The Economy Enters the People (2021–2022) is a lecture performance by artist Ho Rui An that expands on his ongoing body of research focused on the emergence of capitalist modernity in East and Southeast Asia. It examines the relationship between China and Singapore against the backdrop of China’s postsocialist turn towards the market economy. Since the late 1970s, the Chinese government has dispatched thousands of officials to Singapore to study its economic and social policies. In a time when “the economy” had replaced class struggle as the primary subject of governance, the city-state of Singapore was crucial in reshaping the political imagination of an entire generation of Chinese leadership, especially when it came to resolving the intractable problem of corruption. By retracing this history of encounters between the two countries, the work provides a basis for understanding the present-day crisis of late capitalism, with corruption having returned as a subject of political discourse following the 2008 global financial crisis and China’s economic rise.

Venue: T:>Works, 72-13

Admission: $12
Book tickets HERE

When: 10 - 11 Jun 2022, 7.30pm - 9pm

By: Singapore Art Museum (SAM)