The OPEN 2014: Buffet spread of possibilities

SINGAPORE — Would you spend two weekends — and a handful of your weeknights — prepping for a festival that will happen much, much later?

The OPEN, which kicked off last week, is something of a strange animal. It’s presented as a kind of pop-up “arts academy” comprising a series of talks, film screenings, exhibitions and performances that’s meant to get you ready for the Singapore International Festival Of Arts (SIFA) in August and September. Admittedly, you could say there’s something slightly pompous or even condescending in all of this (“You mean we’re not fully ‘equipped’ to watch SIFA shows?!”).

But having a taste of The OPEN over the weekend, I also have to add that there’s something genuinely generous in this unusual event. Yes, it’s somewhat of a glorified, personalised, value-added promotion scheme for SIFA but it’s also way more than that.

Over Saturday and Sunday, I attended talks on bioethics and biomedicine, South African contemporary dancer Mamela Nyamza (and then some), and South Africa post-Apartheid. I also caught a screening of old science short films by pioneering French documentary film-maker Jean Painleve (Dancing molluscs?! Horny octopi?!), a Jerome Bel documentary on a 42-year-old chorus ballet dancer set to retire, and a mockumentary on Martha Graham performed by Richard Move (who was also in town performing Martha Graham at the Asian Civilisations Museum).

It’s pretty rojak — and all of them sort of correspond to specific SIFA shows, directly or otherwise: The science bits for Michael Nyman’s genetics-meets-art-meets-opera Facing Goya; the South African politics and dance bits for Nyamza’s I Stand Corrected and Hatched double-bill; and of course, Bel will be doing Disabled Theater and Move has a Martha Graham production at SIFA, too.

Of course, you can always treat The OPEN events as stand-alone presentations. In the next couple of weekends, you have the 89plus lineup of events and the Ways Of Wandering site-specific performances—all of which don’t seem to have any direct SIFA connection. And on the first weekend, South African activist lesbian artist Zanele Muholi’s Faces And Phases was so strong a show, it could have been presented in another context. Previously exhibited at Documenta and the Venice Biennale, it’s a moving series of photographs and videos about South African identity and anti-gay violence (which serendipitously coincided with the Pink Dot rally). A pity though, that this powerful exhibition ran for only four days when it thoroughly deserved a longer run.

But The OPEN as a whole is still, ultimately, in support of SIFA. And it works that way, too. For example, while Veronique Doisneau’s retiring ballet dancer is a totally different subject from Disabled Theater’s mentally disabled performers, you get a glimpse of the rationale behind Jerome Bel’s practice (the under-the-radar types of performers, his stripped-down approach to a show). And having a public Skype chat with the man himself was a nice treat as well.

On the other hand, could there be a slight danger in having way too much information about a show you’ll be watching? Richard Move’s ACM piece was a nice teaser (the only way to look at it because as a stand-alone show, I wasn’t a fan of the staging) to his SIFA performance, but coupled with the Graham mockumentary Ghostlight and Move’s post-screening discussion, I wonder how much of the “wonder” factor will be left when I eventually watch Martha@... The 1963 Interview in August.

Thanks to this strange animal of a pre-festival sort-of-festival, you start to think about the different ways of experiencing a festival. What happens when you sort of know what to expect? For me, part of the fun of watching shows is figuring things out, making multiple connections as I’m watching them. I’m probably overthinking things here but after a short dance piece, a talk and a film about Move/Graham, I hope there’s still that “wow” factor left for the show proper.

All in all, though, The OPEN and its “buffet spread” of events is an interesting concept. And it didn’t take too long for me to get with the programme and have a substantial “meal” out of it. Can’t wait for next weekend’s seconds.

The OPEN runs until July 12. For more information, visit http://theopen.sifa.sg/. For more on SIFA, visit http://www.sifa.sg/