A Postscript of Geylang in Singapore
Placemaking and Surveillance in a Heterotopia is a piece of writing commissioned by a Singaporean artist, Priyageetha Dia, for her art installation project titled Geylang Gold. Geylang Gold introduces the possibilities of rethinking the relationship between the act of surveilling and surveillance documentation methodologies in placemaking. Situated in the neighbourhood of Geylang in Singapore, known by locals as the country’s only legal red-light district, the project looks at site-specific installations across its spatiality, through which the artist maps different ways of seeing and being seen.
In modern cities, it is typical to find a heterogeneity of spaces, each bringing with them socially and culturally specific narratives of their own. Amidst hegemonic structures of a city, there exist individual systems and networks of relations that may be incongruous with society at large. These are spaces of emplacement for the people and things that have become displaced from the norm, finding ground in a delineated site — the heterotopia. The heterotopia, as conceptualised by Michel Foucault, is a space which disrupts or contradicts the normalcy of a given society and its everyday reality. In contrast to the utopia, an imagined state of society in its perfected form, heterotopias are real sites of deviation where cultures are “simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted.” (Foucault, Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias 1997)
Occupying 10km2 of land in the nation-state of Singapore, the district of Geylang is the epitome of a heterotopia. It is a heterotopia because its socio-economic structures and modes of being differ vastly from that of mainstream Singaporean society. While it occupies the eastern edge of Singapore’s Central Region, a place of cultural capital where financial centres and business headquarters meet cultural heritage and historic landmarks, Geylang is more commonly known to Singaporeans as the city’s red-light district. Geylang carries with it a dystopian image in contrast to its adjacent more upscale districts: Marina Bay, Esplanade, Katong, and Potong Pasir. In a global city which prides itself in its world-class urban landscape, Geylang becomes informal time and space.
Prior to Singapore’s colonialisation by the British, Geylang was a village at the mouth of the Singapore River, home to the local Malay community who lived along the river basin. In the early 1840s, the community was resettled by the British government to an Eastern part of the river, the neighbourhood of Geylang Serai today. Meanwhile, Geylang became populated by Chinese settlers, a result of mass in-migration of Chinese sailors and labourers drawn to Singapore by its attractive free port and trade route between China and India¹. Over time, perceived as lucrative, unorthodox businesses dealing with prostitution, gambling, and drugs began to mushroom across Geylang, giving rise to its independent informal economy and earning it its heterotopian identity. Perhaps the disparity between what is inside and out of Geylang could provide insight into some of its narratives that may have been abstracted by the city.
Today, Geylang is characterised by its highly distinctive architecture and streetscape. Lined methodologically at regular intervals are rows of shophouses and buildings that form individual lorongs, or ‘lanes’, in the Malay language. Originally designed to act as a safety measure against fire hazards, each of these lorongs reflect Geylang’s material culture. Indeed, Geylang has more to offer than just its reputation as a red-light district. It forms a tangible part of Singapore’s history and adds a touch to the nation’s local flavour. One can find a wide selection of shops, eateries, residential apartments, places of worship, and even schools, upon visiting this multi-faceted locality of a melting-pot of socio-cultural typologies. More than a constellation of the people and things that dwell in it, Geylang is a microcosm with its own social and material life that is continuously altered by social, cultural, and economic systems within and beyond its boundaries.
Mother is Watching You
At present, there are more than forty lorongs in Geylang, with prostitution and other vices centred around Lorongs 8 to 24. At the same time, it may not be uncommon for one to encounter police raids, gang fights, and unlicensed cigarette or drug sellers, while roaming these lorongs. When wandering through Geylang, one may notice the extraordinary numbers of surveillance cameras installed along these lorongs, more so than any other district or neighbourhood in Singapore. These state-of-the-art government surveillance cameras, which mushroomed even further after the Little India Riots² in 2013, represent a form of soft power exercised by the state over the heterotopia. To date, there are over four hundred surveillance cameras and Liquor Control laws implemented in Geylang to ban the consumption of alcohol in public on weekends and public holidays after 10.30 p.m. In a nation-state that places great emphasis on a “well-controlled environment that is conducive for urban living and for global corporate businesses to thrive”, (Pow 2013) social order and public safety are of paramount importance. In addition to local campaigns and educational programs on public safety, these surveillance cameras constitute the state’s Panoptic power.
