COMMENT: Singapore's arts and culture need your money, not your grief

When an e-mail recently alerted me that my subscription to one of my morning news staples, Malaysiakini, was expiring - and asked if I might be keen on not just a one-year but a three-year extension - it was not the frugal side of me that sprang into action.

Believe you me, that voice exists: the one that makes you check other ride-hailing apps when you already have a good price on one.

Maybe you save a few cents, it tells you, or better yet, just take the MRT.

This time the other voice spoke up: click that Google Pay button, pay that RM450 (S$135). The one that takes its cue from former Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho's famous quip to the club's owner when he wanted to buy an expensive new striker: "Pay and don't speak."

For all the things we are told money cannot buy, there is a flip side: in this corporeal existence, many things are worth paying for - the edifying knowledge you get from a newspaper or magazine or a paid civil-society seminar, the transient pleasure of a movie, play or concert.

Malaysiakini falls into that category for me - an ever-reliable source of information and diverse views about the country I am most fascinated with other than my own.

There are other intangibles I will pay for without flinching. For instance, money spent on a production by local theatre company Wild Rice, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, has never disappointed.

Recently I caught Hotel, Wild Rice's grand chamber play now in its fourth run. World-class, I thought - what a privilege to enjoy performances not just from veteran thespians like Lim Kay Siu, but rising stars like Coco Wang and Sindhura Kalidas. I will pay good money - and, when it lands, use my soon to be available SG Culture Pass credit - to help sustain works like this. My eyes are already on Wild Rice's upcoming The Serangoon Gardens Techno Party Of 1993, and Teater Ekamatra's Malay-language Yusof: Portrait Of A President, about the Republic's first president Yusof Ishak, returning in October.

These are the good things in life that, if one can afford, should be purchased.

Some among us insist that consumerism should not drive arts and culture - that artists ought not be subject to the whims of paying customers because putting a price on it vulgarises the work, and that audiences should not have to pay to experience them. Leave the question of who pays to the state, or better still to modern-day Medicis - the Renaissance Florence family who bankrolled some of the world's finest art.

I take the opposite view: actual money and vote-with-your-feet support of ordinary people is what sustains the wonderful things in our culture.

Community effort

With that world view, it is hard not to take issue with the performative moaning on social media since Singapore's sole independent cinema, The Projector, announced on Aug 19 that it was entering voluntary liquidation - citing rising costs, changing audience habits and the global decline in cinema audiences.

One wonders how many of those posting "how could this happen" lamentations, complete with crying emojis, truly had an intimate relationship with the vintage-style cinema, a rare home for alternative culture in the Republic. There was a similar outpouring when Thambi Bookstore in Holland Village shut.

I cannot help but feel that many expressing sadness did not, in truth, care about the loss of both the bookstore and the cinema as deeply as they seemed to. What the handwringing displayed in some of these Instagram Stories comes down to is, I fear, something more superficial - a means to signal tribal loyalty to the progressive causes to which The Projector is linked to.

To be clear, there is a small tribe of patrons, regulars and donors who have sustained The Projector since it was launched in 2014 with a crowdfunding effort. I saw posts by many of them revelling one last time at the cinema's farewell party on Aug 23. This was the group - to use the cinema's former manager Prashant Somosundram's words to this newspaper - with a "can is can" attitude that sustained it through its 11 years. They deserve only admiration, not scorn.

They kept alive an institution that screened films ignored by mainstream chains and provided space for dialogues on sensitive issues that commercial landlords often avoid hosting.

As for the performative griefers - they know who they are - they have been called out on social media. They deserve the tongue-lashing, including by the arts-review platform bakchormeeboy, which slammed the "all too familiar noise, groaning and crocodile tears from (this) same bunch of people", who more often than not were "nowhere to be found". Harsh, perhaps, but free riders sometimes need the scolding.

Many enjoyed what The Projector stood for but did little to aid it, comforted by the illusion that enough others were sustaining it. Ad-hoc support - a film here and there, a picture for the 'gram on the vintage cinema's striking spiral staircase - is not a funding model.

What was needed was a far larger community and concerted, sustained support, resistant to fatigue. Absent that, the inevitable result is what we are seeing now: closure, then grief.

Hard truths

Where do we go from here? What are the hard truths - to use that oft-deployed Singaporean phrase for uncomfortable learning points - that we must confront?

First, the importance of community, mutual aid, ground-up initiative, self-help - whatever you want to call it. The idea that these things must be sustained by the people who enjoy and value them cannot be overstated. It is the core of their existence.

I get the reflex, as we have seen in recent days, to say the state should play a role in keeping such institutions alive. A petition circulating online, which some readers will have seen, suggests that the Government should consider a "rescue package" of grants, low-interest loans and other measures for The Projector. Perhaps we write this off as a cathartic grieving exercise. Surely it cannot be a serious call - for the Government to ride in as white knight for a space whose value, its most loyal backers say, is its independence from the state.

The other hard truth: some of the things we enjoy - especially from the indie scene, without state support or "modern-day Medici" philanthropic backing - are fragile even with our best efforts. They can go at any time. Sometimes our best is not enough: the market is too small, or the headwinds too strong, the trends unrelenting - like the global post-pandemic decline in cinema audiences.

Here, the Facebook post of independent film-maker Tzang Merwyn Tong after the Projector's Aug 19 announcement bears repeating: "Every gig you attend may never happen again. Every screening you go to may never return. Every book you buy may never be reprinted. Every performer you support may never have another chance to perform again... Every discontinuation is a reminder of how fragile independent outfits are. Don't assume that the indie-spirited will always be here."

So what is the solution? Speaking as an arch-proponent of consumption - in the right things we care about, I can only say: do your bit to support the good things in life. Listen to the voice that says pay, and don't speak. There can be virtue in consumption, it is not always a vulgarity.

Yes, budgets are not unlimited and there are many things in the world that money can't buy. But sustaining the things that connect us, define us and our community, and sharpen our empathy is worth every cent - an investment in the kind of society we want to live in.