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I’m sitting in a small studio theatre in Singapore. On stage a Chinese actor is carrying a chair slowly across the stage while music crashes intermittently in savage bursts. There are two remarkable things about this. One is that he’s naked, the other that so far it’s taken him ten minutes.

“ I remember stuff like this in London and New York years ago,” I whisper to the man on my right. His name is J.P. He used to be a literature teacher, now he co-ordinates experimental performance events at The Esplanade.

“You must remember every art form is new in Singapore” J.P. whispers back. “People are having to discover everything.”

I know what he means. Singapore has an international reputation for business, cleanliness and tidiness. You can make a fortune here, as long as you don’t eat on the buses or drop litter, but the one thing no one associates Singapore with is art.

“All that is changing,” says the man on my left. His name is Low Kee. He used to be an actor on the experimental fringe in Berlin. Now he’s back in Singapore and spearheading the forthcoming Biennale. “Until recently all performances had to be approved in advance by the police. Can you imagine them licensing something like this?”

Singapore has come along way since 1993 when a report called “Renaissance City” was accepted as new government policy. The writers of the report proposed something radical, turning this businessman’s island-city into a centre for cultural tourism and a bridge between oriental and European arts.

“There is an arts diaspora out there,” says Low Kee. “The world is full of Singaporean painters and artists, and musicians and actors, and we want to bring them back.” Low Kee himself came back, first to run a drama group called Theatreworks and then to be general manager of the Biennale which previews in June and will be Singapore’s big calling card in the arts world this autumn.

Thirteen years may seem a long time for Singaporeans to wait for a naked man to carry furniture across the stage but part of Low Kee’s job has been to reassure the politicians that while art may take time it does get there in the end.

“There’s a tendency for government to want immediate proof of return on their investment and that’s difficult with the arts.”
“Do you ever think they’ll get impatient and pull the plugs?” I ask.
“No,” he says.. “Singapore cannot afford to stop investing in the arts now.”
It’s true that the island has changed a lot since I first visited eight years ago. The Esplanade where we’re sitting is proof. Opened in 2002 on the site of an old British gun battery, this immaculate arts complex-cum-shopping mall is one of the symbols of the new Singapore. The locals have their own name for it, “The Durian”, because of its idiosyncratic spiky roof line, which very much resembles the pungent tropical fruit.

Suddenly the show is over and we go up to the rooftop terrace to watch fireworks burst over the brightly illuminated marina. With its large Chinese population, Singapore does fireworks well. The roof terrace is full of young people who’ve been in the studio theatre with me, or in the concert hall listening to Lim Anlin sing theme songs from Taiwanese movies or in the main theatre watching what has been billed as “a lyrical meditation on the nature of love and sexuality”. They are smartly dressed but there are more T shirts and much more spiky hair than I’m used to seeing in Singapore. Some of the shirts even sport logos.

J.P. cannot stay. He has to go back downstairs to kick off an audience discussion with the naked man. “It’s in the contract for all performers,” he explains. “We’re currently developing performers and audiences in Singapore. In 10 years time there should be a greater sophistication. Everything is still so new.”

There’s an enthusiasm that’s infectious amongst these people. The fact that the government of Goh Chok Tong chose to commission a new piece of music to mark the IMF summit in Singapore this September was taken by many as proof that the country is serious about changing its image in the world.

“It’s called Diaspora,” says Low Kee, with a certain knowing pride. “And it condenses 2,000 years of Chinese music to 30 minutes!” Last year another new Singaporean composition, I La Galigo, was sent on an international tour, ending its run at New York’s prestigious Lincoln Centre. “Until recently to most Singaporeans “culture” meant food, film and shopping,” says Low Kee. “But things are changing.”

Later we find ourselves at Loof, a new open air bar overlooking North Bridge Road. Loof was founded by Daniel and Teng who call their pet project “a refuge for bedraggled office workers and a sanctuary for fools”. No one minds if you lie on the floor and look at the stars and when it rains they offer beers two for the price of one. Tonight however it’s just humid. Looking around I feel a world away from the Long Bar at Raffles Hotel where the clientele is invariably white-haired, western and wealthy. Soon I’m talking to Corinne, an actress who had a small part in I Not Stupid, the film comedy that has done so much to redefine the Singapore’s self image by admitting that there is academic failure on this success-orientated island and, famously, asking the audience “Why are you so damn obedient?”

