LASALLE and inaccuracies in the media

There has been a lot written about LASALLE, College of the Arts, recently on the new developments there. Here are some inaccuracies in recent media reports about the college that need to be set straight:



First inaccuray: MOE disagrees with LASALLE over whether the Institution should offer its students diplomas OR degrees

The Ministry of Education does not have any issue with LASALLE offering both diploma and degree programmes. All of LASALLE’s diploma and degree programmes are registered with the Ministry.

In a letter dated 13 September 2007 from the Ministry of Education, the Ministry acknowledged LASALLE’s achievements which included expanding significantly the range of programmes in the arts and securing Open University UK validation for its degree programmes.

This validation of LASALLE’s degree programmes represents an independent stamp of approval of academic quality from an internationally-recognised accrediting body operating under UK Royal Charter.



Second inaccuracy: LASALLE BA (Hons) degree programmes are 4-year programmes

LASALLE’s BA (Hons) degree programmes are 3-year programmes not 4-year programmes.

Our undergraduate degree programmes are three-year degree programmes (Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3).

Students who do not have the pre-requisites to enter the undergraduate degree programme can apply to enter at Foundation level (Level 0) to prepare them for entry into the BA (Hons) programme. Foundation studies (Level 0) is not part of the degree programme.

Third inaccuracy: LASALLE uses MOE’s diploma funding for its degree programmes

As part of the government’s plans to upgrade arts education in Singapore, LASALLE has been in receipt of funding from the Ministry of Education for Diploma studies since 1999.

LASALLE is required to comply with Ministry of Education policies and guidelines that ensure accountability for the public funds it receives. Any suggestion of irregularity in the way LASALLE uses the Ministry’s funding is baseless.


Fourth inaccuracy: Sotheby’s and ESMOD withdrew from their partnership with LASALLE

It was LASALLE who decided to call off the deals with both Sotheby’s and ESMOD.

LASALLE’ decided to withdraw from its partnership with Sotheby’s Institute of Art following Sotheby’s Institute’s inability to meet academic quality assurance and validation conditions in the context of its operations in Singapore.

As for ESMOD International Paris, LASALLE withdrew from the partnership when ESMOD failed to commit the necessary resources for the development of the joint Master’s programme.


Sent in by Sylvester Toh, Director of Corp Communications of LASALLE, College of the Arts

An interview with artist and theorist Ken Feinstein

Ken Feinstein is multimedia artist & theorist. Both his written and art works address the relationship of the work of art and the audience. He has been exhibited in museums & galleries in China, Japan, Germany, South Africa, Russia as well as the United States. His last solo show was Let A Thousand Videos Bloom at the Chelsea Art Museum, New York in 2004

He is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Art, Design, & Media at Nanyang Technical University in Singapore. See www.kennethfeinstein.com





RJ says: Hello Ken.

Kenneth Feinstein says: Hello Raj.

RJ says: Tell me a little about yourself. When did you get to Singapore?

RJ says: And what brought you here?

Kenneth Feinstein says: I came here in June of 2006. I was hired to teach interactive media at Art, Design &Media.

Kenneth Feinstein says: I had known Isaac Kerlow before & knew that I wanted to work with him.

Kenneth Feinstein says: I knew that creating a new school would be a lot of work, but exciting.

Kenneth Feinstein says: When I came to visit Singapore in March of 2006, I knew I wanted to stay here.

RJ says: Great Ken.

RJ says: So what are you involved in, in Singapore, apart from the teaching?

Kenneth Feinstein says: I am currently working on two grants. One is for a sculptural video display. The other is a game.

Kenneth Feinstein says: I am also creating a few of my own works for some shows still in the works. I will also be going to the Natural House of Fiber in Yogyakarta in November.

Kenneth Feinstein says: The sculptural display is an attempt to get beyond how time-based images are usually experienced.

Kenneth Feinstein says: I am interested in deconstructing the elements of the video/film experience and reconfiguring them in a meaningful way.

RJ says: Reconfiguring into a spatial domain rather than a predominantly temporal?

Kenneth Feinstein says: My work ties the nature of the video to the form of its experience. Most of my work has been environmental as opposed to traditional film screenings. This is why I eventually became involved in interaction. I wanted the experience of the work to be as intimate to the viewer as possible.

Kenneth Feinstein says: Of course the temporal is important, but the temporal does not have to be solely experienced by sitting in a theatre and watching a narrative.

RJ says: I have been to your website Ken and I have thoroughly enjoyed your video snippets, but tell me how a piece of work is environmental and how is it tied to the form of its experience?

Kenneth Feinstein says: The artistic experience is based on how we come into contact with this thing that is separate from our life, yet we can find meaning from. It is based on how we experience the work. How does it touch our lives..

