PERFORMING THE SINGAPORE STATE 1988-1995 Wm. Ray Langenbach B-5-6 Menara Pelangi 8 Lorong Ang Seng 2 Brickfields 50470 K.L. Malaysia Tel/Fax: 603-2274-8231 M: 012-970-1014 Doctor of Philosophy 2003 Centre for Cultural Research University of Western Sydney PERFORMING THE SINGAPORE STATE 1988-1995 William Ray Langenbach B.F.A., M.F.A. Doctor of Philosophy August 2003 Centre for Cultural Research University of Western Sydney DECLARATION This dissertation is my original work, except for those citings from other works as indicated, and has not been submitted for a degree at any other institution. ________________________________ William Ray Langenbach 20 August 2003 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am profoundly grateful to the following people who were generous with their time, effort, and support reading the dissertation drafts and offering suggestions. Supervisors: Dr. Bob Hodge, Dr. Ien Ang (Centre for Cultural Research, UWS), Dr. John Clark (Power Institute, U. Sydney) Those who assessed the final dissertation: Examiners: Dr. Rustom Bharucha, Dr. David Birch, Dr. Edward Scheer & Dr. Latif Kamaluddin, Michael Barrett, Lucy Davis, Sharaad Kuttan, Krishen Jit, Lee Weng Choy, Casey Leong, Susie Lingham, , And to those who helped: Ann & Rad, Ran & Fred, Read & Marianne, Lynne, the Brackett Clan, Norazuan bin Ramli, Chua Beng Huat, Helen Grace, Yvonne Lee, Vincent Leow, Janet Pillai, Yao Souchou & Edward R. Langenbach, Rahmat bin Hassan TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT 1 INTRODUCTION 2 PART 1: SETTING THE SCENE I. SCOPOPHILIA: Clapham Junction From the Air 18 II. IDEOLOGICAL FRAMES: Instrumentally Imagining Singapore 38 III. PERFORMATIVITY AND PERFORMANCE 67 PART 2: PERFORMANCE OF THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE IV. STATE FATHERHOOD & THE BODY POLITIC: The Taxonomy of Progress 98 V. "THE SINGAPORE STORY": Invention & Foreclosure 136 PART 3: PERFORMANCE ART VI. "COFFEE TALK": A Metadiscourse of Daily Life 178 VII. "BROTHER CANE": The Exception that Articulates the Norm 207 VIII. THE AFTERMATH: Performance Indicators 240 CONCLUSION 288 BIBLIOGRAPHY i-xxxiii ABSTRACT 1 ABSTRACT The ephemeral and ungraspable moment of performance has ramifications that extend far beyond its immediate time and place. This dissertation explores performances in Singapore as indicators of divergent visions of the nation-state. During 1993-94, 'performance art' and Forum Theatre provided an arena for a convergence and collision of imaginings and desires for civil society, held on the one hand by a small group of ruling Peoples Action Party (PAP) politicians, and on the other, by a small group of progressive artists and other intellectuals. To understand the ways in which the government and artists contested (or, in some cases, agreed to not contest) the cultural ground requires an examination of performance as a semiotic mode in public life, a genre in art, and an instrument of cultural politics. A study of performance alone cannot sufficiently reveal the subtleties of governmental and artistic agency. The government and artists have mobilized specific figures of speech from a repertoire developed over centuries. These tropes are analysed for their uses, their performative instrumentality, and their discursive power. Finally, tropes and performances coalesce and disseminate prevailing national, regional, and global ideologies. Through an understanding of their ideological import, we can situate specific tropes and performances in the full complexity of the socio-political moment, and reveal the sensitivities and desires that in 1994 drove the government to stigmatise Forum Theatre and performance art as capable of 'agitating' audiences, 'propagating' deviant social or religious information, and 'subverting' the state. This dissertation examines the power of aesthetic forms, and the aesthetics of power. Competing notions of performance in Singapore led to a cultural crisis in 1993-94. That historical punctum and its ramifications constitutes the primary object of this study, and is presented as a significant indicator of the state of the Singapore state at that time. INTRODUCTION This dissertation opens with a 'Singapore story': the narration of a series of events that took place in Singapore in the first hours of 1994. In the final two chapters, it returns to this same story with critical annotation that complexifies the initial narration provided below. Sandwiched between these two recountings are chapters that introduce the critical theories applied to this analysis, and others that lay out the social, political, cultural and performative frames through which the story is retold. A SINGAPORE STORY: "a performing body in perishable space"1 One might claim in retrospect that the steps were already painted on the floor when Josef Ng Sing Chor and