Place.Labour.Capital. connects cultural production and artistic research to broader political and social concerns engaging readers with contemporary debates in Southeast Asia and beyond. The title of the publication refers to the framework employed at the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore in its first cycle of activities (2013–2016).
Singapore, as the world's second largest trading port and the economic epicentre for the region of Southeast Asia, served as an important point of departure to examine the intersections between locality and the global world, labour and flows of capital.
Place. Labour.Capital. serves equally as a rear-view mirror that enables an art institution to review the parameters of its own position in times of a globalised art world and knowledge-production economies. This extensive publication “reminds us that institution building remains enormously significant as a means of opening up new spaces, claims, communities, dialogues, publics, and trajectories for critical artistic practice.” (
Felicity D. Scott, Associate Professor Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University, New York).
Unfolding across four broad sections of “The Making of an Institution,” “The Geopolitical and the Biophysical,” “Incidental Scripts,” and “Incomplete Urbanism,” this publication reads as an exhibition. Drawing connections across disciplines and merging theory with practice,
Place.Labour.Capital. weaves together a constellation of different bodies of materials from essays to poetry, fiction, artworks and documentation of the Centre's past exhibitions.
Richly illustrated, the publication brings together the voices of more than 80 contributors to the Centre's programme from former Research Fellows such as Regina (Maria) Möller (Germany), T. K. Sabapathy (Singapore), and Yvonne Spielmann (Germany) to former Artists-in-Residence including Amanda Heng (Singapore), Shooshie Sulaiman (Malaysia), Erika Tan (Singapore/United Kingdom), Lee Wen (Singapore), and Yee I-Lann (Malaysia). Other participants include those from the Centre's public programmes such as
Stefano Harney (United States/Singapore), Nikos Papasteriadigis (Australia), Post-Museum (Jennifer Teo and Woon Tien Wei, Singapore), and David Teh (Australia/Singapore), to name just a few.
