(hard cover)

PERFORMANCE ART:

MOTIVATIONS AND DIRECTIONS

by

Lee Wen

Master of Arts Fine Arts

2006

LASALLE-SIA COLLEGE OF THE ARTS

(blank page)

PERFORMANCE ART:

MOTIVATIONS AND DIRECTIONS

by

Lee Wen

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Degree Master of Arts (Fine Arts)

LASALLE-SIA College of the Arts Faculty of Fine Arts

May, 2006

ii

Accepted by the Faculty of Fine Arts,

LASALLE-SIA College of the Arts,

In partial fulfillment of the requirements

For the degree Master of Arts (Fine Arts).

Vincent Leow Studio Supervisor

Adeline Kueh Thesis Supervisor

I certify that the thesis being submitted for examination is my own account of my own research, which has been conducted ethically. The data and the results presented are the genuine data and results actually obtained by me during the conduct of the research. Where I have drawn on the work, ideas and results of others this has been appropriately acknowledged in the thesis. The greater portion of the work described in the thesis has been undertaken subsequently to my registration for the degree for which I am submitting this document.

Lee Wen In submitting this thesis to LASALLE-SIA College of the Arts, I understand that I am giving permission for it to be made available for use in accordance with the regulations and policies of the college. I also understand that the title and abstract will be published, and that a copy of the work may be made available and supplied to any bona fide library or research worker. This work is also subject to the college policy on intellectual property.

------Lee Wen

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Abstract

Author: Lee Wen

Title: Performance art:

Motivations and Directions

Degree: Master of Arts (Fine Arts)

Studio Supervisor: Vincent Leow

Thesis Supervisor: Adeline Kueh

Month/Year: May, 2006

Number of Pages: 32

Style Manual Used: Modern Language Association (2nd edition)

This essay will attempt to make a survey of my personal experience

and development working in performance art. In doing so I would also like

to go over my motivations and encounters of working in performance art

which led me to find the importance of representing the temporal form of

performance art in more permanent materials of documentation and

archive and organizing art events.

Since its appearance in Singapore, the practice of performance art

posed various questions. Why would artists feel motivated to work in a

temporal art form which does not result in the making of a material art

object? Given the temporal and ephemeral nature of performance art how

does it continue to be represented? For us who had not seen the actual

performances how does one continue to discuss the relevance and contexts of performances made in the past? We depend on evidences or accuracy of interpretations based on other media such as photography, film or videos, writings, interviews and hearsay or other records in various media forms of documentation and archives. What are the various possibilities in representing them after the fact of the said occurrences or

“” of a temporal performance art work? How do the various media and methods compare and how do we assess them in terms of validity or relevance in relationship to what is deemed as an artwork?

Based on this research, we can re-access performance art and its position as a valid artwork in relation to more traditional media. I hope to be able to look into possibilities for future actions and directions to develop my work in performance art and its contribution to discourse.

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks to those who were generous with their time, effort, and support reading the dissertation drafts and offering suggestions and advises,

To my supervisors: Vincent Leow, Adeline Kueh, and staff of LASALLE-SIA

College of the Arts especially, Milenko Prvacki, Ye ShuFang, Ian Woo, Ahmad

Abu Bakar.

With special thanks to William Lim, C.J. Wee Wan-ling, Alastair MacLennan,

Ray Langenbach, Lee Weng Choy, Audrey Wong, John Low.

And all my relations

vi

Table Of Contents

CHAPTER 1: Performance Art: Enactments, Documentations

and Re-presentations p. 1

1.1 Introduction p. 1

1.2 Local perspective p. 2

1.3 Historical motivations p. 3

1.4 Global trends, marginal networks p. 5

CHAPTER 2: First Encounters: Towards a Conceptual

Framework p. 8

2.1 Introduction p. 8

2.2 and p. 9

2.3 S.Chandrasekaran and Trimurti p.10

2.4 Asian Values, State intervention versus Individual vision p. 12

2.5 Birthrights: Identity and Society p. 14

CHAPTER 3: Manifestations p. 17

3.1 Self, ethnicity and multiculturalism p. 17

3.2 Image and context p. 20

3.3 Persona: contrasts and conflicts p. 21

3.4 Journey of a yellow man p. 21

3.5 Ghosts Stories p. 23

3.6 Neo-baba p. 24

3.7 Method against method p. 25

CHAPTER 4: Representations p. 27

4.1 Archive and documentation; memory and history p. 27

4.2 Alternative and strategic use of media p. 29

4.3 Re-enactments p. 31

4.5 Conclusion p. 35

Notes p. 38

List Of Figures p. 44

Figures p. 46

Bibliography p. 60 1

CHAPTER 1

ENACTMENTS, DOCUMENTATIONS AND RE-PRESENTATIONS

1.1 Introduction

This essay will attempt to make a survey of my own development working in performance art. In doing so I would also like to go over my own motivations and encounters of working in performance art which led me to find the importance of representing the temporal form of performance art in more permanent materials of documentation and archive as well as art works in more durable media.

My research will attempt as much as possible to follow an academic format based on published materials. However, it is an endeavor embarked upon with the foreknowledge that there are very few comprehensive written surveys with references to performance art in Singapore art history.i With the help of some exhibition catalogues, my perspectives are informed largely from personal experiences and conversations via actual encounters with the artists than on textual readings alone.

There have been claims that one cannot partake in making judgmental critical discussion of performance art unless one had actually seen it “live”.

The “live” element of performance art and its dissolving of the separation between the artist and spectator also privileges itself as an unmediated form which arouses an immediate, unique and radical cultural experience. However this is contradicted by the fact that many of our understanding and knowledge 2 of performance art has been studied and written about from evidential proofs via other media such as photography in the early hey days and increasingly in film and videos today. When making her wide-ranging discussions on performance art practices, Amelia Jones held the premise that there is no possibility of an unmediated relationship to any kind of cultural product, including performance or . ii Such privileges should not override other knowledge that arises out of the documentary traces of a live presentation.

Being there to see the live presentation does not mean that the audience would immediately know or understand more about the work. A later research based on documentation, whether in the form of photography, textual or oral, film or video, with the help of hindsight and historical distance may lead to a more meaningful and clearer appraisal.

1.2 Local perspective

In South East Asia the practice and development of performance art had become progressively more intensive within the 1980’s up to today. The recent growth and diversity of contemporary art in South East Asia remains unconsolidated research due to its diverse social historical situations of rapid changes and emphases on post-war politics of nation-building and economic development. iii Added to that its varied cultural histories and multi-lingual status where even if there were published literature, a large part of it would not be in English. Performance art too have been prejudiced into a marginal position in the market driven society, ignored by the mass media or may also be misrepresented by institutions due to its radicalized potential.

Within Singapore’s context TK Sabapathy had cited Tan Teng Kee's 3

Picnic event of 1979 as the first evidence of performance art. Tan created a one-hundred-meters long entitled “The Lonely Road”. He then cut into smaller pieces and incinerated one of his at the end of the event.iv The next foray into performance art is that of Tang Da Wu in 1982 who presented “Five performances” at the National Museum Art Gallery.

Following this Tang went on to initiate The Artists Village in 1988, an alternative space and group came together in the last remaining farms of

Singapore where experiments by various artists forayed into performance art.v

In the same year 1988, , Goh Ee Choo and S. Chandrasekaran put together an exhibition called “Trimurti” where some performances were also presented. vi

Within contemporary art perspective, performance art is traced back to the Futurists, Dadaists and Surrealists during the early 20th Century. Most surveys of performance art would cite the movements in the post-war 1950’s such as and Fluxus in the U.S. and neo-realism in Europe together with Gutai in as the starting point of performance art as a genre in its own right of tradition and historical discourse.vii Without the knowledge of our own local contexts and historical developments, one would easily fall into the fallacy that our local forays into performance is merely an copy of Western art history which is comparatively found in more publications and documentations.

1.3 Historical motivations

In the performance works of Tang Da Wu, there is a narrative feature veering on a proselytizing and pedagogic aspect at work, which often evoke 4 the “medicine man” selling Chinese medicines in the street markets as a precedent. However in his practice there is an ironic twist, which includes the counter-active ingredient in advocating against the use of these traditional medicines as aphrodisiacs such as “Rhino’s drink” (fig.1) and “Tiger’s Whip”

(fig.2). There is a conscientious representation based on a personal concern for an ethical perspective with regard for the problematical politics of global capitalism within a social and ecological context.viii It comes as a surprise that the artists Goh Ee Choo and S. Chandrasekaran in their attempt to differentiate themselves and deny an influence deriving from Tang accused him of being thoughtlessly imitating western practices without any link to one’s own “Asian roots”. ix

In the context of post-colonialism and diaspora it may also be an implication for a strong desire to analyze and clarify the historical motivations and impetus behind contemporary Singapore artists within a multi-cultural, multi-centered context of globalization. This desired goal is not merely to establish a fundamental stronghold of Asian culture and art for the individual artist in Singapore society. The creation of art serves a real need to understand the cultural identity and nature of our individual as well as social evolution and to manifest and assert a unique identity based on history. This however is difficult to achieve or discern independently, coming from a small island city-state, especially so in this post-modern age of mass-media influences, consumerism, simulacra, globalization, market capitalism and rapid change. The individual goals are also further complicated and confused by the state’s over-riding nation-building ambitions and policies.x

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1.4 Global Trends / Marginal Network

I am always puzzled by contradictory proclamations that performance art is now on the rise and at other times the perception that it is in a state of ineffectual wane. The fact is performance art seems to be always a marginalized form of mainstream contemporary art practice although it is being increasingly formalized by prolong practice. Art museums often do not represent performance art in their permanent collections and not many countries would have performance art represented in their biennials, annual art festivals and international art events. However there is a growing network, albeit a marginal one, over the years where artists are initiating their own events and exhibitions. This in itself also contributes to its proliferation, promulgation and evolution.

We live in a world, which is evidentially more globalized, and we cannot ignore its consequence on local situations. Based on my personal involvement with some of the artists initiated events I would like to also analyze and perhaps also speculate on its influence on the global trend of contemporary art practice. Some artists actively promotes international performance art networks include Seiji Shimoda, who organizes “Nippon

International Performance Art Network” in Japan,xi Richard Martel who co- ordinates the Center for Contemporary Art “Le Lieu” in Quebec, Canada and publishes “Editions Intervention,” since 1982 xii and Boris Nieslony in

Cologne, Germany who organizes out of ASA (Art Service Association)

European e.V. xiii 6

Our knowledge of past historical events and performances are usually textual and accompanied by a few iconic photographs. How does one genre of art become adopted into another society in Asia or in Singapore? How do these works become represented in historical discourse? What are the ideological dimensions when artists adopt genres which are traced to a point of beginning in western art history? Are artists conscious of their motivations other than that of merely for the sake of making something new in contemporary art practice? How are such strategies or methodologies being adopted or applied? Are they wholly borrowed, derived or are they translated and hybridized within local contexts?

In Chapter 2, I will outline my first encounters with performance art and developing into my own work. I hope to identify some of the contextual framework and methodology of my works following the early encounters with performance art in Singapore. I will also explore institutional responses and bias in re-presenting (or excluding) performance art especially the relative different acceptance and reception of “Trimurti” as compared to Tang Da Wu and “The Artists Village”, which also creates an anxiety amongst practitioners to actively be involved with their own documentation.

In Chapter 3, I will outline the methodology and contextual frameworks some of my works from 1992 to 2004. This review will help inform my purpose of this thesis of looking for methods and the problematics of documenting and re-presenting performance art. The possibilities that I have identified are re- enactments, photography, videos and mixed media installations. However the questions that I will have to grapple with include that of how well the re- presentations are relevant to the actual performances in them. There is also 7 the question of looking at them as archival documentation instead of an artwork in itself.

In Chapter 4, I will make a comparative study of some artists who have confronted the issue of documentation in their work. The alternative uses of various media to re-present the temporal performance work give a possibility for a continued discourse. However the nature of each media used may affect how the work is being perceived, after Marshall McLuhan’s famous proclamation, “the message is the medium”, one is wary of any performance live happening being re-presented in another media would not necessarily be of a neutral effect. xiv

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CHAPTER 2.

FIRST ENCOUNTERS:

TOWARDS A CONTEXTUAL FRAMEWORK

2.1 Introduction

In this chapter I will outline my first encounters with performance art and developing into my own work. In the process, I hope to identify some of the contextual framework and methodology of my works following the early encounters with performance art in Singapore.

