The Economy Enters The People (2021-2022) expands on Ho Rui An’s body of research focused on the emergence of capitalist modernity in East and Southeast Asia. It examines the relationship between China and Singapore against the backdrop of China’s post-socialist turn towards the market economy. Since the 1970s, the Chinese government has dispatched thousands of officials to Singapore to study its economic and social policies. By retracing this history of encounters between the two countries, the work provides a basis for understanding the present-day crisis of late capitalism, with corruption having returned as a subject of political discourse following the 2008 global financial crisis and China’s economic rise. The Economy Enters The People is both a video installation and a lecture performance. It is also part of the artist’s trilogy of works on the historical and political developments since the 19th century leading up to the so-called “Asian Century” of the present – see also Asia the Unmiraculous (2018-2020) and Student Bodies (2019).
