Tuesday in the tropics 159

17th December 2019

Dear friends and colleagues

Why must every film or video be shown separately in its own allocated space? How many video projectors and screens were deployed in this 2019 Singapore biennale I do not know – a lot, certainly! It must have been a bonanza for the suppliers of video projectors and monitors. It was not always so. For example in the Whitney Biennial of 1993 all the artists were given two pages in the catalogue but if their work was a single screen video or film it was shown in the cinema according to a timed schedule, however famous they were – Charles Atlas, Sadie Benning, Sophie Calle, George Holliday, Trinh T. Minh-Ha, Bill Viola. Only those artists using multiple screens, projectors and objects such as Matthew Barney or Gary Hill with his Tall Ships were exhibited outside the cinema.

But now it seems that not using a cinema and putting every single video into its own space is a holy cow or shibboleth for curators now. But why can’t all the single screen videos and films be put into a programme and played in a cinema with a decent sized screen, good sounds and, above all else, comfortable seats? Then we wouldn’t have so much sound spillage from one area to another. And we could experience them better. For example, when going round the section of the biennale in the ICA gallery at LaSalle College for the Arts I was much taken with the films of Miljohn Ruperto which had some beautiful dream-like sequences,

Miljohn Ruperto, Ordinal (SWNE) (video stills) from Geomancies. Image courtesy of Rini Yun Keagy and the Artist

but they were shown in a specially-constructed, pokey, little triangular space. The only seating provided was two minimal little stools. How sore would my backside have been if I had sat through all three hours of the films he was showing? Likewise, Marie Voignier’s film Na China about African traders working in China was interesting too,

Marie Voignier, film still from Na China, 2019. Image courtesy of the artist

but having to sit on a hard bench for seventy minutes to see it all the way through was a massive disincentive. The exhibition was generally too closely packed – at times with so many partition walls that it felt more like a college degree show. Even if all the single screen videos and films had been sent to more comfortable place there were probably too many artists for the spaces allocated. (50 not 75 might have been a better target.)

Would I have gone back to see all these videos in greater length if I had had more time in Singapore? An old friend now living in Singapore wrote me after my last week’s letter, ‘I spent time with every video work having given myself 4 days to see all the works. I went around each work with so much time and care and was underwhelmed by the whole experience  – I kept thinking I was missing something crucial, that perhaps I was too unsophisticated or uneducated. In the end I went with my gut. I think you are being generous when you say “lots of good intentions”. I thought it was lazy and ineffectual and a failure on so many levels. It did not “bring the heartlanders in”  a statement I have heard so often it is now meaningless – in any event I walked around the venues with never more than 7 other visitors.’

These good intentions can be seen in the wall text that confronted you when arriving at the galleries in LaSalle College for the Arts.

Introductory wall label at LaSalle

Who you may ask, are the “heartlanders”? it is the term used for the ordinary people, mainly ethnic Chinese, who live in tower blocks in areas like Hougang where I used to live. People who are probably not university trained and for whom English is not a first language. Both SAM (Singapore Art Museum) and NGS (National Gallery of Singapore) have made valiant efforts to reach that audience. The excellent Children’s biennial at the NGS which I will speak of in the next letter, new year is, for example, a project that tries to appeal beyond the elites, white and Asian.

This overcrowding vitiated among other works the installation by Gary Ross Pastrana, an artist whose work I have always been interested by. Alas, the noise, aurual and visual of the other works bustled around it. One also asked why as this was really a set for performance there was not a video (as in the Bangkok Biennale) nearby with a recording of a performance. Obviously, my photo shows the set up after the performance, the photo given out by the press office the set before the performance. What happened in the performance? Who sat on the chair and why was it moved?

Gary-Ross Pastrana, Properties, 2019

Gary-Ross Pastrana, Properties, 2019 (installation detail.) Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum

I really liked the project by Mark Sanchez. Essentially a library about wealth distribution in the Philippines.

Mark Sanchez, From Where Labor Blooms, 2019_ Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum

But, of course I am interested in that: I live there! But would it interest the heartlanders of Singapore? Would they spend time reading the books and research papers presented there? Probably, yes, but only if it was about wealth distribution in Singapore. It was a didactic piece which is fine, except the whole biennale felt so teachy! One felt one was being constantly told something, every work was about something, or so the wall labels would have us believe. An why couldn’t they have been in simple vernacular English rather than this laboured and orotund phraseology? And why only in English, why not in Bahasa or Chinese?

Wall label for Miljohn Ruperto

The questions return: what is the Singapore Biennale for and who is it for?

I mentioned the Whitney Biennal of 1993 the exhibition that above all else sort to engage an audience beyond the elite art crowd. Going around it one evening I was struck how many Black and Latino people were there. It really did reach out to that other audience. I think attendance was double that of previous biennials. It was genuinely controversial – showing the video by George Holliday of Ridney King being beaten up by 4 LA cops. But it also had some very memorable, even sensational, art: Janine Antoni’s Chocolate Gnaw, Matthew Barney’s three screen video of satyrs trying to have sex with one another in the back of New York taxis – that would have been fun to show in Singapore! – Robert Gober’s newspaper bundles, Pepon Osorio’s brilliantly ironic Puerto Rican murder scene and Sue Williams shocking paintings about sexual abuse. It was a powerful and memorable biennale because it included some powerful and memorable works. And they acted as a necessary contrast to more cerebral pieces by artists such as Andrea Fraser or Glenn Ligon.

I will finish off my review of the Biennale in another letter in the new year. Wishing you all a very good Christmas!

Tony