Research projects and publications

This book chapter studies arts higher education in postcolonial Singapore. Since the tail end of the twentieth century, Singapore has seen an astonishing investment, development, and growth in the cultural and creative industries aimed at creating a renaissance city-state. Singapore with a world-class transport, public housing, financial, and industrial systems also boasts a world-class educational system placing it at pole position above most developed economies in the Western world for its quality education and high literacy rate amongst its citizens.  This chapter demonstrates the critical link between arts higher education and economic output and how Singapore's renowned and established arts schools - Lasalle College of the Arts (1984) and the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (1938) - remain central to the creative economy as producers of art, artists, and designers, even as local universities and polytechnics jump into the fray to supply much needed manpower to fuel the creative economy. This chapter first maps the development of the creative economy through key cultural policies and locates the place of arts higher education in Singapore. It demonstrates that the weighted hand of cultural policy, whilst critical to the establishment of a creative economy, is largely passive on the place of artist education within the world-class conventional educational system.

Citation:
Purushothaman, Venka. "Cultural Policy, Creative Economy and Arts Higher Education in Renaissance Singapore." Higher Education and the Creative Economy: Beyond the Campus. Edited by Roberta Comunian and Abigail Gilmore. New York: Routledge, 2016, pp. 201-220.

Using 'Forest Project' by contemporary Chinese artist Xu Bing as a case study, this article investigates how the ideology of Ziran (the Chinese version of nature) has been promoted through the practice of art at a community and international level. Mainly focusing on the first two editions of the project in Kenya (2008) and Shenzhen (2009), the paper argues that the artist's approach to the environment of others and his own demonstrates his frustration towards cultural hegemony while drawing attention to the notion of sustainability proposed by Ziran, which is built on an independent and self-generating system.

Citation:
Wang, Ruobing. "Xu Bing's Cross-Cultural Fertilization: Ziran in Transplanting." Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, vol. 3, no. 3, 2016, pp. 325-335.

A theory of Cybernetic-Existentialism is proposed in the light of emerging themes within contemporary arts and performance that appear to relate simultaneously to both fields and to fuse them. Cybernetic-Existentialist ideas are also increasingly prevalent within everyday life and popular culture, and the Disney film Frozen (2013) is examined as an illustration. Case studies are presented of performances by The Wooster Group, Societas Raffaello Sanzio, Jennifer Ringley, Paul Sermon and Steve Dixon, and analysed with reference to the concepts and innovations of cyberneticians including Gregory Bateson and Existentialist philosophers including Jean-Paul Sartre and Gabriel Marcel. A number of philosophical notions are explored including Bateson's 'the difference that makes a difference', Marcel's disponibilité (availability), and Sartre's discourses on 'the look', Nothingness, and being-for-others. The argument highlights the complementary and intersecting concerns of cybernetics and Existentialism and how fusing knowledge from these fields can throw light on fundamental issues and developments within arts, culture and everyday life including interactivity, telepresence, frames, questioning, Angst, and 'separation with communion'.

Citation:
Dixon, Steve. "Cybernetic-Existentialism." International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, vol. 12, no. 1, 2016, pp. 11-30. 

What does it mean to be a global designer of tomorrow? The framework of design education has to respond to the changes in the landscape. The characteristics layered by sequential, experiential and iterative learning, and pedagogical knowledge and understanding are not acquired passively but in an active manner through personal experience and experiential activities; and that learning is based on problem-solving and an exploration of a particular line of inquiry and an active engagement with ideas. As part of studying the development of design education, the Linking Cities, Designing Experiences project underpins a critical inquiry into the issues of urbanism and urbanity. The city encapsulates engaging multifaceted insights and intriguing phenomenon. Students from Singapore and Seoul share different ideas on themes and subjects based on the ‘city'. This project includes ideas of the urban typology, the urban environment, the social settings of cities and their physical infrastructures. The information sharing and collaborative ethnographic research under pinned the critical discourse, as the students are inhabitants of two different cities. The research puts forward an ‘Open Design' concept in learning and teaching design through a cross-cultural design experience in the urban. Ideas related to iterative participatory design, cross-disciplinary design practice, experimental place-making and ‘reflection-in-action' (Schön,1983) formed the important pillars to this project. Designers alike meet to deliberate, collaborate and forge new relationships and exchange ideas with cross- cultural references and insights. This research proposes methods and approaches that could manifest in promoting pedagogical discourse for the future.

Citation:
Hidayah, Nur and Michael Chen. "The Education Flâneur - a Global Studio, 2 Cities, 5 Years, 200 Students and Communities of Practice." Cumulus Hong Kong Proceeding 2016: Cumulus Working Papers 33/16, 2016, pp. 158-162.