The cultural grassroots and the authoritarian city; Spaces of Contestation in Singapore

Abstract

The ‘cultural turn’ in cities has sparked new forms of cultural activism in new contexts around the world. Singapore represents an atypical setting for cultural activism, and thus presents a compelling case of the ways in which arts and culture interacts with activism across varying typologies and spatial scales. Rapid growth and rising wealth has caused socio-cultural fissures and divides, which is reflected in current activist movements in Singapore. This chapter builds upon nascent literature exploring the new geographies of cultural activism in the Asian city by examining the ways such arts-led activism is performed in Singapore at the grassroots level, indoors (in a theatre), outdoors (in a protest park), and online (on social media). In Particular, this paper addresses the ways in which the urban ‘encounter’ across these spaces connects the inter-weaving networks in the cultural-activst space: it is this tightly-bound connectedness, and the emancipatory encounters enabled by such an interweaving, that is noteworthy in Singapore’s case. Each of these spaces (and places) allows for unique possibilities, but also faces authoritarian restrictions. Still, cultural activism is pushing the City-State in new directions as new possibilities and spaces of home emerge.

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13 The cultural grassroots
and the authoritarian city
Spaces of contestation in
Singapore
Jason Luger
Introduction
From the top of the monumental Marina Bay Sands Hotel, fty-seven oors above
Singapore’s glistening nancial district, the city-state spreads away into the tropi-
cal haze in a sea of towers. The street, far below, looks very small. Yet, ensconced
in the city’s nooks and crannies, an increasingly vocal cultural grassroots has
emerged. Singapore’s quest to be a ‘Global City for the Arts’ has been well docu-
mented (Chang, 2000; Chang and Lee, 2003; and Chapter 6, this volume; Yue,
2007; Yun, 2008; Kong, 2012; Goh, 2014) as it has positioned itself among the
world’s elite club of global cultural cities. Yet only recently have researchers
begun the task of exploring the Singaporean grassroots, and how cultural activism
manifests and engenders various encounters on the ground. How to locate
politics in Singapore’s cultural context and how to conceptualise the ways in
which cultural and political encounters shape each other are now compelling
questions.
It is possible to look back, and reect, upon the decades of cultural policy in
cities, as Bell and Oakley (2015) have done. However, while cultural policy
may be well explored, the nexus of art, politics and activism within the cultural
city is very much in vogue. ‘Cultural activism’ (Buser et al., 2013), ‘creative
resistance’ (Colomb and Novy, 2012) and ‘artivism’ (Krischer, 2012) are terms
used interchangeably to refer to that segment of the creative community seeking
new ‘spaces of hope’ (Harvey, 2002). Such activism also uses creative methods
such as visual and performance art, music and sculpture to remake and
reconceptualise urban space (Buser et al., 2013). More broadly, authors are using
recent cases (in the post-‘Occupy Wall Street’ era) to question what it means to be
an activist and perform activism: can simply showing up be included? What are
the contemporary forms of micro-resistance that may look quite different from
traditional conceptions of activism and protest (see Solnit, 2005; Chatterton and
Pickerill, 2010)? How do cultural spaces shape political encounters, and how do
such encounters shape spaces?
Furthermore, locating and mapping the contextual contours of emergent
cultural activism across various spatial typologies and scales, and the ways in
which complicated networks, coalitions and alliances overlap (and sometimes
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Spaces of contestation in Singapore 205
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contradict) in these places are other important, difcult tasks. Andy Merrield
(2014) speaks of ‘wormholes’ and ‘nodes’ within the urban fabric, while Harvey
(2012) suggests that cultural groups are critical to forming spaces of contestation,
opening up new possibilities. What these wormholes look like, or how a ‘space of
hope’ might differ in context and fabric from Paris to Singapore, therefore invites
exploration: do cities remain privileged sites for political struggle as Lees (2014:
235) proposes? And within and across cities, how do privileged sites – squares,
parks, the home, the café, online social networks – dene new cultural–political
movements, and how are they shaped and dened by these movements?
