Joshua Gebert serves as Research Fellow at the School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University for the Climate Transformation Programme (2025–Present). Joshua is trained in architectural history and spatial planning in the Netherlands, developing a foundation in the intersections of culture, the built environment, and sustainability. He received his PhD in Southeast Asian Studies from the National University of Singapore in 2024, where he drew on cultural geography and critical heritage studies to examine the politics of heritage in Indonesia. His doctoral research explored how cultural engagements and artistic practices by local communities can contribute to decolonisation.
Superlative Futures is a transdisciplinary design and research agency in Singapore co-founded by Wong Zi Hao and Liu Dian Cong. Their research practice centres on creative modes of representation to advocate new ways of seeing landscapes, speculative social imaginaries and futuring urban practices to relate differently with more-than-human worlds. They see their design output as a practice of care. They have exhibited at NUS Museum and were supported by Singapore Art Museum’s inaugural Design Research Fellowship (2024-2025). Wong received his PhD in Architecture at the National University of Singapore in 2023, having completed a design-led research on intertidal practices of care. Alongside his research practice, Wong teaches at the Department of Architecture, National University Singapore (NUS) and at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, University of Arts Singapore. Liu currently practices as an architectural designer. He completed a Master of Architecture at NUS in 2024 working on sedimentation and alternative conceptions of “ground”.
This walk is developed to explore how a city can be, if experienced outside of one’s routines. When we change environment, the new conditions affect the senses. Through light, sound and scent, our awareness of space changes dramatically. Composer and sound researcher Dr PerMagnus Lindborg will focus on the perception of sound and its design in complex environments and how this extends to all our senses.
Mapletree and NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (NTU CCA Singapore) will co-present the Discursive Picnic on 14 October as part of Archifest 2017, with the objective to gather the community to public spaces at Mapletree Business City II. The event is organised under the Mapletree-NTU CCA Singapore Public Art Education Programme which aims to promote art appreciation to the general public. The event will kickstart with a walking tour of MBC II led by the building architect from DCA Architects Pte Ltd, the landscape architect director Prapan Napawongdee from Shma Company Limited, and curators of MBC II’s public art commissions, Professor Ute Meta Bauer and Khim Ong from NTU CCA Singapore.
Through poetry readings, well-known local poet Isa Kamari, who serves as the Deputy Director of Architecture (Design) at Singapore’s Land Transport Authority, will share stories behind urban architecture and young poet, Samuel Lee, will stand in dialogue with poetry interventions. The tour will be followed by a discussion, moderated by NTU CCA Singapore Assistant Professor Sophie Goltz, at the Green Bowl, an amphitheatre within the lush and green Central Park at MBC II. Participants, curators, and architects will have the chance to share their ideas of working with space between business/work and art/leisure.
On the first day of exhibition Siah Armajani: Spaces for the Public. Spaces for Democracy., curator Ute Meta Bauer will be giving a guided tour from 3.00 – 3.30pm.
Following the tour, from 3.30 – 5.00pm, Victoria Sung, co-curator of Siah Armajani’s major retrospective shown at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and the Met Breuer, New York, will expand on Armajani’s practice in her talk Siah Armajani: Follow This Line. Sung will focus on the artist’s Reading Rooms, particularly the one included in the exhibition, Sacco and Vanzetti Reading Room #3, and think through the role of museums as public and educational spaces.A public programme of Siah Armajani: Spaces for the Public. Spaces for Democracy.
20 Jult 2019, Saturday
03:00 PM – 03:30 PM
The Exhibition Hall, Block 43 Malan Road
Join us for an afternoon of drawing, walking, and inquiry inspired by 𝘿𝙚𝙨𝙞𝙜𝙣 𝙀𝙖𝙧𝙩𝙝: 𝙎𝙥𝙚𝙘𝙪𝙡𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙫𝙚 𝙁𝙞𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝘾𝙡𝙞𝙢𝙖𝙩𝙚. In this session, we’ll explore how architectural drawing can be a critical tool to visualise the unseen externalities of deep-sea mining, land reclamation, sand exports, and marine geopolitics—especially in Singapore and its neighbouring shores where earth extraction meets fragile ecosystems.
This Drawing Club invites artists, architects, designers, and students to present their annotated sketches at the NTU ADM Foyer from July to August 2025.
No technical drawing experience needed—just a willingness to trace complexity.
Participants are encouraged to bring dry drawing media (markers, found images, etc) and reading references (articles, books, etc) to share, annotate, and get inspiration from during the session.
DATE
Saturday, 24 May 2025
3:00pm – 5:00pm
VENUE
ADM Gallery 2
NTU School of Art, Design and Media
81 Nanyang Dr, Singapore 637458
EXHIBITION DATES
28 April to 13 June 2025
Open by appointment from 14 June to 15 August 2025
GALLERY HOURS
Monday to Friday: 10:00am to 5:00pm
Saturday: By appointment only
Closed on Sunday and Public Holidays
EMAIL
ADMgallery@ntu.edu.sg
What messages echo back to us from the future Earth? What will remain, and what will be mourned of the world as we know it? In a time when planetary futures are continuously mapped, engineered, and imagined, Letters from a Future Earth invites participants to step across the threshold of speculation and listen for voices shaped by rising tides, geoengineered skies, and adaptive ecosystems.
This workshop revolves around The Planet After Geoengineering (2021), a graphic animation by Design Earth, where planetary imaginaries unfold through narrative fragments and visual speculation. Responding to the animation, participants will be prompted to ponder over climate change, environmental design, and planetary care and compose letters and/or postcards from a future Earth. In creating memories of futures yet to be experienced, participants are asked to time-travel into future climates and channel perspectives from the human and other-than-human inhabitants of the Earth to come. The workshop will culminate in a final sharing session where participants will be invited to present their pieces, exchange insights, and reflect on the power of storytelling. In closing, the group will consider how such narratives might shape our actions in the present.
The workshop seeks to make the immediacy of climate change tangible, not only intellectually, but also emotionally by foregrounding personal visions and speculative storytelling with letters serving as intimate vessels for messages of loss, change, and resilience.
The workshop welcomes the general public as well as creatives, artists, writers, architects, designers, students, and everyone interested in the topic of climate change. Suitable for all writing skill levels.
This participatory event is part of a series of public programmes for the exhibition DESIGN EARTH: Speculative Fiction for the Climate on view by appointment at NTU ADM Gallery. Participants are welcome to visit the exhibition before attending the workshop.
This workshop is recommended for participants who are 18 years old and above.
Drawing and writing materials will be provided, participants are also welcome to bring their own.
The works produced will be photographed, and a selection will be featured on NTU CCA Singapore’s media platforms.
This workshop is facilitated by Leila Vignozzi, Intern, NTU CCA Singapore.
Saturday, 5 July 2025
2:00 – 4:00pm
The Hall, NTU CCA Singapore
Inspired by Cosmorama (2018), one of four sections in the exhibition Design Earth: Speculative Fiction for the Climate, this third Drawing Club invites artists, architects, designers, and students to respond to the geostories of asteroid mining, orbital debris, and climate refuge in the age of the “New Space.”
The workshop zooms in on architectural drawing as practice to examine planetary issues such as satellite debris and airspace conflicts, that may seem distant from us. Participants will trace the macrocosmic consequences of extractive economies and of their politics beyond Singapore, and beyond the Earth itself, launching critical conversations into speculative drawings.
The annotated sketches produced during the workshop will be displayed at the NTU ADM Foyer until 13 August 2025, alongside the works produced at the previous Drawing Club.
Participants are encouraged to bring dry drawing media (markers, found images, etc) and reading references (articles, books, etc) to share, annotate, and get inspiration from during the session. No technical drawing experience needed.
This workshop is facilitated by Eunice Lacaste, Programmes Associate, NTU CCA Singapore.
DATE: Thursday, 7 August 2025. 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm
VENUE: ADM Gallery 2, NTU School of Art, Design and Media, 81 Nanyang Dr, Singapore 637458
EXHIBITION DATES: Open by appointment from 14 June to 15 August 2025
GALLERY HOURS: Monday to Friday: 10:00am to 5:00pm. Saturday: By appointment only. Closed on Sunday and Public Holidays
BOOKING EMAIL: ADMgallery@ntu.edu.sg
Decay, decomposition, weathering, rot. Landscapes eroding, architectures disintegrating, bodies breaking down, coming apart, becoming dirt. We hardly have a kinship with decay for, like dirt, decay is—in the words of anthropologist Mary Douglas—matter out-of-place in our perpetually renewing cities. Indeed, the city we are brought to inhabit and desire is built with ever-more weatherproof architectures, with cosmetic treatments that maintain the hardness of the buildings and the smoothness of their surfaces impervious to the traces of Nature’s time. In waterfront cities, which novelist Amitav Ghosh regards as a showcase of architectural mastery over the unruly environment, the cartography of terrestrial edges continues to reinforce the separation of interiorised human-made worlds from exteriorised more-than-human environment. Seen through the lens of the city, the design of the future Earth aspires to be atemporal. And like so many transient and shifting environments stilled in human projections of the Earth (from maps to masterplans), the “unweathered” city must thrive outside of time, devoid of stains and discolouration. But does the city have to be in an anxious race against Nature’s time?
Created and led by Superlative Futures, Drawing Dialogues: Stories of Decay is a workshop for re-attuning our urban selves to Nature’s time. The programme focuses on rethinking the place of decay in the wellbeing of cities and on re-presenting stories of decay as matters of care. The workshop will start off with a walk in the Berlayer Creek—a rare remnant of Singapore’s mangrove histories once denigrated as a place of dankness and disease—where participants will be led to uncover stories of decay and gather thoughts and materials of decomposition. The second part of the workshop will take place at NTU CCA Singapore where, drawing and dialoguing with decay, participants will be guided to create their own narratives and landscapes of decay culminating in a collaborative artwork. Expanding on Superlative Futures’ speculative design research on new ecological practices for weathering the future city, this workshop marks the beginning of a propositional archive—A Cartography of Decay—that charts different relationships between decay and the city.
This event is a public programme created in response to the exhibition Design Earth: Speculative Fiction for the Climate, on view by appointment at NTU ADM Gallery 2 until 15 August 2025.
Progressive Disintegrations is a collaborative group that began out of the need to create a format and a space for creative exchange between the artistic practices of Chua Chye Teck, Marc Gloede, Hilmi Johandi and Wei Leng Tay. The project aimed to open up the normally individual artistic and curatorial pursuits of each participant, creating situations that allow them to explore and expand the notions that underlie their respective practices.
