Hard State, Soft City Conference

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https://ari.nus.edu.sg/Event/Detail/7cf552ea-e88e-43a9-a69b-b6f73685ea71

Notes


17 March 2016

not really a summary so much as random notes taken whilst listening

Wee Wan Ling, On the Contemporary and Contemporary Art: Culture and the 1980s in Singapore

  • gap btwn notion of contemporary and contemporary art in sg
  • periodisation: 1980s
  • disjunctive states / the state would need to “invent contemporary art” in order to prove it was not a cultural desert
  • leading to a post medium condition of the arts
  • two strands observed? - 1 conceptualism / statement making 2 activism / realism
  • not mutually exclusive but having shared concerns
  • what does the post colonial imply for artistic production
  • commitment to development not separate from cold war
  • Not the Singapore River organised by Arbour Fine Arts, susie queh, tang dawu earthworks notions of the i-ching

The Singapore Freeport as Schrodinger's Cat

  • Freeport as art hub as imagined regional market - imagined conduit and site for wealth accumulation
  • nomadic capital

http://conversations.e-flux.com/t/freeportism-and-post-internet-art/3343

It is safe to say, however, that never before now have so many artworks been produced to remain hidden, all enclosed in disenchanted wooden boxes, suspended in a permanent circuit of exchange, in a place called a “freeport” because it is free of customs duties and taxes of all kinds. Since no one is allowed to see the art, it is also free of audience and spectators, an anti-theatron; it is a place of un-seeing. We must examine the conflict between the forces that create new ways of representing and being seen, and the relations that just as quickly place these out of sight...

The term “post-internet” did not spread because it was well defined. On the contrary, its ambivalence and its openness allowed it to resonate widely. Its prefix “post-” is borrowed from notions like the “postmodern” or the “post-digital.” “Post-” used to mean “after,” but now it also includes “beyond” and “deriving from.” It confirms and denies at the same time, exerting a kind of double bind. It says: we belong to the internet, knowing that the internet is over. We are digital, but it does not matter, because that is just what everybody is. “Post-” also presumes to know the border of something: post-internet means we believe that the end of the event called “the internet” is somewhere in sight, in the same way that postmodernism served first of all to consolidate modernism into something we could have conceivably moved beyond.

Post-internet represents the latest episode in the long trajectory of artistic responses to shifts in the forces of representation and the evolution of media technology. We can characterize these responses in one of four ways: 1) the aforementioned metaphorical appropriation; 2) “technologism”; 3) tech-derived projects and practices, or “derivatives”; and 4) tech-related projects and practices, or “relatives.”


  • "no inventory in the freeport"
  • FREEPORT EXEMPTION INVENTORY

Comment for kat & robin:

  • DONT APOLOGISE
  • SLOW DOWN!!!!!!
  • TEXT TOO SMALL!!!!
  • speak into the mike... no waving it around........
  • the sharp sighs of people seeing a slide full of words their heads supported by their arms = exhalation in preparation for inhaling the dense mass of words?
  • my interest lies more in "culture of interpretations" / poetics as means for understanding complexity


weng choy, The Address of Art and the scale of other places

http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/lifestyle/arts-entertainment/artists-without-borders

  • The Address of Art and the scale of other places
  • a quote taken out of context Helms on Heman: "Art history has less and less of a hold on the scene, and critics don't matter anymore ... People are being influenced by things at a much faster pace, and what you put out can be seen on Instagram immediately anywhere in the world.” - http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/lifestyle/arts-entertainment/artists-without-borders
  • singapore’s anxiety defines it more than its aspirations?
  • is singapore good enough? it yearns for arrival on the world stage.
  • but this. does it result in the erasure of place?
  • How can a singapore artist be famous as a Singapore artist?
  • “Local"?
  • Address - a thing to speaking to but also about the local. one addresses ____
  • how to teach history - the past or the present

LWC - Consider these two hypothetical classes in history: in one, the teacher prepares the students to go on a trip to the past, as if it were a foreign country;12 in the other, the teacher guides the students through the present, showing them signs of how history is still everywhere, there to be read by the attentive seeker — as if the proper tense of “history” is “now.” For me, thinking about the contemporary is very much a detour into thinking about history, about the fullness of our present moment. In contrast, when one looks at cultural policy discourse in Singapore, one can see how future-predicated it is as if the nation is in such a hurry to get to the next stage....

  • cultural decline
  • stuart hall
  • the ghost voice of lee weng choy..... the real man muted in right hand corner of the screen... speaking of broadcasting....
  • consider the person browsing a bookstore / contrast with everyday social media/ the latter = transactional economy (i give u attention if you give me attention)
  • scale is about being in the world. different places have different scales.
  • the true purpose of literature is to provide images that will come back to you, if you are so lucky as to grow old.


  • allowing digressions
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