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ABSTRACT
The socio-political transformations of East and Southeast Asia, their direct impact on the changing norms of censorship, cultural and urban policies, and on growing surveillance have led people involved with the socially engaged artistic and creative practices to develop varied tactics and strategies to renegotiate the (im)material boundaries set for them. These mainly discursive, spatial, temporal and aesthetic forms of affective civic engagement aim to disseminate alternative envisionings without necessarily having a directly antagonistic agenda towards the establishment. Inspired by the recent discourses of affect and its potentiality not only in arts but more broadly in temporary, human/nonhuman encounters, and also in the urban environment, I propose that this kind of liminal and fluid self-positioning between ‘underground(s)’ and mainstream could be better understood as ‘affective paragrounds’. As an organic and continuously reconfiguring rhizomatic translocal network of protagonists – and their (in)tangible spaces – affective paragrounds are premised on mixed-method temporary approaches and alliances of communal collaborations with continuously changing positions, roles and strategies. By paragrounding themselves in ‘in-between-ness’ of private and public, they function on the borderline of (in)visibility to re-envision gradual transformations of socio-political and cultural conditions, at the same time raising awareness of freedom of expression, participatory citizenship and civil society formation.
Acknowledgments
The author wish to express her warmest gratitude to everyone who has generously shared their precious time and insights on arts, policies and citizenship in Singapore during her study. Every bit of information has enabled me to understand more about the endless intricacies of these issues.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes on contributor
Minna Valjakka is Senior Lecturer of Art History in the University of Helsinki. Her long-term research focuses on (un)authorized artistic and creative practices in urban public spaces in East and Southeast Asia. Through an interdisciplinary and comparative approach bridging Art Studies and Urban Studies, she examines urban creativity as a response to the distinctive trajectories of geopolitical circumstances, developments in arts and cultural policies, and translocal mediations. Dr Valjakka has published extensively, including journal articles, book chapters and exhibition catalogues and co-edited volumes such as Visual Arts, Representations, and Interventions in Contemporary China. Urbanized Interface (AUP, 2018).
Notes
1 An image of the triptych is available on Xing Danwen’s homepage.
2 In Chinese art, depicting female nudity has not gained such popularity as in the Euro-American arts. It was not until the beginning of the twentieth century that nude images created from a live model as art emerged. Such art was forbidden from the mid-1950s to the late 1970s. Even today, nudity remains a sensitive theme, and such artworks can be censored in many East and Southeast Asian countries.
3 In mainland China, such examples include but are not limited the 1960s and 1970s when some mainland Chinese artists continued to paint secretly in unaccepted styles and themes allowed to be exhibited and studied only much later when regulations were altered. See e.g. Gao (Citation2008), Shen and Andrews (Citation2013), Hawks Citation2017.
4 On censorship and its changing implementations, see e.g. Kaur and Mazzarella (Citation2012), Cather (Citation2012), Hutchinson (Citation2013), Saw (Citation2013) and Chotpradit (Citation2018).
5 Regardless of the continuous financial support from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, Para/Site’s self-identity was based on independence, with fundraising from other sources too and with a critical edge even towards HKADC policies. It was a private space that openly welcomed visitors (Leung, interview, see also Leung Citation1996).
6 Chow’s approach is informed by de Certeau’s (Citation1984, pp. 35–37, 55) understanding of strategy as the means of power to re-enhance itself, and tactic as ‘a calculated action’.
7 Freedom of speech and engagement in literary and artistic creation are mentioned in The Basic Law (Citation2017) in III, Articles 27 and 34. Furthermore, art exhibitions or performance art events do not need a licence unlike, e.g. screening films in Hong Kong.
8 Some changes in tolerance and support for arts have become evident during and after the Umbrella Movement in 2014, and the impact of the new National Security Law set in July 2020 remains to be seen.
9 For an illuminating account of insights on contemporary art in Singapore since the 1970s, see Say and Jin (Citation2016).
10 For a detailed discussion, see Langenbach (Citation2016 [Citation1996]).
11 Part IV of the Constitution of the Republic of Singapore focuses on ‘Fundamental rights’, and the Article 14 on ‘Freedom of speech, assembly and association’ also includes clauses that enables the Parliament restrict these rights based on, national security, morality and public order, among others. See SSO (Citation2020a).
12 For a revised edition from 2014, see SSO (Citation2020b).
13 Singapore Police Force (Citation2019) provides detailed information on public entertainment licensing. For Arts Entertainment and Films classification and licencing, see IMDA’s (Citation2020) website.
14 Three more events were organized in 2017 under the title Sunday at the Shed.
15 Sun Wukong (孫悟空), aka the Monkey King, is a protagonist in the sixteenth-century classic Chinese novel, The Journey to West (西遊記).
16 A substantial overview of the history is provided in Wong (Citation2015).