An architectural structure originally designed by Jeremy Bentham for the prison, the Panopticon is a system of control that allows all inmates to be observed under close scrutiny at all times by an authority figure whom remains out of sight. With the use of an annular building and central watch-tower as the main elements of its built environment, the panopticon allows one to keep watch over those held captive within the building from above. Michel Foucault describes Panopticism as an apparatus for internal surveillance, “to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.” (Foucault, Panopticism 1977) With the panopticon, surveillance is permanent and sustained through the power relation between the observer and observed. In the context of Geylang, the omnipresent street surveillance cameras represent the invisible authority of state structures that looms over the heterotopia. They silently monitor and constrain existing unruly elements within socially-acceptable levels, “and this invisibility is a guarantee of order.” (Foucault, Panopticism 1977)
The heterotopia is in fact an ideal place for panoptic structures to operate and discipline the deviant, disenfranchised body. Foucault writes that in order to effectively discipline, “one must eliminate the effects of imprecise distributions, the uncontrolled disappearance of individuals, their diffuse circulation, their dangerous coagulation.” (Foucault, Docile Bodies 1977) Geylang’s social and cultural boundaries allow the state to easily identify the limited interactions and flows of people and things that take place within it. As illustrated earlier, the strategic designation of Geylang as a red-light district by urban planners is a pragmatic approach that can “prevent cat-and-mouse games of chasing after its vices or driving them underground.” (Tan and Gill 2013) Coupled with this, one’s awareness of being watched could possibly further reduce one’s already limited interactions, altering them into finite and predictable behaviours deemed appropriate by the state. As such, the power of the panopticon is translated into “forms of behaviour, attitudes, possibilities, suspicions — a permanent account of individuals’ behaviour.” (Foucault, Panopticism 1977)
The state’s panoptic power may provide a sense of security and reassurance for mainstream society, owing to popular belief that the monitoring of social behaviours could deter everyday encounters of crime. On the contrary, this could mean an invasion of privacy and individual liberty in public spaces, and perhaps even repression or erasure of unique and unconventional identities. Furthermore, containment of sin and vices to a delineated zone may not be entirely foolproof, as socio-economic interactions are often fluid and candid, especially in Geylang’s complex ethnoscapes. Along with unregistered sex workers that solicit on the streets and unregistered makeshift brothels that do not meet state guidelines, other vices such as the “sale of contraband cigarettes and drugs, as well as the operation of illegal gambling dens, continue to proliferate in Geylang.” (Tan and Gill 2013) The expansion and evolution of Singapore’s sex industry over time “points to the limits of governmental efforts to contain prostitution within clear geographical boundaries.” (Tan and Gill 2013)
In the private sphere, surveillance is being consumed through various modes of commercial security, notably in housing spaces. Geylang has seen a rise in the emergence of gated communities, in the form of contemporary condominiums in the newer lorongs, as part of its gentrification programs. In recent years, these residences have become popular amongst a younger urban-class population who are drawn to Geylang’s proximity to Singapore’s central business district and affordable rent prices. Equipped with twenty-four-hour security systems that regulate entry into their compounds, they reflect a commodification of urban security that “aims to forestall crimes with an assemblage of surveillance technologies, defensive architecture, and prescriptive spatio-behavioural protocols.” (Pow 2013) Local writer Choon-Piew Pow coins this increasing popularity in private surveillance as anxious urbanism. In addition to a perpetuation of socio-economic divide within the heterotopia, private securities and surveillances create a “sense of permanent anxiety around urban spaces, systems and events.” (Pow 2013) Over time, such forms of intended and conscious paranoia would inevitably pervade into the heterotopia’s everyday environment, constituting the materialities of fear and deviance that it embodies.
