Events

CHAIRPERSON

Dr Ivan Kwek, Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

The deliberately ambiguous title of this talk plays with the idea of audiences and the multiple ways in which different people may imagine who is watching (or not) as what under various circumstances. Positioned in between an illiberal state and the people, media producers in Singapore navigate multiple subjectivities as representatives of the state, public service providers, and commercial entertainment producers. Underlying these producers’ various subject positions are also multiple, at times contradictory, imaginations of themselves and their relationships with a diverse range of spectators (including imaginations of the state, sponsors, the broadcaster, ideas about audiences and ratings etc.). So whom do TV producers or even censors in their daily work imagine is potentially watching? And how do these ideas affect their work practices? Drawing on materials gathered during a 15-month immersive ethnography of television productions in Singapore, this talk discusses some of the practices that performatively call upon and wrestle with these different relations and their various instantiations. I aim to reflect on how everyday practices might provide an alternative account of social life by considering how ideas about the state and the people are produced and sustained through these practices.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Fong Siao Yuong completed her PhD at Royal Holloway University of London in 2016 and taught at Royal Holloway University of London and CIEE London. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore and is working on a book that examines how cultural ideas are forged, argued over, shaped and modified in Singapore through an ethnography of television productions.

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