Asian cities have recently gained more prominence as case studies, as a call for
new modes of comparison and ‘worlding’ theory (Robinson, 2011; Roy and
Ong, 2011) has coincided with an upswing in resistance and contestation in Asian
cities (and everywhere else). Asian cities such as Singapore have also become
increasingly inuential in global policy circuits, envisioned not only as policy
recipients but also as policy generators (Luger and Ren, 2014). This volume there-
fore represents an important and timely attempt to bring to light the geographies
of the Asian cultural city.
If Merrield (2014) seeks to ‘scale up’ to the ‘planetary’ level in developing a
new urban ontology, then this chapter seeks to ‘scale down’: it will offer a cursory
tour of three interconnected spatial scales and contexts of the Singaporean
cultural-activist ‘encounter’: the critical theatre space (the Substation); the central
public square; (Speakers’ Corner, also known as Hong Lim Park); and the
Singaporean ‘digital agora’ of social media and blogs, which Habermas (1989)
called the ‘public sphere’ and which Merrield (2014) points to as indicative of
the ‘planetary’ reach of the urban encounter (in this case, transcending the physical
boundaries of the island city-state). Groups and networks overlap across these
spaces, using art and culture in complex ways to probe and challenge the social
and political landscape and the built/digital environments.
What these examples show is both the destabilising potential of art-led
activism in Singapore to form ‘spaces of hope’ within the authoritarian fabric
and, simultaneously, the ways that the built and digital environments are
engineered in ways to control and stabilise the arts. This dichotomy is present in
many contexts, but particularly in Singapore. In negotiating the networks of
encounter and the encountering of networks in and across the city-state, we can
continue the task of mapping the contours of the planetary city, the transformative
potential of cultural activism, and the contextual geographies of contemporary
socio-political movements while also probing the located complexity and
contradictions of one version of authoritarian governance (at the island city-
state scale).
Singapore-focused authors have begun to probe, critically, how cultural/
creative spaces are used (Ho, 2009; Chang, 2014 and Chapter 6, this volume) but,
as yet, the connection between artists, arts spaces and broader activism has not
been fully explored. It is here that this chapter aims to ll a gap, and probe the
question of how Singapore’s art, cultural and activist networks interweave,
overlap and encounter one another in urban space.
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206 Jason Luger
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Globalising (and questioning) the spaces of cultural activism
Urban space is being reconceptualised within the new reality of a hyper-networked
world, and, thus, the shifting spaces/places of activism and lateral activist
networks are likewise being re-examined. The longstanding material/immaterial
dichotomy of socio-spatial relations and interactions remains a prescient (and
unresolved) discussion, as cyberspace and social media mean that the revolution
is being ‘tweeted’ and is simultaneously occurring in situ on the urban street (see
Gerbaudo, 2012). Authors are reintroducing and reincorporating ‘place’ and
‘space’ into the lexicon of networked geographies, arguing that the daily practices
of activists in ‘place’ remain a critical concern in the study of social activism
(Amin, 2005; Soja, 2010; Harvey, 2012). Specic, material sites remain key to
explore, and to be part of the efforts within urban studies to connect the study of
local sites to the networked and transnational relationships that make up social
activism (Cumbers et al., 2008; Featherstone, 2008). Merrield (2014) calls upon
Castells’s conception of a ‘space of ows’ to describe the global landscape of
emerging resistance and activism:
The space of ows is not placeless: it is made of nodes and networks; that is,
of places connected by electronically powered communication networks
through which ows of information . . . circulate and interact . . . [T]he space
of the network society is made up of an articulation between three elements:
the places where activities are located; the material communication net-
works linking these activities; and the content and geometry of the ows of
information that perform the activities in terms of function and meaning.
(Castells 2009: 34)
Within the space of ows, ‘nodes’ emerge that can be material and central (such
as Zuccotti Park near Wall Street, or Tahrir Square in Cairo), but these nodes can
also be immaterial and highly moveable, lacking clear delineations of xities.
