KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - For the first time in its 37-year-history, Singapore's biggest arts festival is being directed not by a civil servant but by a member of its arts community.
The theater director Ong Keng Sen presides over the annual Singapore International Festival of Arts, which opened Tuesday and runs through Sept. 21. Mr. Ong, 50, was brought in to revamp what used to be a highlight of Singapore's arts calendar, but which has struggled in recent years to stand out in an increasingly crowded scene. He will direct four editions of the festival up to and including the 2017 event.
He was interviewed by telephone from Singapore. Here is an edited version of the conversation.
Q. The festival took a break in 2013 to rethink its mission before starting up again this year. Can you talk about what will be different going forward?
A. I don't believe in the old idea that there is a European circuit and an Asian circuit and an American circuit. Every arts festival has to take on the needs, colors and urgencies of that city.
Q. Over the years, the Singapore government has poured millions into the arts; building theaters, bringing in international acts and funding local arts groups. Are we at a point where there is a significant shift in thinking about the arts in Singapore?
A. It's now about the maturity in terms of content. It's no longer a numbers game.
Singapore is a melting pot of Asia. When I am in Singapore, I meet Vietnamese, I meet Latinos, I meet Cambodians. That kind of diversity is very natural. It is not unlike New York, where people go to study. I want to make a Singaporer festival, as in New Yorker, or Londoner.
Tell me about the piece you commissioned by the Indian performance artist Nikhil Chopra, 'Give Me Your Blood and I Will Give You Freedom,' about India's independence fighter Subhas Chandra Bose. It runs for 50 hours. Why?
For a street arts festival, there is a formula for it. For a music festival, there is a formula for it. I suppose in our festival, we try to rethink these formulas.
Singapore was where Bose came to raise the Indian National Army [during the Second World War], enlisting women, British prisoners of war and the Indian diaspora, who were supposed to go to India to free India from the British with the help of Japan. It never quite came to that point and the story became a footnote in history. But it was a very important moment when you see globalization happening in Singapore.
He [Nikhil Chopra] will be in an empty space, a white box 20 meters by 12 meters, and use long brushes to paint the entire space with black ink over 50 hours. Food is brought in to him, almost like a monk in a monastery.
Q. What were you doing before you were recruited as festival director?
A. I was in New York, doing a Ph.D. at Tisch [School of the Arts at New York University] on globalization in art.
In the past, the festival has been led by civil servants from the National Arts Council. They were not artists. This year, [as part of a series of prefestival events] we opened with an exhibition by a South African photographer, Zanele Muholi, of pictures of women raped or killed for choosing lifestyles beyond the heteronormative standard. This opened the weekend of Pink Dot [an L.G.B.T. event] in Singapore by chance and there was some nervousness that the festival would be perceived to be advocating alternative lifestyles.
I personally don't feel we should shy away from such subjects in SIFA. There is increasing pressure toward self-censorship in Singapore and I think it is the responsibility of artists and curators to speak firmly. Six hundred people came in support of the opening of Zanele and this is moving in a country where homosexuality is still a crime under the Singapore Penal Code.
We are not afraid to deal with these kinds of materials that maybe a civil servant will be afraid of.
Q. The theme for the 2015 festival, on the 50th anniversary of Singapore's independence, looks interesting. Can you give us a preview?
A. It involves the larger question of post-empire. We will present the ideas, including some scenes and short films, at this year's festival. There is a Chinese theater looking at finding solitude in this age of spectacle. A Beijing director is looking at Madame Mao's revolutionary operas and reconsidering her legacy. The Singapore theater company ' W!ld Rice ' is working on a piece about the various inhabitants of a single hotel room over 100 years.
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