For the past two days, Mr. Fumio Nanjo, Artistic Director of the Singapore Biennale 2006, was in Ho Chi Minh City in connection with this September's event. Given an extremely short time in Saigon, he was able to meet with many people including Atelier Wonderful, ALBB, Galerie Quynh and Saigon Open City. His visit is perhaps one reason why I noticed the news article below:
Two centuries for Vietnam to catch up with Singapore
16/Mar/2006 Tien Phong Online
It may take Vietnam almost 18 years to catch up with Indonesia, 34 years with Thailand and 197 years with Singapore, said IL Houng Lee, chief representative of International Monetary Fund.
After twenty years of innovation, it's time to raise a question: When can Vietnam catch up with countries in the Asean region and by what way?
The connections are uncanny. The Singapore Biennale is receiving government funding to coincide with the IMF meeting in Singapore in September. Without the IMF, perhaps the biennale would not have been possible. When the IMF says that Vietnam is 200 years behind Singapore, what does that say? For a perspective, let us consider what happened in 1806. Really nothing. 1806 was perhaps the most boring year in history. As a rallying call and a first step to catch up with Singapore, we need to make cultural activity in Vietnam memorable lest we throw back to the stone age.
Posted by on March 19, 2006 9:44 PM | Permalink
I could not find the original Tien Phong article online, so I'm not sure how the chief representative of IMF came up with those rather precise numbers of years separating Vietnam from the degree of development enjoyed by Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore. Sounds rather arbitrary to me, but even if the numbers were fact-based and not just pulled out of Mr. IL Houng Lee's ass, I'm not sure, with all due respect, that the Vietnamese want their country to become like Singapore.