meetings, suggest that it is something more affective rather than practical that draws the crowd together (Chong 2011; Lam 2007). One culminating point of opposition sentiment in 2015 was the maiden rally speech of the new WP candidate Daniel Goh. Goh explained his candidacy as an effect of the moral imperative which he felt when he became a new father, to act on his beliefs about what kind of place Singapore should be: ‘When I became a father, something changed. It was no longer enough for me to volunteer [for WP]. I needed to join the WP, to fight for a Singapore that I want my

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son and all children and young people to inherit […] For me, now, it is a long term commitment to a cause. The cause is not to oppose for opposing sake or to bring down the government. The cause is to change mindsets’ (Worker’s Party 2015). Throughout the campaign, what garnered support for Goh were not the benefits he promised voters, but rather the moral authority he demonstrated in acting against his own immediate interests to make Singapore as he hoped it would be. The high personal costs and considerable risks that come with being an opposition politician in Singapore underscored the moral integrity of Goh’s act and bestowed on him the charisma of someone who led by example. A much-quoted refrain from his speech underscored this effect: ‘Many of my friends and family members asked why I joined the WP. Some were afraid for me. […] They asked me, is it really safe for you to do this? I told them, life is too short and too precious to be kiasu, kiasi and kiagui’1 (Ibid.). Whereas PAP MPs asked citizens to act rationally in their own best interests, Goh introduced himself as standing against the dismal logic of rational self-interest. In doing so, he subverted the regime of calculative economism by which the PAP has long governed, and which it admonishes citizens to adhere to. By demonstrating that a Singapore citizen can risk one’s personal comfort and security to do not what one thinks is practical but also what one thinks is right, Goh’s statements reappropriated the abstract space of the technocratic state and materialized in its place a disalienated space of individual self- and world-making. Many other new opposition candidates similarly garnered support by describing how friends and family tried to dissuade them from risking the comforts and privileges they enjoyed to run against the PAP. While PAP MPs repeatedly exhorted citizens to do what made sense for Singapore’s economy, opposition candidates and supporters rallied around the figure who treated Singapore not as an economy but as home. Constituting the country as a site of affective and irrevocable patriotic commitments that override considerations of cost and benefit, these campaign moments reclaimed Singapore from the PAP’s abstraction and restored it to its citizens. A second rallying point for opposition support was the stance of principled indignation towards the PAP government’s insistent use of market rationalities to manage the nation’s resources. WP’s Goh, for instance, criticized 1 Three terms in the Hokkien dialect of Chinese, which is widely spoken in Singapore. To be ‘kiasu’ is to be afraid of losing out against others; to be ‘kiasi’ is to be afraid of coming to unfortunate ends; and to be ‘kiagui’ is to be afraid of ‘ghosts’, or imaginary fears.

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the government’s refusal to provide more food and transport services to new HDB estates on the grounds that their low population density made it economically unfeasible to do so: ‘Amenities and facilities should be serving the people, not the people serving facilities and amenities’ (Worker’s Party 2015). The very efficiency with which the PAP government managed public utilities – and on which its MPs prided themselves – was here critiqued as an inversion of priorities that placed the needs of capital above the needs of citizens. A similar critique made by SDP’s Paul Tambyah won him much applause: We have some of the best doctors and nurses in the world. We have great allied health professionals and excellent infrastructure and resources. But unfortunately our healthcare financing system is based on some very morally questionable assumptions. The PAP government does not appear to understand, or does not want to understand, that most of us do not want to get sick. […] The current healthcare system which demands very heavy copayments and deductibles punishes people who are sick through no fault of their own. We need a new healthcare financing system […]. [We need] to make sure that nobody is left behind in a healthcare system that the PM said must break even. No public healthcare system can break even. He’s confused! Things that break even are businesses! Healthcare is not a business! (Channel News Asia 2015)

Tambyah’s line was not a criticism of the PAP government’s public healthcare service, but rather a moral critique of the capitalist logic that undergirds its financing. While Khaw Boon Wan cheerfully likened the political institution of democratic elections to the economic process of buying a flat, Tambyah argued that it was ethically objectionable to compare human well-being to market economics. He presented the PAP government’s successful achievement of a self-financing, world-class healthcare system as being founded on an inhumanly economistic approach to life. Tambyah is himself a successful doctor who could easily have ridden the public healthcare system to a comfortable retirement. In speaking out against the very system of which he is a direct beneficiary, Tambyah, like Goh, performatively undermined the logic of self-interest. Such acts, while they lasted, effectively materialized a nation of citizens who are guided in life not by practicality, but by principled commitment to the well-being of their fellow men. Perhaps the clearest exemplar of this performative, or embodied form of political opposition, was the longtime underdog of Singapore politics, now Secretary General of the SDP, Dr. Chee Soon Juan. Since entering politics

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with the SDP in a 1992 by-election, Chee has been fired from his job, gone on hunger strike, been sued for defamation by Goh Chok Tong and Lee Kuan Yew, declared bankrupt, prevented from leaving the country and repeatedly jailed (Go 2015). He has never won an election, and his public protests have largely been dismissed or ignored by mainstream opinion. His party’s 2015 campaign, however, drew sympathy even from staunch PAP supporters. In a speech which netizens labelled as Chee’s ‘epic’ election rally, he spoke about an old lady whom he saw on the street collecting discarded cardboard late one night. Struck by her bent figure and the math that showed she would have to collect more than his body weight in cardboard to make enough money to buy food for a day, Chee asked his audience: What has happened to us? Where is our compassion? Why do our elderly have to clear tables and wash our toilets and collect cardboard, just to live out their remaining years? I don’t believe that we are such a nasty people. I refuse to accept that we can treat our elderly so indifferently, so carelessly. We are a good people. But we have been led astray, and we must find our way back. My friends, we must find our soul again. Because a people without a soul are a people who will not find life – life in its most profound sense. I don’t want to give you alternative policies on how we can become richer and richer. Not if it means we have to lose our soul, our very essence of being human. And being human is to show compassion, is to care for our fellow beings, for those less fortunate than us. […] My friends, we’ve forgotten how to dream. We’ve forgotten how to hope. We’ve forgotten how to care for our old and our weak. We’ve forgotten how to dream for a better tomorrow, and that we have the ability to make that dream come true. Instead, we’ve retreated into a shell and just live in fearful silence hoping that nothing bad will happen to us. I’m asking you, my friends, my dear fellow Singaporeans, not to live in this fear and cynicism any longer. Instead, let us seize the moment and ride confidently into the future. If we do that, I don’t just believe, I know that we will build a better nation, a nation that we can truly love and be proud of. (WeRSG 2015)

The moments I have highlighted indicate an emergent form of political opposition in Singapore, where candidates and supporters work together to configure a citizenry that rises above the logic of pragmatic self-interest that the PAP’s state runs on, driving the nation along its endless pursuit of ‘survival’ and ‘success’. Of course, the opposition parties’ election campaigns are not reducible to such moments: they are multi-faceted events that present

