Lee Weng Choy

Lithobates sylvaticus. More commonly known as the Wood Frog, it is the only frog found north of the Arctic Circle. A tiny, modest-looking creature — lacking in the Hollywood cachet of the Antarctic Emperor Penguin — still, if you needed a poster-boy for surviving against the odds, you could do a lot worse than Lithobates sylvaticus. The frog recently came to mind regarding “Comparative Contemporaries”, something we’ve been working on here at The Substation since 2003. Let me say a few things about this project before returning to our amphibian friend, and, if you stay with me, I promise to eventually address the topic of new year’s resolutions. It’s a roundabout way of explaining our artistic direction for 2008.

Art from this part of the world is on the rise — or so it must seem. From Brisbane to Berlin, Asian artists are all over the place. This year is a banner year for biennales in the East. September alone sees seven biennales and triennials opening; in addition to Singapore’s second edition, there will be shows in Taipei, Shanghai, Gwangju, Busan, Guangzhou and Yokohoma. What has not kept pace with the spectacle of exhibition, however, is the research and writing about contemporary art from the region. For all its global visibility, there are few good books on the subject, and fewer magazines or journals currently in circulation that adequately cover the field. Many important initiatives, like the interdisciplinary series FOCAS, Forum On Contemporary Art & Society, simply do not have the financial support to sustain themselves for the long run (last year’s sixth issue was FOCAS’s last). On the bright side, with all the work generated by the various publications over the years, a substantial body of writing on art has accumulated. Unfortunately, this body of work still remains poorly distributed and read, and insufficiently studied and discussed.

This is where Comparative Contemporaries comes in. It’s a website anthology, done in collaboration with Hong Kong’s Asia Art Archive. Five editors each select what they believe are ten significant texts about contemporary visual art from Southeast Asia. These selections, along with the editors’ introductory essays, will be published on the Archive’s website.¹ Over time, more editors and more “proto-anthologies” will be added, and other contributors will be invited to comment on the selections. The approach of Comparative Contemporaries is provisional; it does not attempt a definitive survey or authoritative mapping, but reflects the developing state of discourses on art from the region. The aim is not to establish a canon of texts but a platform for debate, and to promote in-depth discussion about Southeast Asia’s artists, writers, artworks and issues.

Comparative Contemporaries, or CC for short, started in 2003 at The Substation with a conference and workshop involving more than thirty writers, artists, administrators and curators from the region. In 2006, along with the Singapore Section of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA Sg), we co-organised a follow-up event which took place during the island-city’s inaugural biennale. The online publication of the five editors’ selections is scheduled for 2009, with commentary and more editors’ selections to follow in 2010. So what does artwriting in the tropics have to do with the Arctic wood frog? And why, in an article about new year’s resolutions for 2008, am I talking about a project The Substation isn’t planning to present this year?

In winter, the wood frog literally freezes and turns into a lump of ice. It’s a process that takes several hours, during which the frog pumps its own antifreeze — made of specialised glycogens and proteins — into its cells to prevent them from becoming frozen completely solid. Eventually, the frog’s lungs and heart stop; so does any brain activity. The frog stays in this condition for three to five months. Then as the earth warms and thaws, so does our wood frog. Within a few hours, the creature springs back to life and leaps about.²

Not that Comparative Contemporaries needs one, but I’d like to nominate the wood frog as its mascot. CC has been one of those long-term undertakings that for stretches of time aren’t very active. Even though there are months when it has stopped moving, it’s definitely not dead, and as the project manager, I certainly haven’t abandoned it. To those who’ve been involved in one way or another — from participants of the conferences and workshops, to the editors, to our partner, the Asia Art Archive — evoking the spirit of the wood frog might be of some reassurance. We find a way to steal time from our busy schedules, we resume the work, and CC springs backs to life. Even though we aren’t planning an event in 2008, this year we’ll be doing behind-the-scenes preparations for its online publication in 2009.

Comparative Contemporaries may not be the most obvious example of what we do at The Substation, but it’s exemplary nonetheless. Our work is not always upfront or flashy. We invest in the foundations, not only of local art, but for art of the region. Our mission is to support, in the fullest sense, artists and artistic processes. That means paying attention to the larger contexts of art, and to the things that are not so obvious. Unfortunately, in a place like Singapore, what usually gets emphasised instead is the hype, the product, the bottom-line.

The Substation is often characterised as an alternative arts space. But that can be a misleading description of what we do. Yes, we are an independent organisation and not a big museum or a grand theatre venue. But I’d like to argue that more important than being seen as an alternative to the mainstream — of positioning ourselves in opposition to the blockbuster musicals on show at the Esplanade, for instance — is to stress our essential role in the development of local and regional art. Experimentation is the foundation of contemporary culture. Since we opened our doors in September 1990, examining the fundamental assumptions of art, culture, society and tradition has been the hallmark of The Substation.

