The Hyperrestrained Order (HRO) examines the symbolism and mechanisms of discipline, and control in Singapore. Researching and building upon Michel Foucault’s disciplinary society, and Gilles Deleuze’s societies of control, a hyperrestrained society is an amalgamation of the former two types of societies. The ‘hyper’ refers to the hyperreal image — essentially a photogenic neoliberalist, dystopian state — that is a product of the coexistent hyperreality of both disciplinary, and controlled society.

From the perpetuality of a statist education system, to the culturally and militaristically coded semiotics, and finally the everyday corporate language, The Hyperrestrained Order reveals the systematic reorganization, and occupation of time-space through the mobilization-and-mobility of amass of obedient citizen bodies. And these time-spaces are the enclosures of schools, the military camps, and then the corporation, where one moves in absolute control, and obedience — seamlessly between them. When one moves from the military camp to the office for instance, one brings along the docile trainings from the military camp to an office, optimizing time, and thereby maximizing productivity and profit. Mobilization, as a key characteristic of a hyperrestrained society, hence, means the infrastructural state of motion — of capital, goods, time, money, people, and so on — in fully enclosed and controlled spaces.

All in all, the hyperrestrained order highlights the ambiguity of ideology of a band of iron fist state apparatuses, backed up by a well-rounded, and meticulous government that constantly reinforces its right to exercise power, legitimacy and authority. The HRO puts into perspective the global economic systems and regimes, and the violence of capitalist oppression by questioning the current rhetorics of semio-capitalist citizenship behind neoliberal-nationstates-turning-technocratic sovereignties.