Dear friends and colleagues
I want to talk about a paucity of literary culture.
Bangsa membaca adalah Bangsa berjaya.
When I was in London last month and travelling on the tube I noticed how many people were reading either books, magazines or newspapers. If you look at the snap I took then, I can tell you that the man is reading Philip Roth.
Nearby, someone was reading Jane Austen and someone else was reading something on a kindle. Of course, there were also people playing games on their mobiles or just staring vacantly at nothing in particular.
As I looked at these readers and on subsequent tube journeys in London I noted that one often saw people reading newspapers and books, I also realised how incredibly rare it is to see anyone on the Singapore MRT (Mass Rapid Transport) reading either a book, magazine, newspaper or even a kindle.
Instead, it is quite common to see absolutely everyone in the carriage texting or gaming on their smart phone (The MRT is very hi-tec; mobiles and smart phones all work on it) or see them, with their headphones on, watching TV on a mini screen. Peering over people’s shoulders I have often noticed they are either watching Chinese soap operas, or playing a game with multi coloured balls on their phones or tablets.
By literary culture I don’t mean people writing sonnets or odes on a regular basis, I mean no more than people sometimes scanning the film, theatre, visual arts page in the paper – or reading a novel. Basically, I mean a wider community with an interest in the arts or “creative” culture. Who, basically, expect more than just entertainment.
In my travels I meet some fantastically well read people in Singapore: they are conscientious and committed to art – artists, collectors, curators. But I don’t think there are enough of them. Singapore lacks that wider public you find in London or other big cities who will periodically go to the theatre, exhibitions or dance events.
You see the lack of this in other venues: the thin attendances at dance events here – and there is some fantastic contemporary dance in Asia. The lack of serious films in the cinemas, just an endless diet of superheroes, Chinese epics and rom coms. Entertainment, yes; anything challenging, no.
The second-hand bookshops of Singapore tell a similar story: the vast proportion of books on sale are either on business or are school course books and crammers – as if the sole purpose of reading as to make money or pass exams.
There are newspapers. There is even a free newspaper, but no-one seems to ever read it. There is a supposedly “quality” paper (The Strait’s Times) but it has a lifestyle section rather than an arts or culture section. For nearly three years I curated at a gallery here and we put on some serious, ambitious shows, but there never a serious review of them. Periodically someone from The Straits Times would phone up to ask how we were doing financially – as if the only thing newsworthy about art was retail feasibility. But no-one ever came to look at the art and write about that.
Anyway, let’s get back on the MRT. (and I must tell you, it’s clean, efficient and well designed. Moreover, there are some good art works on the newer stations.)
When you do actually see someone reading a book it normally transpires to be a bible or a qu’ran. Just one person in the twenty odd MRT journeys I have taken since returning was reading a book – a non-religious book, that is – and, interestingly, whereas the people on smart phones were invariably expressionless she was moving her lips as she read. That somatic effect hints at something profoundly important. I don’t know who she is or where she lives, but this is the sort of person on whom the wider fortune of an art world in Singapore depends.
The museums, kunsthallen, the curators and the artists deserve and need a larger and more sympathetic audience.
When I was in KL last week I saw an art work by the young Malaysian artist Mohamad Ezwa Hasin. In the text that accompanied it he lamented how reading has been replaced by surfing facebook etc. for entertainment. He quoted a song that is sung in national reading week in Malaysia. “Bangsa membaca adalah Bangsa berjaya.” A nation that reads is a successful nation.
Work by Mohamad Ezwa Hasin shown at Chandan gallery
Thomas Berghuis told me of a town in Eastern Europe where anyone found reading a book on public transport was allowed to travel free. It is Cluj-Napoca in North-Western Romania. (see http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/romanian-city-offers-free-rides-to-people-reading-on-the-bus-10463497.html) Now, that is an idea that Singapore’s ruling party, the PAP, should take seriously.
Have a good Tuesday
Tony
PS. I have been reading a new biography of Michelangelo on the MRT. I bought it at KL airport. Sadly, you never see books on art in the bookshop at Changi Airport.