“The runway show of border crossers”

Reviewer: Isaac Lim
Performance: 19 September 2015

A part of the opening segment has Italian design director Laura Miotto sharing about her love of museums, being a living gallery, and a microcosm of the world. And here, she shares this stage, set in an exhibition gallery in the National Museum of Singapore, with 19 other border crossers, in a bid to show what a “Singaporer” means.

Director Ong Keng Sen mentions in his notes that the “Singaporer”, he believes, is an individual who lives in Singapore, but is not a citizen, and the show emanates from this position of cosmopolitanism. Except for Eugene Tan (a.k.a Becca D’Bus, the drag queen) who is born in Singapore, the other 19 performers hail from all over the world, crossing borders and but for now, they call Singapore home.

The Incredible Adventures of Border Crossers is part-installation, part-fashion runway, part-karaoke sing-along, part-physical theatre and part-storytelling. The slightly over five-and-a-half hours long durational performance embodies perfectly the theme of this year’s SIFA perfectly, POST-Empires. It presents the ‘others’ of contemporary Singapore in such a fragmented way that this audience feels strangely familiar with the characters, yet very distant at the same time.

Eleven different themed segments make up this mega-production, with “Panorama” opening the show (a prologue), and an uncomfortable ten minutes long mixed-media presentation titled “Spirituality” (kind of epilogue) closing it. The other nine themes questioned the border crossers on their respective take on the themes of “Feast”, “Travel”, “Education”, “Work”, “Everyday Life”, “Wedding”, “Anthem”, “Theatre” and “Funeral”.

The first half of the presentation is fairly slow-moving, despite being peppered with interesting moments of lip-synching, karaoke singing, dancing, and a visual treat from the video art courtesy of multimedia artist Brian Gothong Tan.

There are also poignant stories about crossing the causeway to Singapore from Johor Bahru in crowded buses everyday (as told by Malaysian Ho Shyn Yee), falling in love with a Singaporean, then moving here and falling in love with Singapore (as told by Chilean Maria Eugenia Gajardo), and how a difficult breakup with an ex-lover lead to a new passion for dance (as shared by China-born Xiong Gang).

It is in from the “Wedding” chapter that the mood and rhythm starts to pick up, and all the performers change out of their predominantly monochromatic national-costume inspired get-ups into fancier, colorful costumes fit for a United Nations-themed party. The costumes created by the two creative minds behind Singaporean fashion label Reckless Ericka are a treat for the eyes.

All borders are erased during the “Anthem” chapter, as all the border crossers took to the stage as “live” exhibition specimens, each with an individual sound emitter playing voice-recordings of their personal anecdotes, recitals or choice of songs. The audiences are invited to step into the playing area, to get up-close and listen to these “anthems”, and many took the opportunity to take selfies with the performers.

The most raucous of the chapters is “Theatre”, as the border crossers challenge the notion of what is performance on this sprawling stage/space. D’Bus stripped to reveal black tapes as nipple tapes, and a pink blossoming flower look-alike covering his genitals while performing the track “My Vagina 8 miles wide”. The entire cast goes crazy as Xiong lead a mass dance to the viral hit “Little Apple”.

Theatre and border crossers all merged in this one mega-production by the end of it all. Set designer Chris Lee (of Asylum) creates this long catwalk-like stage with pockets of spaces the audience and performers can interact, is very much suited for this performance venue (the show was initially slated to be performed at Tanjong Pagar Railway Station, where there is a concurrent exhibition-installation by Francis Ng taking place on the three nights the show runs), a cozy and intimate play-space. Sound artist Kaffe Matthews adds on with a most immersive and impactful aural sound-scape that completes the experience.

At the end of it all, Border Crossers is a collection of many fragments, pieces of different people who have moved to find happiness, or parts of people who have come to seek memories. This gallery manages to encase a greater Singaporer, a most interesting intercultural mix of contemporary Singapore.

“Hypnotised!”

Reviewer: Beverly Yuen
Performance: 17 September 2015

The Incredible Adventures of Border Crossers tells the stories of “Singaporers”, who are defined by the director Ong Keng Sen as individuals who live in Singapore but are not citizens. Most of the performers are not professional actors and they originate from the USA, Asia and Europe. This 6-hour stylized performance installation brings us through the life passage of “Panorama”, “Feast”, “Travel”, Education”, “Work”, “Everyday Life”, “Wedding”, “Anthem”, “Theatre”, “Funeral” and “Spirituality” as experienced by the 20 real-life border crossers. Multimedia images designed by Brian Gothong Tan effectively demarcate the different segments, with repetitive patterns recurring between segments to allow space for reflection.

The performers, with their stylized movements and gestures, clothed in futuristic costumes designed by Reckless Ericka, create a world of surrealism and bring to the audience not just the “past” and “now” of the stories, but a view into the future too. The contradicting elements in the images, sounds and designs also heighten the sense of surrealism in the piece. For instance, the performers do a folk dance in their futuristic costumes; images of hectic life are juxtaposed with the close-up face of a lady who is deep in contemplation.

The simple and creative use of the space, designed by Chris Lee of Asylum, includes four screens, two huge cylinders and a walkway. One cylinder is translucent in which individual performers at times enter to deliver their folk songs or narratives. Another is an outside see-through cylinder which the audience enters and walks up a spiral staircase. People outside the cylinder can view the activities inside, but those inside cannot view the world outside. The audience members who are in the cylinder add to the “realness” of the installation. Lives of the border crossers and audience members are presented concurrently in the performance. As I am inside the cylinder and unable to look out, I only hear the music and sounds, which make me wonder about the “outside world”. I feel trapped. Immediately, I reflect — do the border crossers feel trapped and lost too, when they first stepped onto a foreign land?

Designed by Kaffe Matthews, the recurring and repetitive rhythm of the sounds which comprise screaming, cheering, laughing, machinery sounds, sounds from nature, as well as the fusion of folk and contemporary beats provide a sense of cyclic existence which hypnotises me. Repeated multimedia images and movements from performers further enhance this hypnotic effect, drawing me into a state of meditation.

Overall, it is a transcendental-like performance which brings the audience beyond the mundane realm into the subconscious and prehistoric realms in search of freedom and purification. The performance induces in me a feeling that I am going through a supra-mundane experience and embark on a journey of reflections and transformation within the hypnotic space.