Paper short abstract:

The presentation reflects on experiences of artistic creation in the context of Singapore's commemoration of the bicentennial anniversary of British colonisation, and the artists' affective and analytical responses to the inexorable colonial legacy

Paper long abstract:

For Singapore, 2019 marks the year of the nation's bicentennial commemoration - a state-led initiative marking 200 years since the island was colonised by Sir Stamford Raffles. Discussions of the Bicentennial have been variously marked with disgust around the whitewashing of colonialism, and commendation of the sorely-needed opportunity for critical discourse on Singapore's colonial history. Neither does there seem to be an entirely coherent 'official stance'-for one, the Bicentennial Office maintains that the Bicentennial is in fact a commemoration of 700 years of history, because the Singapore story 'actually began in 1299'.

The Bicentennial programme has lined up numerous creative endeavours, including The Future Of Our Pasts Festival (TFOOPFest), a series of artistic approaches by young Singaporeans to lesser-known stories of Singapore's history. The proposed presentation draws on my experiences as a project creator for TFOOPFest and other discourses around the Bicentennial to explore some of the responses generated by issues of de/colonisation. While the project my team envisioned initially seemed to have little direct connection to British colonisation, the context of the Bicentennial proved difficult to ignore. Questions and possibilities arose of how best to handle the legacy of colonialism; merely mentioning marginal historical figures did not in itself seem sufficient to challenge the 'great man' historiography that Singapore struggles to escape.

As the creative process progressed, the haunting presence of Raffles that possessed us only grew stronger and more intimate. The exorcism remains a work in progress.