Singapore Biennale 2008 – Part 2
The South Beach Development site for the 2008 Biennale has proved a much more interesting exhibition venue than City Hall. The worn-out, lived-in environment of the former Beach Road Camp gives considerable life to the works, whereas City Hall drained it out – that place felt like a merely pragmatic use of what was otherwise a uninhabitable vacuum – too small as a public space, sealed in by a lack of natural light, and lacquer-wood decoration too tacky even in its heyday.
Then there’s certainly the novelty factor. The former Beach Road Camp has been open to the public much less often compared to the former government building. The Art Deco building and open areas has been able accommodate much larger installation pieces, viewable from multiple angles – such as Heman Chong’s One Hundred Years of Solitude.
The pieces at South Beach comprise more social/historical commentary types of works than conceptual pieces. The former include The Farmer and the Helicopters (a video/installation reconstruction of Vietnamese civilians’ experiences with American Huey choppers), September Sweetness (a Buddhist stupa made of sugar), and four short films by Aktan Abdykalykov–the last piece I’ll refer to collectively as the “Living Room”, just because the organisers put the films on a TV and a sofa in the room. “Living Room” was a particularly memorable (despite that I don’t usually think much of video installations) – the weirdly domestic experience of sharing a couch with a stranger, in an abandoned room, watching foreign-language short films on TV, struck me as a delicious irony. It certainly didn’t hurt that the films were surprisingly well-directed (but my enjoyment had nothing to do with that – is that a commentary on the nature of contemporary art appreciation or what?)
I ought to mention there were also several requisite, extraordinarily craftless pieces, such Layla Juma Rashid’s Beauty and the Beast. Most people’s imagination are already rich enough to regularly see shapes in chewed gum and clouds. Putting a used Wrigley’s behind a perspex case, then telling people they need to look harder is really the height of condescension.