My first live encounter with performance art was through the work of

Tang Da Wu and S. Chandrasekaran. Other Singapore artists such as

Amanda Heng, Vincent Leow and Zai Kuning also began to work in performance art during that time, however the scope of this essay requires my narrowing down to the works by Tang Da Wu and S. Chandrasekaran. There are various overlaps in the methodology and approach, which I used in the beginning of my work when compared to that of Tang Da Wu and S.

Chandrasekaran. I will attempt to make some comparative study and hope to make some trajectories based on these analyses. The encounters with performance art per se also were the beginning of my questioning the ephemeral phenomenon of performance art and its relation to documentation.

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2.2 Tang Da Wu and The Artists Village

My first work, which could be seen as performance art, was through reading my poetry and making some actions based on them in 1989. xv I wanted to approach it from a personal practice based on drawing, painting and sculptural background. I had published a book of poetry and drawings, “A

Waking Dream” in 1981. xvi This was an attempt in combining a textual narrative to the drawings I had made. Through the “poetry actions” I was beginning to make images in actions based on the poetry. The actions based on poetry served as a textual background for a narrative in my performances.

The works in Tang Da Wu and S. Chandrasekaran also were narratives although differing in subject, context and methodology.

Tang Da Wu had started to make performances in the UK just before presenting his first performances in Singapore. The first performances were not based on any subjects and were improvisations with body, material and environment. He presented his first performances in Singapore when he made “Five days of performances” in La Salle College of Art and the National

Museum Art Gallery in 1982. xvii In 1988, he presented his first narrative performances, “In the case of Howard Liu” and “Superman” during the Second

Singapore Art Festival Fringe at the former St. Joseph Institution building, which was soon to be renovated into the present . The performances presented were commentaries about the power relations between artists and institutions within the art world in Singapore. xviii 10

It was the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which moved Tang to a more socially conscious narrative. “In the end, my mother decided to eat Cat food and Dog food”, was first performed in 1988, , based on contaminated food due to nuclear radiation. This was the beginning of a series of works based on ecological themes that followed such as, "They

Poach the Rhino, Chop off his Horn and Make this Drink", (fig.1. 1989,

National Museum Art Gallery, Singapore), "Tiger's whip", (fig.2.1990,

Chinatown, Singapore; 1991,National Museum Art Gallery, Singapore, also other venues). xix Various different themes were also dealt with usually based on Tang’s strong feelings towards current affairs such as “Open the

Gate”, (1989, Artists Village, ) as a response to Tian An Men incident in Beijing, and “Death of a Filipino Maid”, (1990, Shell Theatre,

Singapore) concerning the issue of maid abuse in Singapore.

The performances usually were presented with ordinary objects related to the context of the performance and Tang would be in a simple costume but different from his normal dressing. The most elaborate ones would include some sculptural objects and used during the performances. For example in

“Rhino Drink”, he presented the performance with an installation of a huge rhinoceros lying on its side surrounding by numerous bottles of the “rhino drink”. His face is powdered white with Chinese opera powder and he is dressed in a costume, which he made himself. The performance had various tense moments of silence in between which he would deliver a simple yet moving narrative of the subject concerned.

2.3 S. Chandrasekaran and Trimurti

11

In 1988, S. Chandrasekaran, Goh Ee Choo and Salleh Japar held the multi-media exhibition entitled “Trimurti” at the Goethe Institute in Singapore showcasing works in drawings, , installation and performance. The exhibition “Trimurti-Ten Years After”, a comprehensive retrospective was held at the Singapore Art Museum in 1998.

The three artists used symbols and themes based on the mythology of their ethnicity and religion. Chandrasekaran was of Indian descent and a

Hindu, Goh was Chinese and used symbols of Taoism, later Buddhism and

Salleh Japar, a Malay Muslim related to with an inclination towards

Sufism. Amongst the three, S. Chandrasekaran was the only one who continued to work in performance art consistently. xx

An effort was made to use traditions as a starting point and using contemporary means of art to renew an identity and connection back to their traditional values. Especially the works of Chandrasekaran, which are usually titled with Sanskrit Hindu vocabulary, he reinterprets or re-enacts visually through the objects, installations and performances.

“Trimurti”, which means “having three forms” representing the triad aspects of the “Supreme Being” and the Hindu gods, Brahma, Vishnu and

Shiva, is re-interpreted as a secular symbol, neutralized and equated as natural forces of “Creation”, “Preservation” and “Destruction”. A religious belief is appropriated and “naturalized” for nonaligned acceptance or revitalization.

In his solo works later Chandrasekaran continues to cite various Hindu concepts while reframing them in his personal quests as an artist. “Yogi”

(1990, Portland Park, performance, installation) which means the seeker of spiritual truth is reframed as his personal search. In performances 12 such as “Kala Chakra (Wheel of Time) and “Atman” series (1992, copper, enamel on clay tablets), the soul or life principal became a process, which involves time. xxi (fig.3)

2.4 Asian values, State intervention vs. Individual vision

Although Tang Da Wu is widely recognized and respected in Singapore as well as internationally, he had never been given a retrospective to date in

Singapore. In the catalogue “Trimurti-Ten Years After” there is a consistent repeated strain of arguments to separate the working methodology and ideological framework from that of Tang Da Wu. In the arguments there seem to be a demonization of Tang’s methods as being “foreign and westernized” and the “Trimurti” artists being of Asian and regional extraction.

S.Chandrasekaran:

“Tang Da Wu’s performances are not rooted in elements from this region even though the issues are. The body gestures, materials, space understanding didn’t come from this region. They were Western-oriented body language which I thought did not work.” xxii

Ray Langenbach identified that the arguments put forward by

Chandrasekaran and Goh in “Trimurti” exemplified a “desired Asian language of embodiment, clear boundaries, limits to freedom and responsibility, all anxious values explicitly espoused and constantly reiterated by the PAP government”, a reflection of the state ideology. xxiii These articulations together with the accompanying texts advocate “Trimurti” to be Nanyang regionalists, formalists, a necessary “harmonious” alternative to Tang Da Wu and the Artists Village who are deemed to be “foreign-influenced” therefore 13

“un-Asian”, who are provocative, confrontational and “do not preclude aggressive forms of artistic transgression and activism”. xxiv

Other than their subjects and themes in their performance, there is a formalistic strain similarly applied in both artists’ working methodologies. Tang and Chandrasekaran still find the traditional media of drawing and studio practice essential to their work. They also have consistently made paintings, sculptures, and installations besides working in performance.

Tang welcomes interactions with the audience. He often emphasized more than the subject matter or issue, that as a performance artist, the most important thing for him is executing a definite skill, which is necessary when responding to a live audience. He finds it challenging to get immediate responses and this motivates him as he finds that the traditional media like painting and sculpture takes a longer time before they are shown to an audience after completion. He even admits that there is a risk involved and sometimes he submits to the vulnerability of ending up feeling foolish. xxv

The performances of Chandrasekaran were less interactive with the audience. His is often an immobile body in an installation or site, almost sculptural. They were usually time-based and durational, putting his body within an installation, which were imbued with symbols based on Hindu mythology or philosophy. Chandrasekaran uses his body to incarnate a symbolic meaning in a ritual, which tests the body’s endurance. The process he goes through also arouses transformations in him. However they are spectacles meant to provoke a reaction: “I want my art to provoke, even disturb the audience. I want them to go out thinking. That’s what I want art to do.”xxvi 14

Langenbach used Victor Turner’s discrimination between taxonomical linkages from that of the symbolical in discussing how artists communicate alliance with social structural positions. xxvii Both Tang and Chandrasekaran often talk about their work in relationship to mythology and the use of traditional beliefs reframed in contemporary contexts. However what could be derived from the need for differentiation and hence in conflict with the State ideology was that Tang’s works promotes openness towards individual responses via dialogue and inquiry. Chandrasekaran may suggest an individual interpretation of Hindu traditions however he used them in a metaphorical way, which seemingly neutralizes economic, social or political positions and ideological implications.

Notions of ‘harmonious multi-culturalism’, ‘re-invented traditions’ and

‘Asian values’ lend credibility to the Singapore Art Museum’s giving a retrospective to “Trimurti” at the accelerated pace. Mahshadi’s description of

“Trimurti” as an “inclusionary strategy”xxviii is arbitrary and at the same time also excludes Tang Da Wu and the Artists Village from the prioritization administered by state legitimatization. The artists as individual social actors are caught in a cultural relativism used by the state’s social construction and engineering based on exclusivist national and ethnic particularisms.

2.5 Birthrights: Identity and Society

The rapid social, political and economic transitions and recent shifts in culture and technology, affected by diaspora and globalization makes it increasingly important for visual art and culture to play a role to interrogate the 15 meanings, effects, and consequences of identity formation in contemporary society.

The earlier works I presented while working with artists from The Artists

Village were done out of a curiosity, experimental spirit and the natural need for personal growth as well as exploring different media, dimensions and possibilities. I was less concerned about the social content and philosophical context than that of exploring a form, which was new and relevant to the time that I was working in. Just like Tang Da Wu and Chandrasekaran, I saw contemporary art practice as remaking of mythological narratives. The incident of 1994 with Josef Ng’s “Brother Cane” performance and its aftermath provided me a different perspective. It strongly impressed me towards a political understanding and perspective as an artist. This call for a political perspective was first began when the Artists Village was evicted from the village site in Sembawang in 1990.

The eviction forced us to participate in the 1990 Singapore Arts

Festival in various public sites throughout the city. xxix Besides presenting solo works I made numerous performances in collaborations with the other artists from the Artists Village. The theme of our project mooted by Tang Da

Wu was “C.A.R.E.” an acronym for “Concerned Artists for the Environment”.

Although it was one of the most exciting and fruitful experiences for experimenting, learning and organizing an art event in public spaces, it was a heavy undertaking of mixed feelings, given the situation of the lost of the land spaces that we used to operate in and expected to continue indeterminately. I was asking many questions which we had no time for resolution at that busy time. What is the position of art and artists in society? 16

During the time when the Artists Village was occupying the last remaining village farms in Sembawang, it occurred to most of the artists participating in the organic way in which we came together would warrant support from the state for it to continue. However we were served with eviction notices which left us with no recourse. One speculation was that we were not even a legal entity, as we were then not registered as an organization or a legally legitimate “society”. There were also speculations that some paintings and works exhibited were too raw and explicit. Our visitor’s book was usually filled with praises but there were the occasional rude comments, accusations that some works were pornographic or blind

“aping” of western culture and various negative responses. xxx The many reports in the newspapers and magazines seems to show the Artists Village had in majority a positive reception albeit some were negative and critical of it.

Yet we could not find any recourse in terms of alternative space when we were served eviction notices.

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CHAPTER 3.

MANIFESTATIONS

3.1 Self, ethnicity and multiculturalism

The representation of the human self after post-modernity’s multi- faceted perspectives of identity-formation is both problematic and complex.

Calvin Schrag draws out a well-balanced thesis that recommends a matrix of configurations of human experience through the domains of science, morality, art and religion. In bringing together the legacy of modernity in confrontation with strategies of post-modernity, a revised narrative of the self is suggested.

A redesigned portrait based on discourse, engaging in action, situated within community in order to moderate towards transcendence. xxxi

In response to various criticisms that performance art for Singapore is yet another example of blind derivative of Western art, I began to investigate the comparison of self-representation in Chinese painting and Western art.

Performance art is usually used as a term to describe a practice within the visual art whereby the actions of the individual artists, sometimes together in a group partake in the work itself. This is often seen to be alien or overly egoistic to some in Asia, who are used to referring themselves more to a social group rather than as unique or outstanding individuals. To be too outstanding is usually frowned at as in the Chinese idioms, not to be like “a camel in a sheep’s pen” or “outstanding nails are to be knocked down”. In comparison to Western culture, it would be difficult to find the similar 18 emphases on portraiture and especially self-portraiture in the corresponding periods of history in Chinese painting. xxxii

In his four-volume study of world religion and myth “The Masks of

God”, Joseph Campbell traced human cultural history unfolding like a continuous evolutionary journey. xxxiii Themes were compared and developed, through variations and distortions and reasserted into a grand theory of the evolution of human culture and consciousness. Culminating in its last volume, “Creative Mythology” anticipated the emergence of a great movement of advancement and climax for human culture. One could inference the relevance when looking at the historical and cultural comparisons of the relative later emergence of performance art in Asia as compared to the West. Considering that in history, Taoism and

Buddhism was the philosophical background whereby the mastery in painting was in landscape and nature rather than in the realistic representation of the human form. At the same time caught in the midst of post-colonialism and entrenched in economic under-development there was a less tendency to accept the changes based on Western philosophy.