Often, experimentation is associated with the young. Indeed, The Substation is a place for younger artists. Some of them go on to become famous, if not exactly mainstream. I remember, several years ago, watching the student films of one Royston Tan in our black box theatre. But it would be wrong to think of our space as only for the young. Rather, we believe that having a place like The Substation, where new people get a chance to present new perspectives, is essential to the development of contemporary art. Most importantly, it’s not just about giving them a chance to show; it’s about pushing them to go further, to critically reflect and challenge themselves.

Moreover, it’s just as important for the more established to experiment more. Last year’s SeptFest featured a solo show by the successful painter, Eric Chan. When Eric decided to take his work into a new direction, it was us he thought of as the right place for such a risk. His “Another Place, Another Time”, turned into one of the highlights of our visual arts programme in 2007 (see below). Given that our building is not as polished and fancy as the wealthier venues in town, we might be considered as home ground mainly for the rough and the raw. So it bears emphasising that we work as well with some of the best. We’re proud to count among our Associate Artists the likes of Simryn Gill, Ho Tzu Nyen, Lee Wen, Lim Tzay Chuen and Zai Kuning; proud of our history with people like Amanda Heng, Ray Langenbach, Vincent Leow, Susie Lingham, Matthew Ngui, Tang Da Wu and Suzann Victor. That’s a far from complete list of the many visual artists who’ve exhibited with us over the years. It doesn’t even begin to mention the many filmmakers, musicians, dancers, writers, theatremakers and poets who’ve made significant contributions to Singapore culture — who’ve made more than a few of those contributions in partnership with us.

An alternative title for this essay would be: “The Hedgehog and the Fox — two mascots for Singapore; a story of can or cannot”. In December 2002, in a memorial tribute to The Substation’s founder, the late Kuo Pao Kun, Janadas Devan spoke about the two animals. His reference was the twentieth-century philosopher Isaiah Berlin, though the proverb of the hedgehog and the fox dates back to the seventh-century B.C., to Archilochus, the Greek soldier-poet. In the sixteenth century, Konrad Gesner drew archetypal pictures of these creatures in his compendium of the animal kingdom, the Historia animalium of 1551 (his illustrations are shown below). Gesner himself relied on the Adagia, a compilation of adages and proverbs by the Renaissance intellectual, Erasmus of Rotterdam, first published in 1500. Erasmus explains: when the fox is pursued by hunters, it figures out different evasions each and every time. In contrast, when confronted by any would-be predators, the hedgehog does just one thing: it rolls up into a prickly ball of spines. Thus, “the fox devises many strategies; the hedgehog knows one great and effective strategy.”³

Janadas gave the proverb a different twist in applying it to our island city-state. Singaporeans are hedgehogs: the one thing we do, and do quite well, is make money. Here, we tend to think in straight lines, if not the bottom-lines I mentioned earlier. The colloquial “can or not” — used, say, when SMSing a friend about meeting for lunch — signifies not only the binary logic of “either–or”; it belies our mono-dimensional culture. As an emblematic Singaporean colloquialism, it suggests a disposition where one is disinclined to explore alternatives. Instead, you quickly ascertain whether you “can” — whether you have permission — or “cannot”. And all too often, as Janadas implied, ours is a society of the “cannot”, because we tend not to pursue the possible, only the profitable. Pao Kun was an inspired exception. He showed us alternative ways of being. He reminded us, taught us, to think we “can”.

A few years ago, Lim Tzay Chuen was invited to propose a project for a group exhibition. Among the possible sites, he chose to work at the National Institute of Education art gallery. NIE is not too far from a military firing range, and while on campus, one sometimes hears the sounds of guns booming. What Tzay Chuen wanted was to arrange for a sniper to shoot a single bullet from the firing range into a window placed on the NIE campus. Such an action would, of course, require considerable technical and logistical research and support — and most of all, permission. This is a country where an unauthorised discharge of a bullet may be punishable by death. Sad to say, the exhibition organisers and NIE did not take up the proposal. The action did not materialise.

Tzay Chuen’s firing a bullet for art, even if the request has been refused, remains a compelling proposition till this day. It has been written about, continues to be discussed — albeit within art circles — and was even the subject of a documentary by Ho Tzu Nyen.⁴ Tzay Chuen reminds us that one of the tasks of art is to “seriously entertain the possible”. His project is less about the logistics of closing down highways, the calculations of bullet trajectories, or the myriad safety arrangements. It is about getting people and institutions to say, “that seems impossible, but, hey, it’s provocative, and why not, let’s seriously consider it”. As expected, everyone in the process was quick to say no. But if at first you don’t succeed, keep at it. Tzay Chuen didn’t give up after the group exhibition came and went. When Tzay Chuen approached The Substation for assistance, true to our founder’s spirit, we said, “we can try”, and together persevered with NIE. They didn’t budge. Perhaps we’ll revisit the project again, after a number of years. This is a wood frog that can lie dormant for a long time.