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a range of different political viewpoints, criticisms and proposals – some of which actually mirror the PAP’s policies and, in this sense, tend to reproduce, rather than challenge the technocratic logic of the ruling party’s governance (Abdullah 2017; Oliver and Ostwald 2018). Still, for those who are attuned to the moments when the opposition candidates invoke and perform a moral critique of the system’s inhumanly capitalist rationality, the opposition parties’ rallies constitute a site at which the PAP state’s relentlessly economistic mode of governance can be (albeit temporarily) subverted. Interviews that I conducted with party volunteers corroborated the idea that many are drawn to opposition campaigns as an arena where one can be more than the hegemonic logic of self-interest allows one to be. Few volunteers were doggedly partisan or stubbornly loyal to any particular party. In fact, many were motivated less by a party’s particular policies than by what they described as ‘the cause’ of Singapore’s democracy. What energized and gratified them was the experience of engaging with fellow citizens in a setting that did not rank them according to their money-making value, but instead allowed each to contribute in their particular capacity. Discursively, opposition volunteers positioned themselves less against the PAP than against their peers, whom many described as politically disengaged – narrowly focused on the pleasures and demands of individual life, wilfully numb to any sense of a broader community – living, in other words, on an island of abstract space. There is, therefore, much to suggest that in a Singapore where governance is conflated with economic management and political rulers claim to be only groundskeepers of the economy, political opposition has come to reside less in the ballot box than in the act of participating in opposition parties’ campaigns and rallies. As a respite from the relentless discipline of capital, these collective productions momentarily turn Singapore into a place where citizens can narrate and conduct themselves as a principled and sovereign people, rather than servile subjects of capital. By way of conclusion, I consider what this diversion of oppositional politics – from the electoral map into campaign terrain – may imply for the young nation’s future.

Conclusion: Two Futures Every form of domination engenders a form of resistance that is particular to itself. The genius of the PAP government’s ‘Singapore model’ lies, arguably, in its effective redefinition of governance into a technocratic matter of socio-economic maintenance; that is, its successful imposition

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of a State Mode of Production, which it alone is now qualified to maintain. The campaigns of GE 2015 suggest that resistance, in this milieu, takes the form of collective endeavours to reanimate and occupy what Lefebvre has called the ‘lived’ dimension of space – the space of human creativity that the SMP must continuously sacrifice to its own success. Lefebvre regarded ‘lived’ space as an ever-present potential within the abstract space of the state. However dominant the productivist state’s logic of infinite growth became, he believed, it would always carry within it the possibility of reappropriation – moments when the regime of alienation might be subverted by acts of humanity’s self-actualization. In Singapore’s GE 2015, voters were conscripted into an electoral map of abstract space, where they found no appealing alternative to voting for the PAP and the continuance of its productivist success. At the rallies and in our conversations, however, voters also materialized a different kind of national space – one in which a citizen’s agency was not limited to a single vote in a rigged map of constituencies, or a shrewd decision in a ruthlessly competitive economy; one where citizens moved freely across electoral boundaries, thinking and speaking with fellow citizens about how they wanted to make their country. For a brief nine days, ‘Singapore’ became a place that individuals made for themselves, actualizing their self- and world-transforming creativities. One wonders if these two tendencies that were at play in GE 2015 – of rational economism on the one hand, and enactments of humanism on the other – will increasingly become the two sides of the electoral coin in Singapore. The PAP government may continue to provide excellent social services, but it may continue to do so by transposing social life itself into the inhuman, mathematical space of profitability, competitiveness and attractiveness to foreign investors. However ‘successful’ it may be, this mode of governance treats life itself as something that is sustainable only in and by its contribution to infinite economic growth. In doing so, it may continue to engender and nourish a mode of political opposition that does not operate within the space of the electoral map, but instead reappropriates space from the electoral map and turns it into campaign terrain. Such elections compel voters to think about the future in two different dimensions: to consider the economic prospects of their ‘small country with no natural resources’, but also to ask themselves what kind of moral-political community they want for themselves and their children. Confronted by these two genres of uncertainty, Singaporeans are caught between the drive to self-alienate and the impulse to self-actualize. Calculating that it is in their own economic interest, they may continue to vote for the PAP.

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But, believing that Singapore ought to be more than a series of well-made calculations, they may also continue to support the opposition. How will this emerging political dualism pan out? The PAP government’s aggressive post-election efforts to engage citizens in envisioning and discussing Singapore’s future suggest that it too is concerned about this question. The campaigns it launched included a lavish multimedia exhibition on The Future of Us, held from December 2015 to March 2016 at Gardens by the Bay, which depicted different scenarios of Singapore in 2030, to signal to citizens that ‘the future has not been cast in stone’ but will become whatever they make it (Sim 2015). Different government ministries were tasked with holding ‘SG Future Engagement Sessions’ at the exhibition site, where ordinary Singaporeans could meet and discuss issues ranging from ‘Our Future Hawker Centres’ to ‘Total Defence and the Changing Face of Threat’ (SGfuture 2016). It seems unlikely, however, that the problem will be solved by such bureaucratically contrived and contained measures. More likely, it will take the gradual cultivation of a new ethos of governance – one that does not conceptually reduce citizens to the self-interested clients of a socio-economic jaga service, or construe democracy as a procedure for outsourcing the running of one’s life.

List of acronyms used BTO GE GRC HDB LKY PAP PM SDP SM SMC WP

Built to Order General Election Group Representation Constituency Housing and Development Board Lee Kuan Yew People’s Action Party Prime Minister Singapore Democratic Party Senior Minister Single Member Constituencies Worker’s Party

Works Cited Abdullah, W.J. 2017. ‘Bringing ideology in: Differing oppositional challenges to hegemony in Singapore and Malaysia’. Government and Opposition 52(3): 483-510.

