Unmasking the city hall facade a study of its visuality in images 3

CHAPTER 3 Masking: A Revealing Veil We can never understand a picture unless we grasp the ways in which it shows what cannot be seen. One thing that cannot be seen in a… picture, which tends to conceal itself, is precisely its own artificiality.1 By interrogating the visuality of the City Hall façade in images, and studying its formal properties as symptoms of larger social, cultural and historical processes at work, the invisible is made visible, and the unseen revealed. Through the myriad changes in its visuality, the image of the City Hall façade has been utilized by various stakeholders – government agencies, local and international artists, private individuals – since its inception to serve their own, varied objectives. Depending on the perspective adopted, the City Hall façade can be viewed as the image of progressive governance, historical continuity and political inclusivity, or that of exploitative political practices, historical discontinuity, and the hegemony of the postcolonial government. But most of all, the City Hall façade is an image of authority. Its use as the political nexus of the colonial and postcolonial Singapore, coupled with its strict classical geometry, exudes a monumentality and fixity that has ensured the longevity of its image in the nation’s imagination. Besides its classical architectural form, one of the factors that has enabled the façade to remain pertinent despite changes in political climate and administrations over the eight decades since its inception is its propagation as an image. It is only as an image that the façade can undergo multiple transformations in its visuality. To return to Le Corbusier’s metaphor of the façade as clothing, changes in appearances, like dressing, 1 W.J.T. Mitchell. What Do Pictures Want?: The Loves and Lives of Images (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, c2005) p.343. 204 are a way of negotiating different social circumstances.2 As signpost, stageset, and billboard, the myriad visualities of the City Hall façade assume different functions to fulfill the evolving political agendas in the colonial and postcolonial periods through the propagation of various meanings. It is also the representational realm that has elevated the City Hall façade from a visual motif to political symbol. As Beatriz Colomina notes, “All the monumental force of architecture is generated by the most insubstantial means.”3 For Colomina, it is through the dissemination of architectural images in mass media that modern architecture is endowed with a visibility that ennobles and immortalizes it. Similarly, in the passage from visual motif to symbol, it is through the replication and dissemination of its image that the façade has acquired a public visibility, and an established significance. Although Colomina’s observation pertains to the analysis of modern architecture, the same can be said for City Hall. It is through the circulation of the façade’s image through various media such as postcards, monetary notes, film, and artistic intervention that it has become one of the most prominent historical building and political symbol in Singapore. For Colomina, the architectural image function not only as a vehicle for the expression and propagation of architectural concepts and ideals. It is also a reflection of, or commentary on the cultural and social conditions of its production. And to Mitchell, the image is both instrument and agency. To him, embedded within images are ideas that serve the interest of those in power. And the City Hall façade functions as both. The changes in its visuality are a reflection of the underlying political, social, 2 For an elaboration of Le Corbusier’s metaphor of façade as clothing, please refer to Chapter 1. Beatriz Colomina. “Media as Modern Architecture,” in Anthony Vidler (ed.). Architecture Between Spectacle and Use (New York: Yale University Press, 2008), p.72. 3 205 and cultural concerns of the state and non-state actors over time. At the same time, the propagation of its image is also used to achieve strategic political and social agendas. In addition to the nature of images posited by Colomina and Mitchell, the representations of the City Hall façade also serve as a site of resistance and subversion. For the analysis of its visuality also yields competing assertions. Documenting a divergence between the use of the visuality of the façade by artists, government agencies and private individuals, the image, which endows the City Hall façade with its potency, also proves paradoxically to be its undoing. Reflexive in nature, images reveal the traces of their own constructions. By interrogating the images, established symbolisms of the façade are contested. The visuality of the façade yields a depth of secret desires and hidden motivations. The profundity of the façade will only increase, as its visuality continues to evolve over time to suit evolving political objectives. While W.J.T. Mitchell posits that a picture conceals its own artificiality, he also forwards that the same image “shows what cannot be seen”. And this is true of the images of the City Hall façade, where both its manifest and latent meanings can be derived from its formal properties in the same picture.4 Dialectically, the unseeable is present in the seeable, and the visible eventually yields the invisible. The image which veils proves to be its own unveiling. However, while the term “unveiling” or “unmasking” is typically used to imply the presence of a face, or an authentic core beneath, there is no end to the unraveling of the City Hall façade. With multiple permutations to its image, each of its visualities yields several interpretations, each as 4 For a further elaboration of manifest and latent meanings, please refer to the write up on obvious and disguised symbolism as conceived by Erwin Panofsky in Chapter 1. 