The initial hook was Makoto Aida's Harakiri School Girls (2006; Painting on canvas, 150 x 200 cm) which portrays 'slender young high school girls... happily committing ritual suicide in an orgy of blood and entrails.' (Roger McDonald, ESG, p. 122) Aida has reworked his original 1999 work (acrylic on canvas, 169 x 240 cm, ESG, p. 123) specially for the Singapore Biennale. The skin tones of the girls have been replaced with a uniform neon yellow and the imposing painting glowed eerily, backlit in a darkened basement room of the National Museum.

Being a fan of Japanese culture, I enjoyed how it referenced popular culture like the movie Battle Royale and anime/manga stereotypes in the range of school uniforms. But most of all, the blend of traditional techniques with a modern twist always gets my admiration. There were numerous art historical references that make up the work, like how the sprays of blood resembled Hokusai's Great Wave woodblock prints, the subtle eroticism of bijin-ga (beautiful women paintings) and in the fine ink brush strokes that make up the creases of the girls' uniforms. The blend of modern and traditional is further highlighted by the contrasting fonts for the title on the right corners and the artist's signatures on the left corners. Particularly captivating was the utter serenity of the central figure and focus of the painting; a ganguro kogal with her blue eye shadow highlighted with silvery sparkles; her katana held high as she prepares to execute her duty as second to the girl the foreground's left; the deliverance of the coup de grace of decapitation that follows disembowelment: an angelic Mona Lisa of death. The next time I get a chance to visit Tokyo, would certainly want to see the original and other works at the Mizuma Art Gallery.

The late Earl Lu opined that a great piece of art should have the qualities of being big (da), heavy (zhong) and eccentric (guai). Big certainly applies to Mariko Mori's Tom Na H-iu (2006, mixed media installation), a 2m plus tall translucent obelisk of light with its patterns linked via the internet with the neutrino detection facility deep underground in Kamioka, Japan. Hiroshi Sugimoto's The Last Supper (2000, black and white photograph, 118.1 x 833.2 cm) has a depth given to it by three dimensional quality of the persons depicted and an uncompromising life-likeness. Among the other works works at the National Museum, the works of Chatchai Puipia and Jose Legaspi made an impression on me for their disturbing strangeness. The latter's series consisting of The Sea, The Corridor, The Dining Room and Night Light (all 2006) evoked a latent sense of threat amidst the quiet desperation of everyday surroundings, made sinister and grotesque with a single gothic detail.

Muhanned Cader's charcoal drawings (Loudspeaker) and Yee I-Lann's Sulu Stories didn't do much for me but it was the venue that produced a surprisingly strong recollection of events from more than a decade ago. The former was drawn onto the walls of the now empty room of the Chairman, Public Service Commission and the latter was displayed in what had been PSC Interview Rooms 1-3. I wasn't prepared for the surge of memories of tension, anxiety and ever so mild horror as I stepped straight into the Chairman's room; the memories of being grilled by the three PSC panel members, bending in the gathering storm of their displeasure at the initial direction of my answer about the Flor Contemplacion case, scarmbling to safety via a hardline non-interference in our domestic law assertion, exiting unceremoniously through the side door. And being summoned one fine day, from camp, to one of the interview rooms (how small they look now!) to be told that my scholarship offer was being withdrawn due to this and that.

But in any case, it was a great opportunity to visit a public building which had felt like a tempat larangan (forbidden ground). I was certainly surprised at how small some of the courtrooms were and by how vividly green the vermillion reading surfaces were. In one of these courtrooms was Jason Wee's 1987 (2006; multi-media installation) which juxataposes, through the year they happened, his recollections of his great grandmother's death and Operation Spectrum: 'a private affair and a public one, different and seemingly apart are woven together... memory is revived yet chided for its fallibility' (June Yap, ESG, p. 112) The walls are surrounded by scenes of the waves lapping gently against a beach at dusk, the tables are occupied by laptops with their screens on the work surfaces and the keyboards perpendicular in the air, the audio recording of funeral chants are interspersed by voices that contest the official accounts that link the arrested to Marxism or liberation theology. Looming over the entire scene, from the judge's bench, and written on that bench in chalk are quotes from ministers on why the plot was dangerous and had to be put down.

Fresh from reading about how Singapore must be kept safe, one exits the judge's dias to immediately come face to face with the centre piece of Jagath Weerasinghe's The Reading Room: Snake and Mics and 1000 Shivas (2006; mixed media installation), a large 1 x 2 m piece depicting, on a yellow (?) background, a brightly coloured mass of serpents slithering towards a massed bunch of microphones, spilling out--through forked tongues--their sussurous whispers towards so many fungal growth-like projections. Weerasinghe was commenting on 'the rise of religious politics in Sri Lanka' (Sharmini Pereira, ESG, p. 114) but the way the exhibits were arranged sequentially draw unmistakeable parallels between politicians (snakes) and their messages through the mass media (mics). But I suppose there is an amibiguity in art (as well as a limit to eyeballs and accessibility) that allows politicians to turn a blind eye to damning criticism, or perhaps even to be a guest of honour awarding a prize to a painting that calls Singapore a dictatorship.