Buser et al. (2013) stress the importance of particular sites and urban ‘places’ that
are infused with meaning by cultural activism, and are crucial to shaping such
activism. They use the Stokes-Croft neighbourhood in Bristol, UK, to demonstrate
how ‘place’ can ‘play a critical role in the fostering of political collectivity’. They
also argue that taking ‘place’ seriously within critical activism necessitates
‘analysis of how neighbourhoods, streets, sites, structures (and so on) may serve
as exible referents for radical politics, cultural sensibilities or the potentials
of cultural activism more generally’ (Buser et al., 2013: 2). Exploring the new
geographies of cultural activism therefore requires a journey through various
spatial scales and urban places, as different socio-spatial relations and networks
interact, encounter and form one another differently, within and across these
scales. That is not to say that material sites of activism are discounted, but rather
that they are understood to be extended by (and into) cyberspace, and vice versa.
A new strand of literature has emerged which focuses less on the policy
implications of the urban cultural turn and more the relationship between the arts,
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Spaces of contestation in Singapore 207
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urban space and broader activist and resistance movements. These movements
are portrayed as a collection of coalitions and alliances, with varying levels of
cohesion and tenacity, differing in form, style, aims and agenda. Colomb and
Novy (2012) explore the (sometimes contradictory) cultural coalitions and
alliances that seek ‘spaces of hope’ in (and against) what is portrayed as Berlin
and Hamburg’s neoliberal appropriation of arts and culture, while Buser et al.
(2013) look at the ways in which disparate networks come together to form a
cohesive ‘aesthetics of protest’ (as Rancière envisioned) in Bristol. One shortcom-
ing of both studies is their European focus. Perhaps the broadest recent survey of
‘socially engaged art’ is Nato Thompson’s (2012) exploration of various forms of
cultural activism (ranging from theatre to street art), as this at least ventures into
the Global South (citing cases in South America, for example).
Despite the lingering problem of urban research sometimes handling Asian
cities with kid gloves due to perceived ‘otherness’ (see Luger and Ren, 2014),
more explorations of what art-led activism looks like across Asia’s contours and
textures are emerging. This is particularly true as recent activist earthquakes have
shaken Hong Kong, Bangkok, Taipei, a number of Chinese cities and, albeit less
sensationally, Singapore. The arts play a central role in this new geography of
Asian activism, partially due to the arts’ relative space for expression within the
connes of (varying degrees of) authoritarianism.
In Thailand, ‘red shirts’ became a pop-culture fashion symbol of anti-
government protest (see Thammaboosadee, 2014); and in Hong Kong, Sonia Lam
(2014) has explored how performance art (the Post-80s movement) has linked up
with traditional street demonstrations over a variety of issues – most recently
efforts to resist Beijing’s increasing control over the territory (known as the
‘Umbrella Revolution’). Krischer (2012) journeys through Tokyo, Seoul and
Hong Kong to explore the ways in which artists use a variety of methods to con-
front social, cultural and political issues and challenge both state and corporate
power. On the ground conditions vary across Asia: an activist activity that might
be tolerated in one place (such as still relatively open Hong Kong) might land an
artist in detention somewhere else (such as mainland China). Still, this Asian
‘artivism’ is connected laterally, Krischer suggests, by bilateral learning processes
and by common, overarching issues of concern such as housing costs, poverty and
the neoliberal appropriation of urban space.
A number of authors have traced the growth and evolution of ‘creative city’
policies in Asia (see Kong et al., forthcoming), as well as the self-conscious ways
in which artists have positioned themselves as agents of change (such as gentri-
cation) within Asian cities (see Chapter 11, this volume). Thus far, however,
Singapore – a particularly complex and hybridised Asian city due to its blend of
‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ approaches, progressive and conservative cultural fac-
tions, and democratic and authoritarian political characteristics – has been largely
absent from the discussion on the nexus of art, activism and urban space. As men-
tioned above, it is here that this chapter attempts to ll a gap. Findings are based
on the rst comprehensive study to explore the crossroads of the arts, activism,
space and place in Singapore. The research incorporated semi-structured
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208 Jason Luger
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interviews with thirty artist–activists, as well as participant and site observations
(including digital ethnography), and was carried out between 2012 and 2014.