In China the first forays into performance art began in the mid 80’s however there were none who use performance art predominantly but more like a by-product to other avant-garde practices. xxxiv In 1992 artists like

Zhang Huan, Ma Liu Ming and Zhu Ming settled in the eastern edge of Beijing and organized various “underground” performances in private events. They soon became known to use performance art as a main form of practice. xxxv

This could be seen as a parallel history to the dates in Singapore where 19 performance art also became conscious manifestations of the artist’s body as artwork as by-products of other avant-garde practices in the beginning.xxxvi

Like S. Chandrasekaran, Zhang Huan uses traditional mythology to create the scenario for a personal transformation and re-interprets them in contemporary contexts. However, unlike Chandrasekaran, he did not use them by neutralizing economic, social or political positions and ideological implications. Zhang Huan’s earlier executed performances were based on the social conditions in the post-Tian An Men incident (1989) in China and his

Buddhist background. His earlier performances such as, “12 Square meters”

(fig.4.1994) where he sits naked covered with honey and fish oil in a filthy toilet and “65 kilograms” (1994) in which he suspended himself from the ceiling tested his ability to endure the harsh conditions in which neither neither he nor the audience could escape. His later migration to New York led to various explorations into his new surroundings. However there is still a strong reference to his Chinese identity and Buddhist philosophy background. xxxvii

I had found it necessary to assert the social and political difference of a descendent of Chinese diaspora outside of China and specifically in a

Singapore multicultural and post-colonial context. It would be too pretentious for me to persist in the old religious or philosophical traditions and yet it was inevitable to deny my connections to the same ethnicity.

Stuart Hall acknowledged that there are two kinds of identity. Identity as “being” which offers a sense of unity and commonality and identity as

“becoming” which is a process of identification and shows the discontinuity in our identity formation. The first one is necessary and yet it is that of the 20 second, which is closer to those who come from a postcolonial society and a history of diaspora. xxxviii

I decided that the only way to deal with it was with a playful and ambiguous interrogation of the stereotyping and exoticization of identity via ethnicity and history. I also found it necessary to work in series as a way to cope with the anxiety of incomplete process and complexities of issues involved within a single performance work. At the same time it was a respond to artists working in series within the modernist and minimalist frame of attempting to use a quasi-mathematical inference. xxxix

This was the contextual framework for considerations before initiating three series of my works: “Journey of a yellow man” (1992-2004), “Ghosts

Stories” (1995-1997) and “Neo-Baba” (1995-1997).

3.2 Image and context

In my series of works “Journey of a yellow man” (fig.5. first performed,

1992, ), “Neo-Baba” (fig.6. first performed, 1995, ) and “Ghosts

Stories” (fig.7. first performed, 1995, Tokyo) I had set out to offer a narrative discourse based on actions that create communicative images and to situate myself in a local as well as international community. They are based on local contexts of an individual’s struggle within the cultural location of Singapore but with view to universal socio-political themes. These works were initiated and were part of another phase for me after residing and researching in London for 2 years from 1990 to 1992. Prior to that, my works were done in the spirit of experimentation with the Artists Village. The time spent in London allowed 21 for wider perspective and research into a more individuated practice within global concerns.

3.3 Persona: contrasts and conflicts

The works often begin with recognizing some core anxieties and concerns that arose from my personal experiences as well as my reading of some issues in contemporary society. My response is also based on the various critiques given from different philosophical arguments on the state of contemporary art. There have been shifts of perspectives amongst artists since the 1960’s in response to the social function of art and emphases of art as a commodity sustained into an investment of aesthetic beauty for the sake of the market. The protests and resistance of the avant-garde became less important and faced obliteration within a global market consumer culture where artists were divided between image-making and social concerns. xl My works straddle between these polarities as a visual artist. I still try to see image making as3 a priority however I could not work without a concern for context in a world of conflict and changing values. There is also an element of pedagogy involved where I usually take the stance of asking questions in order to provoke some thinking for these concerns and not necessarily advocating a particular position. By providing images of contrast and conflict in performance based on personal history, performance art can serve as a tool for cultural discourse and constructing identity. xli

3.4 Journey of a yellow man

One of the anxieties I faced of being a Chinese Singaporean in London was that of often being mistaken for being from mainland China. Even 22 mainland Chinese would usually expect me to be well versed in Mandarin language and knowledge of Chinese culture. Although I am familiar with the language and culture still they would frown on my lesser capacity and competence. At the same time, being first time away for a longer period than before, there is a greater sensitivity of prevalent racism when living in a predominantly “white” society.

To the West, “the other” is often seen not only as exotic, erotic or primitive but also inferior and subject to colonization. The Swedish scientist and botanist, Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) is said to be the father of taxonomy, the scientific classifications of animals and plants now used in biological sciences. He even made some differentiations among the human race in four categories. These included Native Americans (Homo Sapiens Americanus) were seen as "red," "ill-tempered" and "subjugated." The "European" category

(Homo Sapiens europeaeus) was "white, serious and strong." The Asiatic

(Homo sapiens asiaticus) is described as “yellow, melancholy, and greedy” lastly the African (Homo sapiens afericanus) was depicted as "black, impassive and lazy." These categories are explicitly racist stereotypical perceptions, which even today helped scientists to categorize and interpret with these observations. xlii

These contexts along with earlier explorations on identity, helped to initiate my series of “Journey of a yellow man”. Painting the body yellow alluded to various issues on my ethnicity and was also like putting on a full- body mask. When working at the Artists Village and Tang Da Wu, we talked about putting the Chinese opera white powder on the face as a mask to signify embodying another persona in performance. The mask also helps to 23 overcome our shyness of revealing ourselves as well as anxieties of stage fright when stepping in front of an audience.

Etymologically, “mask” originated from the Italian “masca”, which describes an evil, hideous character. The Latin form of “persona” also implied a mask as in a role or a person. xliii The yellow man persona was an over the top mask which wishes to address various issues as well as a visually strong image that captivates the audience.

3.5 Ghosts Stories

I began the series of “Ghosts Stories” after making the observation that ghosts stories easily make their mark on the best sellers list both in Singapore and Japan. This popular impression also seems to suggest nostalgia for the irrational in a hyper-rationalized and extreme control by state apparatus in a contemporary society. To me it seems to express a need to release oppressive tensions arising from living under conditions of paranoia and censorship within an authoritarian and repressive society.

In this series I also sometimes use a black cloth over my head as a mask, however it is not as distinctive element in the work as the “yellow man”.

The emphasis here is to create a “chilling” effect based on the scenario created by objects, sound, lighting and the actions. Some of the objects used repeatedly include golden eggs, sometimes made of painted plaster sometimes from stones. I also used blocks of ice, military blankets.

The Chinese idiom, "Kill the chicken to frighten the monkeys"

(Mandarin: sha ji xia hou) is used repeatedly. It connotes a typical authoritarian attitude of punishing the deviant as a means for social control. I used this as a visual metaphor for the extreme punishment of political 24 detention without trial, which is the most extreme form of repression and social ostracism. It is sometimes used as the basis for some of the objects for installations or actions in performance of the series.

3.6 Neo-Baba

Neo-Baba is another series of work, which is a reference on identity with regard to social realities within a local context and an effort to relate to an international, global community. There was a self-conscious attempt at laughing at one’s self and situation. “Neo-baba” is a pun on the anti-art movement of “Dada” and the derogatory term, “baba” used to describe Straits- born Chinese in and Singapore. Neo-baba was also used as a platform to question conservative assumptions of art and culture, which often generalized what nature of culture should represent the larger society. At the same time it was also an acknowledgment of the complexities involved in our post-modern world of pluralism and global market capitalism.

I dropped the idea of wearing a mask literally, however the handling of a comic persona to me was another way of putting on a mask in a different way. The Neo-Baba persona was often well dressed in a formal tie and long sleeves shirt and spoke in various different languages, which showed evidenced of my multi-cultural background. I did not expect audiences to understand what I was saying. Words and phrases which are commonly used in the dialects and languages that I know were deliberately to throw light on a new identity based on a plural and multi-cultural discourse.

Some objects I have used over the Neo-Baba series is a pair of boxing gloves sewn together with an opposing pair. When I wear them they insinuate an invisible opponent or fighting with a missing opponent depending on the 25 perceiver. Chewing gum is used in various ways where there is an over consumption of it. This is done with reference to the ban of the sale and import of chewing gum in Singapore.

3.7 Method against method

Each performance in the series of “Journey of yellow man”, “Ghosts

Stories” and “Neo-Baba” differs in length, format and has a different sub- theme. Some are short performances of thirty minutes whereas others may be involving an installation, which incorporated long durational performances.

The performances have been conceived based on site-specificity and also responding to the nature of the event concerned. There is also relationship to the time of enactment which influences the work manifested with regard to my own personal physical, mental, emotional and psychological state.

Various plans and proposals to make a performance or installations before the actual manifestations had to be discarded especially when one is unfamiliar to the site, space and society. In response to encountering them in reality the work had to be modified to suit the site, space and society that it will finally manifest itself. I try to be open to spontaneity based on chance and a methodology that is against method.

Dada artists recognized “coincidence and chance” as a strategic force of inspiration and motivation for creativity. xliv There is a meeting of the unconscious in personal experiences or problems and chance occurrences that result in symbolic functions.

The use of chance and spontaneous spirit also has roots in Chinese philosophy. John Cage was an influential figure in the 1960’s especially 26 associated with Fluxus revealed that he used chance operations in his musical creations. To him chance operations was one not entirely devoid of making choices although based on results from using the “I Ching”, an oracle he consulted with the chance throw of the coins. However in Taoist philosophy this is regarded not so much as “chance” occurrence as commonly perceived but a phenomenon, which corresponds to cosmic changes. xlv

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CHAPTER 4.

RE-PRESENTATIONS

4.1 Archive and documentation; memory and history

Performance art being an ephemeral form and medium pose various problems for its continued discussion in contemporary art history and theoretical discourse. Performance itself is seen as an “essentially contested concept” and this essence is built into itself. xlvi Some of its original contexts advanced an open-ended undecidability of forms that challenges limitations of established art forms. Characteristics that are listed to be common to this open definition includes that of an opposition to a commodification of art in contemporary culture and an interest in the juxtaposition of incongruous and unrelated images as well as the use of collage, assemblage and simultaneity. xlvii

These characteristics make it even more problematic when we consider art museums and historical institutions’ inability to represent them.

Any visit to art museums permanent collections will show the imbalanced if not lack of representations of performance art in visual art history for exhibition. The exhibition “Out of Actions”, started in Museum of contemporary art in Los Angeles in 1998 and touring Vienna, Barcelona and Tokyo there after showed the possibility of exhibiting and collecting objects involved in and arising out of performance art. xlviii 28

Performance artists actually acknowledged the temporal and ephemeral nature of the live medium itself and consciously resist commodification and defy the collection of their works in permanent forms of relics, photography, film or video. Such claims however are self-contradictory in a global capitalistic market economy. Even if no commodity is produced there is always the struggle for viability by artists or organizers of performance art events viable through some philanthropic or arts endowment sponsorship if not through the sale of tickets. The resistance to commodification is also renounced for the argument that a live presentation is in the presence of a unique and unmediated experience far different from that of the premise of archive and documentation. xlix

Critics and historians like Amelia Jones and RoseLee Goldberg asserts that there is no possibility for an unmediated relationship in cultural production whether it is a live body art performance. They advocated for the discourse of performance via other media such as photography, film and video as equally valid for the sake of continuous discourse in contemporary art. l

In Singapore there had been some attempts at making some effort at documentation by artists. “Open ends” was an exhibition of performance art documentation held at in 2001 organized by independent artists led by . li It was a valuable effort involving various interviews between the concerned writers and artists, which fulfilled a dire need in a society, which lack an institution that is conscientious in collecting objects out of action and performance art nor documentation and archiving of temporal and ephemeral works. Otherwise a large part of Singapore’s contemporary art history would be lost and forgotten. 29

4.2 Alternative strategic use of media

As an artist working in performance since 1989, one is aware of the lack of effort by the institutions as well as the quick pace of change that erodes our memories. What are the ways for performance artists to take pro- active steps towards amending this discrepancy? I would like to trace some possible strategies that artists have taken in making works that are time- based or temporal in nature and conveyed in alternative media.

Some performance works have been made strategically and specifically to include an end document product made in another media.

Artists like and Hsieh Tehching had made works not in front of a live audience but in their studios and documented them meticulously in videos or photography to be presented later in exhibitions. The presentations in these other media seemed fittingly used to ensure the relevance and continued discourse after the fact of the actual occurrence of the live performances.