Kenneth Feinstein says: On the website there is a work called Sehnsucht (German for longing, but with an understanding that it can be for an idealized, false, past – it is called Departure on the website www.kennethfeinstein.com). It was conceived and shown as a projection floating in a stairwell. The experience of seeing it could only be that of looking up or looking down. Looking down was the main way of viewing it. The viewer would lean against the railing of the stairs look down much as you would if you were looking out the window. It gave a relaxed feel to the viewing. People were transfixed, yet could also use the viewing in a social way. They would look down and talk about anything.

Kenneth Feinstein says: There is another piece on the website ( called Disappearing Tower on www.kennethfeinstein.com) that was displayed as a projection into a window frame. It felt natural even though the view was completely wrong for the place it was shown.. It took a while for the viewer to understand what was going on. After spending time with it, it did hit them.

Kenneth Feinstein says: When I say that I am using deconstructionism as a model for my work, I am being very precise as to its meaning. I do not mean this as another term loosely thrown around the art world, much as PostModernism in art has nothing to do with Post Modernism in philosophy. I am referring back to the methodology of the deconstructionist thinkers and writers, such as Avital Ronell & Derrida.

RJ says:As in meaning when read in light of the assumptions and absences text and language reveal within themselves?

Kenneth Feinstein says: I don't put much stock into the semiotic understanding of reading the work. Just because you can "read" a visual work like a language does not make it the same as language or even make it subservient to language. Meaning is found in the space created when the work is seen by the viewer. To put in Pearsian terms (Pearse was the other father of semiotics, besides de Sausser. he was popular with Delueze, Lyotard & the other poststructuralists), meaning is the referent of the conversation between the work & the viewer. It is an active relationship, not a passive one.

Kenneth Feinstein says: In this way meaning is found in what is in the work that has resonance with the viewer and what the viewer brings with him/her when they see the work.


Kenneth Feinstein says: This is why music, especially improvisation has been an inspiration. It is all about the conversation.

Kenneth Feinstein says: As a student as I first encountered philosophy, I also spent a lot of time listening to free jazz. Ornette Coleman, Dave Holland, Anthony Braxton.. that sort. They inspired me as much or more than the texts did. They lived what the texts said.

Kenneth Feinstein says: These days I find myself listening to them a lot again.

RJ says: You create the content and context and viewer arrives with experience and presuppositions - thus meaning is created and uncreated'..? Am I getting anywhere close here..

Kenneth Feinstein says: Yes. Meaning is not something that I can wholly control. It can only happen when it is seen by others. As much as artists hate to have people ask what does this mean, I like hearing people tell me what it means. I get meanings from them that I didn't think of. It is obviously there, but that doesn't mean that I planned or understood that it was in there.

RJ says: I want to quickly talk about two pieces on your website that intrigue me. The first is 'Shadows of time' and the other is 'Drifting'. Can you quickly comment on these two pieces? [See www.kennethfeinstein.com]. I wish that there was an opportunity for us to experience these two pieces in the context that you originally made them for and in the size of projection that would deliver the appropriate effect. Are context and size are important parameters to you?

Kenneth Feinstein says: On the website I only put up one of the ‘Shadows of time’ works. As a whole it is a large series. The videos are based on the idea that the average person looks at a picture for about a tenth of a second. So I made a work that actually transforms so slowly that the viewer does not even notice it. The experience is found in walking by the work over and over for a period of weeks or months. Every time one walks by the work it is different. It is up to you to put the pieces together. The content is based on a notion of nature found in the Romantic movement. I was interested in decay and nature used as short hand for a Golden Age that never existed.

Kenneth Feinstein says: How this movement was not so much a reaction to modernism and capitalism, but its out growth. That it used the idea of an upward mobility to create a dream of a better life in the country estates of the 19th century. Let's face it, those old estates are now all owned by rock stars & internet billionaires wishing to be landed gentry.

Kenneth Feinstein says: While the middle class, at least in the urban US, buys old farms as weekend homes. They fix up the barns as guest houses or if they farm, it is as a hobby.

Kenneth Feinstein says: Context is always important. A work can be made for a context that is not site specific. So that Sehnsucht can be put in other stairwells & get a similar experience. Size is an interesting question, because if a work is to succeed graphically it should have the ability to be scalable. It has to work no matter what the size. I once was in a show with an artist who knew their work did not work. This person’s solution was to make it big. They said if it was big no one would notice that it was not a good work.

Kenneth Feinstein says: I do hope to have a few new works up in Singapore over the coming year. Since nothing is fixed I can not talk about it.

Kenneth Feinstein says: Back to Drifting, this came out of the SoT series. It is based on the same thought, but I was interested in using shadow first, as a short hand for memory. Secondly, I was interested in getting the image (the main one here a shadow of pay phones in Boston) out of the rectangular shape of the film/video.