With this in mind, I will now turn to Singapore’s current climate of socio-cultural
upheaval, and the related spaces of contestation.
Cultural contestation in the city-state
Political, cultural and social activism have grown in Singapore as the city-state
has embraced – and been impacted by – global currents and ideas (Tan, 2003,
2008; Goh, 2014). Singapore’s status as an (economically and ideologically)
open global city is also a leading cause of societal discontent: local wages have
stagnated as manual labourers have arrived from places like Sri Lanka and
Bangladesh, while housing costs have skyrocketed as wealthy expatriates have
moved into gated villas and luxury private condos. Singapore has remained the
world’s most expensive city for several years.1 Government censorship of media,
public discourse and the arts has generated a loud national debate, particularly
following the recent prosecution – and conviction – of a number of political
bloggers. LGBT rights continue to be divisive, as slow liberalisation of
colonial-era anti-gay laws have generated a conservative backlash (such as 2014’s
‘wear white’ campaign). Films and visual and performance art that cross certain
limits (which Ooi (2009) explains can be political, cultural or moral) face the
Censorship Review Committee (CRC) and may be banned (as the play Stoma was
in 2014).
The arts and cultural realm is crucial in Singapore’s wider landscape of
contestation because more direct political action is largely out of the question. It
is impossible to ‘Occupy’ in Singapore: political protests are highly sanitized and
come with many caveats and restrictions (including rather vague rules on threats
to ethnic, racial or religious harmony). At the same time, the arts-scape becomes
a contested, destabilising force with anti-state and anti-globalisation factions: arts
and culture (and related spaces and networks) therefore become staging grounds
for wider political movements, given relatively more space and room to breathe
within authoritarian connes. Arts spaces and places, both material and digital,
take on a decidedly political identity by proxy; the encounters in and across these
spaces, which occur concurrently at various scales, are, by default, political
encounters. Herein arises the central paradox of ‘cultural Singapore’: while the
government rarely tolerates direct protest, it accepts ‘artistic’ protest (to a degree,
at least) as a necessary (and forgivable) externality of the Singaporean cultural
turn within its new global positioning (Chang, 2000; Chang and Lee, 2003; Ooi,
2008, 2009, 2010a; Kong, 2012).
In conceptualising the socio-spatial forms of the Singaporean cultural-activist-
scape (what Hartley (1992: 29–30) calls the ‘place of citizenry’), we can
summarise here the typologies of space through which this chapter will journey:
a smaller, indoor space (the Substation Theatre); a larger, outdoor park, (Hong
Lim Park/Speakers’ Corner); and nally, the digital place of cultural activism,
which Merrield (2014) suggests is ‘planetary’ in scale and therefore transcends
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the boundaries of the city-state. Howell (1993: 313) conceptualises spaces such as
these, which function as small openings within a repressive power structure, as
‘islands of freedom’ surrounded by Foucault’s ‘carceral archipelago’. In these
‘hidden islands’ (or ‘wormholes’ or ‘nodes’), groups and networks interact with
one another, and with the political sphere, in different ways – formed, emancipated
and limited by the possibilities and restrictions each place allows, within the
broader context of Singapore’s particular form, scale and politics.
Indoor cultural activism: the Substation Theatre
The Substation is located on Armenian Street at the base of Fort Canning Park and
very much in the centre of Singapore’s ‘Arts and Civic District’. It is a theatre as
well as a rehearsal, meeting and gallery space. Founded a generation ago by the
pioneering playwright Kuo Pau Kun, it is one of the primary material spaces
where disparate groups (from theatre and dance companies to activist groups) can
hire out spaces at low (subsidised) rates in a safe environment where they will be
able to express themselves (relatively) freely, critically or not. It must be noted,
however, that like any other organisation or space in Singapore that receives part
of its funding from the state (in this case, the National Arts Council), users must
not step (too far) over the ‘out of bounds’ markers. Therefore, anti-government
activities or any event, display, discussion or forum that might upset Singapore’s
delicate political, racial, cultural and religious order is generally restricted.