DESIGN EARTH‘s latest project is a series of fables that addresses the elephant in the room—the climate crisis—by animating charismatic figures from natural history museums. This design research identifies and leverages figures from the collections all while unsettling the museum apparatus—the devices, archives, histories, and audiences. Some such figures include a taxidermy of an African matriarch elephant, the skeleton of a stranded blue whale, and a composite structure of a Diplodocuscarnegii. The fragmentary remains of such creatures are animated, brought back to life, so to speak in rhyming verse, colorful imagery, and with some poignant humor. These speculative afterlives stir up potent trouble on the breath-taking capture of life in the Anthropocene to ask how cultural institutions may be responsible to calls for decolonisation and decarbonisation. In Singapore, this hands-on, participatory workshop will focus on the cultural prehistory, present, and speculative futures of the Singapore saltwater (estuarine) crocodile and the Malayan tiger. Facilitated by Rania Ghosn, El Hadi Jazairy, and DESIGN EARTH team member Kelly Koh. Beginning with the Artist Talk on 13 June, participants will engage in DESIGN EARTH creative methodologies including site visits and the building of a research archive while looking into the facts and fictions of these creatures and their homes.
For registration, please visit here.
DESIGN EARTH was founded by Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy in 2011. The design research practice deploys the speculative project—drawing and narrative—to make public the climate crisis. Their work has been featured internationally—most recently at Venice Biennale, Bauhaus Museum Dessau, SFMOMA, Milano Triennale—and is in the New York Museum of Modern Art permanent collection. Ghosn and Jazairy are authors of Geographies of Trash (2015); Geostories: Another Architecture for the Environment (3rd ed. 2022), The Planet After Geoengineering (2021) and Climate Inheritance (2023). DESIGN EARTH has been recognized with several awards, including United States Artist Fellowship, Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers, Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture Faculty Design Awards, and Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts Awards.
Rania Ghosn (Beirut, b. 1977) is Associate Professor and Director of the Master of Science in Architecture Studies (SMArchS) in Urbanism at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. El Hadi Jazairy (Algeria, b. 1970) is Associate Professor of Architecture and Director of Master of Urban Design degree program at the University of Michigan.
Join DESIGN EARTH co-founders and co-directors Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy for their first presentation in Singapore, where they will share insights into their collaborative research practice centred on the speculative architectural project as a mode of making the climate crisis public. Their design research brings together spatial history, geographic representation, projective design, and material public assemblies to speculate on ways of living with legacy technologies on a damaged planet. Recipients of the United States Artist Fellowship and the Architectural League Prize for Young Architects and Designers, among other honors, Ghosn and Jazairy have made a practice of telling complex and unwieldy stories of the Earth. Learn more about their ongoing explorations of visual and spatial storytelling.
Friday, 13 June 2025
6:30 – 8:30 pm
The Hall, NTU CCA Singapore
6 Lock Rd, #01-09/10 Gillman Barracks 108934
Free registration here.
How might the architectural imagination make sense of the Earth at a moment in which the planet is presented in crisis? For Design Earth, imagination fuels the production of stories and images that come together as geographically situated speculations—neither documentary nor completely fictional.
Today we live in an epoch shaped by extensive shifts in industrialization, with environmental risks and destruction felt at a planetary scale. Paradoxically, while the threats are serious, we remain little mobilized—in part because of the “abysmal distance between our little selfish human worries and the great questions of ecology.”[1] If we are worried once again that the sky may be falling on our heads, how is it that we have done so little about it? In this light, the environmental crisis can be seen not only as a crisis of the physical and technological environments; it is also a crisis of the cultural environment—of the modes of representation through which society relates to the complexity of environmental systems.
Design Earth: Speculative Fiction for the Climate springs from the conviction that climate change demands urgent transformations in the ways we care for and design the Earth, moving away from a visual rhetoric of crisis that aestheticizes calamity. Design Earth, a research practice founded and led by Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy engages the medium of the speculative architectural project to make public the climate crisis. Their design research brings together spatial history, geographic representation, projective design, and material public assemblies to speculate on ways of living with legacy technologies on a damaged planet. This work is developed simultaneously through the medium of drawing and the creation of books, two of which are excerpted and put in conversation in this art exhibition.
The first book, Geostories: Another Architecture for the Environment (Actar Publishers, 2018), is a manifesto for environmental imagination in twelve architectural projects engaging the planetary scale through drawing divided by the organising principles of Aquarium, Terrarium, and Planetarium. This exhibition highlights three chapters from the larger work, each addressing a planetary common as matter of concern – the atmosphere, deep seabed, outer space: After Oil (2016), Pacific Aquarium (2016), and Cosmorama (2018). It examines geographies of extractive technological systems, foregrounding externalities as political concerns for architecture. Geographic portraits employing axonometry, sections, and split-level views describe the political and ethical implications of our ecological actions while speculating on survival and adaptation strategies that invite us to make sense of the Earth envision it in ways that generate inquisitive, delightful, and potentially subversive responses.
The second book, The Planet After Geoengineering (Actar Publishers, 2021) is a graphic novel which imagines the worlds of climate modification technologies and their controversies. It thinks with and against geoengineering – technologies that counteract the effects of anthropogenic climate change by deliberately intervening in Earth systems as a form of planetary management. In five chapters, The Planet After Geoengineering assembles a planetary section that cuts through the underground, crust, atmosphere, and outer space. Each geostory— Petrified Carbon, Arctic Albedo, Sky River, Sulfur Storm, and Dust Cloud—depicts possible future Earths that we come to inhabit on the heels of a geoengineering intervention all while situating such promissory visions within a genealogy of climate-control projects from nineteenth-century rainmaking machines and volcanic eruptions to
Cold War military plans.
Together these projects help us begin to address the open question of how (else) could we tell the story of the Earth? Beyond the binaries of the preservation of a Blue Marble and the promises of technological solutionism, what geostories can we imagine or envision?
[1] Laura Collins-Hughes, “A Potential Disaster in Any Language: ‘Gaïa Global Circus’ at the Kitchen,” New York Times, September 25, 2014.
Design Earth: Speculative Fiction for the Climate is co-organised by NTU Centre for Contemporary Art and ADM Gallery
OPENING RECEPTION
Friday, 25 April 2025
6:30 – 8:30 pm
VENUE
ADM Gallery 2
NTU School of Art, Design and Media
81 Nanyang Dr, Singapore 637458
DATES
28 April to 13 June 2025
Open by appointment from 14 June to 15 August 2025
GALLERY HOURS
Monday to Friday: 10:00am to 5:00pm
Saturday: By appointment only
*Closed on Sunday and Public Holidays
ADMgallery@ntu.edu.sg
Public Programmes
Join DESIGN EARTH co-founders and co-directors Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy for their first presentation in Singapore, where they will share insights into their collaborative research practice centred on the speculative architectural project as a mode of making the climate crisis public. Their design research brings together spatial history, geographic representation, projective design, and material public assemblies to speculate on ways of living with legacy technologies on a damaged planet. Recipients of the United States Artist Fellowship and the Architectural League Prize for Young Architects and Designers, among other honors, Ghosn and Jazairy have made a practice of telling complex and unwieldy stories of the Earth. Learn more about their ongoing explorations of visual and spatial storytelling.
Friday, 13 June 2025, 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
The Hall, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore
6 Lock Rd, #01-09/10 Gillman Barracks 108934
DESIGN EARTH Workshop: Elephant in the Room and Other Creatures
DESIGN EARTH‘s latest project is a series of fables that addresses the elephant in the room—the climate crisis—by animating charismatic figures from natural history museums. This design research identifies and leverages figures from the collections all while unsettling the museum apparatus—the devices, archives, histories, and audiences. Some such figures include a taxidermy of an African matriarch elephant, the skeleton of a stranded blue whale, and a composite structure of a Diplodocuscarnegii. The fragmentary remains of such creatures are animated, brought back to life, so to speak in rhyming verse, colorful imagery, and with some poignant humor. These speculative afterlives stir up potent trouble on the breath-taking capture of life in the Anthropocene to ask how cultural institutions may be responsible to calls for decolonisation and decarbonisation. In Singapore, this hands-on, participatory workshop will focus on the cultural prehistory, present, and speculative futures of the Singapore saltwater (estuarine) crocodile and the Malayan tiger. Facilitated by Rania Ghosn, El Hadi Jazairy, and DESIGN EARTH team member Kelly Koh. Beginning with the Artist Talk on 13 June, participants will engage in DESIGN EARTH creative methodologies including site visits and the building of a research archive while looking into the facts and fictions of these creatures and their homes.
13 – 19 June 2025
The Hall, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore
6 Lock Rd, #01-09/10 Gillman Barracks 108934
Curator’s Exhibition (de)Tour
Join NTU CCA Singapore Director Karin G. Oen for a closer look at the collaborative practice of DESIGN EARTH, including drawing, writing, animation, and sound components of Design Earth: Speculative Fiction for the Climate. Explore the research and influences that comprise these multi-layered artworks, from the terrestrial principles of geoengineering and petroleum geology, to the supranational domains of the deep seabeds and outer space. Highlighting the long traditions of poetry, science fiction, and image creation that help us to conceptualise these realms, we will consider what it means to tell the stories of the earth, and to live with unsightly “externalities.”
Saturday, 17 May 2025
11:00 am – 12:00 pm
ADM Gallery 2
NTU School of Art, Design and Media
81 Nanyang Dr, Singapore 637458
Student-Led Exhibition (de)Tour
Join Vaishnavi Peddapalli, NTU School of Humanities Class of 2025, for a student-led (de)tour of Design Earth: Speculative Fiction for the Climate that will explore how speculative fiction can reconsider Southeast Asian geographical catastrophes borne from human intervention. Considering localised discourse around climate change and its impact on younger generations, this experience provides space for speculation for our planet’s future.
Saturday, 31 May 2025
11:00 am – 12:00 pm
ADM Gallery 2
NTU School of Art, Design and Media
81 Nanyang Dr, Singapore 637458
Come walk, draw, and speculate. Drawing as a visual and creative practice can also be a tool for scientific inquiry and speculation. Plotting detailed lines can help process the larger picture of the distanced and abstracted planet crisis. Inspired by the exhibition, Design Earth: Speculative Fiction for the Climate, this drawing club invites artists, architects, designers, and students to probe how architectural drawings can unearth the more inconspicuous matters of climate change. Facilitated by Eunice Lacaste, Programme Associate, NTU CCA Singapore.
This Drawing Club invites artists, architects, designers, and students to present their annotated sketches at the NTU ADM Foyer from July to August 2025.
No technical drawing experience needed—just a willingness to trace complexity. Participants are encouraged to bring dry drawing media (markers, found images, etc) and reading references (articles, books, etc) to share, annotate, and get inspiration from during the session.