Kenneth Feinstein says: I was interested in how to get the image alone on to the wall and not the frame. So here I have looked at different ways of masking the extraneous light out. Currently I am talking to some people to see about making it as an LED display. Cost being the governing factor right now. The series that Drifting is from is about 8 works in all.

RJ says: Wonderful Ken. Drifting is a favorite of mine. Let me shift a little away and ask you about your sojourn so far in Singapore. It has been a little more than a year. How do you like it?

Kenneth Feinstein says: I think Singapore is great. I have met some really good people here. The students at the school are as good if not better than the student I have taught elsewhere.

Kenneth Feinstein says: To me there is a real art scene happening here. People hang out with each other. They help each other. Everyone is not permanently in a state of competition here. I don't find this elsewhere, especially in New York.

Kenneth Feinstein says: In New York most people have an attitude that they are better than everyone else and that any success you have has got to be a defeat for me. They see the world as a pie. If you take a piece it is not there for me. This is also a world view at the core of American Conservatism. The link between the "Liberal" art world & the Right in the US is at the heart of what is wrong with that country.

Kenneth Feinstein says: Without going into the political in Singapore, the world view here is more open, welcoming.


Kenneth Feinstein says: We are all in this together.

Kenneth Feinstein says: Now of course the scene here is forming & growing, but that is why it is a good place to be. When everyone wants to go to a place because it is happening, it is too late. It's over. Only the legend remains. Look at New York, Berlin (well that city has always been more hype than reality) or London these days. People go there to be part of something that happened.

Kenneth Feinstein says: I also think that some of the artist who I have seen here are as good as anyone I have seen anywhere. I just saw a show that Choy Ka Fai did at 72-13 and it was great. Ka Fai does world class work. A few weeks ago I saw a new short film by Charles Lim that was great. It was a hi-def short with live music and ambient sounds phoned in live.

Kenneth Feinstein says: Also people like Tien Wei & Jennifer over at the Post Museum are doing something that people will be talking about in the future. The space is incredible and they have a very ambitious curatorial plan.

Kenneth Feinstein says: I know I am sounding like a booster & I am not saying that there aren't problems here, it's just things are happening despite the problems. Maybe it is because Singapore is still under the radar. The outside world has not put it together yet & Singapore doesn't promote their artists to the outside world.

Kenneth Feinstein says: As Singapore is so concerned with a national identity it doesn’t really know what to make of its artists. They resist easy packaging the way that is being attempted with the movie industry here.

RJ says: Ken, I am hoping that you will go a little further into the question of national identity and what it means for the art world here. It is a matter that is debated a lot and Singapore seems to suffer from its lack somewhat, in the region. But I think of it as a positive thing for my own selfish reasons. What do you say? Do we have an identity? What is it? What does it mean not to have a strong national overarching caricature that tars everyone with the same brush?

Kenneth Feinstein says: You know the thing is that as long as people are worried about creating a national identity it can’t happen. It has to be organic. This is the experience I get from living in the US. The US is a place that has been very concerned with national identity on several levels. As a form of assimilation & the accompanying fear of the other. As a form of political unity- look at the witch hunts of the 50's & the political back lash of the 80's & 90's.

Kenneth Feinstein says: Where the force of assimilation was to make everyone a pseudo-white person the culture thrived through those people who resisted that and merged their parent’s world with the majority culture. I am talking about Allen Ginsberg, Rothko, Pollack, Howlin' Wolf, BB King, Ad Reinhardt and on and on.

Kenneth Feinstein says: The national myth that is given here in Singapore is used and rejected at the same time by the majority, from what I can see. I can easily be wrong here. Maybe I am only in contact with an elite group of people, but it does feel that most people don't buy the hype. I find this with people that have nothing to do with the arts, like cab drivers.

Kenneth Feinstein says: From my own perspective, I find the racism that I grew up with is absent here, but a different one is at play.. It doesn't feel as bad as the racism I found growing up, but I have to say I am still new here. What would be the equivalent of crossing racial lines here is more common. The differences seem more economic, class, than racial.

Kenneth Feinstein says: Singapore also has the problem of having been part of a larger entity for a great deal of time and its identity is still some what defined by that. It compares itself to Malaysia & Indonesia, which have long histories of stable populations. Singapore has really only existed for a short time. By this I do not mean the nation state, I mean the general population. Most people have been here what a hundred years?

Kenneth Feinstein says: That is barely time to create anything nonphysical like a culture. We have to stop worrying about it and just make it. It is a messy process and we just have to make a mess. No matter what we are told.


RJ says: I appreciate you taking the time Ken. It has been wonderful talking to you. I hope you have a great stay in Singapore...

RJ says: I hope you will agree to do this again in the future. It would be great to gauge your opinion once you have been here a bit longer and once you have had your exhibitions in this part of the world.