Examples of recent events that have faced censorship or even an outright ban
include a public forum on the death penalty and a play that probed sexual abuse in
the Catholic Church.
Nevertheless, for Singapore, this is a radical space. It allows a wide range of
fringe (and mainstream) groups to use a variety of micro-spaces: a large black box
theatre, a gallery space, and upstairs rehearsal spaces/studios, all located in a
refurbished ‘shop-house’2 which has a characteristic vibe and atmosphere. The
Substation’s versatility is deliberate: it is a space for other spaces, a space for all
users, or, in the words of the creative director, a ‘renaissance space’. On any given
day (including during my visit), a punk-band may be rehearsing in one room, an
art exhibition may be in the gallery, and a public activist forum or debate may be
under way in the black box theatre, all at the same time (see Figure 13.1). All of
the disparate groups are united through their use of the space, if not by any cause,
mission or social relationship. The Substation’s creative director appreciates the
delicate role that the building plays as a space of critical possibility within the
connes of the state. Above all, he explains that it is a sort of all-encompassing
home for both the arts and other critical dialogues to take place: ‘We are a space
rst and foremost in the sense that we facilitate, we provide . . . spaces for incuba-
tion, for process, for creation, for dialogue, for learning. And I think of late maybe
it’s also a space for “unlearning”’ (interview, Substation creative director,
November 2012).
As such, the Substation’s role in fostering activist encounters is far more
important than might be the case with a theatre space in another city. It is a
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Figure 13.1 Posters for upcoming events on the wall of the Substation
Source: the author.
conventional theatre space in the sense that it has a regular programme of events
(plays, recitals, exhibitions), but it is also a focal point for all, or at least most, of
the cultural-activism encounters that occur in Singapore, making it an anchoring
‘node’ in the city-state’s activist/artistic fabric. The Substation was mentioned in
many research interviews as perhaps the only building with the scale, scope and
freedom to facilitate the mixing and interaction of artistic, activist and political
groups under one roof. During my conversation with one activist painter, for
example, I asked where artists, activists and the broader community could come
together indoors in Singapore. After a pause, he responded, ‘Yeah, the Substation,
because . . . sometimes you see . . . theatre plays, punk music next door, art in the
gallery, and activists outside’ (interview, painter, January 2013).
There is tension in the diverse use of the space, both when the state’s ‘out of
bounds’ markers are crossed and within and among the various users, but this
tension is one of the stated aims of the creative director. He believes that cultural
possibilities – and radical new directions – that are unique in Singapore emerge
out it and from the exible occupation of interior space:
Within that diversity [there are] opposites – many opposites – that coexist,
and we welcome that tension, we nurture that tension, in the hope that there
will be . . . cross-dialogue, cross-cultural dialogue . . . And it’s not a
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Spaces of contestation in Singapore 211
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top-down thing, it’s a bottom-up . . . phenomenon. We encourage a kind of
confrontationist approach. So our role is really to ensure that this tension can
continue to exist in Singapore.
(Interview, Substation creative director, November 2012)
The spatial tension therefore unites in situ groups that may not normally
encounter one another. The Substation serves as a sort of reference point
capable of instigating new discussions and linkages. Several interviewees viewed
it as a ‘meeting place’ where a certain idea was generated, a connection was made,
or a friendship was formed.
That is not to say that the Substation’s possibilities are limitless. Though it
enjoys a large degree of autonomy, it must operate within state boundaries, which
continuously expand and contract, resulting in a permanent sense of precarious-
ness. The Substation might be described, at best, as a partially opened ‘wormhole’
in that it fosters a unique type of encounter but is limited by its own roof and walls
and by the inexibility of Singapore’s political–cultural arena. Neither its inde-
pendence nor its ability to cross certain boundaries as an ‘island of freedom’ is
guaranteed.
The next example demonstrates how these limits and possibilities are extended
to the realm of outdoor public space. Hong Lim Park is larger and far more visible
than the Substation and, as such, it has a centrality and resonance as a node of the
cultural-activist encounter.