Saturday, 24 May 2025
3:00 pm – 5:00 pm
ADM Gallery 2
NTU School of Art, Design and Media
81 Nanyang Dr, Singapore 637458
Decay, decomposition, weathering, rot. Landscapes eroding, architectures disintegrating, bodies breaking down, coming apart, becoming dirt. We hardly have a kinship with decay for, like dirt, decay is—in the words of anthropologist Mary Douglas—matter out-of-place in our perpetually renewing cities. Indeed, the city we are brought to inhabit and desire is built with ever-more weatherproof architectures, with cosmetic treatments that maintain the hardness of the buildings and the smoothness of their surfaces impervious to the traces of Nature’s time. In waterfront cities, which novelist Amitav Ghosh regards as a showcase of architectural mastery over the unruly environment, the cartography of terrestrial edges continues to reinforce the separation of interiorised human-made worlds from exteriorised more-than-human environment. Seen through the lens of the city, the design of the future Earth aspires to be atemporal. And like so many transient and shifting environments stilled in human projections of the Earth (from maps to masterplans), the “unweathered” city must thrive outside of time, devoid of stains and discolouration. But does the city have to be in an anxious race against Nature’s time?
Created and led by Superlative Futures, Drawing Dialogues: Stories of Decay is a workshop for re-attuning our urban selves to Nature’s time. The programme focuses on rethinking the place of decay in the wellbeing of cities and on re-presenting stories of decay as matters of care. The workshop will start off with a walk in the Berlayer Creek—a rare remnant of Singapore’s mangrove histories once denigrated as a place of dankness and disease—where participants will be led to uncover stories of decay and gather thoughts and materials of decomposition. The second part of the workshop will take place at NTU CCA Singapore where, drawing and dialoguing with decay, participants will be guided to create their own narratives and landscapes of decay culminating in a collaborative artwork. Expanding on Superlative Futures’ speculative design research on new ecological practices for weathering the future city, this workshop marks the beginning of a propositional archive—A Cartography of Decay—that charts different relationships between decay and the city.
It is recommended to bring water, sunblock, umbrella, mosquito repellent, and notetaking materials (e.g. pencil/pen and paper). This is a rain or shine event.
This event is a public programme created in response to the exhibition Design Earth: Speculative Fiction for the Climate, on view by appointment at NTU ADM Gallery 2 until 15 August 2025.
This programme is free with registration. Limited capacity.
Workshop Schedule
9:00 – 10:00am
Meet at Labrador Park MRT, Exit A
Move as a group to Berlayer Creek
10:30am – 12:00pm
Drawing session at The Hall, NTU CCA Singapore
This workshop will revolve around The Planet After Geoengineering(2021), a graphic animation by Design Earth, where planetary imaginaries unfold through narrative fragments and visual speculation. Responding to the animation, participants will be prompted to ponder over climate change, environmental design, and planetary care and compose letters and/or postcards from a future Earth. In creating memories of futures yet to be experienced, participants are asked to time-travel into future climates and channel perspectives from the human and other-than-human inhabitants of the Earth to come. The workshop will culminate in a final sharing session where participants will be invited to present their pieces, exchange insights, and reflect on the power of storytelling. In closing, the group will consider how such narratives might shape our actions in the present.
The workshop seeks to make the immediacy of climate change tangible, not only intellectually, but also emotionally by foregrounding personal visions and speculative storytelling with letters serving as intimate vessels for messages of loss, change, and resilience.
We welcome the general public as well as creatives, artists, writers, architects, designers, students, and everyone interested in the topic of climate change. Suitable for all writing skill levels.
This workshop is facilitated by Leila Vignozzi, Intern, NTU CCA Singapore.
Saturday, 5 July 2025
2:00 – 4:00pm
The Hall, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore
6 Lock Rd, #01-09/10 Gillman Barracks 108934
Inspired by Cosmorama (2018), one of four sections in the exhibition Design Earth: Speculative Fiction for the Climate, this third Drawing Club invites artists, architects, designers, and students to respond to the geostories of asteroid mining, orbital debris, and climate refuge in the age of the “New Space.”
The workshop zooms in on architectural drawing as practice to examine planetary issues such as satellite debris and airspace conflicts, that may seem distant from us. Participants will trace the macrocosmic consequences of extractive economies and of their politics beyond Singapore, and beyond the Earth itself, launching critical conversations into speculative drawings.
The annotated sketches produced during the workshop will be displayed at the NTU ADM Foyer until 13 August 2025, alongside the works produced at the previous Drawing Club.
Participants are encouraged to bring dry drawing media (markers, found images, etc) and reading references (articles, books, etc) to share, annotate, and get inspiration from during the session. No technical drawing experience needed.
This workshop is facilitated by Eunice Lacaste, Programmes Associate, NTU CCA Singapore.
Thursday, 7 August 2025. 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm
ADM Gallery 2
NTU School of Art, Design and Media
81 Nanyang Dr, Singapore 637458
Singapore, a high-density tropical city, regularly faces environmental challenges such as the urban heat island effect and air pollution. As these issues intensify due to rising temperatures and increasing urbanisation, how can urban ecosystems provide solutions that prioritise wellbeing for all? This lecture will explore how landscape design – such as rewilding and the Rail Corridor – can improve air quality as air pollution intensifies with rising temperatures. For this lecture, we bring together international renowned scientist of air pollution Steve Yim (Associate Professor, Asian School of Environment and Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Nanyang Technological University, and Director, Centre for Climate Change and Environmental Health), and Dr. Srilalitha Gopalakrishnan (Associate Director [Research], Future Cities Laboratory Global and President, Singapore Institute of Landscape Architects), to discuss architectural and scientific innovations to enhance green-city livability, focusing on integrated architecture, urban sustainability, and public health. This lecture will be moderated by Dr. Thomas Schroepfer (Professor of Architecture and Sustainable Design, Singapore University of Technology and Design and Director, Future Cities Laboratory Global, Singapore-ETH Centre) with a welcome address by Ute Meta Bauer (Professor, School of Art, Design, and Media, Nanyang Technological University and Senior Principal Research Fellow, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore).
Tuesday, 18 February 2025
6:30pm – 8:30pm
The Hall, NTU CCA Singapore
Register here
After a very successful first iteration of Climate Futures #1: Cultures, Climate Crisis and Disappearing Ecologies its second convening wants to build on its discussions and expand its understanding of the decline in cultural and ecological diversity in the region. It became very clear that such conversations require space and time to process complex issues, if we do not want to simplify and allow more than one way to process how people feel about their situations and want to be heard. Our futures require us to go beyond the status quo of current modes of operating. To not lose cultural knowledge and biodiversity Climate Futures #2: Belonging & Shared Responsibilities will share various narratives and practices that are already in place. It wants to further provide access to communities outside state and institutional structures to further nurture understanding of change in responsibilities and accountability.
The summit intents to further map how the climate crisis informs our contemporary world, and how diverse cultures can adjust or adapt without losing a sense of purpose. It comprises of discussions into alternative approaches to regional studies focusing on urgencies such as rising sea-levels and temperatures and the impact on natural resources of the region. A particular focus will be on areas such as the Mekong River and Delta (Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam) and its water street to Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines including the Straits that plays an essential role in the regions shared history.
The holistic approach of Climate Futures #1: Cultures, Climate Crisis and Disappearing Ecologies showed already how it can successfully stimulate a debate between artists, designers, and architects, scientists, environmentalists, as well as local voices and policy makers. We seek to reach out to an even wider public including younger scholars and practitioners, as well as community leaders and policy makers from the ASEAN region.
The future of our shared prosperity relies on our collective ability to create an inclusive and sustainable foundation for growth.
Read the programme brochure here.
Thursday, 26 October – Saturday 28 October 2023
Sokhalay Angkor Villa Resort, Siem Reap, Cambodia
Thursday, 26 October
Join the livestream here with the passcode 668981.
9:30am Registration & Coffee
10:00am Opening Addresses
Dr Piti Srisangnam, Executive Director, ASEAN Foundation
H.E. Min Chandynavuth, Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, Cambodia
Prof. Tim White, Vice President (International Engagement); President’s Chair in Materials Science and Engineering; Professor, School of Materials Science & Engineering.
Welcome and Introduction by co-curators Prof. Ute Meta Bauer (Germany/Singapore), Founding Director NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, and Professor School of Art, Design, and Media, NTU Singapore and Magdalena Magiera (Germany/Singapore), Curator Residencies and Programms, NTU Centre of Contemporary Art, Singapore
10:30am The Art of Living Lightly, Keynote Lecture by Rachaporn Choochuey (Thailand), Architect, Co-founder, Design Director, all(zone) ltd
11:40am Between Bots and the Biosphere: Machine Philosophy, Media Ecologies, and Digital Hieroglyphs for Climate Adaptation, Case Study by Nashin Mahtani (Indonesia), Director, PetaBencana.id
12:00pm An Uncommon History of The Common Fence: A Prologue (To the Coast), Case Study by Jason Wee (Singapore), Artist, Writer, Curator
12:20pm Sharing Climate Futures: Developing tools for climate care and action, Case Study by Prof. Ute Meta Bauer (Germany/Singapore), Founding Director NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, and Professor School of Art, Design, and Media, NTU Singapore
1:00pm Discussion with Rachaporn Choochuey (Thailand), Nashin Mahtani (Indonesia), and Jason Wee (Singapore). Moderated by Prof. Ute Meta Bauer (Germany/Singapore)
3:30pm Belonging & Sharing Responsibilities, Closed Workshop by Claudia Lasimbang a.k.a Yoggie, Technical Coordinator Watersheds and Communities, Forever Sabah, Philip Chin a.k.a. Linggit, Technical Coordinator Certified Sustainable Palm Oil, Forever Sabah, and Yee I-Lan (all Malaysia), artist
Friday, 27 October
Join the livestream here with the passcode 400242.
8:45am Registration & Coffee
9:00am Welcome & Introduction
9:10am Creative Digital Lab: how artists, cultural and creative professionals and technologists work together to explore the potentials of XR technology in protecting heritage, safeguarding intangible cultural heritage and contributing to climate action. Lecture by Kamonrat Mali Chayamarit (Thailand), Culture Programme Officer, Lao PDR alternate Focal Point, UNESCO Culture related Conventions Advocate
9:40am Ecology for Non-Futures, Case Study by Binna Choi (South-Korea), Artists, part of Unmake Lab
10:20am Climate impact on social process and social structure, Case study by Daovone Phonemanichane (Laos), Strengthening Climate Resilience Project Manager, Oxfam Mekong Regional Water Governance Program
10:40am When Nature has Economic Value, Case Study by Som Supaprinya (Thailand), Artist
11:20am Discussion with Kamonrat Mali Chayamarit (Thailand), Binna Choi (South-Korea), Daovone Phonemanichane (Laos), and Som Supaprinya (Thailand). Moderated by Bejamin Hampe (Australia), Project Director, KONNECT ASEAN
1:00pm Glimpse of Life on the Water, Closed Workshop Sessions by Sovann Ke (Cambodia), Project Manager, OSMOSE
Saturday, 28 October
Join the livestream here with the passcode 353177.