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Chan Heng Chee. 1975. ‘Politics in an Administrative State: Where Has the Politics Gone?’ Occasional Paper Series 11: 1-27, Department of Political Science, University of Singapore. Channel News Asia. 2015. ‘GE2015: Paul Tambyah Speaks at SDP’s Rally in Commonwealth’. YouTube video, 15:23, 5 Sept. Available at https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=XrgRL8wqcjc [accessed 1 Nov. 2016]. Chiang Hai Ding. 2015. Elections in Singapore. Singapore: Straits Times Press. Chong, Terence. 2011. ‘Election Rallies: Performances in Dissent, Identity, Personalities and Power’. In Voting in Change: Politics of Singapore’s 2011 General Election, ed. Kevin Y.L. Tan and Terence Lee. Singapore: Ethos Books, 115-130. Chow, Jermyn. 2015. ‘GE2015 Shows “the System Works”’. The Straits Times, 10 Sept. Available at http://www.straitstimes.com/politics/singapolitics/ge2015-showsthe-system-works [accessed 13 July 2016]. Elections Department of Singapore. 2016. ‘Parliamentary Elections’. Last updated 28 Apr. Available at http://www.eld.gov.sg/elections_parliamentary.html [accessed 14 July 2016]. Go, Jaslyn, ed. 2015. Teacher Thinker Rebel Why: Portraits of Chee Soon Juan. Singapore: Ethos Books. Heng, Janice. 2015a. ‘“We Are Not the Bosses of Singapore… We Are the Trustees”’. The Straits Times, 9 Sept. Available at http://www.straitstimes.com/politics/ we-are-not-the-bosses-of-singapore-we-are-the-trustees [accessed 13 July 2016]. —. 2015b. ‘Opposition “Riles People Up for Polls”’. The Straits Times, 10 Sept. Available at http://www.straitstimes.com/politics/singapolitics/opposition-riles-peopleup-for-polls [accessed 13 July 2016]. Huaiwei. 2015. ‘Electoral Boundaries during the Singapore General Elections 2016’. Available at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AElectoral_boundaries_during_the_Singapore_general_elections_2015.svg [accessed 1 Nov. 2016.] Lam, Dana. 2007. Days of Being Wild: GE 2006 Walking the Line with the Opposition. Singapore: Ethos Books. Lefebvre, Henri. 2009. ‘Space and the State (1978)’. In State, Space, World: Selected Essays, ed. Neil Brenner and Stuart Elden. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 223-253. Lim, Catherine. 2011. A Watershed Election: Singapore’s GE 2011. Singapore: Marshall Cavendish. Marx, Karl. 1992. ‘Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844)’. In Early Writings. London: Penguin Classics, 279-400. Mutalib, Hussin. 2004. Parties and Politics: A Study of Opposition Parties and the PAP in Singapore. Singapore: Eastern University Press. Oliver, Steven and Kai Ostwald. 2018. ‘Explaining elections in Singapore: Dominant party resilience and valence politics’. Journal of East Asian Studies 18(2): 129-156.

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Ong Hwee Hwee, Ong Sor Fern, Chew Hui Min, Lee Min Kok and Shea Driscoll. 2015. ‘GE2015: 5 Things about the Last Night of Election Rallies on Sept 9’. The Straits Times, 10 Sept. Available at http://www.straitstimes.com/politics/ge20155-things-about-the-last-night-of-election-rallies-on-sept-9 [accessed 14 July 2016]. People’s Action Party. 2015. ‘Speech by Mr. Khaw Boon Wan’. YouTube video, 31:38, 7 Sept. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg0cjumhEd8 [accessed 1 Nov. 2016]. Saad, Imelda. 2015. ‘Three Things That Matter When Voters Choose: Minister K Shanmugam’. Channel News Asia (CNA), 27 Aug. SGfuture. 2016. ‘For Those Who Are Passionate to Shape Our Future’. Available at https://www.sg/SGFUTURE [accessed 13 July 2016]. Shatkin, Gavin. 2014. ‘Reinterpreting the Meaning of the “Singapore Model”: State Capitalism and Urban Planning’. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38(1): 116-137. Sim, Walter. 2015. ‘Future of Us Exhibition to Open Dec 1, More Than 85 Per Cent of Tickets Booked for Opening Month’. The Straits Times, 24 Nov. Available at http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/future-of-us-exhibition-to-open-dec1-more-than-85-per-cent-of-tickets-booked-for-opening [accessed 13 July 2016]. Singh, Bilveer. 1992. Whither PAP’s Dominance? An Analysis of Singapore’s 1991 General Elections. Petaling Jaya, Malaysia: Pelanduk Publications. Tan, Kevin Y.L. and Terence Lee, eds. 2011. Voting in Change: Politics of Singapore’s 2011 General Election. Singapore: Ethos Books. The Straits Times. 2015a. ‘GE2015: PAP Wins 83 Seats; WP Takes 6 Seats, Retains Aljunied and Hougang’. 11 Sept. Available at http://www.straitstimes.com/ politics/ge2015-pap-wins-83-seats-wp-takes-6-seats-retains-aljunied-andhougang [accessed 14 July 2016]. —. 2015b. ‘A Good Education Can Flourish Only If S’pore Succeeds: Heng Swee Keat’. 9 Sept. Available at http://www.straitstimes.com/politics/a-good-educationcan-flourish-only-if-spore-succeeds-heng-swee-keat [accessed 14 July 2016]. Town Councils. 2010. ‘Work of Town Councils’. Last updated 9 June. Available at http:// www.towncouncils.sg/about/WorkOfTownCouncils.html [accessed 1 Nov. 2016]. WeRSG. 2015. ‘Dr. Chee Soon Juan Epic Election Rally Speech (English) GE2015 at Choa Chu Kang Stadium on 3rd Sept’. YouTube video, 25:05. Available at https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IkF7jZjNRU [accessed 1 Nov. 2016]. Wilson, Japhy. 2013. ‘“The Devastating Conquest of the Lived by the Conceived”: The Concept of Abstract Space in the Work of Henri Lefebvre’. Space and Culture 16(3): 364-380. Wong Kai Wen and Tim Bunnell. 2006. ‘“New Economy” Discourse and Spaces in Singapore: A Case Study of One-North’. Environment and Planning A 38(1): 69-83.

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Worker’s Party. 2015. ‘Daniel Goh’s Rally Speech, Hougang Rally, 2 Sep’. Available at http://www.wp.sg/daniel-gohs-rally-speech-hougang-rally-2-sep/ [accessed 14 July 2016].

About the Author Emily Chua Hui Ching is an anthropologist at the National University of Singapore. Her research brings an ethnographic approach to the intersections of media, technology and politics, in China and Singapore. Her work has appeared in The China Quarterly, Ethnography, Science, Technology and Society and Asian Studies Review.

Conclusion Simone Shu-Yeng Chung and Mike Douglass In the two years leading up to Singapore’s golden jubilee celebrations, a public workshop in 2014 followed by a conference the year after called Singapore Dreaming brought together artists, public intellectuals, academics and ‘other thinkers across diverse disciplines’ under the Singapore Dreaming Project (2015). As a self-proclaimed ground-up initiative, its stated purpose was to ‘think the unthinkable, and to formulate new possibilities’ by moving ‘beyond structural or dogmatic layers of constraints’ to ‘imagine, share and explore alternative versions of a Singapore’ beyond the narrative constructed by the government during the country’s first half-century of nationhood (Yeoh 2015). One session of the 2015 meeting was particularly revealing of state and civil society relations in Singapore. The main concern that arose from this session was prompted by a statement reportedly made by a senior government official who, in asserting that the government was moving at a deliberative pace toward allowing greater individual liberties, cautioned people to be patient for change to occur and to do so without confronting the state with demands. In Singapore’s legal and constitutional framework, ‘confronting the state’ can be taken to include strong criticisms of the government or government officials through the media, academic publications, or gathering for public protests (Human Rights Watch 2018, 2019). This human condition pervades and bounds the urban imaginative in Singapore. As the chapters in this book readily reveal, citizens continuously find themselves working in the interstices between patience and confrontation to try to divine the limits of almost any kind of social action. Singaporeans are also conflicted about how to act. There is great, widespread appreciation of the successes of the government in making a prosperous nation-state. Loyalty to country is real. To some observers, the term ‘air-conditioned authoritarianism’ – coined to describe Singapore – sums up why the citizenry avoids openly criticizing the government and instead acquiesce to trade-offs, favouring increases in material welfare over individual freedom and active participation in governance. Yet, many issues related to inclusion, social

