Singapore Fringe Festival
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[edit] Introduction
The M1 Singapore Fringe Festival is an annual festival of theatre, performance art, film, dance, visual arts, mixed media, music and forum created and presented by Singaporean and international artists. Based on a different theme every year and curated by The Necessary Stage, the festival aims to bring the best of contemporary, cutting-edge and socially engaged works to the Singapore audience.
The M1 Singapore Fringe Festival is set to be a creative centre with a twin-purpose of innovation and discussion, a platform for meaningful and provocative art to engage our increasingly connected and complex world.
Previously known as the M1 Theatre Connect, it was renamed the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival in 2005. The inaugural edition of the Festival featured 14 works, and had the theme of Art and War. In 2006, the 12-day Festival featured a total of 51 works from 20 countries, centred around the theme of Art and Healing. The most recent edition of the Festival held from 30 January to 11 February 2007 had the theme of Art and Disability, and hosted a total of 22 works from 12 countries.
Come 2008, the Festival will take place from 16 to 27 January 2008, with the theme of Art and History.
[edit] M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2008: Art and History
(taken from the curatorial statement in the application form for the Festival, which can be downloaded here:)
"A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress." - Walter Benjamin
What is the role of art in relation to history? Is art a rendition, an interpretation, a record amongst many other records? Art allows us to document and respond to history. It is our logbook of the chain of catastrophes and travesties of the past, which we can refer to as we are swept off into the future.
Art has been used as a powerful medium to record what one regards as history. In the process of creation, more often than not, our interpretation with history works as catharsis and release, and we discover more about our individual beings.
What is the role of history, then, as we continue to be buffeted and engulfed by the storm of progress? History does not necessarily reflect reality, but rather what we are to believe as real. History too is an interpretation. It is not cut and dried nor cast in stone. It is malleable and can be manipulated by whoever holds power to perpetuate control.
In this sense, history serves to document and educate, but it also provides us with raw materials that we can apply to our template of the present-day, i.e. a postmodern interpretation of what used to be modern.
History is not necessarily about the past. Time and time again, humanity has exposed its folly and hubris by repeating its previous mistakes. Hence, as we investigate the role of history and its dialogue with art, we are also compelled to deal and contrast with its antithesis: the future.
In exploring the role and fault lines of history, we are compelled to cast ourselves into the future too, and contemplate on the concept of utopia – is it a concept that is meaningful in these times?
The M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2008 unearths the myriad perspectives on Art and History. We hope that you will join us in engaging with the theme and its diverse interpretations.