There are some things that haven’t changed since Pao Kun founded The Substation. Art is still inseparably connected with social life, and its job of provoking us to think experimentally — to critically examine ourselves, our habits, assumptions, ideals and convictions — remains as important now as then. But many things have changed in Singapore since the 1990s. Back then, when The Substation got started, contemporary art felt “new”, and when artists experimented with questions of form and content, those experiments coincided with a sense of the opening up of civil society. Today, however, the feeling is that while contemporary art is far from fully mainstreamed here (where is it anywhere in the world?), it has become normalised. It’s the core of art school curricula, and the media report on it regularly — typically, for instance, by hyping big events like our participation at the Venice Biennale, or the Singapore Season in London. Artists continue to innovate today, but has our art become less urgent in spite of becoming more visible?

One way of approaching the question of relevance is to look at the publics for contemporary art. Although if you want a fuller measure of the health of a country’s cultural life, you should look beyond the numbers who buy tickets to theatre shows, or turn up at gallery openings. You should look to the people who read about art. I said experimentation is the foundation of contemporary culture; I should add, experimentation is a conversation — with our traditions, our contemporaries, our strangers and our selves. What separates readers from mere consumers is that the former care enough to invest themselves in art’s conversations. Yet the sad fact is that in Singapore we don’t read very much about local or regional art. Like I said, the material is out there — not all of it’s very good, but there’s much that’s worth reading. It’s just not that easy to find.

Producing material is only half the story; the task of dissemination and distribution continues long after the essays have been researched, written and published. In that regard, projects like Comparative Contemporaries are crucial for nurturing reading publics. CC will make texts easier to find, places them in context, and aims to encourage readers to search for more. CC operates, not in national terms, but in view of regional and international publics. Contemporary art does not develop in isolation, and neither does its audiences. It’s arguable that the growth of art readers in this corner of the world is hampered less by the lack of local publications than by the lack of regional platforms. That’s why the discontinuation of FOCAS is such a major loss.

Since the inauguration of this online magazine, we’ve positioned it as a public space with an unapologetically intellectual bent. FOCAS and CC are demanding reads — in contributing to our understanding about art, culture and society, their authors assume prior knowledge to begin with — which is what you would expect from something that goes in depth. As important as going in depth is, what’s needed in tandem is to increase access to such conversations. The Substation therefore supports initiatives which range from the demanding to the accessible. An example of the latter is Article (another joint project with AICA Sg). Launched in September 2007, Article: the SAS Companion was a single-issue newspaper that covered the 2007 Singapore Art Show. It was put together by a team of young writers, along with some more experienced hands, and featured interviews, previews, reviews, as well as opinion-editorial pieces on contemporary Singapore art. The newspaper originated as a central public sphere for both the dissemination of information and the expression of considered opinion. Article aspired to that ideal: the common meeting point that does not aim to lower the common denominator but to elevate it. In 2008, a new edition of Article will cover the second Singapore Biennale.

While FOCAS had a print run of 1,000 copies per issue, last year’s Article had a run of 15,000. Numbers are misleading. The readership of FOCAS in time will expand, as writers continue to refer to the work published in its volumes. More importantly, such numbers are misleading because they cannot measure the life and value of a public. This is a critical difference between publics and markets. It’s easy to quantify bums on seats, box office revenues, or sales figures. It’s much harder, if not impossible, to quantify the impact and significance that the relatively small public of FOCAS contributors, readers and supporters has had and will have over the years.

A big part of what’s wrong with how we desire art and culture is how we measure success. We have key performance indicators, KPIs, that privilege big numbers — of audiences, events, or sales — over practically everything else. We’re all complicit in the tyranny of these KPIs; we can’t just blame the bureaucrats or market forces. I’m not advocating that we shy away from assessing and evaluating artistic and cultural practices. Rather, we should be more proactive in setting the agenda of what are our “key indicators”.

What, for instance, is the value of all the corporate-sponsored art competitions in town? Do these programmes genuinely catalyse artmaking, raise standards of practice, or is their main purpose to serve as PR for the corporate sponsors, and to hype the image of Singapore as a global city for the arts? How have the powers-that-be evaluated the measure of these competitions? Have they, as part of their assessment, engaged artists, curators, artwriters and audiences in frank and extended conversations about the benefits of such programmes? To ask such questions is not to view corporations or the government cynically; it is to take them seriously. While here is not the place to delve into the many ways we could better assess government and corporate relations with the arts, one point deserves to be made. What we should be looking for in the development of the arts are depth and diversity (and by the latter, I don’t mean merely ensuring that we have the politically-correct ethnic representations of Chinese, Malay, Indian and Others).

