Nineteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

Nanyang Technological University Centre for Contemporary Art (NTU-CCA) – directed by super-curator Ute Meta Bauer – has been one of the few art institutions that exhibit local and international artists since 2013 in Singapore. After a decade of generous backing, the Singapore government became more reserved with further funding for the centre. In 2020 in the middle of the pandemic, the centre closed its main art exhibition gallery. The art residency program was downgraded to a skeletal operation. NTU-CCA recalibrated to bootstrapped approaches for art production: opting for more smaller but deliberate art exhibitions, while using online media to reach the wider publics. With a fraction of the budget, NTU-CCA delivers tactical art programs while investing in the do-it-yourself capability of online spaces as the site for art exhibitions. Media historian Lev Manovich argued that screen technologies have their own independent virtual matrix that could be phenomenologically constituted as an actual site for art exhibitions. Southeast Asia art historians such as David Teh theorised the online guerilla approach by artist-activists using the Internet as a boundless site for dissent against oppressive powers. NTU-CCA as an art institution joins the ranks of disenfranchised practitioners obliged to consider new media spaces as autonomous sites for art exhibitions. The closure of the NTU-CCA’s physical exhibition space is a symptom of Singapore’s shrinking art spaces. Though online art exhibitions are not uncommon, it is critical to unpack the economic and civic context behind this digital transition in relation to Singapore’s overall art ecology.