Bruce Nauman began working in the 1960s with a mistrust of the traditional self-contained object. Art for him was to create based on real experiences. Sculpture implicated participation and “performance” of the viewer by walking and moving around the object’s space. This inspired him to observe his own movements and to perform in his studio making works such as “Slow Angle Walk (Beckett Walk), and “Walk with Contrapposto

(fig.8.1968)” without an audience in order to limit the situation and admitted a 30 mistrust of audience participation. lii His studio was like a lab-theater where works later involved another performer executing tasks under Nauman’s scripted instructions. Nauman often played with words and puns and to perform was a self-conscious “act” which made one the “actor”. The actions captured on videos provide a strange continuous narrative when played over and over. liii

The focus on him as material and object switched later to the “other” as performer, which includes the viewer. In “Performance Corridor” (fig.9.1969), where the installation was a prop which features the viewer as performer captured on an attached video camera and transmitted on a monitor as part of the constructed environment. Like a fun house, which provides the participant with distortions of various mirrors and corridors, the viewers are made uncomfortable and disrupted while walking through the installations.

In the 1980s, as his work became more political, Nauman’s characters became overtly theatrical. Clowns, jesters and mimes appeared in his works commenting on the masquerade of social theater. Unlike Nauman, Hsieh

Tehching had made socially, politically poignant works while resisting becoming overtly theatrical.

Between the years of 1978 and 1986, Hsieh Tehching made five "One

Year Performances," and then continued with "Earth," a thirteen-year performance that stretched from the end of 1986 to the end of 1999. Each of these performances involves making a vow to follow as closely to the conditions, which he will adhere to for a year. The conditions include a particular constraint or mode of being, which he will go through while documenting it meticulously on various media like photography or video. 31

The documentation have been compiled and can be viewed on a computer via website or DVD-ROM. liv (fig.10. 2000)

His last thirteen years performance ended on January 1, 2000 with a presentation where he revealed in a public announcement that he did not do any “art” work during that 13-year period for this performance and “kept himself alive”. Thus making a paradoxical situation of making art without actually “doing” art. The enigmatic Hsieh have not made any performance art work since his last “Earth” piece. However he had exhibited the documents in the form of posters, photographs and videos. He also gives lectures about these past works. lv

Vito Acconci created performances in the 70’s, which were well documented on photographs and videos. Although he had stopped performance for more than twenty years, he presents his past works with elaborate installations providing possible new readings based on his variable presentations. An exhibition in 2004 presented a large selection of works made from 1969 to 1973. The presentation looks like a large room of flow charts comprising photographs, typewritten paper, notes on paper and cards, connected by broad red line or tape accompanied by videos and installations. lvi It gave a sense of an artist re-invention and re-discovery of his past performances. (fig.11. 2004)

4.3 Re-enactments

Marina Abramovic has made various performances in which she later represent them in various media. Some of her works are re-presented as photography objects, reframed and modified with texts or drawings to become 32 artworks in themselves although images are based on performances done in the past. A series of works were made in 1994 based on various performances done in the 1970’s.

“The Lovers” was the performance she did in 1988 with long time collaborator, setting out to walk from opposite ends of the Great Wall of

China for 90 days and meeting in the middle. They had planned to marry when they meet however due to an unexpected twist, and they separated instead. A set of color photographs with unique drawings on the border, together with a new video installation was presented in an exhibition in 1997. lvii The photographs and video footage were taken during the 1988 performance they could be re-worked into becoming accessible in a gallery and revitalized after a good period of 9 years after. (fig.12.)

Unlike other artists committed to performance art having various qualms of re-presenting live works in other media, Abramovic took it to the extreme of re-staging historically iconic performances recently with her

“” at the Guggenheim Museum (November 2005). The performances she chose were five iconic works in performance art history done by other artists in the past and one by her. She performed works based on Bruce Nauman’s “ (1974) ”, ’s “Seedbed

(1972)”, ’s “Action Pants: Genital Panic (1969)”, and ’s

“The Conditioning, first action of Self-Portrait(s) (1973) ’ “How to

Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (1965)” and her own “Lips of Thomas

(1975)”. She wanted to do was ’s “Trans-fixed (1972)” but she was turned down when she solicited Burden’s permission. lviii (fig.13. 2005)

According to the Guggenheim Museum’s press release, the re- 33 enactments were done on the premise that there was little documentation that exists during the early critical period of performance art. Abramovic also wanted to examine the possibility of redoing and preserving an ephemeral art form. lix One can see that she did re-interpret the performances based on the original but it would hardly be a true repeat or preservation of the original.

What is interesting is that it provided a bridge to the performances of the past especially for an audience who may not even be born yet at that time. Her performance was well documented with video and photography to be preserved but it is her work that is being preserved. As the artists, body, place and time is different, therefore even the re-doing of a performance is altogether another performance and cannot be the same as the original even if she did it exactly the same. Although there have been many criticisms on

Abramovic’s “Seven Easy Pieces”, one can appreciate the challenges she brought out in the attempt at preserving an ephemeral art form. Abramovic had done a performance, which had been provocative and unconventional, perhaps even a parody of the earlier performances rather than its preservation. Presenting them in Guggenheim Museum looked like a canonization of herself. Comparing to the listed shared characteristics of performance art in the historical contexts that Carol Simpson Stern and Bruce

Henderson identified it would be hard to say she did not performed in the tradition of historical performance art as an undecidable and open-ended form. lx

The idea of re-enactments of performance art has its precedents. The

Whitechapel Art Gallery in London held 'Short History of Performance – Part

One' in 2002 featuring artists’ re-enactments by , Stuart 34

Brisley, Bernsteins, the Kipper Kids, Hermann Nitsch, Bruce McLean, and

Jannis Kounellis. lxi This was followed by part two in November 2003 featuring artists using lectures format to question ideas of authority and truth.

There were key presentations by The Atlas Group, Mark Dion, Andrea Fraser,

Inventory, Robert Morris, and Carey Young. lxii

The problematics of re-enactments and documentations have seen different responses from artists. Some artists have made appropriations of past performances, which at the same time look at memorializing a well- known performance art work and in a way, which tries to update it using new technology.

MTAA (M. River & T.Whid Art Associates) uses the internet as a medium for public art and updates 's one year performance to re-contextualize in the present art scene. lxiii Although this is an interesting variation of a performance with new media, or could be a way to memorialize an iconic work, it comes across more like a parody through the use of technology than a serious live performance art piece. The work does not have the intensity of someone actually making a live action. Other artists question the idea of framing and contextualizing of performance art through documentation and archiving. Hayley Newman, in her photographic project,

“Connotations-Performance Images 1994-1998” featured various photographs of performances that she faked and meticulously providing details thus addressing facets of authenticity and counterfeits. lxiv Newman was able to make a gender and feminist twist while making references to past iconic performance art works. In “Meditation on Gender Difference” using pink makeup, she faked sunburn on herself the parts usually covered by a bikini, 35 referencing Dennis Oppenheim’s 1970 “Reading Position for Second Degree

Bum”. (fig.14. 1996)

CONCLUSION

In the creation of other art forms such as painting or sculpture, the work is preserved in itself. Performance art may be an ephemeral form but its memory can be preserved in other media. The essence of its mark in passing into another media such as photography, film, and video, new media CD-

ROM and websites however becomes a memory of the actuality and can never be the same experiential phenomena. Hence even the live re- enactments done by artists may recall the original performance but it can only be a renewal in a new scenario and a bridge to the actual past experiences.

The strategic use of chance and spontaneity, responses to site-specificity and time will render it impossible to be repeated or re-enacted in performance art.

Perhaps the power intrinsic in performance is the blurring between art and life but it also arouses various conflicting desires. We can neither repeat our past nor leave it behind. The objects of art making fulfills a human desire to out last our mortality. As Hippocrates (c. 460-357 BC), the Greek philosopher’s famous saying: “Ars longa, vita brevis", usually rendered in

English "art is long, life is short." The ephemeral quality of performance art at once makes contradictory claims towards its validity as an art medium.

However discourses continues to be made based on documents in various media. The relationship between truth and authority is necessarily a practical concern for the performance artist. In “Archive Fever”, Jacques Derrida investigates the concept of the archive in terms of Freudian psychoanalysis. 36

The desire to maintain an archive is convoluted with the death drive, an impulse towards the destruction of everything including the archive. lxv

An art museum’s permanent collection and its program of exhibitions in some ways are like an archive of representations of cultural history in a society. The art museum’s program of exhibitions and collection imposes particular alignments and associations between different trajectories of cultural consciousness as records, and promotes particular lines of thinking.

As seen in how the Singapore Art Museum’s privileging the works of “Trimurti” and S. Chandrasekaran by giving them a retrospective in 1998 vis-à-vis the parallel manifestation of “The Artists Village” and Tang Da Wu.

It is the suspicion that institutions can never give a complete fair and balanced representation to performance art that artists begin to self-organized exhibitions, events and festivals. As a response to “Out of Actions: Between

Performance and the Object, 1949-1979” organized by Museum of

Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the exhibition “Art Action 1958-1998” was organized by Richard Martel, in Quebec. lxvi Martel invited artists and historians for a conference during the performance event and published alternative account of performance art history left out by the Museum of

Contemporary Art Los Angeles exhibition and catalogue. Some of the artists featured also include other artists who also organize like Boris Nieslony from

Germany, Seiji Shimoda from Japan and Chumpon Apisuk of .

Boris Nieslony since 1978, have through the years collected and maintained the most comprehensive archive of performance art “Die

Schwarze Lade” (The Black Kit) and was adopted and housed in “Perforum” in Berne since 1981. This archive contains dossiers from up to a thousand 37 artists worldwide and includes documentations in various media and still growing as a “living” archive. He also continues to organize various performance art events and conferences.

The work of artists today goes beyond that of just making individual works. Many have found it necessary to overcome shortcomings of galleries, museums, art institutions and official events by starting their own alternative art spaces, festivals of performance art events, publications in order to provide an invaluable counter perspective and possibilities to that of the institutions.

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NOTES i There is a lack of any comprehensive history of Singapore art history. Surveys on Singapore’s art history such as Kwok Kian Chow’s “Channels and Confluences – A History of Singapore Art”; 1996 Singapore Art Museum, focused on painting and sculpture and do not inform on performance art. It is only mentioned in passing that Tang Da Wu and artists from The Artists Village such as Vincent Leow, Zai Kuning, Amanda Heng as well as S. Chandrasekaran as part of “Trimurti”, were also practicing performance art. The most comprehensive survey to date is that in Ray Langenbach “Performing the Singapore State 1988 – 1995”, 2003, unpublished PhD thesis, Center for Cultural Research, University of Sydney. http://library.uws.edu.au/adt-NUWS/public/adt-NUWS20041027.174118/ ii Amelia Jones, "Presence" in absentia: experiencing performance as documentation, 1997 Art Journal Vol.56 No. 4 p.11-18. iii Some recent publications includes Clark, John; Modern Asian Art, 1998 Sydney, Fine Arts Press, focused on Japan, China, India, Thailand and . Another often cited work is “Contemporary Art in Asia: Traditions, Tensions” by Apinan Poshyananda, Thomas McEveilley, Geeta Kapur, Jim Supangkat, Marian Pastor Roces, Jae-Ryung Roe, 1997 Asia Society, New York, focused on India, Indonesia, the , , and Thailand. Both books focused on the few countries and their artists’ use of traditional imagery and modes to deal with contemporary issues. What is revealed is the complexity of the notion of “Asia” as a single region and highlighted the difficulty to access generalizations and trace the ebb and flow of influences and information in the local spheres of cultural productions. iv T.K. Sabapathy: Sculpture in Singapore. Exhibition Catalogue Singapore: National Museum Art Gallery. 1991. v Kwok Kian Chow, Channels and Confluences – A History of Singapore Art, 1996 Singapore Art Museum, p.141-150. vi T.K. Sabapathy, Editor. Trimurti And Ten Years After Exhibition Catalogue.1998 Singapore: National Heritage Board / Singapore Art Museum. vii Anthony Howell, Analysis of Performance Art: A Guide to its Theory and Practice 1999, Routledge Harwood Contemporary Theatre Studies RoseLee Goldberg, Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present 1979/2000 Thames and Hudson. viii “Asian Artist Today - Annual V: Tang Da Wu Exhibition Catalogue", 1991, Fukuoka Art Museum, Japan. ix , "Constance Sheares, In Conversation with S. Chandrasekaran, Goh Ee Choo, Salleh Japar", in Trimurti and Ten Years 39

After. Edited by T. K. Sabapathy. Singapore: Singapore Art Museum / National Heritage Board. 1998. p. 54,60 and 75. x C. J. Wee Wan-Ling, 'National identity, the arts and the global city for the arts.' In Derek da Cunha (ed.), Singapore in the New Millennium: Challenges Facing the City-State, p. 241-242. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. xi Shimoda Seiji, Editor. The Nippon International Performance Art Festival Catalogues, 1993 to 2005, Tokyo, NIPAF. xii Richard Martel, editor. Art Action 1958-1998, 2001, Quebec, Inter, (Editions intervention). xiii http://www.asa.de xiv Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, 1964 (Gingko Press). xv The first presentations were at the exhibition “Happenings”, held at National University of Singapore campus co-organized by Artists Village and students from the Faculty of Architecture in 1989. xvi Lee Wen, A Waking Dream, drawings and poetry, 1981, Select Books, Singapore. xvii "Open ends" 2001, Catalogue, documentation exhibition of performance art in Singapore, (Septfest 7-21 September 2001). Singapore, The Substation, Interview with Tang Da Wu by John Low (pages are unnumbered).. xviii Lee Wen, “Interview with Tang Da Wu” The Future of Imagination 3, Catalog, 2006, pg.12-19. xix "Open ends" 2001, Catalogue, documentation exhibition of performance art in Singapore, (Septfest 7-21 September 2001). Singapore, The Substation, interviews by John Low also Catalogue “Asian Artist Today” – Fukuoka Annual V, September 10 – November 10, 1991, Fukuoka Art Museum. xx T. K. Sabapathy, Editor. Trimurti And Ten Years After. Exhibition Catalogue. Singapore: National Heritage Board / Singapore Art Museum. 1998. xxi “Icons”, An exhibition of recent works by S.Chandrasekaran, 11-18 January 1996, exhibition catalogue, The Gallery Fort Canning Centre Introduction by Constance Sheares, “Trimurti to beyond” by T.K. Sabapathy. I was also invited to Portland Sculpture Park in 1990 and helped S.Chandrasekaran on his “Yogi” installation after I finished making my own work, a stone installation. It was here where I had various conversations with Chandrasekaran about his process.

