Safety first
Stephen Pettitt travels to Singapore to find out what we can expect from its season in London
Every nation seems to be at it. Japan, Portugal, Hungary, Brazil, Sweden — all have recently promoted or are promoting arts festivals in London in order to further our awareness of their cultures. When so many countries are vying for our attention, and when so much native art is happening at the same time, these festivals sometimes seem more like rallying points for expatriate communities than events that will imprint something indelible on our notoriously insular collective mindset.
But at least those countries just mentioned do possess distinctive cultural identities. What about Singapore, though? In February and March, London will be hit by the Singapore Season, The Singaporeans can hardly be accused of flooding the market. Just four groups from the densely populated tropical-island city state are visiting. Rest assured, they are no village idiots. That wonderful, erudite, charismatic maverick Ong Keng Sen — a celebrity in the world of radical experimental arts — will offer a season from 2 February to 12 March at the ICA, curating a programme of films, installations, video, music and even a clubnight, as well as directing his own company TheatreWorks's docudrama The Global Soul, a presentation that features a multinational cast in its examination of what national identity means. He's also in charge of a Singapore Film Week from 7 to 13 March. (Will we see some of the work hitherto banned on the island?) The excellent Singapore Dance Theatre gives a triple bill of Asian and Australian choreographers' works at the Peacock Theatre from 16 to 18 March. The T'ang Quartet, a lively and excellent young ensemble that should go far and deserves serious European representation — what about an EMI Debut Series disc? — gives its Wigmore Hall debut on 26 March. And the Singapore Chinese Orchestra, under the direction of conductor Tsung Yeh, gives a concert at the Barbican on 1 April which includes a new work by Michael Nyman and a 'Calligraphy Concerto' devised by Singapore's best-known artist — and philosopher and poet — Tan Swie Hian. To judge from what the SCO played for us, we might be in store for an overdose of American-style epic emptiness rather than anything very oriental in feel. But let us wait and see. Just four groups, then. Is that because that is all Singapore has to offer? Far from it. During my visit to the island I was shown a plethora of activity. Facilities are superb. First and foremost, there's the stunning new Esplanade concert hall (home of the fine Singapore Symphony Orchestra, alas not visiting on this occasion) and theatre complex, designed jointly by Michael Wilford & partners and Singapore's own DP Architects and known locally as the Durian after the pungent local fruit because of its gracefully curved, prickly outer skin. There's the Arts House, converted handsomely from George Coleman's 1827 Parliament House. There are small experimental galleries like the quaintly named Plastique Kinetic Worms and a plethora of ethnic arts and dance organisations. There's a smallish but perfectly formed and sensitively curated national art gallery, the Singapore Art Museum. There's the Singapore Repertory Theatre, and a new Drama Centre due to open next year. There are designated 'arts belts' in Chinatown and Little India. And so on. The message to us was that there's an awful lot going on here, and it's all generously supported and encouraged by the National Arts Council, the government department responsible for matters artistic. They aim to make Singapore a destination for arts tourism, a Global Cultural City, as the mandarin speak would have it. That's all fine, then.
But there's also an awful lot going on there in other ways. The arts are all about the freedom to express, but, in the past, the government, which has been in the hands of the People's Action party since 1963, has restricted that freedom. Past court actions by the government against those who have expressed critical views have taught the local press to practise selfcensorship and have also helped keep any threat of a viable opposition at bay. Ordinary people are shockingly cautious about what they say. Political discussions take place in hushed tones, as though microphones were lurking under every cushion. On my visit, leaders of many arts groups looked anxiously to the omnipresent NAC representative whenever we asked any potentially awkward questions. There really is a bizarre climate of fear. Most people simply accept that it's easier not to tread on any political toes, and to be content with Singapore's admittedly affluent lot, its efficiency and its cleanliness. (And muzak everywhere encourages non-thought and nondiscussion.)
Government itself likes stability, too. It would prefer not to be challenged. It's reluctant to take any decision that bears the slightest risk of antagonising the majority. There's a law effectively forbidding gay sex, for example. Nobody's been prosecuted for a long time, apparently — Singapore is a major centre for gay tourism — but there's little chance of it being repealed in a state where religion of one kind or another is big. (To criticise any particular religion is actually a major offence.) And a mild question from a young Singaporean reporter at the Singapore Season press conference about how much the London project was going to cost was met with a non-answer. My only guess is that this was because of a fear that, if the sum were reported, then millions of non-arts-loving Singaporeans might go ballistic at the thought of all their hard-earned dollars being wasted on such frivolity. Yet the list of sponsors is long.
Nevertheless, under the newly elected prime minister Lee Hsien Loong, son of Singapore's first prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, the government does seem to want to present a different face to the world — or its real face, as Lee Boon Yang, the minister of information, would prefer it. Although one senses that the artists feel there to be still an invisible boundary mark —a mark whose location they can only guess at but beyond which it would be very risky to tread at the same time there's a hope and one or two indications that this is at last a government which realises the need to open itself to more liberal values. Their reasons are probably not altogether altruistic, of course. This is a city state that, after all, runs itself like an enormous corporation, and every operation undertaken by every department has, you can be sure, a bottom-line equation. The bureaucrats will be asking themselves just how much goodwill, how much resulting trade and tourism, they can gain through showing the world how dynamic and free their arts really are. That's fair enough, as long as in return those arts are allowed to be as radical and as challenging as they wish, and are welcomed into the political debate, rather than being used merely as societal emollients. Ong Keng Sen, for one, would never allow that anyway.
Stephen Pettitt is a music critic for the Evening Standard.
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