8:45am Registration & Coffee
9:00am Introduction & Welcome
9:15am Every (de)Force Evolves into A (de)Form, Lecture by Gahee Park (South-Korea), Curator, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul
10:00am Pedagogy, Community, Art: Bottom-up Urbanism at Phnom Penh’s Wat Chen Dam Daek, Case Study by Lyno Vuth (Cambodia), Artist, and Eva Lloyd (Australia), Lecturer, University of New South Wales (UNSW)
10:20am Luang Prabang: From Cultural Landscape into Practice, Case Study by Phonepaseth Keosomsak (Laos), Architect, Artist
11:00am Snare for Birds: Rebelling Against an Order of Things, Case Study by Kiri Dalena (Philipines), Artist
11:20am Travelling through time, Case Study by Malin Yim (Cambodia), Artist
11:40am The New Word for World is Archipelago, Case Study by Nice Buenaventura (Philippines), Artist
12:00pm Discussion with Nice Buenaventura (Philippines), Kiri Dalena (Philipines), Phonepaseth Keosomsak (Laos), Gahee Park (South-Korea), Lyno Vuth (Cambodia), and Malin Yim (Cambodia). Moderated by Magdalena Magiera (Germany/Singapore)
2:30pm Visit of Blue Art Centre. Welcome by Sareth Svay (Cambodia), Artists, Director, Blue Art Centre
3:00pm Closing workshop by Cynthia Ong (Malaysia), Chief Executive Facilitator Forever Sabah Institute, LEAP
Curated by NTU CCA Singapore
Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director and Magdalena Magiera, Curator, Residencies and Programmes
Supported by
ASEAN Secretariat
ASEAN-Korea Cooperation Fund
Mission of the Republic of Korea to ASEAN
ASEAN Senior Officials Meeting for Culture and Arts
Programme support by Ministry of Culture and Fine Art, Cambodia
PROJECT PARTNERS
ASEAN FOUNDATION
Since the formation of ASEAN in 1967, ASEAN has embarked on a journey to accelerate economic growth, social progress, and cultural development in the region. After three decades, ASEAN leaders recognised there remained inadequate shared prosperity, ASEAN awareness, and contact amongst the people of ASEAN. As a result, ASEAN leaders established the ASEAN Foundation during the ASEAN 30th Anniversary Commemorative Summit in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia on 15 December 1997.
KONNECT ASEAN
As the post-Cold War reality of a new world has taken shape and formed new directions and conversations, ASEAN has re-entered the contemporary art space via collaborative efforts between various ASEAN bodies. The Republic of Korea celebrated 30 years of diplomatic relations with ASEAN in 2019 and in the same year established KONNECT ASEAN, an ASEAN-Korea arts programme. Supported by the ASEAN-Korea Cooperation Fund and administered by the ASEAN Foundation, KONNECT ASEAN signals both an eagerness by ASEAN to revitalise its once integral role in contemporary visual arts and Korea’s sincerity in establishing closer ties with ASEAN.
The programme celebrates Southeast Asian and Korean arts using different platforms (exhibitions, education and conferences, public programmes, residencies, and publications and archives) to explore and discuss social, political, economic, and environmental issues in the region. The artists’ works and activities engages and strengthen the public’s understanding of ASEAN’s role in facilitating cultural diplomacy. Furthermore, the programme intends to connect with the three major stakeholder groups of government, business, and civil society to achieve the vision of an ASEAN Community. Outcomes provide permanent resources recording why ASEAN matters and its ongoing contribution to the region’s growth, prosperity, and stability.
NANYANG TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY
A research-intensive public university, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has 33,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students in the Engineering, Business, Science, Medicine, Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences, and Graduate colleges. NTU is also home to world-renowned autonomous institutes—the National Institute of Education, S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Earth Observatory of Singapore, and Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering—and various leading research centres such as the Nanyang Environment & Water Research Institute (NEWRI) and Energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERI@N).
Under the NTU Smart Campus vision, the University harnesses the power of digital technology and tech-enabled solutions to support better learning and living experiences, the discovery of new knowledge, and the sustainability of resources. Ranked amongst the world’s top universities, the University’s main campus is also frequently listed among the world’s most beautiful. Known for its sustainability, over 95% of its building projects are certified Green Mark Platinum. Apart from its main campus, NTU also has a medical campus in Novena, Singapore’s healthcare district. For more information, visit ntu.edu.sg.
NTU CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART SINGAPORE
Situated within Singapore’s premier art precinct Gillman Barracks, NTU CCA Singapore is a pioneering institution that has been instrumental in shaping the contemporary art landscape in Singapore and beyond. With a focus on fostering creativity, innovation, and critical thinking, the Centre’s programmes have consistently challenged the status quo, encouraging artists to explore new realms of artistic expression. For more information, visit ntu.ccasingapore.org.
Image: Climate Futures #1, Jakarta (Indonesia), 2022. Courtesy NTU CCA Singapore, Konnect ASEAN & ASEAN Foundation.
Han Nefkens Foundation – Fundació Antoni Tàpies Video Art Production Award
Tekla Aslanishvili
A State in A State
11 Oct 2022, Tue – 6 Nov 2022, Sun
The Screening Room, Block 38 Malan Road, #01-06
12 pm – 7pm, every day except Monday
Film starts every hour
Premier Screening: Tuesday 11 October, 7:00pm-8:30pm
The screening will be followed by a conversation between the artist Tekla Aslanishvili, artistic-scientific collaborator Dr. Evelina Gambino and Assistant Professor Dr. Marc Gloede, School of Art, Design and Media, NTU, Singapore.
The welcome will be given by Ute Meta Bauer, Professor, School of Art, Design and Media, and Founding Director, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, and Dr. Karin Oen, Senior Lecturer and Head of Department, Art History, NTU School of Humanities.
A State in a State is the result of Aslanishvili winning the Han Nefkens Foundation – Fundació Antoni Tàpies Video Art Production Grant 2020, in collaboration with Jameel Art Centre, Dubai; the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design in Manila; NTU CCA Singapore and WIELS, Brussels. The Award appraises the work of emerging artists aged 40 and under, who live in West or Central Asia and have established a solid trajectory but not yet received recognition by international art institutions.
Aslanishvili was selected by an international jury, including NTU CCA Singapore’s Founding Director Ute Meta Bauer and former Deputy Director of Curatorial Programmes, Dr Karin Oen, for her body of meticulously researched work and her commitment to exploring a specific geopolitical context, whilst connecting to a wider discourse on the impact of extractivist economies on a planetary scale.
A State in a State is an experimental documentary following the construction, disruption, and fragmentation of railroads in the South Caucasus and Caspian regions. It examines railways as a technical materialisation of the fragile political borders that have re-emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Revolving around the scenes of delay and waiting that constitute cargo mobility, the film reads the optimistic narratives about the New Silk Road against the grain. It observes how the iron foundation of connectivity can be used as a weapon of exclusion and geopolitical sabotage. Dotting the same lines, other forms of sabotage are deployed by workers to disrupt the political violence. Looking at historic and current practices of resistance, A State in a State explores the potential of railroads for building a different, infrastructural consciousness, and the lasting transnational kinship among the people who live and work around them
The film is developed in artistic-scientific collaboration with Dr. Evelina Gambino, Margaret Tyler Research Fellow in Geography at Girton College, University of Cambridge.
Research & Script: Tekla Aslanishvili / Evelina Gambino
Music: Ani Zakareishvili / Nika Pasuri
Cinematography: Nikoloz Tabukashvili / Tekla Aslanishvili
Typography: Dato Simonia
Editing: Tekla Aslanishvili
Sound: Viktor Bone / Irakli Shonia
Color: Sally Shamas
A State in a State will be also presented at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona from October 8th till November 27th.
BIOGRAPHY
Tekla Aslanishvili (b. Tbilisi, 1988) is an artist, filmmaker and essayist based between Berlin and Tbilisi. Her works emerge at the intersection of infrastructural design, history and geopolitics. Tekla graduated from the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts in 2009 and she holds a MFA from the Berlin University of the Arts – the department of Experimental Film and New Media Art. Aslanishvili’s films have been screened and exhibited internationally at PACT Zollverein, Neue Berliner Kunstverein, Baltic Triennial, Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Kasseler Dokfest, Kunsthalle Münster, EMAF – European Media Art Festival, Videonale 18, Tbilisi Architecture Biennial. She is a 2018–2019 Digital Earth fellow, the nominee for Ars-Viva Art prize 2021 and the recipient of the Han Nefkens Foundation – Fundació Antoni Tàpies Video Art Production Award 2020.
Marc Glöde (PhD), is a curator, critic and film scholar. His work is focusing on the relation of images, technology, space, and the body, as well as the dynamics between fields such as art/architecture, art/film, and film/architecture. Since 2017 he is an Assistant Professor at NTU/ADM, Singapore and Co-Director of the MA in Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices.
About Han Nefkens Foundation
The Han Nefkens Foundation was established in 2009 with the aim of connecting people through art. In 2016, Han Nefkens decided to focus exclusively on supporting emerging and mid-career international video artists through Awards, Production Grants, and Mentorship Grants. The Foundation is not only involved in producing new works with the artists, but also finding international residencies, producing publications, purchasing working tools, finding technical support, and bringing artists into contact with art institutions and peers. With an extensive network in countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea, Ecuador, Peru, Spain, and the Netherlands, the Foundation is able to present artists to a diverse and global audience.
Judging Panel
The winner has been selected by a judging panel chaired by Han Nefkens, Founder of the Han Nefkens Foundation; Carles Guerra, representing the Fundació Antoni Tàpies; Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director of the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art; Dirk Snauwaert, Director of WIELS; Joselina Cruz, Director/Curator at Museum of Contemporary Art and Design and Nora Razian, Head of Exhibitions at Jameel Arts Centre, in the presence of Hilde Teerlinck, Director of the Han Nefkens Foundation; Alessandra Biscaro, Coordinator of the Han Nefkens Foundation; Zoë Gray: Senior Curator of WIELS and Karin Oen, Deputy Director, Curatorial Programmes at NTU Centre for Contemporary Art.
Image Credits
Tekla Aslanishvili
A State in A State, 2022
Colour, black and white, AVCHD Digital film; archival & found footage, sound, 47 min.
video still
Commissioned by Han Nefkens Foundation – Fundació Antoni Tàpies Video Art Production Award
Courtesy the Artist
The Ideal Communist City (Andrei Baburov, Georgi Djumenton, Alexei Gutnov, Zoya Kharitonova, Ilya Lezava, Stanislav Zadovskij), comprised urban concepts by architects and planners at the University of Moscow written during the late 1950s and first published in a journal of a communist youth organisation in 1960. The architects’ collective imagines urban life “structured by freely chosen relationships represents the fullest, most well-rounded aspects of each human personality.”