40

xxii Op. Cit. interview with Constance Sheares pg. 54. xxiii Ray Langenbach, “Performing the Singapore State 1988 – 1995”, 2003, PhD thesis, Center for Cultural Research, University of Sydney. Ch. 4. xxiv Op.Cit. Ahmad Mahshadi “’Different Things’: Trimurti and Multicultural Assertions” pg. 32 – 41. xxv "Open ends", 2001, documentation exhibition of performance art in Singapore, (Septfest 7-21 September 2001). Singapore, The Substation, Interview with Tang Da Wu by John Low (pages are unnumbered). xxvi Op. Cit. interviews with Constance Sheares, pg 65. xxvii Op. Cit. and also Quoted by R. Langenbach: Turner, V. 1982. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: Performing Arts Journals. xxviii Op.Cit. Ahmad Mahshadi “’Different Things’: Trimurti and Multicultural Assertions” pg. 39-40. xxix The eviction forced a move out of the rustic village. Tang brought as many works and material he could salvaged from the old village, which were too much for the first house he rented and necessitated a second mover where he finally re-settled in three rented post-colonial houses in Queens Avenue, Sembawang. xxx I was living there in the village when we were served eviction notice in 1989-90. I assisted Tang Da Wu to negotiate with the then newly formed National Arts Council as well as the Land Authorities for extension to stay longer in Sembawang unsuccessfully. xxxi Carl. O. Schrag, The Self after Postmodernity, 1997 Yale University Press. xxxii Richard Ellism Vinograd, Boundaries of the Self: Chinese Portraits, 1600- 1900, 1992 Cambridge University Press, New York. WU Hung, Katherine R. TSIANG, editors; Body and Face in Chinese Visual Culture, 2004 Harvard University Press. xxxiii Joseph Campbell, Primitive Mythology, Occidental Mythology, Oriental Mythology, Creative Mythology (Masks of God) 1991 (reissued) Penguin. xxxivGao Minglu, Toward A Transnational Modernity: An Overview of the Exhibition, Gao Minglu ed. Inside Out: New Chinese Art (catalog). Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. xxxv Qian Zhijian, Performing bodies: Zhang Huan, Ma Liuming, and –Interview, Art Journal, Volume: 58. Issue: 2. Summer 1999, New York. 41

xxxvi For a comparison with Japan see Munroe, Alexandra: Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky, Harry N Abrams, NY 1994. One could also make contrasting comparisons with Japan, which was more open to the new influx of philosophical ideas from the west. Yoshihara Jiro who exhibited in Paris in 1952, helped initiated the avant-garde group, Gutai. Under the influences of “l’art informel” and “action painting”, Gutai staged events that have been cited as the precedents of Happenings. Groups like “Neo-Dada Organizers” and “Hi Red Center” in Tokyo followed this in the 1960’s. However my interest here is to make comparisons based on parallel histories of coming from the same roots of Chinese culture evolving into artists presenting themselves in performance art and related to my early development and position in Singapore. xxxvii Hans Gunter Golinske, The Body as Intercultural Medium of Communication “On the Spiritual Background to the Art of Zhang Huan”, in Dziewior, Yilmaz. “Zhang Huan” Kunstverein in Hamburg, Published by Hatje Cantz 2003 p.73-78. xxxviii Stuart Hall, Cultural Identity and Diaspora in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference. J. Rutherford, ed. Pp. 222-237. London: Lawrence and Wishart.1990. xxxix Rosalind E. Krauss The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, MIT press 1986 “Notes on the Index: Part 1 & 2”, p.196-220. xl Suzi Gablik, Has Modernism Failed? New York: Thames & Hudson, [1984] 1986. xli Charles R. Garoian, Performing Pedagogy: Toward an Art of Politics. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. xlii Although my work is not directly related to issues of racism I found it useful to understand the perceptions of identity in relationship to race. For issues of classification see Smedley, Audrey: "Science and the Idea of Race," in, Race and Intelligence: Separating Science from Myth, edited by Jefferson M. Fish (London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 2002): pg. 145-155. For identity formation see: Balibar, Etienne & Wallerstein, Immanuel: Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, Verso, 1991. xliii Erich Herold, The World of Masks, London, Hamlyn, 1992. xliv Hans Richter, Dada: Art and Anti-Art, Thames & Hudson, reprinted 1997. xlv John Cage, Silence, lectures and writings, Wesleyan University Press; 1st edition 1961. xlvi Marvin A. Carlson, Performance: A Critical Introduction, 1999, second edition 2003 Routledge. 42

xlvii Ibid. Quoted in Carlson, Marvin. p. 80. xlviii Paul Schimmel, Kristine Stiles, Russell Ferguson editors: Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object, 1949-1979 by Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. xlix Lucy Lippard, Six Years: The dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972 (NY: Praeger, 1973) Some artists like Alastair MacLennan prefers photography to video documentation. Also in discussions with Adina Bar-On, a pioneer performance artist of Israel, she would like all documentations to be destroyed when she dies. l Amelia Jones, Body Art/ Performing the Subject. 1998 University of Minnesota Press. Jones, Amelia and Stephenson, Andrew (ed.) Performing the Body/ Performing the text, 1999, London, NY Routledge. RoseLee Goldberg, “Be my mirror”, Don’t Call It Performance catalogue 2004 El Museo del Barrio New York. li “Open ends” – A documentation exhibition of performance art in Singapore, 2001, The Substation. Amanda Heng, Jason Lim and myself initiated the project. lii Paul Schimmel, Kristine Stiles, Russell Ferguson editors: Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object, 1949-1979 by Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Interview quoted pg. 91. liii Joan Simon, ed. Bruce Nauman: Exhibition Catalogue and Catalogue Raisonne New York: Distributed Art Publishers, in association with Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 1994. Texts by Neal Benezra, Kathy Halbreich, Paul Schimmel, and Robert Storr. liv Shaviro, Steven, Performing Life: The Work of Tehching Hsieh, Tehching Hsieh, One Year Performance Art Documents 1978-1999 DVD ROM, http://www.one-year-performance.com/ lv Jill Johnston, Tehching Hsieh: Art's Willing Captive, Art in America, Sept, 2001. lvi Saltz, Jerry. “Body Heat.” The Village Voice. April 23, 2004, other works of Acconci refer to Taylor, Mark C. Frazer Ward, Jennifer Bloomer: Vito Acconci London: Phaidon, 2002. lvii "Boat Emptying Stream Entering”, Sean Kelly Gallery, New York, January 10, 1997 - February 22, 1997. http://www.artnet.com/magazine_pre2000/reviews/smith/abramovic.asp lviii Johanna Burton, Repeat Performances, Artforum, January 2006, p.55-56. 43

Smith, Roberta, Turning Back the Clock to the Days of Crotchless Pants and a Deceased Rabbit, New York Times, November 17, 2005, Arts and Leisure, p.1. Kennedy, Randy, Self-Mutilation Is the Sincerest Form of Flattery, New York Times, November 6, 2005, Arts and Leisure, p.1. lix Guggenheim Museum website: http://www.guggenheim.org/exhibitions/abramovic/index.html lx Carol Simpson Stern, Bruce Henderson: Performance: Texts and Contexts, New York, Longman, 1993. lxi Rachel Withers, “Short History of Performance-Part One”, ArtForum magazine Spring 2002. lxii Whitechapel Gallery website: http://www.whitechapel.org/content.php?page_id=323 lxiii http://www.mteww.com/mtaaRR/on-line_art lxiv Hayley Newman, “Performancemania”, Catalogue published by Matt’s Gallery, 2001. lxv Jacques Derrida, Eric Prenowitz (Translator) Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, University Of Chicago Press 1998. lxvi Richard Martel, ed. Art Action 1958-1998, Quebec, Inter/editeur, (Editions intervention) 2001.

44

List of figures:

1. Tang Da Wu, They Poach the Rhino, Chop Off his Horn And Make this Drink, Performance at National Museum Art Gallery, Singapore, 1989. Photo: Koh Nguang How …………………………………………………….46

2. Tang Da Wu, Tiger’s Whip, Performance at People’s Park, Chinatown, Singapore, 1991. Photo: Koh Nguang How. ………….……………………….47

3. S. Chandrasekaran, Kala Chakra (Wheel of Time), Performance, 1991, http://scholars.nus.edu/landow/post/singapore/arts/mixed/chandrasekaran/ind ex.html………………………………………………………………………………48

4. Zhang Huan, 12 Square Meters, Performance, 1994, Beijing China, ©Zhang Huan. Made Possible by Zhang Huan Studio. http://www.zhanghuan.com/12SquareMeters.htm……….…………………….49

5. Lee Wen, Journey of a yellow man, Performance, 1992, London, . Photo: Rosa Sanchez…………………………………………………….……….50

6. Lee Wen, Neo-Baba, Installation and Performance, 1995, Tokyo, Japan Photo: Satoko Sukenari……………………………………………..…………….51

7. Lee Wen, Ghosts Stories, Performance, 1995, Tokyo, Japan. Photo: Raiji Kuroda……………………………………………………..………………………..52

8. Nauman, Bruce, Image from Slow Angle Walk (Beckett Walk),1968. videotape, black and white, sound, 60 min. repeated continuously, from Bruce Nauman Exhibition Catalogue, Distributed Art Publishers, in association with Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 1994. p. 136. …………………………..…….53

9. Nauman, Bruce, Performance Corridor, 1969 from Bruce Nauman Exhibition Catalogue, Distributed Art Publishers, in association with Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 1992. p. 27. Photo by Peter Moore..……………….54

10. Tehching Hsieh: One Year Performance-Art Documents, 1978-1999 (2000) DVD-ROM ………………………………………………………………....55

11. Image of installation, Vito Acconci: Diary of a Body 1969-1973, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York, 2004. Photo: Robin Holland.………………….56

12. Abramovic, Marina, The Lovers (Seated Figure) 1988; Published in 1996 Color photograph with unique drawing on lower margin framed: 28 3/4 x 27 inches, Sean Kelly Gallery website: http://www.skny.com/ Downloaded on 27 April 2006. …………………………………………………..57 45

13. Abramovic, Marina, Seven Easy Pieces, 2005, View of Abramovic performing Valie Export’s Action Pants: Genital Panic, 1969, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, November 11, 2005. Photo: Kathyrn Carr. Artforum January 2006, pg.55………………………………………………….58

14. Newman, Hayley, Meditation on Gender Difference, 1996, Lexham Gardens, London. Photo: Christina Lamb, Color C-Type print 40 X 26.7 cm. Newman, Hayley, Aaron Williamson, “Hayley Newman Performancemania”, Matt’s Gallery, 2001. pg. 49..………..…………….……………………………59

46

Figure.1 Tang Da Wu, They Poach the Rhino, Chop Off his Horn And Make this Drink, Performance at National Museum Art Gallery, Singapore, 1989. Photography by Koh Nguang How.

47

Figure.2

Tang Da Wu, Tiger’s Whip, Performance at People’s Park, Chinatown, Singapore, 1991. Photography by Koh Nguang How.