Outdoor cultural activism: Speakers’ Corner/Hong Lim Park
Speakers’ Corner, a state-designated place for free expression, can be found in
Hong Lim Park, a two-acre grassy square near the nancial district. The park is
unique in Singapore as a site where large groups (sometimes numbering in the
thousands) can assemble (peacefully) to voice critical opinions – albeit with
certain restrictions. Thereby, it has become a focal point for cultural activism in
the authoritarian built environment. Comparisons with ‘pop-up’ revolutionary
areas, such as Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park or Cairo’s Tahrir Square, are difcult to
make because Hong Lim Park is ofcially designated (by the authorities) as a
protest space; it did not assume its identity through bottom-up social upheaval. It
is also strictly demarcated (and monitored), making it something of a Foucauldian
‘panopticon’ (Foucault, 1980). On most days, its landscaped lawn is devoid of
people (at least that was the case whenever I walked through it), and large gathe-
rings must be pre-approved and abide by a number of rules. Several signposts
around the park denote what is and what is not permitted: any activity that is seen
to be against ‘racial or religious harmony’ (a grey area that is constantly evolving
in Singapore’s ongoing moral and cultural conversation) is forbidden.
Nevertheless, due to its size, centrality, symbolic meaning and historical
signicance, Hong Lim Park is unique as a public space in Singapore that provides
a stage for thousands of diverse voices. Despite the rules and regulations, it is a
place where activists, artists and indeed any other groups can and do gather for a
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variety of causes and in sufciently large numbers to garner national and even
international attention. Merrield (2014: 66) notes that such squares have crucial
importance as physical meeting places:
Squares like Zucotti Park or Tahrir are urban public spaces not for reason of
their pure concrete physicality but because they are meeting places between
virtual and physical worlds . . . that is why they are public – because they
enable public discourses and public conversations to talk to each other, to
meet each other, quite literally.
On ‘International Human Rights Day’ in December 2012, I came across the
‘Really, Really Free Market’ in Hong Lim Park (Figure 13.2). This event was
sponsored by an arts group (anonymised here due to political sensitivity), who
were present along with a wide variety of unrelated activists: for instance, migrant
workers’ groups shared the space with an anti-rape organisation. There were
opportunities to trade books, clothes and other items. On one blanket sat relatives
of some of Singapore’s long-term political detainees. Krischer (2012) describes a
similar ‘free market’ in Tokyo, and the movement has its origins in the cooperatives
of the United States (several US cities have ‘free markets’, including my home
Figure 13.2 The ‘Really, Really Free Market’ at Hong Lim Park
Source: the author.
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town of Durham, North Carolina). This therefore represents an example of
cross-cultural inuence and co-learning of ‘artivist’ techniques and tactics applied
in a Singaporean setting (within site-specic authoritarian connes that do not
exist in the United States or Tokyo). So the event is both comparable and
incommensurable.
The Really, Really Free Market – with its ambiguous mission and seemingly
unrelated, disparate participants – is the type of grassroots activity that can take
place in Hong Lim Park without fear of censorship from the authorities. Viewed
as a strategy, such an event allows decidedly political activism (human rights
campaigners; those seeking the release of political detainees and the return of
exiled dissidents) to mingle with more banal art displays and enjoy the non-
monetary exchange of goods, foodstuffs, clothes and crafts. Viewed from
above, perhaps, this is not a political event – it poses no threat to state. Picked
apart, and closer to the ground, however, it contains pointed political messages,
all curated by artists who revealed in interviews that they were acutely aware of
the potential for such events to promote activism and the exchange of (radical)
ideas. Part of the Really, Really Free Market’s success, and ability to force a
cross-cultural conversation, is this ambiguity and lack of overtly political over-
tones. It is therefore a rather dressed-down, sanitised version of political activism,
rendered acceptable to Singapore’s ‘moral majority’ and to the authorities.
Naturally, this leads to the question: is this really activism at all? And if it is, can
it be truly transformative, radical or political?
