Making the most of our talent

The celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of Singapore’s independence – SG50 – are now in full swing following last Sunday’s grand national day parade.
 Now it’s the turn of the renamed the Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA) to delight both residents of the city state and visitors.
 Formerly known as the Singapore Arts Festival, the event brought many memorable performances to the region including the British Royal Ballet’s “Swan Lake”. Audiences are aware though, that classical ballet will probably no longer form part of the programme. That’s mainly because the festival is now independently run, with the support of and supervision by National Arts Council, and festival director Ong Keng Sen has more freedom in curating the event.
 “The festival is not for everybody: we can’t reach 6 million people [who live in Singapore],” he says.
 “SIFA is a festival that aims to offer to those who aspire to something different. It’s clear to me that it’s this kind of audience we want to have a dialogue with.”
 In this auspicious year, the theme is “Post-Empires”. In addition to foreign works like a concert of Aboriginal songs by Australia’s Black Arm Band and the “Winterreise” concert with images by South African artist William Kentridge, the focus is on local artists who have received substantial amount of support from SIFA to create special works they cannot stage in their normal performance season.
 “I choose the artists by looking at their whole output, rather than their last work. I first chose 50 artists and then I had meetings with them, watched them in rehearsals and followed them for a while. I asked them to put forward the manifesto of their company’s philosophy – why they have been doing it like this for many years and where they see themselves going in the future. It’s like self-reflexivity. For example, Drama Box has been working in forum theatre style focusing on the issues concerning Singaporeans and the idea of public space and the Bukit Brown Cemetery came up in our discussion,” he explains.
 Indeed, the audience can watch Drama Box’s work ‘It Won’t Be Too Long: The Cemetery’ either at dawn or dusk in this very graveyard.
 Ong himself will also restage a unique six-hour durational performance “The Incredible Adventures of Border Crossers”, commissioned for “Singapore en France – le festival” at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, with non-performers of various nationalities, mostly middle-class people who are, unlike the working class residents, well out of the spotlight.
 “I want to celebrate life and that’s why it’s called ‘adventures’. I chose the words ‘border crossers’ as they’re closer to everybody who’s doing that everyday in a very unconscious way. I notice that many politicians regard migration as an issue, and so we’ll never surpass the challenges of migration. By working on this work, I realise that inter-culturalism is in everyday life and I’m interested in the ‘Singaporer’, the way there are New Yorkers and Londoners, not Singaporeans.”
 As for the next edition of SIFA, Ong says, “The theme is supposed to be future trajectory, so I’m thinking that after a political season this year, it should be about aesthetics and beauty, more popular culture perhaps. The problem is it’s very difficult to find anything of good quality in popular art and entertainment. When I look for works, good quality specifically means they are not being supported by commercial avenues. So, I think the focus will be on art for the future. A question is how we can continue to speak through, and with, art. In the future, art may be a way in which we can see the value, or beauty, or humanity.
 “We’d like to also expand the commission to include interesting works by artists in other Southeast Asian countries. It will be more difficult than how other festivals and theatres commission works in Europe and the US. Another problem is that in Southeast Asia art is stuck with national identity.”

The writer wishes to thank Tay Tong and Eileen Chua for all assistance.

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- SIFA 2015, with the main theme “Post-Empires” continues through September 19 at various venues. There are both free-admission and ticketed programmes. For more details, visit SIFA.sg, also on facebook, Twitter and Instagram.