The opening of the National Museum of Singapore presents an opportunity and platform to explore the varying perspectives and stances that contemporary cultural practitioners and artists have adopted in response to issues of tradition and history. The current dynamism of the cities of Asia have its social roots in the complex variety of intersecting cultural forces that characterise urban centres with deep and rich histories like Bangkok, Taipei, New Delhi, Singapore, among others. In theatre, film, dance, music and the visual arts, the contemporary is haunted by the ghosts of history. Like Harold Bloom argues in the field of poetry, the anxiety of influence is inescapable - each contemporary artist creates his or her own identity through an argument with the one(s) that came before. The present cultural landscape is composed of sedimented layers of old and new processes simultaneously. Revival, rejection, and reinvention are all possible stances towards history. Tradition and history can be seen as a cradle, source of ideas, origin and even parent.
The Performance and Cinémathèque strands of the festival tackles the difficult and complex issues of the relevance of these cultural traditions to contemporary society. Core events will be opportunities for the people of Singapore - both artistes and the public, to develop their own meaningful interpretations of vernacular cultural forms found in Singapore. The performance traditions of Chinese opera and puppetry, Malay Bangsawan and Indian musical forms are recontextualised rather than simply reproduced. In addition to the performances, there will also be accompanying workshop demonstrations, seminars and talks. These forms found in Singapore's cultural make-up will be presented alongside other forms found in the larger Southeast Asian and Asian region.
The installations in Interrogating Time, Hidden Histories looks at the process of conceptualising history through the visual. Here attention turns to the physical presence of the National Museum and also the idea of the Museum in its specific context. While the permanent exhibitions deal seriously with the pre-colonial, colonial to national history of the island, the Museum site itself reflects this through its strategic location at the foot of Fort Canning, where the ruling elite of 14th century Singapore resided. With the transition from colony to nation, the history of this Museum itself evolves in tandem. The 'ghosts' of the Museum, with its 19th century origins as the Raffles Museum, collecting the ethnology and natural history of the region (read British colonial territories) is ripe for artistic response. The redeveloped National Museum juxtaposes a 19th century colonial building - gazetted a national monument - with a 21st century modernist glass and steel extension. The architectural concept put forth by the architects, that the explicit transparency of the latter is to showcase the beauty of the historical building, forms another basis for intervention.
– Tan Boon Hui (Festival Programmer)
(Source: National Museum of Singapore Programme)