Singapore Biennale 2006: Belief is the word

We were standing in front of the old city hall in Singapore, and we were attempting to levi-tate it.

You read it right. Raise the building off the ground. Make that mother float like the Starship Enterprise. But, uh, not in a David Blaine magical charlatan sense, mind you. It’s more of a contemporary art thing. We (meaning public officials, volunteers, schoolchildren, and journalists from all over the world) were taking part in New Zealand artist Daniel Malone’s public art project titled "Steal this Smile! :)" as part of the Singapore Biennale.

The Singapore Biennale, which runs until Nov. 12, is the Lion City’s first-ever international biennale of contemporary visual art. The event, organized by the Singapore National Arts Council (NAC) in partnership with the National Heritage Board of Singapore, features 198 artworks by 95 artists and art collectives from 38 countries and regions. Including hallucinogenic artworks by Japanese avant-garde artist Yayoi Kusama. Including Jane Alexander’s visually-arresting surrealistic courtroom with a non-existent judge (recalling Beckett). Including Malone’s participatory live art piece.

"Steal This Smile! :)" was based on a peace demonstration first organized by Abbie Hoffman in 1967 in Washington, D.C. Hoffman, leader of the "Yippies" (or the Youth International Party), gathered some 35,000 anti-war protestors in an attempt to levitate the Pentagon by 300 feet by means of meditation. The goal was to make it wobble in mid-air to exorcise evil spirits or war pigs – whichever fell first. Inspired by Hoffman, Malone asked his volunteers (including this skeptical journalist) to surround the old Singapore city hall, hold hands and focus on levitating the edifice through will power and belief. Predictably, the building didn’t budge. No matter. The significance of the work, according to curator Eugene Tan, "is its celebration of belief as a creative force."

Or, more precisely, belief in belief itself.

"Belief," by the way, is the theme of the Singapore Biennale. Singapore is regarded as a crossroads of sorts, a nation where a multitude of faiths, languages and ethnic groups co-exist within one economically-prosperous society. The organizers have appropriately selected religious sites (aside from museums, public institutions and unused buildings) as some of the venues for the exhibitions – the Armenian Church of Saint Gregory the Illuminator, Church of Saints Peter and Paul, Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple, Maghain Aboth Synagogue, Sultan Mosque, Saint Joseph’s Church, and the Sri Krishnan Temple.

The idea was for the artworks to be placed side by side with objects of religious devotion, for the church/temple/mosque/synagogue pilgrims to have an encounter with contemporary art.

At the opening day press conference, Singapore Biennale 2006 artistic director Fumio Nanjo, also the deputy director of Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, said, "(We wanted artists) to examine the basis of belief in people’s lives. Belief in a religious system, belief in an economic system – even art exists in a particular belief system."

Beliefs produce more conflict, he added, but at the same time they create dialogue and discussion. "(The role of contemporary art is to) question what we have been, and create what we will be in the future," he explained.

A member of Nanjo’s curatorial team along with Roger McDonald and Eugene Tan is Sharmini Pereira. According to Pereira, the artists who are exhibiting in consecrated spaces face this challenge: how could contemporary art be critical and not be disrespectful. "(Anyway), the role of contemporary art is not to dictate ideas, but to beseech thought," she said.

Interesting how the artists have erected their own homage to doubt in houses of faith.

Also, the thrust of Singapore Biennale according to the National Arts Council CEO Lee Suan Hiang is to "make contemporary art accessible to the common man."

Lee said that the NAC is undertaking the ABC approach to the arts. "We are doing the biennale for ‘A’ – art’s sake. We want to make art accessible and affordable. We want our artists to experiment, to speak a new language, and to shape the way we think of ourselves. ‘B’ is for business’ sake. We want creativity to be a catalyst for economic activities, and at the same time develop further our art ecosystem for artists and galleries. And ‘C’ is for community’s sake. We want the biennale to embrace the public, and for it to be relevant, engaging and interesting to the audience."

"(We want the ordinary people in Singapore) to get infected with the biennale bug," said curator Roger McDonald. "A biennale could only take root if it engages the audience."

There are indications the seeds have been sown, or (to mix metaphors) someone already got bitten by the bug. Singapore Biennale 2006 general manager Low Kee Hong recalled his talk with one of the contractors who saw the artworks on view.

"The contractor told me he’s going to bring his grandmother every weekend to see the exhibits," Low enthused.

Biennale Beckons

Sydney Biennale artistic director and curator Charles Merewether pointed out how the Singapore Biennale is so well-organized. He said, "(It is commendable how the Singapore Biennale) has created something new and vital, relevant and significant not just for the country but for the (Asia-Pacific) region and a broader domain. I have nothing but praises for the event. I am raring to see the artworks, because the proof is in the pudding (laughs). The event is quite ambitious and it’s not just like any biennale."