As such, there are mixed opinions on the sort of emancipatory ‘spaces of hope’
that Hong Lim Park may or may not enable to emerge out of the cultural-activist
landscape and whether such a controlled, demarcated activist site has the potential
to host transformative urban encounters. Some activists I interviewed genuinely
seemed to appreciate the possibilities afforded by Hong Lim Park and the simple
fact that it was a designated space for expression, but most agreed that the space
alone was not enough and should be utilised alongside other openings, nodes and
wormholes:
I’m always looking for spaces. I mean, it’s great that we have Hong Lim Park,
to some extent – it’s a public gathering space. But you need to complement
public work with private work as well. And that’s when we need more closed
spaces, more safe spaces, where smaller groups of people can come together.
And it would be slightly more intimate, I guess.
(Interview, activist, February 2013)
Other voices were more sceptical of Speakers’ Corner as a legitimate space for
free expression, envisioning it more as a gestural space, emasculated of its radical
potential by authoritarian restrictions. An architect who has designed many of
Singapore’s recent buildings commented: ‘They tried to make it a park but there
are too many restrictions. It’s a public space, but it is not really utilised the way it
could be utilised. Historically it was quite a big gathering place’ (interview,
architect, March 2013).
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Hong Lim Park does have many limitations, but it allows a scale and visibility
for activism that are impossible elsewhere in Singapore and thus represents an
opening: it has the capability to induce a nationwide discussion and for that reason
it is powerful. Moreover, ‘rare alliances’3 that are simply impossible in a theatre
like the Substation have the potential to form in the park. The ‘free market’ allows
activists, artists and those who are merely interested onlookers to come together
and thus expand the reach and capabilities of Singaporean activism.
An even larger, and potentially more destabilising, space is the cyber-city of
digital activism that stretches far beyond Singapore’s borders. Though material
activism cannot occur online, cyberspace provides a different, novel type of
platform. This enables new possibilities for socio-cultural interaction and for
spaces like the Substation and Hong Lim Park to become much larger and more
signicant than their physical forms allow by extending into cyberspace.
Singapore’s digital ‘artivists’
#FreeAmosYee. 7 people like this.
(Singaporean artist’s Facebook page, 2015)
In contrast to Singapore’s modest physical scale and rigid authoritarian
restrictions, cyberspace, or what Habermas (1989) called the aspatial/normative
‘public sphere’, is notably large and loud in the city-state. Cyber-Singapore
remains relatively open, with blogs and social media serving as numerous
digital speakers’ corners. This space contains a wide cross-section of voices and
opinions, reecting society at large – from conservative groups to radical
organisations, with coalitions and alliances that sometimes intersect and overlap
in ways that are unique to cyberspace. Artists, in digital form, play a crucial role
as online instigators and curators of digital activist movements.
Though Habermas (1989) and Don Mitchell (1995, 2014) remain sceptical,
and Malcolm Gladwell (2010) suggests that the ‘revolution will not be tweeted’,
theorists such as Merrield (2014) and Gerbaudo (2012) assign a crucial
place (and a high potential) to the digital street in today’s complicated global web
of urban networks. Digital activism may not supplant the city street as a primary
site of encounter, but in a context such as Singapore’s (where use of the street
and the material commons comes with so many restrictions), it forms an
important addition, helping to ‘scale up’ and amplify the activities occurring in
material form.
The digital city is no panacea. Cyber-Singapore is subject to surveillance and
censorship by the authorities, as well as varying degrees of self-censorship. The
government’s sporadic prosecution of bloggers for posting critical comments
indicates the increasing reach of authoritarianism into cyberspace. For instance, in
2014, the blogger Alex Au of yawningbread.wordpress (which frequently airs
critical views on any number of topics) was convicted of defamation for comments
he posted that were critical of the way in which Singapore’s high court had
handled gay rights cases. The following year, a sixteen-year-old named Amos Yee
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was found guilty of libel over comments he made on YouTube about the
recently deceased Lee Kuan Yew (Singapore’s prime minister for more than
thirty years). Still, the cloak of anonymity and the difculties of policing the
internet’s many highways and tributaries give bloggers a degree of power and
freedom: physical space is not needed to express opinions and there is room for
almost everyone. Just as a material arts spaces such as the Substation allow for
some (relative) breathing room and free expression, so too do cyber arts spaces,
as is evidenced by the highly charged (and often overtly political) posts, comments
and discussions that have appeared on the social media pages of several
Singaporean artists over recent years. People act differently online, frequently
saying and doing things that they would never dream of doing on the street or
at a party.
