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2002-03-27 - 4:29 a.m. Instructions for Performance Illustrating Disillusionment and Skepticism and Possibly Even Contempt for the S21 Project in The Light of Recent Policies Promoting the Profanation of Collective Memory: Equipment: Masking Tape Marker: One red, one black Procedure: 1) Sign up for any one of the 'dialogue sessions' with the S21 Committee. 2) Once you are in the auditorium, take out the masking tape. On a short length you have already written the words: I LOVE S21. 'LOVE' here should be in the form of a red heart for maximum graphic impact. 3) Paste it across your mouth. Make sure the message is upright. 4) During the 'Question-and-Answer' session, go up to the microphone, tap it a few times, and realise that you can't actually say anything. Look apologetic and return to your seat. 5) After the session, stand in front of as many press cameras as possible. Wave your hand vigorously, to show that you are friendly and mean no harm. 6) Walk to the open field at Bras Basah. Enjoy the scenery along the way. Stand in the middle of the field. Rip the masking tape off with one abrupt gesture. 7) SCREAM UNTIL YOU HAVE NO VOICE LEFT. 8) End of performance. Footnote: Despite a tremendous swell of public opinion to save the National Library, near Bras Basah Park, the government decided to go ahead with its plans. The library will be demolished to make way for the new Singapore Management University. And even the invocations of the S-21 rhetoric, where 'active citizenship' was one of its tenets, failed to cut any ice. Singapore is embarking on yet another nation-building exercise, this time labelled 'Remaking Singapore'. I say, 'fuck you lah': after S-21 was born, the National Library got a whiff of its doom, a forum to discuss homosexuality in Singapore was banned, the Political Donations act was drafted (incapacitating various opposition parties and NGO's) and independent-minded Sintercom was gazetted as a political website, leading eventually to its shutdown. Remaking Singapore? We haven't even begun re-imagining it yet.
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