Rather less subtle but still quite beautifully haunting and provocative was Jonathan Allen's Tommy Angel #1-#3, #5-#10 (2005-6; black and white photographs, 122 x 91 cm each) which explores the relation between Christianity and magic through a series of images that depict a performer/preacher presenting Christianity as a conjuring trick. Arranged as a labyrinth, one passage seemingly leads to freedom and peace depicted by doves but ends in a dead end of Death and the Beast. One supposes that this is not so much a criticism of Christianity the religion but more plausibly the uses and abuses of the religion for unsavoury ends by smooth and slick characters and how that may come to tears in the end. Reflecting on this exhibit reinforced to me the vacuity of the OB markers on race and religion: there may be times when we need to ask ourselves and each other very fundamental questions that may cause offence and unhappiness but the negotiation of which are crucial to the health of our society and polity.

The other exhibit that deals with another OB marker subject that of race or what I prefer to call ethnicity was Nuha Asad's Faces with One Feature (2006, mixed media installation), a comment on multi-culturalism. It was striking how faces were covered with red satin cloth but yet this facelessness reinforced a notion of common humanity that is the red of blood, regardless of the colour of skin, manner of dress or other differences in details. Yet as often been pointed out in studies of identity politics, it's those minute differences that are all important.

There were a couple of works that tread on international relations. Jeon Joonho's In God We Trust (2004, digital animation, 8 min 10 sec) and THE WHITE HOUSE (2005, digital animation, 32 min 16 sec) were particular favourites with visitors who guffawed at how the Korean artist displayed boundless confidence bordering on arrogance in stamping his ardent Korean nationalism on icons of US political history.

Finnish artist group YKON's M8--Summit of Micronations, Singapore (2006, mixed media installation) is politely described as exploring 'Singapore as a conference, a forum, a meeting place where utopias are generated.' (Irmeli Kokko, ESG, p. 118) Even a casual perusal of the exhibit surely confirms that the exhibit depicts Singapore as dystopia and a bit of a joke--which seems to have come to pass given the clumsy handling of the CSO issue at the IMF/WB conference. There is a video film of the conference proceedings (eight people seated around an octogonial table laughing uproariously for the entire duration), the set of the above-mentioned video which groups Singapore with entities of questionable sovereignty like the Principality of Sealand and the Kingdoms of Elgaland and Vargaland, a little red M8 booklet which describes the Singapore representative as:

Lim Kong Soon (76)
Retired Politician, Republic of Singapore

Lim Kong Soon strongly believes in progressivism (constant human progress--there are always things to improve), elitism (the world is a social pyramid in which members of an elite rule by virtue of their superior talent), geneticism (talent and intelligence are inherited and can be improved by eugenics) and cultural evolutionism (culture is a transient and ephemeral entity--a tool to be wielded from above by a progressive elite). While these four beliefs are so embedded in his thinking that one could call them faith, LKS is ready to abandon any other idea or system in exchange for new ideas as long as they promise improvement towards his Confucian ideal * [Records of the Rites, Book IX, The Commonwealth State]. He praises air-conditioning as the ultimate invention which brought control, comfort, and prosperity to South-East Asia. The air-conditioner provides a suitable metaphor for LKS's vision of society. pp. 10-11 (c) YKON, Helsinki, 2006

YKON definitely seems to be a fan of Cherian George's book. Yet somehow I can't really laugh like the actors in the film, even if only at the absurdity of being Singaporean, and being Singapore I instinctly worry if perhaps laughing at myself (and by extension the country and our leaders) might also be verboten.

Tanglin Camp was my last stop of that afternoon and thus the most rushed. I had only been there once when it was still Loewen Road camp and the site of various parts of HQ Medical Corps. Definitely a place to visit only if to imbide the military history of Singapore from the British era, before the entire complex is transformed into the swanky antique and yuppie wine bars of Dempsey Road. I'm still rather cross with myself for failing to find Makoto Aida's The video of man calling himself Binladen staying in Japan (Single channel video, 8 min) but I was suitably aghast at Com&Com's The Adventures of Mocmoc and Mermer (2006, mixed media installation) which features a whole wall of some 300 crayon drawings by the children of Haig Girls', Gongshang and Zhueng Hua Primary Schools showing these two artificial made-for-tourism icons of Romanshorn, Switzerland and our own glorious island republic. 'Com&Com invite to think about art and national identity, being and becoming. The artwork links the formative questions of a child with those of a city or nation-state: "Who am I, where did I come from, and where am I going?"' (Lam Yishan, ESG, p. 176) Yet the most evocative attempts to tackle such questions have not, for me, come through the crayon drawings that I had been gangpressed into so many times in my now distant youth, but in passages here and there one finds some much more insight, authenticity and sensitivity than in any National Education syllabi.

I'm not a huge fan of video installations, only if because one often has to sit through an installation for an amount of time that has been fixed by the artist. However there are always exceptions--in particular, I really did enjoy Tang Maohong's Sunday (2006, digital animation) as five channels looped into each other, side by side, with bizarre themes and images linking them in a pattern that I know is there but find impossible to articulate. Tang lives and works in Shanghai and recently the Financial Times' review of the Shanghai Biennale complained about 'the absence of politically charged art.' Yet in Tang's work, 'the viewer's choice, and his or her beliefs become crucial in reading the work. The choice you take at the beginning will take you to your own garden. Without being didatic or overtly political, Tang questions his viewers' beliefs in how the world is presented.' (Biljana Ciric, ESG, p. 216) And that is IMHO what makes something into a work of art. The Singapore Biennale is laden with many such gems in a myraid public spaces that are part of the landscape of our small yet often personally unexplored island. And in re-discovering art amidst our public spaces, perhaps we can also get re-acquainted with ourselves just a little.