Place.Labour.Capital. connects cultural production and artistic research to broader political and social concerns, through the agency of a new institution, the Nanyang Technological University Centre for Contemporary Art (NTU CCA) Singapore.
The title refers to the framework employed at CCA in its first cycle of activities, from 2013 to 2016. Singapore, as the world’s second largest trading port and an economic epicentre for the region, serves as a point of departure to examine place, that is the intersection between locality and the global, labour, and flows of capital. This beautifully-designed publication weaves together critical essays and contributions by curators and academics with former artists-in-residence at NTU CCA Singapore, and documents past exhibitions in photographs. Place. Labour. Capital. serves equally as a rear-view mirror that enables an art institution to review its own economies of knowledge production and its position in the time of global art. Drawing connections across disciplines and fields of practice, this publication is conceived as a Space of the Curatorial for the reader to encounter, experience, and engage critically with ideas that bear a sense of the urgency of the now and have relevance in the wider social sphere.