Stills from Ho Tzu Nyen’s documentary on Lim Tzay Chuen’s bullet proposal; from Episode 4 of 4 X 4 — Episodes of Singapore Art.

I don’t know about you, but truth is, my new year’s resolutions are hardly ever “new”. More often than not, they are my last year’s resolutions. The most pressing thing, as each year turns into the next, is to finish the unfinished business of the year or years before. So many things to do, so many tasks one sets out to do, projects one has yet to complete. A lot of wood frogs. But we’re optimists here at The Substation; we believe we can, eventually, get it done. For starters, I’d like to produce a better Substation Magazine this year, with more frequent and timely updates (I wanted to finish this essay last month) and a new feature, Radio Substation (in my middle age, I’ve finally discovered the world of podcasting).

I’ve spoken about experimentation, conversation, and art in its social context — these themes will be the cornerstones of our artistic direction for the year. (Last year we emphasised outreach, corporate relations, and infrastructure.)⁵ If this year’s direction doesn’t sound all that different from the past, it’s because we think of our work in terms of the long view, and value continuity, even as we embrace, however reluctantly at first, the changes around us.

Lastly a few words about the rat. Among the animals I’ve mentioned in this essay, I suppose the rat has pride of place — it is the year of the rat, after all. But for what purpose would I want to employ the rat as a metaphor? The wood frog is associated with persistence, whereas the hedgehog, single-mindedness, and the fox, with being open, flexible and inventive. As mascots, each offers virtues. I don’t mean to imply that we in Singapore should become only fox-minded as opposed to being our usual hedgehog selves. We need to persevere, we need to have focus, and we need to be more adventurous. But what does the rat teach us? Actually, I’m not so interested in the rat in general than a particular kind, the lab rat.

Lab rats, of course, are used for scientific experiments. (We’ve got a policy against using live animals for art at The Substation, and some of us in the office are also critical of animal testing.) Looking up the rat on the internet, I was surprised to learn a few things. The common brown rat, a.k.a. the Norwegian rat, or Rattus norvegicus, doesn’t come from Norway at all, but from Asia. Today’s most popular lab rat strains are descendants from the Wistar Institute albino brown rats, which were developed in the early 20th century. Lab rats are calmer and less likely to bite than their cousins in the wild. They also breed earlier, produce more offspring, and can tolerate greater crowding. But I haven’t been able to find out why lab rats are white. Were they first selected for aesthetic reasons? Or is it a coincidence that albino rats happen to be more docile? If anyone knows, I’d appreciate if they told me.

Rats are useful to science because, as model organisms, they share a number of features with humans; tests on them are biologically relevant to us. Therefore, in a sense, they are not just lab rats, they are rat-humans. They give us knowledge about ourselves. And yet their laboratory treatment is possible only because of a wilful denial of this bond with humanity. (On a tangential note, the Greek philosopher Aristotle claimed to have discovered the crucial distinction between “us” humans and “them” animals. We laugh. They don’t. Laughter, for Aristotle, is so important to humans, because it is at that moment of the first laugh as an infant that one is ensouled. Scientists have conducted experiments with lab rats to suggest otherwise; they tickled the creatures, and recorded what might be high frequency laughter, inaudible to our ears.)⁶

In some ways, art is like a laboratory. It may be inextricably connected with life, but art is artifice. Precisely through its techniques of defamiliarisation, of taking something everyday and making it strange and new again, it shows us how profound and moving life really is — or something like that. The lesson of the lab rat is a tragic one. Perhaps it is also a cautionary tale: reminding us that what we should want from our art is the opposite of what inoculates us. Art should help make all of us more human.

Eric Chan, Da Vinci 1485, Chan 2007 from “Another Place. Another Time.”

1. Visit www.aaa.org.hk for more information about the Asia Art Archive. [↩]
2. For more on the wood frog, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_frog or Christopher Mattison’s Frogs and Toads of the World. [↩]
3. See Stephen Jay Gould’s The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister’s Pox. [↩]
4. See Ho Tzu Nyen’s 4 X 4 — Episodes in Singapore Art, Episode 4. [↩]
5. See “Learning to Live with the Tunnel”, http://www.substation.org/mag/editorial/learning-to-live-with-the-tunnel-2.html [↩]
6. Check out this great podcast on “laughter” from WYNC Radio Lab: http://blogs.wnyc.org/radiolab/2008/02/25/laughter/ [↩]