Chung, Simone Shu-Yeng & Mike Douglass (eds), The Hard State, Soft City of Singapore. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2020 doi: 10.5117/9789463729505_concl

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justice, citizen rights, the environment, erosion of associational life and vernacular heritage still draw people to strive for change. Cutting across civil society and state relations is the question of human agency. No matter how hard or difficult institutional and structural constraints might be, individuals and collectivities can nonetheless push forward with alternative ideas, campaigns, projects and actions. Most of the chapters in this collection speak to the indefatigable capacity of people to create their own imaginatives and forms of placemaking against the grain of state intrusions into their life-spaces (Sim 2001). We also acknowledge that the state is not monolithic. While much has been written about ‘seeing like a state’ (Scott 1998) that points toward state pathologies that always lead to failures, the state as government is composed of individuals and bureaus that do work with civil society organizations to further projects with the goal of encouraging greater participation in the production of space. People in government can also be conflicted about having to do the work of the state during their work hours while participating after hours in, for example, gay pride activities (Tan 2015) or providing assistance to homeless foreign workers (Han 2018). In this context, we are reminded that Singapore has one of the most highly educated populations in the world. With a literacy rate of 97 percent and one-third of the population holding university degrees (DSS 2019), Singapore is placed first in the world for reading and mathematics by the OECD (BBC News 2018). The government is well aware of the propensity of a highly educated population to think critically and organize for change, and yet the Singapore government, under its ruling People’s Action Party, remains formidable in its control over the narratives and production of space and its uses. The question of how a highly educated society can effect changes in governance over freedom of expression is a long-standing one. One major avenue for expressing discontent without directly confronting the state is the urban imaginary, expressed through art, filmmaking and other media, that is used in ways that obliquely provides openings for critical thinking. The Singapore Dreaming Project is a case in point. The urban imaginative of the soft city that can accommodate alternative visions is an important element for dealing with the dissonance of national identity and aspirations for another kind of city. To reveal the many dimensions of state-civil society dynamics focused on the urban imaginary, this edited volume is an intentionally interdisciplinary undertaking drawing together diverse approaches, methodological framings and different subjectivities to elucidate the ‘holistic complex of

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interrelationships’ (Stember 1991: 5). No single discipline alone is capable of providing a nuanced understanding of the intertwined mechanisms and processes that drive the construction of imaginative renderings of Singapore. Building on the multidisciplinary expertise of our contributors – many of them scholars and practitioners who are also actively involved in the issues they address – and the dialogic themes of ‘hard state’ and ‘soft city’ to channel the discourses, interactions between the state and the people are shown to be varied and deeply contextuated by the socio-political, socioeconomic and cultural conditions and issues at stake. At the same time, insights into domestic development of the arts, policy making, poetry and music, heritage activism, urban farming, and even seemingly mundane everyday practices, underscore the importance of space for placemaking and relational meaning. The contributing authors bring to this volume insights that not only reveal the intersections of the hard and the soft city, but also implicitly convey their personal relationships with Singapore, including their life-spaces and the presence of the state, in ways that provoke distant dialogues with and among readers that disclose the values and layered meanings of the stories and interrogations presented. Likewise, the diversity of epistemologies widens the audience who engage in dialogues about urban imaginatives and what they personally mean. As noted, state programming and monitoring permeates virtually all aspects of Singapore life, including entertainment (Zhang and Yeoh 2017), religion (Woods 2018) and public events in public spaces such as carnivals (Goh 2013). Even the spaces of imagination can be felt to come under the Panopticon gaze of the state. This perceived omnipresence is precisely why an emancipated space for expression – not necessarily to challenge the state, but as a space for associational life and human flourishing through the fulfilment of desires and to explore alternative possibilities of being – is imperative. Art and other creative expressions can be seen as forms of communication by which people can share their yearning for the conviviality of living in a city that has been dampened by the pursuit of material progress, stability and security. As this collection of essays testifies, the government has in recent years begun to create more spaces for the autonomous development of arts and culture at the grassroots. However, many existing spaces are also sacrificed to make way for commercial and state-sponsored venues. The building of a new train station, for example, invariably involves the disappearance of small locally owned shops and the loss of what Sassen (2015) calls the ‘urban tissue’ of social life found in lanes and common areas. In other terms, these

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are ‘civic spaces’ in which people from different walks of life can mingle together at arm’s distance from commerce and government (Douglass, Ho and Ooi 2010). Outlets for creative expression and avenues for participation in political processes, such as those witnessed during general elections, remain nonetheless carefully managed and monitored by government authorities and appointed steering committees. All media are subject to censorship, including film shows and art exhibits. Public assembly is severely restricted, and government surveillance cameras are omnipresent. Precedents consistently demonstrate how activities that do not fall under the state’s purview are by choice highly diffused, given to becoming ephemeral even as their actors adroitly utilize interstitial spaces across the island. At the time of writing our coda, Singapore is celebrating its bicentenary. The event is dubbed as a complement and even ‘prequel’ to SG50, for the year 2019 coincides with Sir Stamford Raffles’s documented arrival on its shores two hundred years earlier. Quick to pre-empt potential charges of colonial sentimentality, the organizers asserted from the outset that 1819 simply forms a key marker in Singapore’s much longer history and global transversality that dates back another five centuries (Singapore Bicentennial Office 2019). Different from SG50 in terms of focus and scale, the bicentennial’s pivot is to showcase Singapore’s origins as inexorably linked to wider geopolitical developments before the time of the republic. In other words, the bicentenary provides a temporal space for Singaporeans to contemplate their collective achievements thus far and what it means to be a Singaporean. Through this opening to engage in a discursive archaeology of the future, visions of the city possible become the means to critically assess the present (Jameson 2007; Friedmann 2000). The government’s quest for Singapore to achieve global city status via coordinated national-level schemes, planning and funding over the last two decades has left many Singaporeans, especially the younger generation, questioning their sense of belonging and even identity. Thus, the timing of the bicentennial event and its aims appear apropos of critical thinking that, while not directly confronting the state, draws on urban imaginatives to engage all of Singapore in thinking about the past, present and future. As with SG50, which took place in 2015, the availability of small grants through existing funding structures to support ground-up initiatives aligned with the objectives of the bicentennial incentivized participation from interest groups. One such project is the month-long multi-programme, The Future of Our Pasts Festival, featuring events and activities organized by students in tertiary-level education, which sets out to locate under-explored narratives of the past and capture these through a variety of mediums