The Ideal Communist City was first published in English in 1971 within the influential series on architecture and urban theory, the i press series on the human environment, initiated by Mary Otis Stevens and Thomas McNulty. This volume comprises a facsimile edition of the original title with a foreword by Ana Miljacki, professor of architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The Ideal Communist City
Published by NTU CCA Singapore and Weiss Publications, 2022
By Andrei Baburov, Georgi Djumenton, Alexei Gutnov, Zoya Kharitonova, Ilya Lezava, Stanislav Zadovskij. Edited with text by Ute Meta Bauer, Karin G. Oen, Pelin Tan. Afterword by Mary Otis Stevens. Essay by Ana Miljački.
Design by Enver Hadzijaj
© 2022 by the editors, Mary Otis Stevens, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore and Weiss Publications, ISBN: 9783948318161
Distributed by D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers
Copies are available for sale at NTU CCA Singapore.
To purchase your copy, please contact ntuccapublications@ntu.edu.sg
World of Variation is a a visual/verbal essay addressing critical societal issues such as community versus privacy, public versus private realms, social justice and humane, sustainable developments from a global perspective. To avoid datedness and the cultural biases inherent in realistic representations, the two authors, Mary Otis Stevens and Thomas F. McNulty, both MIT graduates and noted for their projects in the Modern Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, formulated an abstract visual language to convey their conceptual ideas.
This new edition contains a facsimile of the original edition published in 1970 with added commentaries by Pelin Tan, sociologist and art historian, professor at Fine Arts Academy, Batman University, and senior fellow of CAD+SR; Karin G. Oen, principal research fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s School of Art, Design, and Media (NTU ADM); Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore and professor at NTU ADM; and a text by Beatriz Colomina, professor of the history of architecture at Princeton University, and Mark Wigley, professor of architecture and Dean Emeritus, Columbia University.
World of Variation
Published by NTU CCA Singapore and Weiss Publications, 2022
By Mary Otis Stevens, Thomas McNulty. Edited with text by Ute Meta Bauer, Karin G. Oen, Pelin Tan. Afterword by Mary Otis Stevens. Essay by Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley.
Design by Enver Hadzijaj
© 2022 by the editors, Mary Otis Stevens, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore and Weiss Publications, ISBN: 9783948318178
Distributed by D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers
Copies are available for sale at NTU CCA Singapore.
To purchase your copy, please contact ntuccapublications@ntu.edu.sg
During the residency, Lyno will explore the entangled histories of colonialism, modernisation, and urbanisation focusing on the Garden of Tropical Agronomy, located in the Bois de Vincennes, one of the largest public parks in Paris which hosted the International Colonial Exposition in 1931. The exposition featured several architectural representations of the colonies, including Cambodia and Indochina, the remnants of which are still extant today surrounded by modern facilities. The artist is interested in excavating the politics of the built environment to understand the historical role architecture has played in the construction of imperialist agendas and the lingering implications of colonial symbolism and power structures in the present.
Find out more about SEA AiR.
Vuth Lyno is an artist, curator, and educator who is interested in space, cultural history, and the production of knowledge through social relations. Drawing on a wide range of materials such as interviews, artifacts, and newly made objects, he creates spatial configurations that weave together personal stories and collective bodies of knowledge. Participatory and experimental in nature, his artistic and curatorial approach is rooted in communal learning and aims to engage a multiplicity of voices in the production of meaning. He is a member of Stiev Selapak, a collective which founded and co-runs Sa Sa Art Projects in Phnom Penh, a long-term initiative committed to the development of the contemporary visual arts landscape in Cambodia. His work has been presented at several group exhibitions and institutions such as the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, Thailand (2020) and the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial, Brisbane, Australia (2019), amongst others.
Azra Akšamija is a Sarajevo born artist and architectural historian. She is the Career Development Professor and Assistant Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Art, Culture and Technology Programme. In her multi-disciplinary work, Akšamija investigates the politics of identity and memory on the scale of the body (clothing and wearable technologies), on the civic scale (religious architecture and cultural institutions), and within the context of history and global cultural flows.
Akšamija was trained in architecture at the Technical University Graz, Austria (Dipl.Ing. in 2001) and Princeton University (M.Arch. in 2004), and received her PhD in History of Islamic Art and Architecture from MIT (History Theory and Criticism of Art and Architecture / Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture) in 2011.
Akšamija’s work has been published and exhibited in leading international venues such as at the Generali Foundation Vienna, Valencia Biennial, Gallery for Contemporary Art Leipzig, Liverpool Biennial, Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, Sculpture Center New York, Secession Vienna, Manifesta 7, Stroom The Hague, the Royal Academy of Arts London, Jewish Museum Berlin, Queens Museum of Art in New York, and the Fondazione Giorgio Cini as a part of the 54th Art Biennale in Venice.
Research Focus
Azra Akšamija’s projects explore the potency of art and architecture to facilitate the process of transformative conflict mediation though cultural pedagogy, and in so doing, provide a framework for analysing and intervening in contested socio-political realities. Her recent work focuses on the representation of Islam in the West, architectural forms of nationalism in the Balkans since the 1990s, and the role of cultural institutions and heritage in constructing common good in divided societies. Akšamija investigates the role of cultural and religious identity in conflicts, especially in the recent history of the Yugoslavian war and its aftermath.
Formally trained in sculpture, Zul Mahmod has continued to build and expand his practice over the last three years to include sculpted sound and live sound performances. Zul’s practice investigates the aural architecture of spaces in order to explore the emotional, behavioural and visceral responses of its inhabitants. While in residence, Zul will explore the aural relationship between readymade sound sculptures and the architecture of space. Sonic characteristics, forms and textures of everyday objects will be examined in order to compose an orchestra of sonic sculptures.
Working with a comparative methodology, Valentina Karga intends to delve deep into theories of prehistoric matriarchal societies. Still at an early stage of development, her inquiry embraces multiple sources and ultimately aims to intertwine myths, histories, and political implications of matriarchal societies with the Anthropocene discourse, engaging theories on the posthuman condition that advance the understanding of the planet as a homeostatic system where all living and non-living organisms are connected and interdependent. Among her current sources of inspiration are Helen Diner’s seminal work for women’s cultural history, Mothers and Amazons, published in 1932; Marija Gimbutas’ notion of “archaeomythology” which blends archaeology, comparative mythology, and folklore; and Bruno Latour’s reading of the Gaia Hypothesis formulated by James Lovelock in the 1970s. During the residency, the artist aims to expand her understanding of feminine symbolism by researching prehistoric symbols and archaeological excavations in Southeast Asia.
The artistic practice of Valentina Karga (b. 1986, Greece) spans the fields of architecture, socially engaged art, and performance. Interested in creating alternatives to existing societal and pedagogical structures, Kargadesigns conceptual infrastructures that encourage engagement and participation to facilitate practices of commoning and sustainability. Her works have been presented at Athens Biennale, Greece (2013); transmediale, Berlin, Germany (2016); and the inaugural Thailand Biennale (2018-19). She is a founding member of Collective Disaster, an interdisciplinary, transnational, and nomadic community that works in the intersections of art, architecture, and the social realm and is currently Professor for introduction to artistic work in Design at HFBK Hamburg, Germany.
During her residency, Weber will be collaborating with Annie Seaton. Annie Seaton and Tamara Weber work together as Close Readings, a collaborative project of visually informed investigative research. Close Readings’ recent works explore selective multimedia deconstruction. Their process involves, first, making photographs—then turning those images into xeroxes (or) otherwise altering them. In Singapore and New York, they will be simultaneously and asynchronously researching in various media. Through a collaborative process of visual and text-based interaction, Annie and Tamara will create book-like objects that will serve as blueprints for further work.
Simon Soon will be comparing the architecture and landscape of Nanyang University (1955-1980) and Chinese University of Hong Kong (1963-present), two Chinese-language institutions of higher learning in former British colonies. He is interested in exploring how the spatial design of these two institutions facilitate different experiences of cultural and political modernity as well as constructions of social memory. His residency at the NTU CCA Singapore will allow him to undertake the Singapore segment of his research as well as pursue further research on contemporary art in Singapore. His research will involve archival material into architectural histories in Singapore as well as the facilitation of a panel discussion with scholars and artists on the Nanyang University.
Sean Connelly (b.1984, United States) is an artist, urban ecologist, and architect. His research addresses the role of innovative design in recovering ahupua’a, a traditional Hawaiian spatial configuration. Connelly operates both independently and collaboratively out of his studio practice After Oceanic which pursues projects in the realms of architecture, landscape, and infrastructure. He is also the author and producer of Hawai‚Äòi Futures, a virtual intervention and educational tool for island urbanism. His work has been shown across the United States at the Honolulu Biennale (2017); Honolulu Museum of Art (2015) and Santa Fe Art Institute (2016).
Jamie North (b. 1971, Australia) is an artist based in Sydney. His practice explores the concurrence and conflict between architectural structures and the biological world. Initially working with photography, North’s interest in the ability of plants to recover, regenerate, and reclaim an environment after human intervention has shifted towards the creation of living sculptural installations. His work has been presented at the 20th Biennale of Sydney, Australia, 2016; Tophane-i Amire Cultural and Arts Center, Istanbul, Turkey, 2015; Monash University, Melbourne, 2015, amongst other venues.
Sally Tallant, presents a talk within our framework of our overarching curatorial narrative Place.Labour.Capital as her current position, Director of the Liverpool Biennial, is situated in a post-industrial port city feeling the effects of flows of global capital and an area which has historical known different routes of migration. During research Tallant will meet with a number of Singapore artists to understand their concerns and practices as well as visit institutions within Singapore to get an understanding of the arts ecosystem.
Sally Tallant (b. 1967, United Kingdom) is the Director of Liverpool Biennial ‚ The UK Biennial of International Contemporary Art. From 2001 ‚ 2011 she was Head of Programmes at the Serpentine Gallery, London where she was responsible for the development and delivery of an integrated programme of Exhibitions, Architecture, Education and Public Programmes. She has curated exhibitions in a wide range of contexts including the Hayward Gallery, Serpentine Gallery, Hospitals, Schools as well as public commissions. She has developed commissioning programmes for artists in a range of contexts and developed long-term projects including The Edgware Road Project, Skills Exchange and Disassembly. She has also curated performances, sound events, film programmes and conferences. She is a regular contributor to conferences nationally and internationally. She is a Trustee of Metal, and Advisory Board Member of Open Arts Archive (Open University), a Board Member of the International Biennial Association and a member of the London Regional Council for the Arts Council of England.
During the residency, Phyoe Kyi intends to develop an interactive multimedia installation. The project—which subtly pays homage to the artist’s mother, a recurrent subject in his work— entails both the conceptualization and the rendering of a virtual museum showcasing a selection of artworks that are of special significance to the artist himself. He aims to finalize the architectural plan of the museum as well as to gather video and audio files for his idiosyncratic collection. Concurrently, Phyoe Kyi will also expand the scope of The White Cloth, a project started in 2014 that explores the layered symbolical imagery of white cloth and its social, political, and cultural significance in Burmese culture and language.
