Singapore Fringe Festival
Photo of Tim Jeeves from his performance piece Should I be in my bodi? Photo by Hira Osman
Tim Jeeves recently came back from Singapore with some thought-provoking questions about cultural interpretations of disability art.
So, I ask you; when is a disability art festival not a disability art festival? To which the answer, given in chorus of a thousand laughing voices, is, When it's the 2007 Singapore Fringe Festival
. Now perhaps that's being a little harsh, and I'm being a little Anglo-centric in my definition of the term disability art, or even a little conservative in how closely a festival needs to relate to its theme. But when I am confronted with a series of video works such as those I saw by Tim Etchells that have no bearing to disability (or are related in only the most mind-stretchingly convoluted way), and where even the paragraph in the program headed The Relation of the Work to Disability makes no reference whatsoever to its title, one is forced to ask some questions as to why exactly he was invited to participate in the festival.
Even before this my relationship with Singapore had been a bit strained. Singapore's Media Development Authority (the nation's censorship board) had told me a few months before my trip that I could not perform naked since our consultation reveals a discomfort with members of the public drawing freely on the naked body of a sick person
. Aside from indignation at the restriction on my artistic freedom I was disgusted enough to consider not going at the implication that writing on the body of a non-sick person was somehow more acceptable. And where the idea that I'm sick came from I'm not sure… But after much internal debate off I went, revenging myself on the authorities by printing the above text on the seat of the boxer shorts I had to wear, and an interesting experience of Singapore's take on disability art was gained.
Of course, not all the work was so independent from the festival's theme as the Etchells' video pieces mentioned above. The work I saw from some of the other British artists was particularly striking. Larry Dunstan's evocative and personality-filled portraits dominated the subway into the Jendela (Singapore's main art centre for theatre and music - think the Barbican but in the Far East). Julia Cassim's documentary film, The Insightful Eye, showed off the work of a selection of partially sighted UK artists to good effect, though the poor sound reproduction of the video in the gallery meant that a great deal of the intention was lost, and though I, with true journalistic dedication, made the effort to persevere with it, I was left wondering how much interest the piece would have generated in a more casual viewer.
United Nations, by the Portuguese (though London based) artist Monica de Miranda, was another piece of work to stretch my associations of the word disability a little further than I am accustomed. Taking members of the public for a ride in a wheelchair decorated with a sequinned Stars and Stripes, she facilitated a one to one performance discussing the disabling effects of globalisation on the world. At first I was disorientated and a bit put off by the piece, after all, the program stated that it was a work dealing with issues of social disability, which I, naturally enough, assumed was a reference to the social model. After a while though the metaphor she was suggesting began to present itself to me in more depth. There is a similar demonstration of selfish disregard by both the able-bodied in their construction of the world around us and the rich world's manipulation of the rest of the globe. An interesting analogy that can be taken a fair way before it breaks down. Whether such a comparison was her explicit intention I'm not sure. If it was, much more could have been made of it in the conversation we had.
last updated: 2007-05-08 18:10:36
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tags : international review festival