Jeannine Tang “Spectacle’s Politics and the Singapore Biennial” (2007)

With the present “Reading suggestion” we shift our focus from the African continent to the tropical state of Singapore with an article of 2007 by Jeannine Tang titled “Spectacle’s Politics and the Singapore Biennale” published by the Journal of Visual Culture.

The choice of focusing on an almost fifteen year old article is driven by a dual reasoning: on the one side it allows us to reflect on the way biennial scholarship has developed and which themes instead are still central to their analysis, and on the other it gives us an opportunity to reflect on the genesis of the Singapore Biennial as the article was published just months after the conclusion of its first edition.

The introduction of the article offers us more than the other parts an understanding of how biennials were framed at the time, with a strong focus on the economic effects and their involvement in regional and/or national marketing strategies through culture. While this stream of research is very much still valid, the overall weight of cultural planning and cultural capital analysis and practices in the late ‘00s and early 10s was a strong reason to frame biennials fully functioning within these logics. In the case of the Singapore Biennale, it certainly seems appropriate as it was initiated directly by the government with a clear intention of providing a planned meeting of the WTO with an appropriate cultural frieze.

This genesis and the consequent control the government had over the staging of the biennial is one of the main critical points raised by Tang in her analysis, especially in light of the nationalist agenda the government was operating. A number of cases of full or partial censorship of works in this occasion are quoted by the author to support her case. Among these Daniel Malone’s “Steal this smile” which attempted to incorporating the national symbols in a work that was critical towards the WTO, which ultimately was modified following pressure by the authorities; and the daunting account of a work developed by a Slovenian student in Singapore for an exchange that was problematizing the death penalty in the state which was completely shut down as well as the reporting on it through the threat of legal action against newspapers wanting to report on it.

The article then focuses specifically on an analysis of Singaporean spectacularization of politics through a continuous re-branding strategy by the government in an attempt to reposition the state regionally and globally. The author associates the gesture of initiating a biennial in this sense as fully part of an attempt of co-opting culture in this to serve a nationalistic agenda. Also relevant in this strategy in the analysis is the attraction of sponsors for the biennial through tax advantages for private capital.

The second part of the article then focuses on the curatorial approach and its attempt to focus on a regional identity. The co-presence of WTO forum and Biennial however limited this possibility as the curators also wanted to present works accessible to the international visitors. This, which is first discussed as a critique, is later in the article re-visited as a positive factor for local audiences as their exposure to western contemporary art was very limited at the time otherwise.

The third part of the article focuses on the descriptions of specific works underlining the overarching effect of state patronage on the exhibition as already discussed above.

In her conclusions, Tang places the scale of biennials against the responsibility they carry in terms of allowing for a critical and free space in the face of the limits experienced in Singapore.

While certainly dated today the article presents us with a series of questions which remain open and valid today both towards the limits of biennials in relation to their financial dependency from private bodies often not inclined to adopt an antagonizing stance towards governments, and in terms of finding a balance between regional and global representation. The most critical aspect of the article is perhaps something which emerges only through some non-developed remarks in which the author seems to suggest a generalized competition between biennials which is not very convincing.

We hope you enjoyed this further reading proposal and look forward to your comments!

Find the full article at the following link: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1470412907084519