Festival Politics: Singapore’s 1963 Southeast Asia Cultural Festival

08/11/2007 - 15:30

8 November 2007
15.30 - 17.00 hrs

Leiden Southeast Asia Seminar by Dr Jennifer Lindsay from the Southeast Asia Centre, Australian National University

Venue: KITLV, Reuvensplaats 2, 2311 BE, Leiden
Room 138

In August 1963, at the height of the Cold War, in the midst of Indonesia's Confrontation with emergent Malaysia, and just one month before the Federation of Malaysia officially came into being, Singapore hosted the first - and only - South East Asian Cultural Festival to celebrate the opening of Singapore's National Theatre. 500 artists took part, from 11 countries. This paper discusses the 1963 Festival, where overlapping and competing images of Southeast Asianness were put on display. It was the first arts festival where Southeast Asia presented itself as a cultural unit, yet inextricably bound with national, regional and international politics of the time.

Jennifer Lindsay writes on cultural policy, Indonesian performance, media, translation, and language. From September-November 2007 she is an Affiliated Fellow with IIAS and KITLV (funded NWO). In Australia she is a Visiting Fellow at The Southeast Asia Centre (Australian National University), prior to which she was Senior Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, after teaching at the Department of Performance Studies, the University of Sydney.

For more information please contact Ireen Hoogenboom at hoogenboom@kitlv.nl or 071 527 2295.

The Leiden Southeast Asia Seminar is a co-operation of the IIAS, ISIM, VVI, KITLV and the Department of Cultural Anthropology & Development Sociology, Leiden University