Working with drawing, sculpture, installation, and cognitive mapping, the practice of Monica Ursina Jäger (b. 1974, Switzerland/United Kingdom) unfolds through a multidisciplinary reflection on concepts of space, landscape, and architecture that scrutinizes the relationship between the natural and the constructed environment.
Her work has been presented at the Biennale Kulturort Weiertal, Winterthur, Switzerland (2017); Haus Konstructiv, Zurich, Switzerland (2017); Kunstverein Wagenhallen, Stuttgart, Germany (2016) amongst other venues. She was the recipient of the Swiss Art Award 2007 and is currently a research associate and lecturer at the Institute of Natural Resource Sciences IUNR, University of Applied Sciences Zurich ZHAW, Switzerland.
Miguel Andrade Valdez (b. 1979) lives and works in Peru, Lima. His practice blends building methodologies and the language of sculpture in order to shape a different understanding of architectural construction and urban development. Through his large scale sculptures and installations which take the human body as a standard unit of measurement, he casts built objects as representations of shared social spaces. His works have been included in numerous group shows including Mana Contemporary, Jersey City United States (2015); Museo Mario Testino, Lima, Peru (2014); Museum of Contemporary Art, Lima, Peru (2013), Art Basel Miami Beach, United States (2012).
Valdez situates his work at the intersection of architecture and sculpture, in a liminal space where the limits of public and private, social and individual, containers and contents are constantly challenged. In line with a series of works developed over the last few years that engage different building methods, the artist will research the technique of concrete sheltering. Looking at monumental sculpture and working with local masons who specialise in concrete sheltering and other construction techniques specific to Singapore, he will experiment new possibile developments for his work.
During the residency, Lee will expand his interest in urban phenomena and inner structures by focusing on cutaways: openings created through the partial removal of the external surface of an object that makes its internal features visible. The artist will research and select a number of case studies in Singapore to explore the function of cutaways with in the urban context and engage with overlooked issues regarding art, architecture, and urban design.
Informed by several theories in the fields of film studies, linguistics, and graphic design, Lee regards cutaways as a method of investigation, a concealment device that can open up a different understanding of urban processes and anxieties as well as provide a penetrating insight into the deep-seated desires of the city.
Nikos Papastergiadis is the Director of the Research Unit in Public Cultures, and a Professor in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. Furthermore, he is a co- founder (with Scott McQuire) of the Spatial Aesthetics research cluster. He is the Project Leader of the Australian Research Council Linkage Project, “Large Screens and the Transnational Public Sphere,” and Chief Investigator on the ARC Discovery Project “Public Screens and the Transformation of Public Space.” Prior to joining the School of Culture and Communication, he was Deputy Director of the Australia Centre at the University of Melbourne, Head of the Centre for Ideas at the Victorian College of Arts, and lecturer in Sociology and recipient of the Simon Fellowship at the University of Manchester. Throughout his career, Papastergiadis has provided strategic consultancies for government agencies on issues of cultural identity and has worked in collaborative projects with international renowned artists and theorists.
Mary Otis Stevens (b.1928) is a pioneering American architect. Her architectural designs, along with the founding of i Press (1968-1978), an important publisher of books on architecture, urbanism, and social space, were linked to her ability to radically re-envision space and relationships. In the context of the Cold War and American political activism in the 1960s, her work, which were often in collaboration with her partner, fellow architect and i Press co-founder Thomas McNulty, revealed her foundational training in philosophy and her commitment to de-centralising hierarchies.
CITIES FOR PEOPLE is the pilot edition of the annual NTU CCA Ideas Fest, a platform to catalyse critical exchange of ideas and encourage thinking “out of the box”. It is a bottom-up approach linking the artistic and academic community with grassroots initiatives. This pilot edition expands artistic interventions and engages contemporary issues such as air, water, food, environment, and social interaction in connection to artistic and cultural fields, academic research, and design applications.
The 10-day programme, coinciding with Singapore Art Week 2017 and Art After Dark at Gillman Barracks, comprises a conglomerate of performances, public installations, participatory projects and social experiment, urban farming initiatives, public dialogues, and a variety of workshops. It cumulates in a three-day summit that brings together a prominent group of architects, theorists, researchers, curators, and community groups to discuss and exchange ideas about urbanism, modes of exchange, critical spatial practice, and to envision a future city. CITIES FOR PEOPLE offers a platform to contemplate the possibilities for our shared space, reformulate our demands accordingly, and project solutions and desires for the future.
CITIES FOR PEOPLE, borrowing the title from a book by eminent Singapore architect William S. W. Lim published in 1990, expands on some of the ideas Lim developed, particularly in relation to tropical environments and recycling, as well as his call for a humanistic architecture. Organised on the occasion of the exhibition Incomplete Urbanism: Attempts at Critical Spatial Practice, this event is an invitation to share and engage in cooperative projects and collective experiences that critically reflect on current challenges in urban and social development.
Developed during the last five years of Phyoe Kyi’s life, The Museum Project stands out as one of the artist’s most ambitious, albeit unfinished, undertakings at the time of his sudden death in 2018. Bringing together its three main stages, the presentation in The Lab reflects the development of the architectural design and features several mediums the artist experimented with: an interactive installation (2013), architectural renderings and sketches of artworks and installations (2014 – 15), and a model based on the last architectural project (2018). The presentation also includes a timeline designed by Tun Win Aung and Wah Nu to illustrate the collaboration which originally sparked The Museum Project.
Wah Nu is a contemporary artist from Myanmar.
Tun Win Aung (b. 1975, Myanmar) employs a wide range of mediums including photography, video, and installation. His practice focuses on local histories and environments and he often collaborates with artist Wah Nu on large-scale art projects and activities. Their works as a duo have been exhibited in institutional venues such as the Guggenheim Museum, New York, United States (2013); 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan (2011); and biennials including Singapore Biennale (2016); 4th Guangzhou Triennial, China (2011); and the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial, Brisbane, Australia (2009).
Jegan Vincent de Paul is an artistic researcher with an interest in large-scale technopolitical phenomenon with a focus on physical infrastructures. He received his Ph.D in Art, Design and Media from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore in 2021. His doctoral thesis Infrastructure, Narrative, Impact: A Counter-Reading of Belt and Road uses art as a research methodology to show how “the Belt and Road” is a rhizomatic global narrative constructed in the process of interpretation and analysis. He has worked internationally as a researcher and designer and was a visiting scholar and lecturer at the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology (2010–12). He has exhibited at the 4th ZERO1 Biennial in San Jose, California, Space in Kingston, Jamaica and the Centre for Contemporary Art in Singapore. Vincent de Paul holds a Master of Architecture from University of Toronto and a Master of Science in Visual Studies from MIT.
Artist and writer Judith Barry’s work spans several disciplines: architecture, film/video, performance, installation, sculpture, photography and new media. Through this rich variety of media, Barry explores complex relationships between issues of public address, representation, and popular culture.
Barry has exhibited internationally in numerous exhibitions including: the 3rd Berlin Biennale (2004), Sao Paolo Biennale (1994), the Venice Biennales of Art and of Architecture, and the Whitney Biennale (1987). Recent exhibitions include: The Content of Form, Generali Foundation, Vienna (2013); Critical Episodes, MACBA, Barcelona (2013); This will have been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980’s, ICA, Boston (2013); The Deconstructive Impulse, Contemporary Art Museum, Houston (2012); and dOCUMENTA 13, Kassel (2012). She was awarded the Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts (2000), Best Pavilion at the Cairo Biennale (2001), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2011) among others. Public Fantasy, a collection of Barry’s essays, was published by the ICA in London (1991).
Judith Barry was born in Columbus, Ohio, USA, in 1954. She lives and works in New York City, and is currently Director/Professor of the MFA in Visual Arts at the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University.
Alan OEI currently serves as the Artistic Director at The Substation. Founded in 1990, The Substation is Singapore’s first independent contemporary arts centre. Under Oei’s stewardship, The Substation has initiated programmes engaging in discourse on public space such as Discipline the City (2017) and A Public Square (2019). Oei is also co-founder and executive director of OH! Open House and was the former Artistic Director for Sculpture Square from 2012 to 2014. He holds a bachelor’s degree in art history from Columbia University and a diploma in fine arts from LASALLE College of the Arts.
Alvin Tan (Singapore) is the Founder and Artistic Director, The Necessary Stage, Singapore.
Amanda CRABTREE (United Kindgom/France) established artconnexion, an independent non- profit cultural production agency based in Lille in 1994 and joined the organisation full-time in 2001. Prior to this, she worked at the British Council, Paris; Le Fresnoy, Studio national des arts contemporains, Tourcoing; Le Magasin contemporary art centre, Grenoble, and the Centre d’art contemporain of Geneva. She teaches at the University of Lille and directs the Master’s programme in Art and Society with a particular focus on the production of contemporary artworks within the public realm. She has just established a short-course University Diploma entitled Reclaiming Art/Reshaping Democracy based on the protocol of New Patrons public art projects.
Ant Farm was founded in 1968 in San Francisco by architects Chip Lord and Doug Michels as a countercultural collective intersecting between media art and architecture. Their influential work, which integrated art into everyday life with an ironic humour, highlighted environmental degradation, promoted sustainability, and challenged the ideologies and pervasiveness of American mass media, culture, and consumerism. They disbanded in 1978 after a fire destroyed their studio.
Antonia CARVER (United Arab Emirates) is a member of NTU CCA’s International Advisory Board and is currently the Director of Art Jameel, Dubai, an organisation that fosters and promotes a thriving arts and culture scene and support the development of creative enterprises in the region of Middle East, North Africa, Turkey and beyond. Art Jameel is the founding partner of Edge of Arabia, The Crossway Foundation, Jeddah Art Week, and The Archive. Prior to joining Art Jameel, Antonia was the director of Art Dubai, where she has overseen its development into the leading art fair of the Middle East and South Asia, along with its diverse programmes, artists residencies and commissions as well as other educational initiatives and prizes. Before relocating to the UAE, Antonia was editor at Phaidon Press and had roles at Institute of international Visual Arts and G+B Arts International.
Ashley THOMPSON (United Kingdom) is Hiram W. Woodward Chair in Southeast Asian Art at SOAS University of London, where she leads the Research and Publications division of the Southeast Asian Art Academic Programme. She is a specialist of Cambodian cultural history, with a focus on classical and pre-modern arts and literatures, in the larger South and Southeast Asian context, with a view to theorising politico-cultural formations. Formative experiences include working under Vann Molyvann for the creation of a Cambodian national management structure for Angkor, and with the Théâtre du Soleil and Phare Ponleu Selpak on the direction of a Cambodian production of Cixous’ Terrible but Unfinished Story of Norodom Sihanouk, King of Cambodia. Recent publications include Hiding the female sex: a sustained cultural dialogue between India and Southeast Asia and Emergenc(i)es: History and the Auto-Ethnographic Impulse in Contemporary Cambodian Art (both 2017).