Playground of Shenanigans
Through the lens of surveillance, one can witness the common vices taking place across Geylang’s lorongs. As they continue to flourish within its perimeter, Geylang becomes stereotypically known as a place of sin, deviance, and lawlessness, an antithesis to Singapore’s world-city identity. Placemaking in Singapore encompasses strategies to “gain recognition in a competitive world-city landscape, serving goals to promote civic pride, social bonding and nation building.” (Chang and Huang 2008) The city of Singapore is marketed by urban planners to appeal to international investors, entrepreneurs, and tourists. As opposed to the quality of life, public order, and conservatism of mainstream Singaporean society, Geylang’s ethnoscapes are far too precarious, and may even contradict Singapore’s placemaking ideologies. While the different goods and services circulated in Geylang are objectionable to the general populace, they remain vital to its informal economy and free market, making up a significant portion of its livelihood. Additionally, the heterotopia of Geylang serves a social function, “for each heterotopia has a precise and determined function within a society”, (Foucault, Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias 1997) as such is the power dynamic between the hegemonic city and heterotopic space.
As part of local urban planning, Geylang serves as a designated red-light district, where sex work is contained within a delineated space where it can be legalised, regulated, or restricted accordingly by the state. While the trafficking of women for prostitution is punishable by law under Singapore’s Women’s Charter Chapter 353³ and Penal Code 373A⁴, women who are looking to enter sex work out of their own volition are permitted to do so. As the sex industry and its related activities cannot be entirely eliminated, the notion of containing sin bestows upon the city an authority over its flows and channels of networks, perhaps preventing its access into mainstream society. State strategies to moderate sin include the implementation and frequent revision of policies that ensure the health and safety of workers in the sex industry, as well as the licensing and supervision of brothel establishments in order for them to operate as a commercial business while complying with public order laws.
As a result of its informal economy, Geylang has formed its own time and space that operates independently from the rest of the city and its socio-economic developments. Singapore’s local tour guide Yinzhou Cai, known for his guided group tours in Geylang, Geylang Adventures, notes that “the stigma of Geylang amongst locals and the dilapidated conditions of the older shophouses have made it appealing for owners to rent them out to low-wage migrant workers.” (Measures 2020) These migrant workers, who come from neighbouring Asian and Southeast Asian nations to pursue blue-collared labour that few Singaporeans aspire to do, reside in these rundown cheap housing with unsanitary and architecturally unsafe living conditions, in exchange for rock-bottom rent prices in a cosmopolis. In addition to their low wages and positionalities as migrant labourers, social insecurity and poor healthcare and safety become key barriers to a fair standard of living. The lived condition of these workers echoes a socio-economic disparity between the everyday realities of the heterotopia’s residents and that of white-collar society — a reflection of the city’s greed and pride, and the separation of Self from Other.
As a heterotopia that is often feared and avoided, and hence surveilled, Geylang may be perceived as an inaccessible site unlike other public spaces. To enter unreservedly, “one must have a certain permission and make certain gestures” (Foucault, Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias 1997), for instance, to be a participant in its vices. However, there is more to look forward to than prostitution, drugs, and crime in Geylang’s vibrant nightlife culture. Geylang is a food-lovers’ paradise. Coined by locals as the best supper spot in Singapore, the lorongs are littered with eateries serving a wide selection of cuisines, some even open for twenty-four hours, making it one of the best sites for gluttonous indulgences. Unlike contemporary and high-end cosmopolitan nightscapes in the Central Region, Geylang offers something more casual and affordable for the everyday working-class consumer. While formal nightscapes emanate safe and predictable environments, Geylang is a site of difference and diversity, challenging hegemonic structures of the global city and the image that it paints of itself.