48

Figure 3.

S. Chandrasekaran, Kala Chakra (Wheel of Time), Performance, 1991, http://scholars.nus.edu/landow/post/singapore/arts/mixed/chandrasekaran/ind ex.html

49

Figure 4.

Zhang Huan, 12 Square Meters, Performance, 1994, Beijing China,

©Zhang Huan. Made Possible by Zhang Huan Studio. http://www.zhanghuan.com/12SquareMeters.htm

50

Figure 5.

Lee Wen, Journey of a yellow man, Performance, 1992, London, England,

51

6. Lee Wen, Neo-Baba, Installation and Performance, 1995, Tokyo, Japan.

52

7. Lee Wen, Ghosts Stories, Performance, 1995, Tokyo, Japan.

53

Figure 8. Nauman, Bruce, Image from Slow Angle Walk (Beckett Walk), videotape, black and white, sound, 60 min. repeated continuously, from Bruce

Nauman Exhibition Catalogue, Distributed Art Publishers, in association with

Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 1994. p. 136.

54

Figure 9. Nauman, Bruce, Performance Corridor, 1969 from Bruce Nauman

Exhibition Catalogue, Distributed Art Publishers, in association with Walker

Art Center, Minneapolis, 1992. p. 27. Photo by Peter Moore.

55

Figure. 10, Tehching Hsieh: One Year Performance-Art Documents, 1978- 1999 (2000) DVD-ROM

56

Figure 11. Image of installation, Vito Acconci: Diary of a Body 1969-1973,

Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York, 2004. Photo: Robin Holland.

57

Figure. 12. Abramovic, Marina, The Lovers (Seated Figure) 1988;

Published in 1996 Color photograph with unique drawing on lower margin framed: 28 3/4 x 27 inches

Sean Kelly Gallery website: http://www.skny.com/ downloaded on April 27,

2006

58

Figure 13. Abramovic, Marina, Seven Easy Pieces, 2005, View of Abramovic performing Valie Export’s Action Pants: Genital Panic, 1969, Solomon R.

Guggenheim Museum, New York, November 11, 2005. Photo: Kathyrn Carr.

Artforum January 2006, pg. 55.

59

Figure. 14. Newman, Hayley, Meditation on Gender Difference, 1996, Lexham

Gardens, London. Photo: Christina Lamb, Color C-Type print 40 X 26.7 cm.

Newman, Hayley, Aaron Williamson, “Hayley Newman Performancemania”,

Matt’s Gallery, 2001. pg. 49.

60

Bibliography

Buchloh, Benjamin H.D.: Neo-Avantgarde and Culture Industry: Essays on European and American Art from 1955 to 1975. MIT Press, 2001.

Cage, John: Silence, lectures and writings, Wesleyan University Press; 1st edition 1961.

Carlson, Marvin A.: Performance: A Critical Introduction, Routledge; 1999.

Campbell, Joseph: Primitive Mythology, Occidental Mythology, Oriental Mythology, Creative Mythology (Masks of God) Pengiun, (re-issued 1991) Clark, J., Modern Asian Art, Sydney, Fine Arts Press, 1998.

Feher, Michael (ed.): Fragments for a History of the Human Body. - Zone 3, 4 and 5. Zone ,1989.

Derrida, Jacques, Eric Prenowitz (Translator) Archive Fever : A Freudian Impression, University Of Chicago Press, 1998.

Dziewior, Yilmaz. “Zhang Huan” Kunstverein in Hamburg, Published by Hatje Cantz 2003.

Foucault, Michel: History of Sexuality: Volume 1, trans. Robert Hurley, New York, 1980.

Gablik, Suzi : Has Modernism Failed? New York: Thames & Hudson, [1984] 1986.

Garoian, Charles R.: Performing Pedagogy: Toward an Art of Politics. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999.

Goldberg, Roselee : Performance Art: from futurism to the present, 1979/2000, Thames & Hudson.

Goldberg RoseLee; “Be my mirror”, Don’t Call It Performance catalogue El Museo del Barrio New York 2004.

Golinske, Hans Gunter, The Body as Intercultural Medium of Communication On the Spiritual Background to the Art of Zhang Huan, Zhang Huan, Kunstverein in Hamburg, Hatje Cantz 2003.

Hall, Stuart: Cultural Identity and Diaspora. In Identity: Community, Culture, Difference. J. Rutherford, ed. Pp. 222-237. London: Lawrence and Wishart.1990.

61

Herold, Erich: The World of masks, London, Hamlyn, 1992.

Howell, Anthony: Analysis of Performance Art: A Guide to its Theory and Practice, (Routledge Harwood Contemporary Theatre Studies) (Paperback)

Johnston, Jill, Tehching Hsieh: Art's Willing Captive, Art in America, Sept, 2001.

Jones, Amelia: "Presence" in absentia: experiencing performance as documentation, Art Journal Winter 1997.

Jones, Amelia: Body Art/ Performing the Subject. University of Minnesota Press 1998.

Jones, Amelia and Stephenson, Andrew (ed.) Performing the Body/ Performing the text London, NY Routledge, 1999.

Kaprow, Allan: Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, ed. Jeff Kelley, Los Angeles and Berkeley 1993.

Kaye, Nick, Site-Specific Art: Performance, Place and Documentation. London: Routledge.

Krauss Rosalind, E. : The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, MIT press 1986.

Kwok Kian Chow, Channels and Confluences – A History of Singapore Art; Singapore Art Museum, 1996.

Kwon, M: "One Place After Another: Notes on Site Specificity" in Suderberg, E. (ed) Space, Site, Intervention: Situating , pp 38-63. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.

Langenbach, Ray, “Performing the Singapore State 1988 – 1995”, PhD thesis, Center for Cultural Research, University of Sydney. August 2003, http://library.uws.edu.au/adt-NUWS/public/adt-NUWS20041027.174118/ Lippard, Lucy : Six Years: The dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972 (NY: Praeger, 1973)

Martel, Richard ed. Art Action 1958-1998, Quebec, Inter/editeur, (Editions intervention) 2001.

McLuhan, Marshall, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Gingko Press,1964.

Munroe Alexandra: Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky, Harry N Abrams; NY 1994.

Naumann, Francis M.: Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Making Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction , New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1999. 62

Newman, Hayley, Aaron Williamson, “Hayley Newman Performancemania”, Matt’s Gallery, 2001.

Poshyananda Apinan: Modern Art in Thailand: nineteenth and twentieth Centuries, Oxford University Press, 1992.

Qian Zhijian, Performing bodies: Zhang Huan, Ma Liuming, and performance art in China – Interview, Art Journal, Volume: 58. Issue: 2. Summer 1999, New York.

Richter, Hans: Dada: Art and Anti-Art , Thames & Hudson, reprinted 1997.

Roth, Moira : Difference/Indifference: Musings on Postmodernism, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage, Newark, G+B Arts International, 1998.

Sabapathy, T. K.; Sculpture in Singapore. Exhibition Catalogue Singapore: National Museum Art Gallery. 1991.

Sabapathy, T. K, Editor. Trimurti And Ten Years After. Exhibition Catalogue. Singapore: National Heritage Board / Singapore Art Museum. 1998.

Saltz, Jerry. “Body Heat.” The Village Voice. April 23, 2004.

Schrag Carl. O. – The Self after Postmodernity, Yale University Press, 1997.

Schimmel, Paul, Kristine Stiles, Russell Ferguson editors: Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object, 1949-1979 by Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, California.

Sennett, Richard: The Body and the City in Western Civilisation - Faber ,1994.

Shaviro, Steven, Performing Life: The Work of Tehching Hsieh, Tehching Hsieh, One Year Performance Art Documents 1978-1999 DVD ROM, http://www.one-year-performance.com/

Smedley, Audrey : "Science and the Idea of Race," in, Race and Intelligence: Separating Science from Myth, edited by Jefferson M. Fish London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002.

Signer, Roman, Gerhard MacK, Michaela Unterdporfer (Editor): Roman Signer (Hardcover) Hatje Cantz Publishers; Bk & DVD edition, August 15, 2004.

Simon, Joan, ed. Bruce Nauman Exhibition Catalogue and Catalogue Raisonne New York: Distributed Art Publishers, in association with Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 1994. Texts by Neal Benezra, Kathy Halbreich, Paul Schimmel, and Robert Storr.

63

Stern, Carol Simpson and Bruce Henderson: Performance: Texts and Contexts, New York, Longman, 1993.

Stiles, Kristine and Peter Selz (ed) : Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.

Taylor, Mark C. Frazer Ward, Jennifer Bloomer : Vito Acconci London : Phaidon, 2002.

Turner, Victor: The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure, Chicago 1969 Vinograd, Richard Ellism, Boundaries of the Self: Chinese Portraits, 1600- 1900, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1992.

Wart, Tracey (ed.) survey by Amelia Jones, The artist’s body, London Phaidon 2000.

Wee, C. J. Wan-ling: Creating High Culture in the Globalized "Cultural Desert" of Singapore, TDR: The Drama Review - Volume 47, Number 4 (T 180), Winter 2003, pp. 84-97.

Wee Wan-Ling, C. J.: Local Cultures and the "New Asia": The State, Culture, and Capitalism in . Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore.

Withers, Rachel, “Short History of Performance-Part One”, ArtForum magazine Spring 2002.

WU Hung, Katherine R. TSIANG, editors; Body and Face in Chinese Visual Culture, Harvard University Press, 2004

Other Catalogues/publications

“Asian Artist Today -Fukuoka Annual V: Tang Da Wu Exhibition Catalogue", Fukuoka Art Museum, Japan 1991.

“Icons”, works by S.Chandrasekaran, 11-18 January 1996, exhibition catalogue, The Gallery Fort Canning Centre.

“Open Ends” – A documentation exhibition of performance art in Singapore, 2001, The Substation

NAME Lee Wen (8492)

Research and Concept Development 1

DATE: August 25, 2005

Between the Individual and Society Seeking roots in the practice and development of performance art in Singapore

Chapter 1: Introduction

My essay will attempt to survey the development of performance art practice in relationship to Singapore’s art history. In my analysis I will attempt to make an objective comparative study of my own performance practice with that of Tang Da Wu and S.Chandrasekaran amongst other artists with regard to historical aspects of performativity. I write as an artist from Singapore who has increasingly used performance art as the dominant form of practice and growth since the late 1980s. My motivation arises from a personal need as well as aspiration to attempt a survey based on research for answers to some critical questions in order to enable a better perspective towards a speculation of the continued direction of contemporary art practice for artists in Singapore and especially for myself. My research will attempt as much as possible to follow an academic research based on published materials. However, it is an endeavor embarked upon with the foreknowledge that there are insufficient written references to Singapore art history and least of all performance art history.

1.1 The need for a local perspective

In Asia the practice and development of performance art had become progressively more intensive within the 1980’s up to today. The recent growth and diversity of contemporary art in Asia remains unconsolidated research due to its diverse social historical situations of rapid changes and emphases on political and economic development.1 Added to that its varied cultural histories and multi-lingual status where even if there were published literature, a large part of it would not be in English or other major global lingua franca.

Within Singapore’s context TK Sabapathy had cited Tan Teng Kee's Picnic event of 1979 as the first evidence of performance art. Tan created a one-hundred-metre long painting entitled “The Lonely Road”. He then cut into smaller pieces and incinerated one of his sculptures at the end of the event. 2 The next foray into performance art is that of Tang Da Wu in 1982 who presented “Five performances” at the National Museum Art Gallery. Following this Tang went on to initiate The Artists Village in 1988, an alternative space and group came together in the last remaining farms of Singapore where experiments by various artists (I joined the Artists Village in 1989) forayed into performance art. 3 In the same year 1988, Salleh Japar, Goh Ee Choo and S. Chandrasekaran put together an exhibition called “Trimurti” where some performances were also presented. 4 Art to me is a manifestation of our human consciousness. Whatever the medium used or whichever the movement or philosophy it arises from, it is a visible form or an experiential expression which represents

1 Some recent publications includes Clark, John; Modern Asian Art, Sydney, Fine Arts Press, 1998 focused on Japan, China, India, Thailand and Indonesia. Another often cited work is “Contemporary Art in Asia: Traditions, Tensions” by Apinan Poshyananda, Thomas McEveilley, Geeta Kapur, Jim Supangkat, Marian Pastor Roces, Jae-Ryung Roe, Asia Society, New York, 1997 focused on India, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand. Both books focused on the few countries and their artists’ use of traditional imagery and modes to deal with contemporary issues. What is revealed is the complexity of the notion of “Asia” as a single region and highlighted the difficulty to access generalizations and trace the ebb and flow of influences and information in the local spheres of cultural productions.