“Everyone is excited,” says Corinne, nursing her Tiger beer. “When I was growing up there was only one festival in Singapore. The Arts festival in June and there was Gilbert and Sullivan and Oklahoma at the Victoria Theatre. Now there are 12 festivals – jazz, dance, Hindu. Muslim, Malay, Chinese –we have a very mixed population, but this is good - every month something big is happening.”

Corinne was disappointed not to have been cast in the sequel to I Not Stupid (aptly titled I Not Stupid Too), which came out earlier this year, but she’s optimistic about the future of film in Singapore.

“I think we are finding a voice. At first of course we tried to make films like Hollywood, Bollywood, and Bruce Lee but that time is over. I Not Stupid was like our Four Weddings and a Funeral; it showed that we have good stories here, though I don’t know what is happening to your film industry. First Full Monty, then Calendar Girls, now Mrs. Henderson Presents. It’s like the British want films in which times are hard and everyone takes their clothes off! We think it very strange. Don’t forget Playboy is still banned over here!”

I resist the temptation to tell Corinne about the show I’ve just seen at the Durian and ask her instead what she thinks of the Biennale. “It’s good that we’ve got all these artists coming here, “ she says thoughtfully. “I think there are eight from Singapore and then people from all over the world: South Africa, Britain, USA, South America, Japan and Africa. And it’s also good that people are not just exhibiting in museums and art galleries. They’re using the Sri Krishna and the Kwan Im Thong temples on Waterloo Street and the Armenian Church so it’s going to draw attention to Singapore and show the world that we are an island where all these cultures live next to each other in harmony. In fact the temples on Waterloo Street are right next door to each other!”

It’s late when I leave Loof but Singapore shows no sign of going to bed. People work long hours here and then they go party. Zouk, one of Fatboy Slim’s favourite clubs, is disappointed if it closes before 5am. But I’m heading to somewhere else, Park View Square on the edge of Kampong Glam, the city’s Muslim district.

Park View is bizarre, a towering new Art Deco apartment building that looks like a set from Ghostbusters. It sits, weirdly, amid wasteland and is decorated with statues of 18 “Titans” chosen by the owner, Mr. C.S. Hwang. Paying off my driver, I make my way inside, flanked by huge looming statues of Socrates, Dante, Salvador Dali, Winston Churchill, Chopin and Sir Stamford Raffles.

There’s a piano bar inside Park View Square called Divine Wine Extraordinaire. I’ve come here to hear the jazz and to meet Harry, a young Singaporean artist who makes sculptures out of materials appropriated from other cultures. The phenomenal affluence of Park View’s spacious, 30s style retro bar seems to be an odd place to share a drink with someone who has claimed that 21st century consciousness is “fragmented and dominated by western consumerism” but I soon realise Harry actually enjoys our modern sense of disorientation.

“No no, it’s exhilarating and intoxicating,” he says. “I mean look at that!” We both stare. The cellar at Divine Wine is perched 20 feet over the bar and when you order a bottle, a female member of the bar staff, kitted out in angel wings, abseils up the side of the wine cellar and selects it for you. The more expensive the wine, the higher the mini-skirted “Angel” flies “You could not invent something that surreal,” grins Harry. “I want her in my next installation.”

At 1:30 in the morning, several angelic bottles worse for wear, I get in a taxi and head back down to the Esplanade. I could walk but Singapore is so humid that people use taxis as mobile air-conditioning units. You jump in, cool down for a few blocks and then re-emerge into the sultry night. Taxis are cheap too. The only problem is that too many of them are driven by stockbrokers who lost all their money in the 1997 Asian crash and they really don’t know this side of the Singapore river. When I explain my hotel is opposite the “Esplanade” my kind, but anxious, driver looks confused.

“You mean Durian?” he asks. Now the rice is cooking.

As we drive through spotless streets, lined with tall trees and even taller skyscrapers. I notice that these days people at the pedestrian crossings don’t always wait for the lights to turn green. Things are changing in Singapore. All that art is having its effect. It’s difficult to imagine chewing gum smears on the sidewalk or, perish the thought, graffiti but the best behaved city in the world is acquiring a patina of bohemian scruffiness.

Down below the Durian’s spiky roof people are still milling around outside Harry’s Bar. Doesn’t anyone get tired over here? Boy, the Renaissance City takes it out of you. Suddenly it feels like the end of a very long evening.

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