The launch of the biennale was held at the Padang with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong as guest of honor. Information, Communications and the Arts Minister Lee Boon Yang talked about how the event will give Singaporeans an opportunity to view "diversity in art, new ideas and creative expressions."

The festivities began with the release of the "Open Burble" formation of balloons by London-based artist Usman Haque. The balloons were embedded with LED lights that changed from white to blue to purple to red whenever the young volunteers shook or pulled them. They could have sound-tracked it with a Grateful Dead tune for a weirder trip.

There was also a fashion show featuring outfits inspired by the polka-dotted artworks of Yayoi Kusama, a dance number by the biennale mascots Mocmoc and Mermer, and a death metal number titled Symphony Duma by Bastos Con Diablitos with costumes designed by Filipino artist and Young STAR columnist Yason Banal.

Banal explained the collaboration: he wanted to present the dark side of the tropics, since a tropical country such as the Philippines also have its dark moments like natural disasters and memories of martial law. The region is not just about "fun under the sun." Banal’s premise was that darkness lurks everywhere.

In the next few days, we journalists were taken on a tour of the Singapore Biennale exhibitions.

At the Church of Saints Peter & Paul, we saw Alwar Balasubramaniam’s "Emerging Angels," an evaporating compound installation. At first, you’d think the artwork was nothing but a block of marbles, but over time the material will evaporate when exposed to air and form two angels. We saw everything from Cristina Lucas videos to a floor painting by N.S. Harsha at the Sri Krishnan Temple titled "Cosmic Orphans."

Sculpture Square features Jianhua Liu’s "Dream" installation made up of shattered Chinese celadon wares arranged in the shape of a space shuttle. An artwork that contrasts "the dreams and ambitions of mankind" with "reality of daily life and the possibility of failure."

At the old city hall, on view are brilliant works by Sheba Chhachhi and Donna Ong, among others.

Chhachhi’s moving-image light box titled "Winged Pilgrims: A Chronicle from Asia" is her comment on globalization. Images of birds with beautiful plumage move across different landscapes, which are symbolic of how people situate themselves through their dislocation. "I want to provoke a sense of displacement in the viewers, and their desire to make a connection," explained Chhachhi.

Ong’s "Sing O Barren Woman" installation features China dolls with blank faces submerged in glass tanks inside a "secret laboratory," which might be the artist’s examination of spiritual fertility and sterility. The artist, a graduate of London’s Goldsmith College, also created an assemblage – composed of spoons, knives, strings, pails, bicycle wheel and tongs, among other curiosities – designed to be played like a xylophone by anyone (especially non-musicians).

The works at the Singapore National Museum are more diverse – from "The Last Supper" to "The Last Supper." Meaning, from Hiroshi Sugimoto’s "The Last Supper," a 3D copy of the famous painting by Leonardo Da Vinci, to Bigert & Bergström’s "The Last Supper," a documentary featuring a former death row chef in the US who reconstructs one of the 200 "last suppers" he prepared during his stint at Huntsville State Prison in Texas. Both are mystifyingly good in their own macabre way.

Speaking of macabre, Filipino artist Jose Legaspi’s disturbing paintings are also on display at the museum. National Arts Council corporate communications assistant director Nigel Sim said it best: "Legaspi’s paintings put you in a certain mood. My friend and I were talking (animatedly) when we went into the room filled with his paintings… we became silent right away."

Japanese artist Makoto Aida’s "Harakiri School Girls" is deceptively pretty with its bright acrylics and pretty J-girl subjects. Until you examine what the painting is really about.

The exhibitions at Tanglin Camp, a former military installation, are much more eclectic – video works, mixed media, assemblages, performance art pieces, architectural installations and digital animation, among other incarnations of contemporary art.

Hands down, the most interesting piece for me is Scott Bowe’s "Painting as a Zombie" video.

The subject of Bowe’s presentation is the "death of painting versus the return of painting" debate. He says, "Painting is currently in a post-death state… It is like a zombie walking forward with an awkward jerky movement between life and death." Interspersed with iconoclastic paintings (such as Rodchenko’s "Red, Blue and Yellow," as well as those white-on-white paintings that question the role and relevance of the medium in the ever-changing landscapes of art) are scenes from classic zombie opuses like George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, Lucio Fulci’s Zombie and Michael Jackson’s Thriller.

"Painting as an art form has been attacked so much that it has become a half-dead and half-alive entity, but it always comes back," said curator Roger McDonald. "It just needs a bit of reinvention."

True, true. Contemporary art is always enthralling precisely because reinvention is part of its makeup. It is like Madonna without the rehashed ABBA grooves, or David Bowie without the Tin Machine sidemen. No matter what form it takes in the future, art will always have the ability to engage and move its audience.

Who knows? With the right weather conditions, art might even raise an old building off the ground.

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Special thanks to the Singapore National Arts Council. For comments, suggestions, curses and invocations, e-mail iganja_ys@yahoo.com.