Church of St. Gregory the Illuminator, Hill Street, Singapore 2006.
In 1909 the Armenian Church of St Gregory the Illuminator was the first building in Singapore to acquire electric lights and fans. This fact no doubt had its resonances with the interior, faith-based work of the church, but also mingles with a broader, external context of 'electrification', and the state's presentation of such buildings as monuments, as state heritage, and so on. This project, as part of the Biennale, is a 'partial' celebration of this history, filled with doubts about the contemporary context of such power.
The work employs two switches that control the church lighting, its 'appearance' after dusk. A switch placed at the entrance gate to the church has only a 24% chance of working. This is the percentage of the electrical market in Singapore that is provided electricity directly by the State. The other switch, remote from the church and in an 'arbitrary' location across the street, actually works more often. Its percentage of success, 76%, represents consumers who have access to the so-called contestable market: where prior to its consumption, electricity is traded whole-sale, much like any other commodity. These consumers (usually bigger fish) have access to multiple providers.
In this way, each switch ‘represents’ a power regime, a slice of the market pie. A sign next to the switch tells you the reasons for its (un)reliability. As in democracy, this becomes a peculiar state of affairs.
The contestable market in Singapore is tightly controlled. The state actually owns about half of the ‘private’ generating companies, making the binary itself far from simplistic.
The title of the work is a provocation… is ‘everything’ contestable? If this were true, the traditional locus of power (the switch at the gate) would not be active at all. The mix is far from clear, as the state mingles with market interests, and a number of apparent positions are put into question, as we begin to look at what happens behind consumer activity in almost any goods or service available today. This work deals with a particular type of infrastructure, in which such positions are deeply rooted, and whose formal presence, in the public imagination atleast, is barely contested at all.