Curator Statement

Theme: Pacific Rim. Venue: Container Culture: Singapore Container. Venue: South Hall. Curator: Gunalan Nadarajan

The internationalization of trade is a complex phenomenon emerging at the intersection of several interrelated and often competing histories: of gifts and exchanges; of values, cultural and monetary; of national interests and inter-national imperatives; of borders and transgressions; of conflicts and compromises; of embargoes, regulation and free movement. Ports have historically served as nodes of this tendency toward the internationalization of trade as well as of its frustration. The container revolutionized international trade in the mid-1950s when it began replacing the tedious, labor-intensive and delay-and damage-prone practices of conventional cargo handling. The fact that a single container could move between several modes of transport -between ships, planes and trucks- while safe-guarding the integrity of what was being transported encouraged the neutralization of the specificities of what was being transported. The abstract and monochromatic color palette of these containers is not acci-dental insofar as it exemplifies its seeming indifference to port, mode of transport and cargo. Containerization seems to embody, or at least seeks to create a token deference to, the value-neutral exchange of goods that international trade ought to be. However, the container merely distorts the highly volatile cultural and political frictions that actually mediate international trade. Sticking Point, the work of Singaporean artists Margaret Tan and Shirley Soh, seeks to engage and problematize this seeming political neutrality of trade, especially of the rhetoric of free trade.
In their work, the artists contend with the recently completed free trade agreement (FTA) between Singapore and the U.S. While the principles of free trade and the agreement that instantiates it are seemingly laudable in their goals, the motivations behind and the effects of such trade are seldom so. A free-trade agreement (principally, an agreement to engage in an exchange of goods that is free of tariffs, quotas and preferences) is based on the market principles of comparative advantage where it is assumed that in a free-trade situation, sectors would specialize in areas in which they have a relative advantage over others. Free trade also assumes that all products are thought to be socio-culturally and politically neutral insofar as only their economic values have any relevance in such exchange. The artists have chosen, interestingly, to work with chewing gum, a politically loaded product in Singapore, in order to reveal the socio-political complicities of free trade. As a result of the Singapore-U.S. FTA, the Singapore government’s ban on the imports of chewing gum into the nation-state in the 1980s came under scrutiny. While the ban has had an undue effect on the international perception of civil liberties in Singapore (i.e. that it is a country that disallows its citizens the right to leisurely and harmlessly chew gum), the Singapore government has maintained it as a commitment to a clean city free from “unsightly gum spots”. The FTA has forced a reconsideration and negotiation of the import of chewing gum into Singapore. Instead of taking up an entrenched position (of who is right and who is wrong), the artists have chosen to reveal the cultural and political sensitivities that are reflected in this issue through a video installation within a standard shipping container— the veritable symbol of international free trade.

• Gunalan Nadarajan, Curator, (Singapore/USA) is Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies, College of Arts and Architecture, Penn State University, U.S.A. Gunalan Nadarajan is an art theorist / curator from Singapore. His publications include a book, Ambulations (2000), and many catalogue essays and academic articles. He has curated exhibitions in several countries, including Ambulations (Singapore), 180KG (Yogyakarta, Indonesia), Negotiating Spaces (Auckland, New Zealand) and media city 2002 (Seoul, South Korea). He was contributing curator forpocumenta XI (Kassel, Germany) and served on the jury of several international exhibitions, including ISEA2004 (Helsinki/Talinn) and transmediale 05 (Berlin, Germany). He is also currently Artistic Co-Director of the Ogaki Biennale 2006. Nadarajan is on the Board of the Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts. He was recently elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Nadarajan’s research interests include art and biology, robotic arts, nanotechnology and toys.