2 Sabapathy, T. K.; Sculpture in Singapore. Exhibition Catalogue Singapore: National Museum Art Gallery. 1991

3 Kwok Kian Chow, Channels and Confluences – A History of Singapore Art; Singapore Art Museum, 1996

4 Sabapathy, T. K, Editor. Trimurti And Ten Years After. Exhibition Catalogue. Singapore: National Heritage Board / Singapore Art Museum. 1998 the state of our human consciousness. The origins of art is traced back to human society in pre-history, based on drawings and carvings found on the walls of the dwellings in caves, together with evidences and signs of religious and magical rituals. One can co-relate these early beginnings in terms of contemporary art to the manifestations as objects of painting and sculpture as well as that of site-specific installations, time-based art and performance art. Within contemporary art perspective, Performance art is traced back to the Futurists, Dadaists and Surrealists during the early 20th Century. Most surveys of performance art would cite the movements in the 1950’s such as Happenings and Fluxus in the U.S. and neo-realism in Europe together with Gutai in Japan as the starting point of performance art with a capital P, that is a genre in its own right of tradition and historical discourse.5 How does one genre of art become adopted into another society in Asia? Less we fall into accusations of being derivative of a western discourse, we need to address our own perspective based on the practices of artists here in relationship to our historical heritage. Are artists conscious of their motivations other than that of making something new in contemporary art practice? What are the ideological dimensions when artists adopt genres which can be traced to a point of beginning in western art history? Is the methodology applied wholly borrowed or hybridized with local contexts?

1.2 Historical motivations

In the performance works of Tang Da Wu, there is a narrative feature veering on a proselytizing and pedagogic aspect at work, which to me often recalls the “medicine man” selling Chinese medicines in the street markets as a precedent. However in his practice there seems to be a counter-active ingredient in advocating against the use of aphrodisiacs

5 Howell, Anthony, Analysis of Performance Art: A Guide to its Theory and Practice (Routledge Harwood Contemporary Theatre Studies) 1999 Goldberg, Roselee; Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present (World of Art) 1979/ 2000 such as “Rhino’s drink” and “Tiger’s Whip” with a conscientious representation based on a personal concern of global ecological problems. 6 It comes as a surprise that the artists Goh Ee Choo and S. Chandrasekaran in their attempt to differentiate themselves and deny an influence deriving from Tang accused him of being thoughtlessly imitating western practices. 7 Perhaps such accusations are the result of living and practicing within the small frame of an island city-state.8 However it also shows a need to analyze and clarify the historical motivations and impetus behind contemporary Asian artists within a multi-cultural, multi centered context of globalization. The goal is not to establish a fundamental stronghold of Asian culture and art in Singapore but to understand the nature of our evolution and if any uniqueness there is to discover based on the hybridized nature of our influences. In order to make a comprehensive objective comparative study of my own performance practice with that of Tang Da Wu and S.Chandrasekaran, a distance study of other contemporary performance artists in other Asian countries such as China, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines may also be required.

1.3 Global Trends / Marginal Network

I am always puzzled by contradictory proclamations that performance art is now on the rise and at other times the perception that it is in a state of ineffectual wane. The fact is performance art, whether spelled with a capital ‘P’ or that in the lower case, it seems to be always a marginalized form of mainstream contemporary art practice although it is being increasingly formalized by prolong practice. However there is a

6 “Asian Artist Today -Fukuoka Annual V: Tang Da Wu Exhibition Catalogue", Fukuoka Art Museum, Japan 1991 7 Sheares, C. "Constance Sheares, In Conversation with S. Chandrasekaran, Goh Ee Choo, Salleh Japar", in Trimurti and Ten Years After. Edited by T. K. Sabapathy. Singapore: Singapore Art Museum / National Heritage Board. 1998. 8 Langenbach, Ray; “Performing the Singapore State 1988 – 1995”, Phd thesis, Center for Cultural Research, University of Sydney. August 2003. growing network, albeit a marginal one, over the years where artists are initiating their own events and exhibitions. This in itself also contributes to its proliferation, promulgation and evolution. We live in a world, which is evidentially more globalized, and we cannot ignore its consequence on local situations. Based on my personal involvement with some of the artists initiated events I would like to also analyze and perhaps also speculate on the its influence on the global trend of contemporary art practice. Some artists actively promotes international performance art networks include Seiji Shimoda, who organizes “Nippon International Performance Art Network” in Japan,9 Richard Martel who co- ordinates the Center for Contemporary Art “Le Lieu” in Quebec, Canada and publishes “Editions Intervention,” since 1982 10 and Boris Nieslony in Cologne, Germany who organizes out of ASA (Art Service Association) European e.V. 11

9 Shimoda Seiji, Ed. The Nippon International Performance Art Festival Catalogues, Tokyo, NIPAF, 1993 to 2005 10 Martel Richard, editor; Art Action 1958-1998, Editions Intervention (2001) 11 http://www.asa.de

PROPOSED THESIS CHAPTER OUTLINE

CHAPTER 1. Introduction 1.1 The need for a local perspective 1.2 Historical Motivations 1.3 Global Trends / Marginal Networks

CHAPTER 2. Tang Da Wu and S. Chandrasekaran, Singapore performance art pioneers 2.1 Introduction 2.1.1 Asian values, State intervention vs. Individual vision 2.1.2 Birthrights: Identity and Society 2.1.3 The street peddler and the shaman 2.2 Multiculturalism and ethnicity in a globalized world 2.2.1 Conceptual art and performance art 2.2.2 Censorship and performing rights 2.2.3 Singapore performance artists: Driving up a down a one way street 2.2.4 Site: public and private

CHAPTER 3 Neo-internationalism 3.1 Introduction: Swing or Sink 3.1.1 The artist, the and the institution 3.1.2 Survival via networking 3.2 What’s wrong with contemporary art? 3.2.1 20 Questions, no answers 3.2.2 What’s wrong with performance art? Another 20 questions. 3.2.3 Archive and document: no memory, no history

CHAPTER 4 CONCLUSION 4.1 Speculation and situation 4.2 Why performance art is still relevant; where do we go from here?

NAME Lee Wen (8493) Research and Concept Development 2 DATE: November 9, 2005

CHAPTER 2. Tang Da Wu and S. Chandrasekaran, Singapore performance art pioneers

2.1 Introduction

Although I had read about it in books and magazines, my first live encounter with performance art was through the work of Tang Da Wu and S. Chandrasekaran. There are various overlaps in the methodology and approach, which I use in my work when compared to that of Tang Da Wu and S. Chandrasekaran. In this chapter I will attempt to make some comparative study and hope to make some trajectories based on these analyses. My first work, which could be seen as performance art, was through reading my poetry and making some actions based on them in 1989. 1 I wanted to approach it from a personal practice based on drawing, painting and sculptural background. I had published a book of poetry and drawings, “A waking dream” in 1981. 2 This was an attempt in combining a textual narrative to the drawings I had made. Through the “poetry actions” I was beginning to make images in actions based on the poetry. The actions based on poetry serves as a textual background for a narrative in my performances. The works in Tang Da Wu and S. Chandrasekaran also were narratives although differing in subject, context and methodology. Tang Da Wu had started to make performances in the UK just before presenting his first performances in Singapore. The first

1 The first presentations were at the exhibition “Happenings”, held at National University of Singapore campus co-organized by Artists Village and students from the Faculty of Architecture in 1989. 2 Lee Wen, A Waking Dream- drawings and poetry, Select Books, Singapore, 1981 performances were not based on any subjects and were improvisations with body, material and environment. He presented his first performances in Singapore when he made “Five days of performances” in La Salle College of Art and the National Museum Art Gallery in 1982. 3 In 1988, he presented his first narrative performances, “In the case of Howard Liu” and “Superman” during the Second Singapore Art Festival Fringe at the former St. Joseph Institution building, which was soon to be renovated into the present Singapore Art Museum. They were commentaries about the power relations between artists and institutions within the art world in Singapore. 4 It was the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which moved Tang to a more socially conscious narrative. “In the end, my mother decided to eat Cat food and Dog food”, was first performed in 1988, Orchard Road, based on contaminated food due to nuclear radiation. This was the beginning of a series of works based on ecological themes that followed such as, "They Poach the Rhino, Chop off his Horn and Make this Drink", (1989, National Museum Art Gallery, Singapore), "Tiger's whip", (1990, Chinatown, Singapore; 1991,National Museum Art Gallery, Singapore, also other venues). 5 Various different themes were also dealt with usually based on Tang’s strong feelings towards current affairs such as “Open the Gate”, (1989, Artists Village, Sembawang) as a response to Tian An Men incident in Beijing, and “Death of a Filipino Maid”, (1990, Shell Theatre, Singapore) concerning the issue of maid abuse in Singapore.

In 1988, S. Chandrasekaran, Goh Ee Choo and Salleh Japar held the multi-media exhibition entitled “Trimurti” at the Goethe Institute in Singapore showcasing works in drawings, paintings, installation and performance. The exhibition “Trimurti-Ten Years After”, a comprehensive

3 The Substation, 2001, "open ends" documentation exhibition of performance art in Singapore, (Septfest 7-21 September 2001). Singapore, The Substation, Interview with Tang Da Wu by John Low. 4 Catalogue of “Future of imagination 3” interview with Tang Da Wu by Lee Wen (To be published in 2006 April.) 5 Ibid, interviews by John Low also Catalogue “Asian Artist Today – Fukuoka Annual V, September 10 – November 10, 1991, Fukuoka Art Museum retrospective was held at the Singapore Art Museum in 1998. The three artists used symbols and themes based on the mythology of their ethnicity and religion. Chandra was of Indian descent and a Hindu, Goh was Chinese and used symbols of Taoism, later Buddhism and Salleh Japar, a Malay Muslim related to Islam with an inclination towards Sufism. Amongst the three, S. Chandrasekaran was the only one who continued to work in performance art consistently. 6 An effort was made to use traditions as a starting point and using contemporary means of art to renew an identity and connection back to their traditional values. Especially in Chandra’s works, which are usually titled with Sanskrit Hindu vocabulary, he reinterprets or re-enacts visually through the objects, installations and performances. “Trimurti”, which means “having three forms” representing the triad aspects of the “Supreme Being” and the Hindu gods, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, is re-interpreted as a secular symbol, neutralized and equated as natural forces of “Creation”, “Preservation” and “Destruction”. A religious belief is appropriated and “naturalized” for nonaligned acceptance or revitalization. In his solo works later Chandrasekaran continues to cite various Hindu concepts while reframing them in his personal quests as an artist. “Yogi” (1990, Portland Sculpture Park, performance, installation) which means the seeker of spiritual truth is reframed as his personal search. “Atman” series (1992, copper, enamel on clay tablets), the soul or life principal became a process, which involves time. 7

2.1.1 Asian values, State intervention vs. Individual vision

Although Tang Da Wu is widely recognized and respected in Singapore as well as internationally, he had never been given a

6 Sabapathy, T. K, Editor. Trimurti And Ten Years After. Exhibition Catalogue. Singapore: National Heritage Board / Singapore Art Museum. 1998 7 “Icons”, An exhibition of recent works by S.Chandrasekaran, 11-18 January 1996, exhibition catalogue, The Gallery Fort Canning Centre Introduction by Constance Sheares, “Trimurti to beyond” by T.K. Sabapathy, retrospective to date in Singapore. In the catalogue “Trimurti-Ten Years After” there is a consistent repeated strain of arguments to separate the working methodology and ideological framework from that of Tang Da Wu. In the arguments there seem to be a demonization of Tang’s methods as being “foreign and westernized” and the “Trimurti” artists being of Asian and regional. S.Chandrasekaran: “Tang Da Wu’s performances are not rooted in elements from this region even though the issues are. The body gestures, materials, space understanding didn’t come from this region. They were Western-oriented body language which I thought did not work.” 8 Goh Ee Choo: “I did not respect Tang Da Wu very much; I respect him as an artist but not so much the person because I felt that he was bringing something from the West, applying a system that was totally alien to Singapore. Whereas in the West we can make strong statement and yet get away with it, in the East everything you say has a certain responsibility.” 9 Ray Langenbach’s identified that the arguments put forward by Chandrasekaran and Goh in “Trimurti” exemplified a “desired Asian language of embodiment, clear boundaries, limits to freedom and responsibility, all anxious values explicitly espoused and constantly reiterated by the PAP government”, a reflection of the state ideology. 10 These articulations together with the accompanying texts advocate “Trimurti” to be Nanyang regionalists, formalists, a necessary “harmonious” alternative to Tang Da Wu and the Artists Village who are deemed to be “foreign-influenced” therefore “un-Asian”, who are provocative, confrontational and “do not preclude aggressive forms of artistic transgression and activism”. 11 Other than their subjects and themes in their performance, there is a