206 valid as another. There is no authenticity to be uncovered behind the artificiality of the image. One only encounters an endless stratum of mask upon mask, veil upon veil. The image of the City Hall façade is endlessly superficial. But even so, the reflexive nature of images justifies the study of the City Hall façade as an image. Like a neurotic syndrome, the image reveals in the process of concealing. It is a revealing veil that unravels the seams of carefully crafted facades to make visible the hidden scripts behind, disclosing what an analysis of the physical architectural object will not yield. 207 APPENDIX A IMAGING Issue of postcard titled “Supreme Court and Municipal Building, Singapore” Issue of postcard titled “Municipal Building, Singapore” 1913 1920 Proposal to construct a building to house the expanded municipality 1926 Construction of Municipal Building commences G.R.K. Mugliston porposal for re-construction of civic centre; Set up of committee to study plans for design and construction of Municipal Building EVENTS 1929 1931 1934 1936 Celebration of first King’s Birthday parade Completion of Municipal Building 1937 1939 Celebration of King George VI’s Coronation Celebration of King George V’s Silver Jubilee 1942 1945 1959 Victory parade to commenmorate surrender of Japanese Municipal Building taken over by the Japanese 1963 Announcement of independence through merger by Lee Kuan Yew Announcement of self-government by Lee Kuan Yew APPENDIX A IMAGING Presentation of For Singapore and Signs of Memory at the Singapore Biennale Issue of $1 “bird” series monetary note Issue of $50 “orchid” series monetary note 1966 1972 Issue of $10000 “ship” series monetary note 1976 1987 First National Day Parade held at National Stadium First National Day Parade held at Padang EVENTS 1989 2005 2006 City Hall vacated by Academy of Law; Building announced to be turned into a national art museum Administrative function of City Hall abolished; Annexed by Supreme Court to accomodate Academy of Law Commissioning of 9th August by the National Museum of Singapore 2007 2014 2008 Appoinrment of Studio Milou as architect for the NAG Lanching of architectural competition for National Art Gallery (NAG) Opening of NAG APPENDIX B Year 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 National Day Parade - Sites Centralized Parades Decentralized Parades Padang National Marina As stated Stadium Bay ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Jurong Sports Complex, Queenstown Sports Complex, Toa Payoh Sports Complex, Jalan Besar Stadium, Bukit Panjang parade centre, Redhill Road parade centre, Haig Road parade centre, Paya Lebar parade centre, Parry Secondary School centre, old Raffles Institution 1976 ! ! Jurong Sports Stadium, Jalan Besar Sports Stadium, Queenstown Sports Stadium, Toa Payoh Sports Stadium, Temasek Junior College, Tiong Bahru Secondary School 1977 1978 ! ! Jurong Sports Stadium, Jalan Besar Sports Stadium, Queenstown Sports Stadium, Toa Payoh Sports Stadium, Temasek Junior College, Delta 1979 1980 ! ! Jurong Sports Stadium, Jalan Besar Sports Stadium, Queenstown Sports Stadium, Toa Payoh Sports Stadium, Temasek Junior College 1981 1982 ! ! Jurong Sports Stadium, Jalan Besar Sports Stadium, Queenstown Sports Stadium, Toa Payoh Sports Stadium, Bedok Stadium, Ang Mo Kio Secondary School 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 ! ! ! ! ! ! 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Marina South, Jurong East, Tampines, Yishun 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 ! ! ! ! APPENDIX C Series Features Denomination Infrastructure $1 Buildings Landscapes HDB flats $5 Singapore River $10 Orchid Clasped hands Singapore seafront and $50 Clifford Pier $100 Bird Singapore waterfront $500 City Hall $1000 Victoria Theatre $10000 Istana $1 City Hall $5 Harbor $10 $20 $50 Miscellaneous HDB flats Changi Airport School band on parade Dancers of $100 various ethnic groups $500 Oil refinery $1000 Container terminal $10000 Ship $1 Singapore River Sentosa satellite earth station Chingay $2 $5 procession PSA container terminal $10 $50 $100 HDB flats Benjamin Sheares Bridge Changi Airport Members of $500 Armed Forces and Civil Defence Force $1000 $10000 Ship repair yard City Hall Old Raffles Institution, $2 Victoria Bridge School, College of Medicine Singapore Botanic $5 Gardens Sports $10 Portraits activities Ethnic musical $50 instruments Uniformed $100 $1000 youth groups Istana, Parliament House, Supreme Court Research $10000 scientist working in laboratory BIBLIOGRAPHY Film References National Day Parade 1966, videocassette, Singapore: Radio and Television of Singapore, 1966. 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