Catherine DAVID (France) is the Deputy Director of the Musée National d’Art Moderne at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. From 1982 to 1990, David was curator at the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, and from 1990 to 1994 she was curator at the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris. From 1994 to 1997, David served as Artistic Director for documenta X in Kassel (1997). Since 1998, she has been director of the long-term project Contemporary Arab Representations, which began at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona. Between 2002 and 2004, David was director of the Witte de With Center of Contemporary Art in Rotterdam. In 2016, David curated Reframing Modernism at the National Gallery Singapore, which brought together over 200 iconic works from the collections of the National Gallery Singapore and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
Chomchon Fusinpaiboon, PhD, is a lecturer at the Faculty of Architecture, Chulalongkorn University, and a practising architect. His research interests cover modern and contemporary architecture in Asia. His doctoral dissertation examines how a modern architectural culture was established in Thailand, and how it transformed traditional ideas of architecture and vice versa. His published and ongoing works include studies on unconventional works of Thai architect Prince Vodhyakara Varavarn, who reinterpreted English arts and crafts philosophy to adapt to modern Thai architecture of both the pre-war and the post-war periods, and the establishment of Thailand’s first architecture school that involved a Belgian architect and Chinese migrants. Currently he is doing design research on the shophouse, a non-pedigree modern architecture that played a major role in the urbanisation of Thailand during the 1960s and 1970s, questioning its legacy and its future in relation to contemporary architectural practice and urban issues.
Christina Leigh Geros (United States/Indonesia) is a Design Research Strategist at PetaBencana.id, Jakarta, Indonesia.
Constance Singam (Singapore) is an author and civil society activist.
Tan Dan Feng (Singapore) is the Director of Asian Urban Lab, Singapore.
Dan Graham is an influential pioneer of conceptual art and performance-related video art. His multi-disciplinary practice, spanning across curating, writing, performance, installation, video, photography, and architecture, aligns itself with popular culture more than contemporary art. His work is informed by a social awareness, often working with hybrids that oscillate between quasi-functional spaces and installations to expose processes of perception, of which his freestanding, sculptural structures called Pavilions are an example. NTU CCA Singapore collaborated with Mapletree to permanently install Elliptical Pavilion (2017) at Mapletree Business City II.
Daniel Mudie CUNNINGHAM (Australia) is Director of Programs at Carriageworks in Sydney, Australia. He has held curatorial roles at Artbank and Hazelhurst Regional Gallery, and academic positions at Western Sydney University, where he completed his doctorate in cultural studies in 2004. At Carriageworks he is currently leading the curatorial delivery of a major public art strategy tied to the redevelopment of South Eveleigh in Sydney. Cunningham is a widely published academic and arts writer and has authored numerous artist monographs and edited publications, including the magazine Sturgeon (2013–16).
Didier Faustino’s work is concerned with the physical Here and Now, with the body at its center. Far from being confined in any of the traditional territories of Art or Architecture, he invites us to operate freely and construct our world starting from the presence of our individual bodies in the world. His subversive stand invites us to reconsider the boundaries of the private and public, of the personal and communal.
Eileen GOH (Singapore) is an Assistant Manager for the Art in Transit programme at the Land Transport Authority (LTA), Singapore. Goh oversees and leads a team in the initiation, development, and implementation of the Art in Transit programme as well as other special art-related projects undertaken by LTA. Goh plays a large part at every stage of the process of conceptualising, developing and delivering the artworks commissioned to be displayed in the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) stations managed by LTA. This includes working closely with various internal and external stakeholders— including civil contractors—in the fabrication and installation of artwork to presenting the artworks to Ministers and public communities. Goh is a graduate of LASALLE College of the Arts with a BA (Hons) in Arts Management.
Dr Etienne Turpin is a philosopher, research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and founding director of anexact office in Jakarta, Indonesia. He is principal co-investigator of the exhibition-led inquiry Reassembling the Natural and co-editor of the intercalations: paginated exhibition series. In 2016, he was Visiting Research Fellow at NTU CCA Singapore where he continued his research on the role of urban labs, maker spaces, and hacker collectives in the context of urbanisation in Asia.
Research Focus
Fellowship period: 1 June – 31 December 2016
During his residency, Dr Etienne Turpin will be researching the role of urban labs, maker spaces, and hacker collectives, in the context of South and Southeast Asian urbanisation. His work will help to develop the Urban Lab Network Asia, simultaneously investigating the work of urban labs through ethnographic research and inviting organisations to participate in the platform which enables the network. With the support of his design practice—anexact office—Dr Turpin will further the work of “making the multiple” by documenting encounters with activists, organisers, and community groups who are experimenting with urbanisation processes through various types of design-led inquiry and applied research. The outcome of this research, a film titled “Is the City a Laboratory?” and a working-documentary process assembled as “The Multiple Must Be Made,” will be included in the forthcoming NTU CCA Singapore exhibition Incomplete Urbanism: Attempts of Critical Spatial Practice, and will help to develop the web-based platform labnet.asia.
Gordon Matta-Clark originally trained as an architect, was one of the most influential post-war artists. He is best known for subverting architecture and urban landscape with geometric interventions of “building cuts,” converting them into gravity-defying and disorientating walk-through sculptures. His work is seen not only as a rejection of the architectural profession but also as new modes of contemporary artistic expression. “Anarchitecture,” which became the name of an artist group of which he was a member, and the title of a 1974 exhibition from the group’s discussion around the dematerialisation of the art object and activation of space and place, was attributed to him.
Grace Samboh lives and works between Yogyakarta, Jakarta and Medan, doing curatorial work as well as groundwork research. In 2011, she co-founded Hyphen —, a research initiative that aims to publish reference books on recent art practices. She is program manager for the Equator Symposium (2012–2022, Yogyakarta Biennale Foundation) and programme director of RUBANAH Underground Hub, a gallery-based initiative in Jakarta, established in 2018.Grace Samboh has been involved in a variety of exhibition projects as curator, advisor or contributor, including Unorganised Response (AutoItalia, London, 2019), Contemporary Worlds: Indonesia (National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2019), Choreographed Knowledges (Institute for Art and Society, Yogyakarta, 2019).
H. Koon Wee is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Faculty Member of the Hong Kong University Advanced Cultural Leadership Program. He served as the former Academic Director of the HKU Shanghai Study Center and Adjunct Professor of the New York University Shanghai Program. He taught previously as a visiting critic and teaching fellow at Pratt Institute and Yale University. At HKU, Koon teaches classes in urbanism, memory and identity, globalisation, and architectural design. As a registered architect and founding principal of art and architecture practice SKEW Collaborative, Koon gained a number of awards and recognitions from the Asia Pacific Design Center, Condé Nast, Architectural Record Magazine (China), ID Magazine, Modern Media Group, Design Singapore Council, National Arts Council, and Lee Foundation. Koon supports government and non-profit bodies in a number of advisory roles, including the Leaders in Urban Governance Program at the Singapore Centre for Liveable Cities, the Haiti International University Center, Orphans International, AA Asia, Asian Urban Lab, and Design Singapore Council.
Ho Weng Hin is partner and conservation specialist consultant of Studio Lapis, an architectural conservation consultancy involved in major local and regional projects. He is also a founding director of the Singapore Chapter of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), an advisory body to UNESCO on heritage conservation, and represents Singapore as expert voting member on its International Scientific Committee on 20th Century Heritage. He serves on government advisory panels on heritage policy and planning. Ho Weng Hin is an adjunct senior lecturer at the Department of Architecture at National University of Singapore, and he obtained his specialist postgraduate degree in conservation from the University of Genoa, Italy. He is the co-author of several books including Our Modern Past: A Visual Survey of Singapore Architecture, 1920s-70s, and former co-editor of The Singapore Architect, the professional journal of the Singapore Institute of Architects.
Hong Phuc Dang (Vietnam) is Founder of FOSSASIA, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Hongjohn LIN (Taiwan/Singapore) is an artist, writer and curator. Lin has a PhD in Arts and Humanities from the New York University. He has participated in exhibitions including Taipei Biennial (2004), Manchester Asian Triennial 2008, Rotterdam Film Festival 2008, and Taipei Biennial (2012), China Asia Biennial (2014), and Guangzhou Triennial (2015). Lin was curator of the Taiwan Pavilion Atopia, Venice Biennial (2007), co-curator of Taipei Biennial (with Tirdad Zolghadr, 2010). Currently he is serving as Professor at the Taipei National University of the Arts. His writings can be found in international magazines, journals, and publications. He wrote the Introductions for Chinese edition of Art Power (Boris Groys) and Artificial Hells (Claire Bishop and his publications in Chinese include Poetics of Curating (2018).
Jasmeen PATHEJA (India) lives and works in Bangalore. She is founder andfacilitator of Blank Noise, a community of Action Sheroes, Heroes, Theyroes, citizens and persons, taking agency to end sexual and gender based violence. Patheja initiated Blank Noise in 2003, in response to the normalisation and the silence surrounding street harassment. Over the last 16 years, Patheja has designed a wide range of interventions to trigger discourse and shift public consciousness. Her work rests on the power of collaborations and community. Patheja is a TED speaker and Ashoka Fellow. In 2015, she received the International Award for Public Art, for the project Talk to Me (Blank Noise). She is currently shortlisted for the Visible Award and was shortlisted for the Vera List Center for Arts and Politics. She works as artist in residence at Srishti Institute of Art Design and Technology.
Jason Wee lives and works in Singapore and New York. His practice is concerned with hollowing out singular authority in favour of polyphony. He transforms singular histories and spaces into various visual and written materials, with particular attention to architecture, idealism, and unexplored futures. Wee is the founder and director of Grey Projects, an artists’ space, library, and residency programme that focuses on emerging artists, experimental curatorial practices, new forms of writing, and design propositions. He is editor of the poetry journal Softblow.
His work has been included in group shows at the Chelsea Art Museum, New York, United States; Casino Luxembourg, Luxembourg; Singapore Art Museum, Singapore. He has been Artist-in-Residence at Artspace, Sydney, Australia; Tokyo Wonder Site, Tokyo, Japan; Gyeonggi Creation Center, Ansan-si, South Korea. He received the 2008 Young Artist Award for visual arts in Singapore and has been Studio Fellow in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program.
Between October 2016 and January 2017, Wee was Artist-in-Residence at NTU CCA Singapore where he continued his research interest in the cycle of redevelopment that is endemic to the life of Asian global cities.
Jeremy Chia (Singapore) is a Researcher at Asian Urban Lab and AA Asia, Singapore.