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and outputs. It is one of many examples of how the divide between the state and civil society in Singapore is often, and increasingly, blurred. On one level, the co-option of public participation for the excavation of local memories can be viewed as a state-mediated attempt at accommodating microhistories – the personal stories of common folks that contribute a qualitative dimension, to dilute the singularity of dominant historiography by offering details of the past which may have minor or no impact on the present (Ginzburg 1993). Whether these strands of individual accounts and autobiographical extracts ultimately serve to either counter or substantiate the master narrative, at the very least a plurality of voices are now being brought to the fore on mainstream channels, even if they remain couched in the past, buffered by temporal distance. While well-publicized one-off events tied to the bicentennial are launched in succession across the calendarial year, unrelated ground-up mainstays like the Singapore Really Really Free Market still run every month, although their venues tend to be unfixed. The Substation, Singapore’s first independent arts centre, now 30 years strong, continues to draw an audience with its edgy programming. But as the centre’s artistic directors past and present confess, its primary challenge is to sustain an actively engaged community or publics (Chai 2019). Ground-up initiatives of these more established sites and enduring activities therefore remain localized or operate in an ephemeral manner – and the soft side of the city is malleable enough to accommodate them in its folds. Singapore is, after all, only one city in a world of cities. Yet it is an axiomatic fact that no two cities are alike. From a comparative urban research standpoint, the depth and complexity of urban reality on the ground compels us to critique ‘the spatiality of the city itself, as a site of assemblage, multiplicity and connectivity’ (Robinson 2010: 13). In the context of Singapore, a wealthy and stable country characterized by single-party hegemony and the bastion of state capitalism, its urban planning par excellence and technocratic governance as its blueprint for material success, there is still much that the chapters in this volume can contribute to further extant scholarship. By no means exhaustive, the range of perspectives corresponding to discrete topics tackled by the individual authors here highlights ways of thinking across different urban experiences: through praxis; textual analyses of film, literature, archival material and visual images; and contextualizing the parameters with which polemical issues take hold in Singapore’s sociopolitical landscape. Furthermore, the relationship between the state and the people in the city state of Singapore varies in each of these cases and changes over time, even as the physical terrain itself changes.

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Of late, there has been a push towards making Singapore a ‘lovable city’ by nurturing community ties and sense of self among individuals (Kwee 2016), now that the republic has once again topped the global ranking for most liveable city in Asia (Anderson 2019). Unlike the quantifiable indexes for measuring liveability and sustainability that paved a clear roadmap towards earlier achievements, the process of making Singapore lovable cannot really be engineered into being and requires long-term cultivation of social capital, drawing on the willingness and commitment of a large proportion of the population – extending to most, if not all, social groups – and the sustained practice of a shared ethos. The role of government is, then, to formulate soft policies that will encourage, rather than facilitate, organic placemaking with room for experimentation and more local-level autonomy to ‘remake the world after our heart’s desire’ (Park 1967: 3 cited in Harvey 2008: 23). In conclusion, The Hard State, Soft City of Singapore captures the crystallization of state and society relations at a particular juncture in Singapore’s story, highlighting issues on the ground that in some cases extend to include emerging formulations in the post-SG50 era. What we also sought to convey in this compilation are critical reflections on the half century‐long gestation of Singapore’s independence and initiate new conversations about alternative futures for this city state.

Works Cited Anderson, Meg. 2019. ‘Vienna Tops Mercer’s 21st Quality of Living Ranking’. Mercer, 13 Mar. Available at https://www.mercer.com/newsroom/2019-quality-of-livingsurvey.html [accessed 12 June 2019]. BBC News. 2018. ‘Pisa Tests: Singapore Top in Global Education Rankings’. Available at https://www.bbc.com/news/education-38212070 [accessed 28 June 2019]. Chai, Amanda. 2019. ‘The Impossible Feat of Being an Art Director in Singapore’. SG Magazine, 18 Apr. Available at https://sgmagazine.com/arts-city-living/ news/impossible-feat-being-artistic-director-singapore [accessed 12 June 2019]. Department of Statistics (DSS). 2019. ‘Education, Language Spoken and Literacy’. Government of Singapore. Available at https://www.singstat.gov.sg/find-data/ search-by-theme/population/education-language-spoken-and-literacy/latestdata [accessed 28 June 2019]. Douglass, Mike, K.C. Ho and Giok Ling Ooi. 2010. Globalization, the City and the Rise of Civil Society – The Social Production of Civic Spaces in Pacific Asia. London: Routledge.

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Friedmann, John. 2000. ‘The Good City: In Defense of Utopian Thinking’. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 24(2): 460-472. Ginzburg, Carlo. 1993. ‘Microhistory: Two or Three Things That I Know about It’. Critical Inquiry 20(Autumn): 10-35. Goh, Daniel P.S. 2013. ‘Multicultural Carnivals and the Politics of the Spectacle in Global Singapore’. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 14(2): 228-251. Han, Kirsten. 2018. ‘Singapore’s Migrant Workers Struggle to Get Paid’. CNN, 24 February. Available at https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/24/asia/singaporemigrant-workers-intl/index.html [accessed 28 June 2019]. Harvey, David. 2008. ‘The Right to the City’. New Left Review 53: 23‐40. Human Rights Watch. 2018. ‘Singapore Events of 2017’. Available at https://www. hrw.org/world-report/2018/country-chapters/singapore [accessed 28 June 2019] —. 2019. ‘Singapore Events of 2018’. Available at https://www.hrw.org/worldreport/2019/country-chapters/singapore [accessed 28 June 2019] Jameson, Fredric. 2007. Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. London: Verso Books. Kwee, Melissa. 2016. ‘Singapore: From Liveable to Lovable City’. In 50 Years of Urban Planning in Singapore, ed. Heng Chye Kiang. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 315-316. Park, R.E. 1967. On Social Control and Collective Behavior. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Robinson, Jennifer. 2011. ‘Cities in a World of Cities: The Comparative Gesture’. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 35(1): 1-23. Sassen, Saskia. 2015. ‘Who Owns Our Cities – and Why This Urban Takeover Should Concern Us All’. The Guardian, November 24. Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press. Sim Sock-Fang. 2001. ‘Asian Values, Authoritarianism and Capitalism in Singapore’. Journal of the European Institute for Communication and Culture 8(2): 45-66. Singapore Bicentennial Office. 2019. ‘About the Singapore Bicentennial: 700 Years of History’. SG Bicentennial. Available at https://www.bicentennial.sg/about/ [accessed 12 June 2019]. Singapore Dreaming Project. 2015. ‘Singapore Dreaming’. Asian Urban Lab. Available at https://www.facebook.com/SingaporeDreamingProject/ [accessed 28 June 2019]. Stember, Marilyn. 1991. ‘Advancing the Social Sciences Through the Interdisciplinary Enterprise’. The Social Science Journal 28(1): 1-14. Tan, Chris. 2015. ‘Pink Dot: Cultural and Sexual Citizenship in Gay Singapore’. Anthropological Quarterly 88(4): 969-996.

