It’s not every day you end up spending your birthday in a carpark, but that’s exactly what Singapore’s first contemporary arts centre did, as The Substation celebrated its 33rd anniversary last Saturday on the 8th floor carpark of Parklane Shopping Mall.

This wasn’t just a random celebration with cake and drinks however, and very intentionally coincided with a milestone event – opening night of The Substation’s newly rebranded The Arts Festival (formerly known as Sept Fest), where a group of artists and creatives had been working tirelessly over the last few months planning and setting up for a group show and series of festivities all held at this one unusual gathering place.

Responding to the theme Re-Connect/Centre/Converge, the two-week long festival, which runs till the end of September, features a group of free to view artworks installed across the carpark, along with workshops, talks and performances. All this was intended to have members of the public and the arts community gather in a single location, activating the space and turning it into a place, forging new bonds through shared experiences and dialogues.

In many ways, this was reminiscent of the old days when The Substation still had its space at Armenian Street, where the S11 coffeeshop provided many evenings that stretched into nights of creative impulses, stimulating conversation, or just bonding. It doesn’t take anything fancy to turn a space into a place – all it needs is something to happen, people to bear witness, and to engage in dialogue, talking and sharing about anything and everything.

For The Arts Festival, there’s plenty of thought-provoking work to talk about, and unlike a decentralised arts festival taking place across multiple venues, becomes a sort of unexpected hub, grungy but well-put together, each work seemingly simple upon first sight, but with a piece of each artist’s soul embedded into it, a personal story to be told. So much of the set-up makeshift, right down to. the spare plywood-turned ‘benches’ lined with tarp that are arranged around the place – but everything done with heart.

Some tongue-in-cheek, some urgent and mournful, and others simply sharply observant of the things we may miss in our daily lives, the art often speaks for itself beyond its artist statement. One recurring theme we see across the work is an attempt to make such a concrete, urbanised space, into one that is more domestic and homely.

Take for example Bridget Tay’s Centre Piss, its title playing on Singaporeans’ garbled pronunciation of ‘centrepiece’, which features a heavy chandelier hung precariously from a ladder. Considered a status symbol for Singaporeans to have in the house, its displacement and dislocation from a living room asks viewers to consider its actual value, and who are the people, the everymen holding it up (represented by the ladder). Dripping in blue resin while microphones pick up and play back distorted versions of the ambient noise, we are left to ponder over the grotesque nature of luxury, and what it might ultimately mean.

Adeline Kueh’s Sama-sama literally sets up a gathering space, as she brings participants together over a simple but homely meal, allowing the impetus to share stories and conversation, of generational knowledge and healing through the act of speaking and listening. Also subtly manipulating the floor, Dylan Chan’s From Mine to Yours places photo prints beneath wooden flooring panels, laid out on the ground and invites viewers to consider the stories lying in the ground beneath us.

Elsewhere, work takes on a more environmental slant, commenting on issues of space and coexistence with nature and plants. Joshua Kon’s Having a Great Thyme! is an act of resistance, a screen placed atop a mound of dirt dealing with guerrilla gardening, while Marvin Tang’s Ideal States passes commentary on hoardings as poor construction camouflage. Printing a multi-layered collage of Tengah forest (controversial for having cleared 90% of it to make way for the new Tengah estate) onto hoarding, the work asks us to to speculate on how much say the forest itself has, while a video showcases how much we’ve capitalised on the Garden City tagline, with an endless loop of stock footage of Singapore containing nature amidst our buildings.

In The Trees that Felled, upon seeing the loss of Lentor Forest from her home, Amelia Lim ventured out to collect and salvage tree trunks left behind in the process, Frankenstein-ing them together into a makeshift ‘tree’. Bookended by twin mirrors, the resulting structure seems to stretch infinitely into the sky and into the ground. Two such structures have been set up for The Arts Festival, perhaps even in dialogue with each other, with Amelia’s work providing a form of rebirth for these felled trees in an unlikely space.

And delving into the intimate and personal, works such as Lai Yu Tong’s
Rearrange The World sees the artist’s vulnerabilities come to light, with a series of thirty papercut collages showcasing a game between two hands, one injured. Referencing his own thumb injury and fear that he might never make art the same way again, the work feels like a quiet triumph over that, changing the world through the act of rearrangement, and education (the work resembles pages from a children’s book, and has actually been adapted into a book by Thumb Books, the artist’s 2022-founded press).

And in 尘惦 (chén diàn) found on paper, made in minds, Hong Shu-ying returns to childhood memories in Chinese Orchestra, and showcases extreme zoom-ins on Chinese orchestra scores, some of which are copied by hand, containing personal notes, and resulting in an uncanny series of images that seem to suggest a hidden life beyond the notes, or the vibrancy of her own memories these scores represent. Arranged to almost appear like waveforms, the work is accompanied by audio made in collaboration with musician Ng Wei Xuan.

To think all of this was done by a group of independent artists who wanted to make a show happen, a space that was never intended to hold art to begin with, begs the question of what an arts space ‘should’ look like, and how one could better channel resources and efforts towards what really seems to matter – building community and camaraderie, and ensuring that there remain viable spaces to activate. The Arts Festival feels like a success in and of itself, but wouldn’t it be even better with the right support?

Particularly when one considers how quickly spaces come and go, it is almost with certainty that this will be the one and only time The Arts Festival will be held at such a space, with Parklane Mall slated for further redevelopments at some point soon. Malls of old are fast disappearing, and replaced with hoarding and new developments. How long before we forget, how long before space no longer becomes viable, and instead becomes hostile in land-scarce Singapore, where we no longer feel welcome to even hang out somewhere, share a meal and a drink, and just converse?

“We’ve worked hard to overcome the limitations, with weeks of artists working together, supporting one another as they lay down the lights and sound cables, building platforms and benches to make this space a place,” said Festival Director John Tung at the opening last Saturday. “It is the spirit of triumph against adversity that stays with The Substation, to resist the pressures of performing to be one with the market and arts ecosystem, to go against the grain audaciously and boldly and support each other every step of the way, all to pull together a festival you see here.”

“I want to thank all the artists and people who helped make this festival possible, and credit every single artist who’ve worked hard to bring this to fruition. The life of an artist is to create work that in a way, subsidises the entertainment of someone else. I hope that everyone present now and over the course of the festival is able to appreciate the work in this space, and see a little piece of their soul the artists have put into their work.”

In the heat and humidity of Singapore, there are times what we seek isn’t necessarily luxury, but respite and shelter. Re-Connect/Centre/Converge: The Arts Festival seems to embody that idea of a makeshift home and refuge in an unexpected location within the city, that those who wander in or seek that connection find it here.

The Substation may not have its home any longer, but its persistent spirit certainly lives on in the artists and audiences it has touched, and perhaps, each time they manage to beat the odds, it inspires more people to join them in that ecstatic, liberated energy, and find the support it needs to carry on; in an unstable landscape where no space lasts forever, it is the community, camaraderie and people who make it a place that truly matter.

Re-Connect/Centre/Converge: The Arts Festival runs from 16th to 30th September 2023 at L8 Carpark, Parklane Shopping Mall, 35 Selegie Rd, Singapore 188307. Admission is free, tickets to events and workshops available from Peatix

You can support The Substation in its fundraising efforts for The Arts Festival by making a donation to the ongoing Giving.sg campaign here