Shannon Tham presented their performance art works early in the morning of 1 January, 1994, at the 5th Passage Contemporary Art Space. A small crowd of about 30-40 people, a press photographer and a reporter from the tabloid press were still in attendance. The extra effort proved to be worth their while. The press reports and photographs of Ng's and Tham's performances, particularly one photograph of Ng with his back turned to the audience, buttocks showing, that were published two days later, resulted in two arrests and the closing of the 5th Passage gallery. Over the succeeding weeks the Artist’s General Assembly (hereafter referred to as the AGA), the weeklong art festival in which Ng and Tham performed, functioned as a strange attractor in a dynamic system. The AGA and its aftermath was the exception that articulated the cultural norm in Singapore of the mid-1990s, parenthetically framing all subsequent art events. When taking over the office from the first generation Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, on 28 November 1990, the "Second Lap" Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong had promised a kinder, gentler, more consultative and participatory approach to the management of civil society and culture, accompanied by a loosening of censorship guidelines (Goh in Chong, 1991:148). The subsequent events over New Years' night 1993/4 revealed a different face of the Goh government, and had an impact on the arts in Singapore seemingly out of reasonable scale to the events themselves. 1 Susie Lingham, "Life Stilled", in Victor and Lingham 2002. INTRODUCTION 3 What is difficult to communicate now, nine years later, was the tone of early 1994. A pallor of bureaucratic dread descended on a small, creative, politically naïve community of artists. The government called in the police, who took statements and brought charges against Ng and Iris Tan, the Manager of 5th Passage. Three weeks later, the government stigmatised an entire art form as having the potential to 'agitate' the public,' propagate' deviant messages and 'subvert' the government2. The arts community simply buckled, mounting no organised resistance against the orchestrated administrative assault. The most riveting performances of 1994 moved from art schools, galleries, and theatres into the offices of the government bureaucracy, police stations, and the courts. The government appropriated the space created by participatory performance, intervening in the events while excluding others from doing so. Vital civil society forms became the object of renewed government surveillance and scrutiny. Artists became audience to the theatre of the state, sitting in the High Court, witnessing the performances of attorneys, prosecutors and justices, mulling over parliamentary speeches and ministerial pronouncements, undergoing police interrogations, etc. The art scene became the enactment of a film-noir script, and the term 'performance art' took on the aura of a criminal enterprise or a forbidden ideology. Government officials attended an unpublicized meeting with the artists who were sworn to secrecy concerning the existence of the meeting and the agreements made there. One well- known theatre company began to reject phone calls from friends and colleagues, refusing to discuss its on-going negotiations with government officials. The telephones of artists and academics were reported to be tapped, and they began to look over their shoulders during conversations or lapse into silence when a stranger sat at a neighboring table in a coffee shop. Documentation of sensitive performances was secreted away in fear that it 2 The government declaration, released through Singapore Press Holdings read: [...] concerned that new art forms, such as "performance art" and "forum theatre" which have no script and encourage spontaneous audience participation pose dangers to public order, security and decency, and much greater difficulty to the licensing authority. The performances may be exploited to agitate the audience on volatile social issues, or to propagate the beliefs and messages of deviant social or religious groups, or as a means of subversion (The Straits Times (Staff) 21 January, 1994 (22 Jan.) emphasis added.). INTRODUCTION 4 would be taken by the police as court evidence. Some former colleagues were labeled government spies, others as too contentious. Evidence and tactics were daily mulled over. Public universities and art schools shunned artists and academics associated with the AGA, and a group of students attacked their lecturer for having taught them performance art. Letters appeared in Letters-to-the-Editor columns attacking an art form the writers had never seen, while supportive letters languished unpublished on the editors’ desks. Some artists and theatre practitioners, seeking to distance themselves and