A CASE OF SINGAPORE POLITICAL REFLUX

<strong>THE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND AESTHETICS JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY</strong> presented <strong>PERFORMING STATE A CASE OF SINGAPORE POLITICAL REFLUX</strong> a lecture by <strong>WILLIAM RAY LANGENBACH</strong> (Professor of Performance Studies, University of the Arts, Helsinki) <strong>on Monday February 1, 2016</strong> The ephemeral and ungraspable moment of performance has ramifications that extend far beyond its immediate time and place. During 1993-94, performance art and Forum Theater provided an arena for an historically important collision of desires for what Singapore civil society should or should not be. A small group of ruling Peoples Action Party (PAP) politicians, working the levers of the state apparatus, confronted a smaller group of progressive intellectuals. The politicians had significant administrative and political power at their disposal, while the artists, performers and writers manifested their creative power by imagining a more egalitarian Singapore that did not yet exist.