Katherine Tuider, Executive Director and Co- founder of Honolulu Biennial Foundation, will speak about building a biennial from the ground up in what has been described as the most isolated, populated landmass in the world, Hawai‘i. Despite the perceived challenges associated with building an international, city-wide exhibition with no start-up capital in a seemingly isolated place, the contributions and involvement of the local community in Hawai‘i made the Honolulu Biennial a success. Prioritising the needs and desires of the local community was an integral part of the planning process in order to create a biennial that was locally relevant, while also being reflective of what makes Hawai‘i so unique for those who were visiting. A biennial that honours and involves its community is not only more sustainable, but also more interesting for those who visit because the biennial serves as a portal for understanding the history and culture of that place. As urban spaces rapidly grow and change, Tuider will explain why a “community-first” approach is essential in order to create successful public art exhibitions that are reflective of the past, while also relevant in the future.
Professor Kwok Kian-Woon is a sociology faculty and currently Associate Provost (Student Life) at Nanyang Technological University. His research interests include the study of social memory, mental health, civil society, and heritage and the arts. As a sociologist and a citizen, he has been actively involved in public life. He has served on many key committees of the Heritage Board, on the boards of the NTU Centre for Contemporary Arts and the Intercultural Theatre Institute, and as external advisor to the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. He was President (1997-2001) of the Singapore Heritage Society, which has worked with many Singaporeans to shape the national agenda on heritage conservation.
KOK Heng Leun is a prominent figure in the Singapore arts scene, having built his artistic career as a theatre director, playwright, dramaturg and educator. Koh is known for his ability to engage the community on various issues through the arts, championing civil discourse across different segments of society. Having begun his work in the theatre almost 30 years ago, some notable directorial works include Manifesto (2016), Drift (2007), Trick or Threat (2007), and Happy (2005). His explorations with multi-disciplinary engaged arts has produced works like It Won’t Be Too Long (2015), which touched on the dynamics of space in Singapore, Both Sides, Now (2013, 2014), a project that seeks to normalise end-of-life conversations, and Project Mending Sky (2008, 2009, 2012), a series on environmental issues. Koh’s contributions to the arts have landed him the National Arts Council Singapore Young Artist Award in 2000 and the National Arts Council Cultural Fellowship in 2014. Koh is currently the Arts Nominated Member of Parliament.
Wee H Koon is Assistant Professor at the HKU Department of Architecture, and founding director of the Cities in Asia Summer Program. He served as the Academic Director of the HKU Shanghai Study Center between 2008-2011. He received a number of international accolades for the design of industrial buildings and campuses, such as Blueprint, Green Dot, LEAF, and the Chicago Athenaeum Awards. Koon was selected to be the co-director for the 2017 Architecture Festival “Archifest” by the Singapore Institute of Architects. He is a founding member of the Docomomo Hong Kong Chapter, and advisory board member of Asian Urban Lab. He supports governments and NGOs in advisory roles, including the Singapore Centrefor Liveable Cities’ Leaders in Urban Governance Programme, Design Singapore Council, Hong Kong Buildings Department, Haiti International University Centre, Orphans International, AA Asia, and Modern Asian Architecture Network.
Larry Ng is the Group Director of Architecture & Urban Design Excellence, URA.
Laura Miotto is Associate Professor at the School of Art, Design and Media (ADM) at Nanyang Technological University, and co-chair of the MA programme in Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices at ADM. She is also Design Director of GSM Project in Singapore, an international firm specialised in exhibition design originating from Montréal, Canada. With 20 years of experience in the design field, both as a creative director and an architectural designer, Miotto has worked on exhibitions focusing on heritage interpretation and sensorial design strategies in the context of museums, thematic galleries, and public spaces
Leon van Schaik AO is Professor of Architecture and Innovation Chair in Design Practice Research at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT). From his base in Melbourne, he has promoted local and international architectural culture through an influential practice-based research programme and the commissioning of innovative architecture. His Architecture and Design PhD programme at RMIT has become an important template for institutions worldwide. In 2005, at the 75th anniversary awards of the Australian Institute of Architects, Professor Van Schaik was awarded the inaugural Neville Quarry Architectural Education Prize. In 2006, he was made an Officer (AO) in the General Division of the Order of Australia for his services to architecture and education. Some of his recent publications include Practical Poetics in Architecture (Chichester: Wiley, 2015) and Ideograms (Melbourne: Lyon Foundation and Lyon Housemuseum, 2013).
Lewis BIGGS (United Kingdom) is an independent curator (Co-Curator, Aichi Triennale 2013; Curator, Folkestone Triennial 2014, 2017, 2020; Curator, Land Art Mongolia 2018; advisory curator Kaunas Biennial 2019). As International Adviser and now Distinguished Professor of Public Art at Shanghai University (since 2011) he is also Chairman of the Institute for Public Art, dedicated to the research, propagation, and advocacy of artist-led urbanism. He was a Director of Tate Liverpool (1990–2000); and General Series Editor for Tate Modern Artists Series, Tate Publishing 2001–14. Lewis was the Artistic Director / CEO of Liverpool Biennial 2000–11. The Biennial exhibitions under his leadership focused on newly-commissioned art, much of it site specific for the urban environment, researched collaboratively and realised by a team of locally based curators.
Lilian Chee is an Associate Professor at the Department of Architecture in the National University of Singapore (NUS). She is a writer, academic, designer, curator, and award-winning educator who has lecturered at the Bartlett, Delft, ETH Zurich, Melbourne, and the Berlage Centre. Her work is situated at the intersections of architectural representation, gender, and affect in a contemporary interdisciplinary context. Her research explores the emergence of architecture through, and from within, everyday encounters and its archives, influenced by film, art and literature. She conceptualised, researched, and collaborated on the award-winning architectural essay film about single women occupants in Singapore’s public housing 03-FLATS (2014), which won the best ASEAN documentary Salaya (2015); shortlisted for the Busan Wide Angle Documentary Prize 2014; and screened at the Singapore Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2016. She is working on a book about public art in Singapore, and co-editing a volume on domesticity in architecture.
Lorenzo PETRILLO (Italy/Singapore) is a designer and community driver. He began his career in Italy, designing for esterni, an association that develops cultural projects for public spaces (among them, the Public Design Festival). Petrillo then moved to Asia in 2007, first to Shanghai and then three years later to Singapore. His experience over the last eight years has been predominantly in the brand experience space, as a lead designer for MNCs such as Bata and Samsung. His travels around the globe inspired him to start his own business, LOPELAB, a design consultant agency that redesigns public spaces through marrying urban structures and social ideas for a more enjoyable and sustainable city. Since then, Petrillo and his team at Lopelab have organised eight Urban Ventures events that have seen over 50,000 visitors.
Low Eng Teong (Singapore) is an Assistant Chief Executive, Sector Development, National Arts Council Singapore.
Massamba MBAYE (Senegal) is an art critic, exhibition curator, and communication theories historian. Mbaye is a lecturer at Dakar Cheikh Anta Diop University and at the Virtual University of Senegal (UVS). Mbaye is a member of the Dakar Biennale of Contemporary African Art, Dak’Art Steering Committee and the Communication Officer of the Biennale. A member of the International Association of Art Critics (IAAC), he is the Executive Director of a media and communications group. Furthermore, Mbaye is a member of the editorial board of Afrik’Arts, an international visual arts magazine published by Dak’Art. He is an associate curator at Raw Material Company (RAW) and he is the lead curator of Kemboury Gallery. He has been regularly writing about aesthetics for the last 20 years. In 2019 Mbaye was a juror for the International Award for Public Art.
Matthew Mazzota is a conceptual artist whose work lies at the intersection of art, activism, architecture, design, and urban planning. His interactive public projects explore the relationship between people and their environments, as well as between each other. Between November 2014 and January 2015, Mazzotta was Artist-in-Residence at NTU CCA Singapore where he recreated his community-specific public art project Outdoor Living Rooms at a hawker centre in Singapore. In 2017, Mazzotta was one of the speakers in the Centre’s public summit Cities for People NTU CCA Ideas Fest 2016/17. He received an undergraduate degree from the School of the Art Insitute of Chicago, and a Master of Science in Visual Studies from the Massachusetts Institue of Technology, Cambridge, United States.
Milenko PRVAČKI (Singapore) was born in 1951 in (former) Yugoslavia. He graduated with a Master of Fine Arts (Painting) from the Institutul de Arte Plastice “Nicolae Grigorescu” in Bucharest, Romania. Prvački is one of Singapore’s foremost artists and art educators, teaching at LASALLE College of the Arts since 1994. He was Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts for 10 years, and is currently Senior Fellow, Office of the President at the College. He is also Founder of ART WALK Little India and Tropical Lab. Prvački participated in major exhibitions, most notably the Biennale of Sydney (2006). His work is in various private and public collections, such as the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia; Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade, Serbia; Singapore Art Museum, National Gallery Singapore; amongst others. He was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 2011, and Singapore’s Cultural Medallion for Visual Arts in 2012.
Pen Sereypagna is the director of the Vann Molyvann Project and a freelance architect and urban researcher based in Phnom Penh City. He has been awarded scholarships and fellowships including the Chevening Scholarship (2017–18), US/ICOMOS and East West Center (2015–16), Sa Sa Art Projects (2014–15), Asian Cultural Council (2012–13), and the School of Constructed Environments PARSONS as a visiting scholar (2012). Sereypagna’s work on Genealogy of Urban Form Phnom Penh, Genealogy of Bassac, and Phnom Penh Visions has been the subject of several exhibitions and presentations in Cambodia and selected venues in Asia, Australia, and the US. His publications on urban transformation with a focus on Phnom Penh, Cambodia, include: Cité de l’Architecture & du Patrimoine (forthcoming 2019), National University of Singapore’s Urban Asias (2018), Chulalongkorn University’s Nakhara journal (2015), and Parsons Journal (2014).
Philip TINARI has served as Director of UCCA, Beijing, the institution at the heart of Beijing’s 798 Art District, since late 2011. His programme has brought to China international figures including Robert Rauschenberg, Elmgreen & Dragset, Haegue Yang, William Kentridge, Taryn Simon, and Tino Sehgal, and has tracked China’s evolving art scene through retrospectives and surveys of artists including Zhao Bandi, Zeng Fanzhi, Liu Wei, Xu Zhen, Wang Keping, Wang Xingwei, Kan Xuan. In 2009, he launched LEAP, an internationally distributed, bilingual art magazine published by the Modern Media Group. He is a contributing editor of Artforum, and was founding editor of the magazine’s online Chinese edition. He holds degrees from Duke University and Harvard University, and is currently a PhD candidate in art history at the University of Oxford.
Dr. Pwint is Professor and Deputy Head of the Department of Architecture at Yangon Technical University (YTU), Myanmar. She received her PhD in Architecture from Yangon Technical University in 2006. