Bureau of Race Neutrality

Can you imagine a society without race? Would our lives be better or worse?

Race is widely understood to be a social construct that sorts populations. Often this is according to visible physical differences (phenotypes) such as skin colour, geographic places of origin and cultural differences such as language. Cultural theorist Paul Gilroy (2000), historian Barbara J. Shields alongside her sister, sociologist Karen Fields (2012) are among those who have sought to dismantle the category of race. They dismiss arguments premised on “scientific racism”; that is that certain hereditary characteristics predispose particular groups of people to certain attributes, such as intellegence, tolerance to pain, or their propensity to poverty and criminality. The mapping of the human genome revealed that humans are genetically 99.6–99.9% similar, prompting the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2023) to advise the scientific community to avoid racial categories when studying hereditary traits. Nevertheless such calls to dispense with race are often met with resistance, arguably because communities, states and societies are deeply invested in it. Race is often conflated with ethnicity which refers to cultural practices, language and ancestry, so the Bureau is concerned with examinig these terms and their use. Prejudices based on race are often entwined with class thus the Bureau’s interests encompass issues of labour, gender, migration and borders.

The Bureau of Race Neutrality is a participatory artwork and think tank that seeks to divest from race as a category of difference. It was initiated by Sumugan Sivanesan during a three month long residency at Singapore Art Museum, 1 April–29 June 2024.

A text, "Reading Race in Singapore", is on SAM Residency’s Samplings platform.

Pamphlets
Designed to be printed on both sides of a single A4 sheet. Simply flip along the long side and fold in half along the vertical axis.
1. The Bureau of Race Neutrality Singapore, June 2024 [PDF]
2. The Bureau of Race Neutrality Singapore, “Migrant Labour/Artistic Labour”, June 2024, revised Feb. 2025 [PDF]
3. The Bureau of Race Neutrality Berlin. “Creative Labour”, January 2025 [PDF]

Podcasts
Broadcast on fugitive radio.

Cassette
The Bureau released a tape piece Migrant Labour/Migrant Leisure (2025) fugitive productions [Bandcamp]. This is based on a sound piece performed at Narrow Marrow, Penang, Yes No Klub, Yogyakarta and SAM Residencies, June 2024.

Digital
The sound piece Antifascist Noise (2025) is based on a short recording documenting an instance of police violence in Berlin, at a demonstration against the war in Gaza, 31 December 2024. The recording is manipulated on CDJs, taking cues from the slow virtuosity of Éliane Radigue and the sluggish grind of DJ Screw. The piece is gloriously “unmastered”, a reference to Chuquimamani-Condori Crampton's critique of established commodity-orientated music production values. Antifascist Noise was released on fugitive productions Bandcamp 31 December 2025.