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

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 st

CHAPTER 3

Masking:

A Revealing Veil

204

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.

205

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

3 Beatriz Colomina “Media as Modern Architecture,” in Anthony Vidler (ed.) Architecture Between Spectacle

and Use (New York: Yale University Press, 2008), p.72

206

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

207

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

1913 1920 1926 1929 1931 1934 1936 1937 1939 1942 1945

Issue of postcard titled

“Municipal Building, Singapore”

Issue of postcard titled “Supreme Court and Municipal Building,

Singapore”

Celebration of King George V’s Silver Jubilee

Municipal Building taken over by the Japanese

Announcement of self-government by Lee Kuan Yew

Victory parade to commenmorate surrender of Japanese

Announcement of independence through merger by Lee Kuan Yew

Proposal to construct a

building to house the

expanded municipality

Construction of Municipal Building commences

Celebration of first King’s Birthday parade

Celebration of King George VI’s Coronation

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

Completion of Municipal Building

EVENTS

IMAGING

APPENDIX A

Administrative function of City Hall abolished;

Annexed by Supreme Court to accomodate

Academy of Law

Lanching of architectural competition for National Art Gallery (NAG)

Opening of NAG

City Hall vacated by Academy of Law;

Building announced to be turned into a

national art museum

Appoinrment of Studio Milou

as architect for the NAG

First National Day

Parade held at Padang

Mo Kio Secondary School

$100

Dancers of various ethnic groups

$1000 Ship repair yard

$2

Old Raffles Institution, Victoria Bridge School, College of Medicine

Timeline Singapore: Episode 13, Civic District, dir Huang Weixian, Channel

NewsAsia, DVD, Singapore: MediaCorp News Pte Ltd, 2006

9 th August, dir Tan Pin Pin Available from

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSZ7A4M_TXY; accessed on 27th October 2011

209

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