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Woods, Orlando. 2018. ‘Spaces of the Religious Economy: Negotiating the Regulation of Religious Space in Singapore’. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 57(3): 531-546. Yeoh Lam Keong. 2015. ‘Singapore’s Social Compact Trilemma – The Dynamics of a Critically Uncertain National Future’ (conference paper). Presented at the Singapore Dreaming Conference, TheatreWorks, 6-7 February 2015. Available at https:// www.facebook.com/SingaporeDreamingProject/posts/1541781262768711?__ tn__=K-R [accessed 28 June 2019]. Zhang, Juan and Brenda S.A. Yeoh. 2017. ‘The State of Fun? Exclusive Casino Urbanism and Its Biopolitical Borders in Singapore’. Pacific Affairs 90(4): 701-723.

Index activism 21, 26, 29, 56, 70, 70n2, 87, 234-235, 237, 239, 243, 245-246, 261, 301 affects 16, 20-21, 82-83, 85, 129n15, 186, 186n2, 252, 260, 287-289 alienation 17, 87, 93, 105, 251, 253-254, 275, 277, 280-281, 283, 288, 293 anniversaries 19, 22, 74, 74n5, 87 golden jubilee 30, 276, 299 SG50 11, 19, 21-22, 25n12, 26, 29-30, 74, 74n5, 87, 254, 276, 302, 304 appropriations 19, 28, 105, 121-122, 124, 138-139, 141, 149, 151, 209, 245, 288-289, 293 apps or applications 29, 234, 239-246 AR or augmented reality 233-234, 239, 241-242, 244 architecture 13, 37, 40, 42, 48-49, 51, 117, 191, 194, 209 Aristotle 93, 93n1, 149 art criticism 113, 115-119 art spaces and arts centres 172, 196, 201-202, 270, 303 artists 15-16, 28, 47-48, 54, 59, 61-64, 75, 78, 87, 114-116, 118, 191-193, 195, 200, 202, 204-205, 207-210, 263, 299 arts and culture 76, 88, 191-192, 194, 199-201, 207, 301 galleries 62, 87, 115n4, 117-118n7, 161-162, 195, 198, 203, 236 museums 60-62, 87, 115n4, 116, 117-118n7, 178, 195, 198n4, 201, 207, 236, 246 NAC or National Arts Council 75, 154, 197, 199, 201-203 policies 40, 58-60, 63, 72n3, 191-193, 195-197, 199, 210, 301 Post-Museum 205-206, 206n14, 258, 260-261 Renaissance City Report 58, 61, 195n2 authoritarianism 12, 21, 26, 172-173, 186, 276, 299 awareness 20, 204-205, 235, 251 belonging, sense of 24, 44, 53, 55, 83, 196, 199, 302 bicentenary 302-303 BID or Business Improvement District 198-200 Bras Basah.Bugis precinct 192, 195-197, 200, 203 Bugis area 38, 202 built environment 14, 17, 37, 54, 130-131, 139, 198, 208, 218, 253-254 Bukit Brown 101, 103, 233, 237, 240, 245 Brownies 238, 245 Cemetery 27, 29, 233, 235-241, 244-246 iBBC mobile app 29, 233-234, 239-245 Wayfinder Trail 233, 241, 245 see also cemeteries

CBD or Central Business District 23n10, 52, 171, 173, 202 cemeteries 23, 29, 101, 103, 233-246 ancestors 101, 235 burials 29, 101-103, 235 see also Bukit Brown censorship 26-27, 61, 69, 72-79, 81-82nn9-11, 83, 85-86, 88, 302 Certeau, Michel de 28, 124, 129-130, 139, 209 tactics 28, 124, 130-131, 204, 209 China 29, 42, 47-48, 54, 99, 148, 148n2, 151-154, 164, 174 mainland 147-148, 148n2, 153-154 Qing dynasty 42, 147, 164 Chinatown 14n5, 38, 51-52, 96, 197, 203 city branding 192, 195 city state 13, 17, 37-38, 46, 56, 93-94, 96, 99, 105-106, 113, 114n1, 118, 145-148, 161, 175, 184, 186, 193, 196, 215, 235, 246, 272, 303-304 cityscape 95, 121, 128, 141, 178, 196 Civic District 192, 195, 197-198, 202 civil society 11, 19, 21-23, 29, 234, 241, 244-245, 260-261, 271, 300 Clementi New Town 29, 213, 215-230 collaborative imaginaries 251, 256, 272 collective actions 11, 17, 19, 23, 25-26, 28, 126-127n8, 129, 139, 178, 209, 221, 227, 230, 238, 261, 264, 268, 292-293 colonial 14, 14n5, 22, 42, 45-46, 48, 52, 54, 72, 156-157, 237-238, 265, 302 British administration 17, 101n6, 156-157, 237 columbaria 101, 103, 236 Communists 69-70, 77, 80-81 community formation 17-19, 24, 28-29, 54, 104, 107, 147, 151-152, 163, 171-172, 175, 179-186, 198-200, 202, 204-207, 209, 213, 215-216, 218, 218n1, 220, 222, 225-226, 228-230, 234-236, 238-239, 241-243, 253-254, 257, 264-266, 269, 271, 278, 282, 288, 292-293, 303-304 consumerism 22, 29, 156-157, 199, 204, 251 conservation initiatives 29, 50, 52, 56, 195-196, 201, 204, 206, 209, 233-246 SHS, Singapore Heritage Society 233, 236, 241 conviviality 11, 17-21, 29-30, 107, 172-173, 175, 180, 182, 213-216, 218-226, 228, 230, 230n8, 301 cosmopolitanism 23, 23n11, 27, 47-48, 171-173, 175, 178, 180, 182, 186 counterpublics 251, 255-256, 261, 271-272 creatives and creative practitioners 37, 61, 63-64, 121-122, 139, 193, 210

308 

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developmentalism 15n6, 21, 39, 184, 234, 276, 279 districts 52, 96, 98, 103, 196, 206, 281 Doghouse 171-173, 175-178, 180-186 The Straydogs 171, 175, 178-179

see also public housing heartland and heartlanders 23, 23n11, 29, 54 hinterland 12, 56-57 historical context 29, 40-42, 53-55, 63, 73, 75, 77n7, 79-80, 82-83, 85, 116, 145, 148, 154, 156-157, 159, 161, 163n8, 164-165, 179, 237-240, 244-245, 269, 303 Hokkien 38, 103, 164-165, 289n1 households 99, 107, 217, 219-221, 224-225 human agency 11, 17, 25, 149, 252, 256, 293, 300 human flourishing 24, 28, 215, 282, 301