Re-Flux
The spatial body of Geylang embodies different social and material lives. Scattered across a heterotopia that brings with it a dystopian image are a number of sites of enlightenment and spirituality — schools and places of worship. Uncannily situated in a site of sin, deviance, and anxiety, they present themselves as channels for salvation. In line with recent gentrification of Geylang’s lorongs, Geylang is deserving of an image-makeover, through new narratives and salvation of its public persona that generate new ways of reading and contemplating about its body politic. A futuristic approach makes a compelling method for one to attempt to reimagine and reconceptualise the spatiality of Geylang as a heterotopia. Digital space, in particular, is a medium with futuristic transformative powers that can offer alternative ways of reading and contemplating about spaces. Digital mediums have the ability to give rise to alternative spaces outside of institutional structures and systems, with the autonomy “to originate, multiply, and distribute themselves through open fields of contemporary communication without curatorial control.” (Groys 2008)
Using Legacy Russell’s theory of the Glitch as reference for placemaking, one can explore the use of digital spaces and mediums to unsettle current preconceived notions and ideas of Geylang. Russell defines the digital or technological Glitch as “an error, a mistake, a failure to function” (Russell, Glitch Feminsim: A Manifesto 2020) in a given system. Though carrying its own socio-cultural significance that differs from that of cyberspace, the heterotopia of Geylang itself is akin to a glitch in Singapore’s dominant everyday landscapes. According to Russell, it is precisely this Glitch, or disruption of the norm, that should be embraced, especially in the face of hierarchy and hegemony. Embracing the Glitch is a first step towards a transformation of the spatial body, especially when the system “has already been disturbed by economic, racial, social, sexual, and cultural stratification, one that for too long has marginalised bodies.” (Russell, Digital Dualism and The Glitch Feminism Manifesto 2012) For the people and things that have become displaced from the norm, one can contemplate what it means to be deviant or broken, reshaping their identities and positionalities from within the heterotopia.
Paramount to Russell’s oeuvre on the Glitch is the concept of Glitch Feminism, a critique on social and technological constructs of binary gender and how their socio-political conditions have been limited by institutional norms. “Celebrated as a vehicle of refusal, a strategy of non-performance”, (Russell, Glitch Feminsim: A Manifesto 2020) Glitch Feminism proposes that we “refuse to be hewn to the hegemonic line of a binary body” (Russell, Digital Dualism and The Glitch Feminism Manifesto 2012) and look for new ways in which the body can take on different non-binary identities and inhabit space in an unrestricted manner. Similar to the how bodies are gendered, racialised, or categorised by institutional systems, Geylang has been pigeon-hold and reduced to its dystopian image by the hegemonic structures of the city. As such, Russell’s Glitch Feminism prompts us towards searching for and creating new bodies and identities, to challenge binary stereotypes rather than conform. With the help of digital space, “we make new worlds and dare to modify our own.” (Russell, Glitch Feminsim: A Manifesto 2020) There are unexpected wonders to be found in every hidden corner of Geylang’s spatial body, and they can be made visible through placemaking in cyberspace. Through the Glitch, and incorporeal otherworldly nature of the digital medium, there are infinite possibilities for world-building, new geneses, and salvation.
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[1] Information on the history of Geylang was obtained from Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority’s Conservation Portal. (Urban Redevelopment Authority 1991)
[2] The Little India Riots, which took place on the 8th of December 2013, was triggered by a traffic accident involving a private bus and foreign construction worker of Indian nationality at the junction of Race Course Road and Hampshire Road in Little India. The latter was believed to be drunk and was later pronounced dead as a result of the fatal accident. Upon witnessing the accident, a large crowd of other foreign workers took to the streets to riot against the bus driver.
[3] Women’s Charter Chapter 353 №140: Any person who sells, lets for hire or otherwise disposes of or buys or hires or otherwise obtains possession of any woman or girl with intent that she shall be employed or used for the purpose of prostitution either within or without Singapore, or knowing or having reason to believe that she will be so employed or used, shall be guilty of an offence. (Legislation Division of the Singapore Attorney-General’s Chambers 2009)
[4] Penal Code 373A: Whoever brings, or assists in bringing, into Singapore any woman with intent that such woman may be employed or used for the purpose of prostitution, or who sells or buys any woman for the purpose of prostitution, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term not exceeding 10 years, and shall also be liable to fine. (Legislation Division of the Singapore Attorney-General’s Chambers 1872)
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