One arts group (anonymised here due to political sensitivity) that frequently
organises events in Singapore has an extremely vocal online presence, forming
new types of encounters that are often more directly political and critical
than when observed in places like the Substation and Hong Lim Park. While
semi-structured interviews conducted with one member of this group about
the nature of their work did not garner any overtly political comments,
digitally shadowing the same artist on Facebook revealed a very different tenor
and tone. The themes, aims and missions of the public events that the artist curates
seem to be about raising awareness and using art to induce reexivity, introspection
and self-questioning. Rather than championing any specic political cause or
topical protest, the artist organises events around broader themes of social and
grassroots values:
We set up in spaces and we attempt to change the economic laws. We demand
that everything inside here be free. And we talk about the values, the qualities,
of having to share. That is the only value that we argue for.
(Interview, artist, 2013)
Online, however, the same artist is ardently political, posting angry opinions
about Singapore’s and other nations’ ruling elites. Their Facebook page – which
is open to the public, not private – covers a wide range of artistic and political
themes. These posts have generated a cross-cutting discussion, and a new
space for art–activist encounter not found on the Singaporean streets or in any
Singaporean building. For instance, Amos Yee’s arrest prompted the artist to
instigate a critical discussion. The artist crossed into the activist space to
spearhead a digital campaign to ‘free Amos Yee’ and fund his legal defence:
‘Anyone who would like to lend their support to this photo campaign, please do
so today!’ (Artist’s Facebook page, 1 May 2015). The artist allied with the Com-
munity Action Network (CAN) – a Singapore-based grassroots advocacy group
– to release a (digital) statement that protested both the public’s condemnation of
Yee and the ofcial charges that had been laid against him. One of the comments
on this posting encapsulated the digital art–activist space’s generative potential:
‘Thank God for the Internet. There is a God.’ It received four ‘likes’.
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Conclusion: cultural revolution Singapore-style
As Lefebvre surmised (and Merrield paraphrased), ‘human beings make space
just by encountering other human beings’ (Merrield 2014: 36). In Singapore
these encounters occur digitally and materially and thus ‘the urban consolidates,
creates its own denition, its own coming-together’. In Singapore, centrality is
moveable, relative, not xed and (as Merrield might propose) always in a state
of constant mobilisation and negotiation (sometimes decentring itself). It
resembles a spider’s web rather than a xed square, in contrast to Zucotti Park
or Tahrir Square. Lefebvre (1968) wrote that there can be no city without
centrality. Yet, in Singapore, ‘centrality’ has a peculiar meaning: it may lie closer
to Merrield’s interpretation of a place (or space) where
People encounter one another because of certain situations, because of certain
collisions in time and space, because of certain attributes . . . people discover
interpellated group commonality because bodies and minds take hold in a
space that is at once territorial and deterritorial, in a time that isn’t clock or
calendar time but eternal time.
(Merrield 2014: 35)
Singapore’s multitude of ‘minor spaces’ – including the Substation Theatre, Hong
Lim Park and innumerable websites – may be combining to form ‘major spaces’
(as Merrield calls them), enabling new possibilities to emerge, remaking the
cultural city-state and sending it forward in new directions.
Notes
1 Economist Intelligence Unit, 2014.
2 A type of vernacular, colonial-era architecture common in Singapore and Malaysia.
3 http://blogs.wsj.com/indonesiarealtime/2014/06/28/rare-alliance-forms-in-singapore-
to-challenge-gay-rights-rally/ (accessed 10/06/15).
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