elections in Singapore electoral map 30, 277-278, 285-287, 292-293 campaigns 24, 30, 194n1, 275, 277-278, 282, 284-285, 287-289, 291-294 GE or General Election 21, 24, 29-30, 49, 70, 194n1, 251, 253, 275-280, 282-283, 286-288, 293-294, 302 GRCs or Group Representation Constituencies 279, 282, 294 Polling Day 276, 287 SMCs or Single Member Constituencies 279, 282, 294 votes 30, 87, 275-279, 282-285, 287-289, 293 exile 27, 42, 69-70, 80, 82-83, 85-86, 154 festivals 23, 44, 71, 78, 86-88, 162-163, 178, 182, 192, 200-203, 207, 210, 255, 302 foreign or migrant workers 25, 27, 93-94, 98100, 103, 105-106, 206, 206n13, 225, 229-300 dormitories 98-99, 101, 103, 106 films 15n6, 69, 71, 74, 76, 78-80, 84-87 documentaries 27, 69-71, 73-75, 77, 80-81, 86-87, 235 Films Act 76-79 see also Media Development Authority filmmakers and film directors 48, 63, 71, 74n5, 79, 87 Forming Cityscapes 28, 121-129, 133-135, 137, 139-140 garden city 40, 54, 61, 256 geopolitical 146-148, 152-154, 157, 163, 163n8, 269, 302 global cities 11, 13, 27, 37, 41, 56-63, 72, 76, 114, 148, 195, 252, 302 globalization 13n4, 37, 105, 199 greening of Singapore 52, 54, 192, 253, 266 tree planting campaign 54-55, 266 Goh Chok Tong 199, 283, 291 government agencies 12, 61, 70, 78, 197-198, 210, 246, 264n4, 267 grassroots 19, 23, 29, 245, 301 hard state 26-27, 60-61, 63, 88, 113, 186n2, 245, 301, 304 hawker centres 29, 223, 226-229, 294 HDB or Housing and Development Board 12, 18, 50, 54, 56, 96, 198, 216-217, 224n3, 229, 283, 285, 294 BTO or Built to Order 283, 294 estates 23n11, 287, 290 flats and apartments 15, 23n10, 49, 55, 217, 220, 257, 283 new towns 18, 37, 56, 96, 98-99

identities 11, 14, 17-18, 22-24, 26-28, 42, 45, 48, 56, 78, 82n11, 107, 147, 152, 154, 158, 160, 163n8, 165, 172-173, 183-184, 194, 197, 200, 302 national identity 22, 53, 83, 196, 199, 206n13, 278, 300 ideologies 12, 14, 37, 39-40, 46-47, 49, 75, 82, 159, 193, 208, 227, 252, 277-278, 282, 287 inclusion 214, 299 Internet 20, 72, 79, 116-117, 234 kampongs 18, 219, 253n1, 266 Kampong Glam 14n5, 50, 52, 197, 202 kampong spirit 18, 218, 218n1, 254 kiasi 186, 254, 289, 289n1 kiasu 186, 254, 289, 289n1 knowledge 20, 43, 79, 126-127n8, 129n15, 137, 139-140, 151, 158, 205, 233-234, 238-239, 241, 244, 264, 264n4, 268-269, 272 Koolhaas, Rem 13-14, 16, 26, 30, 37-40, 46, 49-51, 53-54, 94n3 Singapore Songlines 13, 37, 40, 62 kopitiams 38, 63 kopi kakis 227-228 labour 57, 98, 105, 251-252, 261-262, 264n3, 267, 270, 280 Land Acquisition Act 18, 194 land expansion 95, 106 land use 94, 105, 193-196, 196n3, 217, 245 landmarks 104, 198, 240 Lee Kuan Yew 12n3, 21, 41n2, 46-47, 49-50, 52-54, 70, 74-75, 252, 276, 291, 294 LKY 276, 294 Oxley Rise 46-47 Lefebvre, Henri 14, 122n1, 124, 129, 133, 208-209, 275, 277-281, 293 abstract space 137, 275, 277-282, 284, 289, 292-293 representational space 14, 28, 122n1, 272 see also lived space legislation 14, 70, 72, 75, 78, 81, 88, 93, 183-184, 266 Lim Boon Keng 42-43, 44n6, 46, 59 Little India 14n5, 52, 99, 101, 173, 197, 202, 206-207, 257 riots 101, 206n13

Index

liveability 18, 20, 59, 192, 217, 304 lived space 15, 26-27, 30, 122n1, 125n4, 275, 277-278, 288, 293 campaign terrain 30, 278, 288, 292-293 Malaysia 49, 52-53, 56, 61, 69-70, 73-74, 80, 84, 86, 117-118n7, 147, 153n6, 154, 162, 164, 177, 219, 278 Federation of Malaysia 12, 46, 49, 52, 164 Johor Bahru 73, 84, 86 Kuala Lumpur 98, 114n1, 117, 147 Malaya 15n6, 45, 48-49, 80, 164-165 merger 49, 53, 53n9 separation 15n6, 46, 52-53, 56-57, 147 maps 25, 27, 30, 44, 74, 94, 94n2, 96, 96n5, 98, 103, 115, 132, 139, 148n2, 163, 193, 196, 206, 237-238, 241, 244-245, 254, 258, 264-265 Marina Bay 23n9, 60, 192, 197-198, 201 Gardens by the Bay 25n12, 294 master plan 12, 14, 17, 22, 105, 107, 196, 196n3, 198, 281 Conservation Master Plan 14n5, 194 master narrative 11, 22, 26, 29, 303 MDA or Media Development Authority 27, 70-72, 76-77, 77n7, 79-80, 173, 207 modernity 13n4, 14, 37, 42-44, 49, 52-53, 55, 59, 63, 145, 148, 151, 157-159, 234, 238, 266 nation-building 27, 53, 55, 75, 163 National Day 18, 19n8, 21, 55, 196, 198, 276, 283 notices and signs 130-133, 207, 223 opposition candidates and parties 30, 70, 70n2, 77, 275-279, 282, 284, 287-294 SDP or Singapore Democratic Party 77, 282, 288, 290-291, 294 WP or Worker’s Party 282, 288-289, 294 PAP or People’s Action Party 30, 39-42, 46-49, 51-53, 57-58, 70-72, 74n5, 75, 78, 80, 82-84, 87-88, 194n1, 275-279, 281-285, 287-294 placemaking 11, 14, 17, 26, 29, 107, 191, 200, 203, 300-301, 304 place management 29, 191-193, 196-197, 199-200, 203-204, 208-210 postcolonial 42, 147-148, 151-152, 156, 234-236, 238 Peranakan 42, 45-46, 87 Baba 42, 44-46 Nonya 45 permanent residents 93, 96n4, 101, 105-106, 114n1, 254 photography 63, 117-118n7, 121-131, 133-140, 213, 234, 237-239, 241, 256 physical infrastructure 59-60, 94, 106, 191, 194, 196, 206n13, 225, 235, 281 political hegemony 30, 40, 104, 303 pragmatism 12, 37, 40-42, 52, 52n8, 69, 73, 75, 78-79, 82-84, 104, 159-160, 193-194, 236, 245, 252, 288, 291