8 Op. Cit. interview with Constance Sheares pg. 54 9 Op. Cit. interview with Constance Sheares pg. 70 10 Langenbach, Ray, “Performing the Singapore State 1988 – 1995”, PhD thesis, Center for Cultural Research, University of Sydney. August 2003. Ch. 4 11 Op.Cit. Ahmad Mahshadi “’Different Things’: Trimurti and Multicultural Assertions” pg. 32 to 41 formalistic strain similarly applied in both artists’ working methodologies. Tang and Chandra still find the traditional media of drawing essential to their work. They also have consistently made paintings, sculptures, and installations besides working in performance. Tang welcomes interactions with the audience. He often emphasized more than the subject matter or issue, that as a performance artist, the most important thing for him is executing a definite skill, which is necessary when responding to a live audience. He finds it challenging to get immediate responses and this motivates him as he finds that the traditional media like painting and sculpture takes a longer time before they are shown to an audience after completion. He even admits that there is a risk involved and sometimes he submits to the vulnerability of ending up feeling foolish. 12 The performances of Chandrasekaran were less interactive with the audience. His is often an immobile body in an installation or site, almost sculptural. They were usually time-based and durational, putting his body within an installation, which were imbued with symbols based on Hindu mythology or philosophy. Chandra uses his body to incarnate a symbolic meaning in a ritual, which tests the body’s endurance. The process he goes through also arouses transformations in him. However they are spectacles meant to provoke a reaction: “I want my art to provoke, even disturb the audience. I want them to go out thinking. That’s what I want art to do.”13 Langenbach used Victor Turner’s discrimination between taxonomical linkages from that of the symbolical in discussing how artists communicate alliance with social structural positions. 14 Both Tang and Chandra often talk about their work in relationship to mythology and the use of traditional beliefs reframed in contemporary contexts. However

12 The Substation, 2001, "open ends" documentation exhibition of performance art in Singapore, (Septfest 7-21 September 2001). Singapore, The Substation, Interview with Tang Da Wu by John Low. 13 Op. Cit. interviews with Constance Sheares, pg 65. 14 Op. Cit. and also Quoted by R. Langenbach: Turner, V. 1982. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness o f Play. New York: Performing Arts Journals. what could be derived from the need for differentiation and hence in conflict with the State ideology was that Tang’s works promotes openness towards individual responses via dialogue and inquiry. Chandrasekaran may suggest an individual interpretation of Hindu traditions however he used them in a metaphorical way, which seemingly neutralizes economic, social or political positions and ideological implications. Notions of ‘harmonious multi-culturalism’, ‘re-invented traditions’ and ‘Asian values’ lend credibility to the Singapore Art Museum’s giving a retrospective to “Trimurti” at the accelerated pace. Mahshadi’s description of “Trimurti” as an “inclusionary strategy”15 is arbitrary and at the same time also excludes Tang Da Wu and the Artists Village from the prioritization administered by state legitimatization. The artists as individual social actors are caught in a cultural relativism used by the state’s social construction and engineering based on exclusivist national and ethnic particularisms.

2.1.2 Birthrights: Identity and Society

The rapid social, political and economic transitions and recent shifts in culture and technology, affected by diaspora and globalization makes it increasingly important for visual art and culture to play a role to interrogate the meanings, effects, and consequences of identity formation in contemporary society. The portrait of the human self after post-modernity’s multi-faceted perspectives of identity-formation is both problematic and complex. Calvin Schrag draws out a well-balanced thesis that recommends a matrix of configurations of human experience through the domains of science, morality, art and religion. In bringing together the legacy of modernity in confrontation with strategies of post-modernity, a revised narrative of the self is suggested. A redesigned portrait based on discourse, engaging in

15 Op.Cit. Ahmad Mahshadi “’Different Things’: Trimurti and Multicultural Assertions” pg. 39-40 action, situated within community in order to moderate towards transcendence. 16 In my series of works “Journey of a yellow man” (first performed, 1992, London), “Neo-Baba” (first performed, 1995, Tokyo) and “Ghosts Stories” (first performed, 1995, Tokyo) I had set out to offer a narrative discourse based on actions that create communicative images and to situate myself in a local as well as international community. These works were initiated and were part of another phase for me after residing and researching in London for 2 years from 1990 to 1992. Prior to that, my works were done in the spirit of experimentation with the Artists Village. It was done out of a curiosity and the natural need for personal growth as well as exploring different media, dimensions and possibilities. Just like Tang Da Wu and Chandrasekaran, I saw contemporary art practice as remaking of mythological narratives. The incident of 1994 with Josef Ng’s “Brother Cane” performance and its aftermath provided me a different perspective. It strongly impressed me towards a political understanding and perspective as an artist. This call for a political perspective was first began when the Artists Village was evicted from the village site in Sembawang in 1990. During the time when the Artists Village was occupying the last remaining village farms in Sembawang, it occurred to most of the artists participating in the organic way in which we came together would warrant support from the state for it to continue. However we were served with eviction notices which left us with no recourse. One speculation was that we were not even a legal entity, as we were then not registered as an organization or “society”. There were also speculations that some paintings and works exhibited were too raw and explicit. Our visitor’s book was usually filled with praises but there were the occasional rude comments and negative responses. 17

16 Schrag Carl. O. – The Self after Postmodernity, Yale University Press, 1997 17 I was living there in the village when we were served eviction notice in 1989-90. I assisted Tang Da Wu to negotiate with the Arts Council as well as the Land and Estates department for extension to stay longer in Sembawang. The eviction forced us to participate in the 1990 Singapore Arts Festival in various public sites throughout the city. Besides presenting solo works I made numerous performances in collaborations with the other artists from the Artists Village. The theme of our project mooted by Tang Da Wu was “C.A.R.E.” an acronym for Concerned Artists for the Environment. My solo pieces “Good news, bad news” were improvisations with some text and objects that I brought to the site for my performances. I had made some chains out of old newspapers and improvised with a chisel and a hammer. It was emotionally charged as during this event I was also in high spirits being given a chance to make various experimental works however it had an underlying sadness as we had just lost the original village where The Artists Village had begun. Some other experiments included “Noah’s Ark” which was performed twice in different ways. While proposing for the project to the Arts Council, I had a similar idea of enacting something based on the myth of “Noah’s Ark” but to save plants instead of animals. Da Wu was also thinking of this and he invited me to collaborate with him. We did not discuss what to do but merely brought quite a lot of materials from the studio, such as ladders, wheel barrows, potted plants, shovels, ropes, projectors etc. and improvised with them. Other collaborations included “Serious Conversations” with Tang and Vincent Leow at and “Bird Man” with Vincent Leow and Wong Shih Yaw. From these experiences I became more conscious also of working individually and together in group collaborations and saw this artistic manifestation as a microcosm of our human individuality vis-à-vis society. While doing a solo work we are able to work at our own pace and respond the way we like and see fit. However in group collaborations we have to be constantly aware of what the other party is doing. A synergy is enacted where one could feel when the energy is rising and dropping and coming to a stop at the end of the performance.

Bibliography

Body :

Allsopp, Ric and deLahunta, Scott: The Connected Body? - Amsterdam School of the Arts (1996) Burkitt, Ian: Bodies of Thought: embodiment, identity and modernity - Sage (1999) Feher, Michael (ed.): Fragments for a History of the Human Body. - Zone 3, 4 and 5. Zone (1989) Goffman, Erving: Presentation of Self in Everyday Life - Penguin (1969) Rude, George: The Crowd in History 1730-1848 - Lawrence and Wishart (1981) Sennett, Richard: The Body and the City in Western Civilisation - Faber (1994) Stafford, Barbara: Maria Body Criticism - MIT Press (1991)

Theory :

Ashcroft, Bill et al: Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies - Routledge (1998) Jo Bonney (ed): Extreme Exposure : An Anthology of Solo Performance Texts from the Twentieth Century Publisher Information:New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2000. Benjamin H.D. Buchloh: Neo-Avantgarde and Culture Industry: Essays on European and American Art from 1955 to 1975. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001. 532 pages Cheng Meiling, In Other Los Angeleses: Multicentric Performance Art, Berkeley : University of California Press, 2002. Foucault, Michel: History of Sexuality: Volume 1, trans. Robert Hurley, New York, 1980 Charles R. Garoian: Performing Pedagogy: Toward an Art of Politics. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. 248 pp., 33 b/w ills Hall, Stuart (ed.): Representation:Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices - Sage (1997) Francis M. Naumann: Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Making Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction , New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1999 Moira Roth: Difference/Indifference: Musings on Postmodernism, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage, Newark, G+B Arts International, 1998 Schrag Carl. O. – The Self after Postmodernity, Yale University Press, 1997 Sontag, Susan: Regarding the Pain of Others, New York 2003 Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz (ed) : Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). Wee, C. J. Wan-ling: Creating High Culture in the Globalized "Cultural Desert" of SingaporeTDR: The Drama Review - Volume 47, Number 4 (T 180), Winter 2003, pp. 84-97 Wee Wan-Ling, C. J.: Local Cultures and the "New Asia": The State, Culture, and Capitalism in Southeast Asia. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

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Marvin A. Carlson: Performance: A Critical Introduction, Routledge; 1999, (2nd edition December 2003) Lucy Lippard: Six Years: The dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972 (NY: Praeger, 1973) Johannes H.Birringer: Performance on the edge, London, New Brunswick NJ – Athlone Press, 2000 Roselee Goldberg: Performance Art: from futurism to the present, NY, Thames & Hudson, 2001 ed. Amelia Jones and Andrew Stephenson, Performing the Body/ Performing the text London, NY Routledge, 1999 , Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, ed. Jeff Kelley, Los Angeles and Berkeley 1993 ed. Peggy Phelan, Lydia Hart, Acting Out: Feminist performances ed. Tracey Wart survey by Amelia Jones, The artist’s body London Phaidon 2000 Anthony Howell: Analysis of Performance Art: A Guide to its Theory and Practice, (Routledge Harwood Contemporary Theatre Studies) (Paperback) Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object, 1949-1979 by Paul Schimmel (Editor), Kristine Stiles, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Calif., Russell Ferguson (Editor) Art Action 1958-1998 Ed. Richard Martel, Quebec, Inter/editeur, (Editions intervention) 2001 LIVE art and performance, ed. Adrian Heathfield, Tate Publishing 2004 Routledge, New York

Site-Specific

Kaye, N.: Site-Specific Art: Performance, Place and Documentation. London: Routledge. Kwon, M: "One Place After Another: Notes on Site Specificity" in Suderberg, E. (ed) Space, Site, Intervention: Situating Installation Art, pp 38-63. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Schechner, R, 1994 (1973). Environmental Theater. New York: Applause Books. 2000

Space :

Harbison, Robert: Eccentric Spaces - MIT Press (2000) Roach, Josep: Cities of the Dead - Columbia University Press (1996)

Anthropology:

Van Gennep, Arnold: The Rites of Passage – Chicago (1960) Turner, Victor: The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure, Chicago 1969 Barrett, John: Fragments from Antiquity - Blackwell (1994) Rehm, Rush: Greek Tragic Theatre - Routledge (1994) WU Hung, Katherine R. TSIANG, editors; Body and Face in Chinese Visual Culture, Harvard University Press, 2004 ISBN: 0674016572 Vinograd, Richard Ellism Boundaries of the Self: Chinese Portraits, 1600-1900 Cambridge University Press, New York, 1992

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Apinan Poshyananda: Modern Art in Thailand: nineteenth and twentieth Centuries, Oxford University Press, 1992 Clark, J., Modern Asian Art, Sydney, Fine Arts Press, 1998 Kwok Kian Chow, Channels and Confluences – A History of Singapore Art; Singapore Art Museum, 1996 Langenbach, Ray, “Performing the Singapore State 1988 – 1995”, PhD thesis, Center for Cultural Research, University of Sydney. August 2003 Sabapathy, T. K.; Sculpture in Singapore. Exhibition Catalogue Singapore: National Museum Art Gallery. 1991 Sabapathy, T. K, Editor. Trimurti And Ten Years After. Exhibition Catalogue. Singapore: National Heritage Board / Singapore Art Museum. 1998 “Asian Artist Today -Fukuoka Annual V: Tang Da Wu Exhibition Catalogue", Fukuoka Art Museum, Japan 1991 “Icons”, works by S.Chandrasekaran, 11-18 January 1996, exhibition catalogue, The Gallery Fort Canning Centre Open ends – A documentation exhibition of performance art in Singapore, 2001, The Substation