309 Prime Minister 196, 278, 294 Lee Hsien Loong 18, 19n8, 81, 196, 282, 284, 287 see also Lee Kuan Yew; Goh Chok Tong production of space 17, 22, 24, 208-209, 300 public characters 29, 213, 215-216, 222, 228-230, 230n8 public housing 12-13, 22, 29, 56, 74, 204-205, 213-214, 216-219, 221, 223-224, 235-236, 266 corridors 29, 217, 219-220, 223-225, 266, 285 lifts 217, 220-224, 224n3, 285 void decks 29, 223-226, 228, 285 see also HDB public spaces 22, 139, 171, 183-184, 186, 192, 198, 203, 207-208, 234, 301 publics 119, 261, 303 Raban, Jonathan 11, 14, 26, 60, 261, 269; see also soft city race politics 21-22, 45, 47-48, 54, 72, 76, 83n12, 101n6, 278 Raffles, Stamford 54, 149, 156-157, 302 statue 145, 154, 157 region 12-13, 43-44, 46, 48, 54, 57, 72n3, 154, 173-174, 192, 218n1 archipelago 95 Asia 22, 43, 46, 51, 55, 57, 59, 72n3, 86, 154, 200, 304 Southeast Asia 46, 49, 54, 62, 87, 107, 118n8, 159, 173, 175, 218n1 relocation and resettlement of people 94, 96, 98, 101, 235 right to the city 17, 107, 209 scarcity of land 196, 234, 240 scarcity of resources 12, 41, 262, 288 security concerns 70-73, 76-77, 80-83, 85, 88, 104, 172, 257, 264, 264n4, 289, 301 Internal Security Act 70, 70n2, 72, 77, 83 shophouse 87, 203-204, 257, 260 shopping centres and malls 22, 28, 171-175, 180, 182-183, 186, 202n9 Peninsula Shopping Centre 173-174, 177 Singapore colonial 17, 233, 236 independence 12, 14, 15n6, 18n7, 19, 27, 37, 39, 41, 46, 53-54, 56, 70, 74-75, 94-95, 147-148, 163, 194, 276, 278-279, 304 little red dot 11, 74 model 12, 281-282, 292 story 12, 12n3, 18 Singapura 58, 163, 165 Singapore Dreaming 40, 299-300 Singapore literature 147, 151, 159, 165 Singapore music scene 28, 171-172, 175, 177, 179, 181-184, 186, 202n8, 203, 207, 301 Singaporeans 18, 21, 27-28, 30, 45, 53, 55, 60, 63, 69, 72, 74, 74n5, 76-77, 81, 83-84, 86-88, 103, 107, 117-118n7, 145-146, 154, 159-160, 162, 171, 175-176, 178, 180, 185-186, 196, 253-254,

310 

The Hard State, Soft City of Singapore

263, 276, 283-284, 288, 291, 293-294, 299, 302 Sinophone 145-149, 152-154, 164-165 literatures 148, 148n2, 153, 165 poetry 152 Sinoscripts 145-146, 149, 152, 164-165 social capital 209, 213, 216, 228-230, 304 social classes 18, 42, 72, 98, 175, 182, 192, 214, 257 social media 116-117, 123, 237-239, 243, 245 social practices 183, 186, 252 soft city 11, 14, 16, 26-27, 60, 88, 113, 186n2, 245, 300-301, 304 songlines 30, 39-40, 45, 47, 49, 63 SPUR or Singapore Planning and Urban Research Group 19, 40 state and civil society 94, 245-246, 299-300, 303 state capitalism 12, 281, 303 Straits Settlements 45, 164 subjectivities 146, 149-151, 154, 164-165, 268, 300

The Substation 38, 172, 208, 303 third places 19, 213, 216, 222, 222n2, 228, 230 top-down 29, 103, 121, 191-193, 196, 200, 203 transnational 27, 146, 148, 152, 173

tabula rasa 13-14, 37, 62, 94, 94n3 talking cock 177-178, 180, 182, 185 Tan Pin Pin 15, 27, 69-71, 73-79, 84-88 To Singapore, With Love 27, 69-75, 78-80, 82-88 technocracy 12, 40, 277, 281-282, 284, 289, 292, 303 technology 12, 15, 25, 41, 57, 60, 227, 233-235, 237-238, 241, 244-246, 256 the digital 20, 23, 29-30, 113, 116-117, 233-235, 237-238, 241, 243-245, 269 the elderly 114n1, 118, 204, 219, 224, 227-229, 266, 291 the everyday 15-17, 19, 23-24, 28, 47-48, 71, 121-122, 122n1, 124, 128, 130-133, 138-141, 172, 175, 182, 207, 209, 214, 234, 266, 301

visual research 122-123, 125-129

URA or Urban Redevelopment Agency 12, 197-199, 202, 202n10 urban development 13, 40, 56, 193, 234-236 urban farming 23, 218, 256-257, 264, 264n4, 301 community gardens 213, 264-266 corridor gardening 218-220 Foodscape Collective 29, 251, 257, 264-272 Growell 29, 251, 256-261, 267-270, 272 urban imaginaries and the urban imaginative 13n4, 17, 25, 27, 30, 40, 60-61, 88, 152, 186n2, 252, 299-302; see also representational space urban planning 12, 16, 56, 94n3, 192-193, 208, 252, 303 urban transformations 40, 45, 200

war 46-48, 119 water catchments and reservoirs 14, 95, 98, 101, 103 waterfront 198 Esplanade 196, 198, 198n4, 210 Singapore River 52, 96, 197, 199, 201 see also Marina Bay workforce 98, 263, 267 world-class 13, 27, 37, 48, 58, 61-63, 74, 114, 199, 252-253, 290 zonings 96, 173, 183, 196, 199-200, 202-203, 236, 281

Publications

Norman Vasu, Yeap Su Yin and Chan Wen Ling (eds): Immigration in Singapore 2014, ISBN 978 90 8964 665 1

Gregory Bracken (ed.): Asian Cities. Colonial to Global 2015, ISBN 978 90 8964 931 7

Lena Scheen: Shanghai Literary Imaginings. A City in Transformation 2015, ISBN 978 90 8964 587 6

Anila Naeem: Urban Traditions and Historic Environments in Sindh. A Fading Legacy of Shikarpoor, Historic City 2017, ISBN 978 94 6298 159 1

Siddhartha Sen: Colonizing, Decolonizing, and Globalizing Kolkata. From a Colonial to a Post-Marxist City 2017, ISBN 978 94 6298 111 9

Adele Esposito: Urban Development in the Margins of a World Heritage Site. In the Shadows of Angkor 2018, ISBN 978 94 6298 368 7

Yves Cabannes, Mike Douglass and Rita Padawangi (eds): Cities in Asia by and for the People 2018, ISBN 978 94 6298 522 3

Minna Valjakka and Meiqin Wang (eds): Visual Arts, Representations and Interventions in Contemporary China. Urbanized Interface 2018, ISBN 978 94 6298 223 9

Gregory Bracken (ed.): Ancient and Modern Practices of Citizenship in Asia and the West. Care of the Self 2019, ISBN 978 94 6298 694 7

Henco Bekkering, Adèle Esposito and Charles Goldblum (eds): Ideas of the City in Asian Settings 2019, ISBN 978 94 6298 561 2

Gregory Bracken, Paul Rabé, R. Parthasarathy, Neha Sami and Bing Zhang (eds): Future Challenges of Cities in Asia 2019, ISBN 978 94 6372 881 2

K.C. Ho: Neighbourhoods for the City in Pacific Asia 2020, ISBN 978 94 6298 388 5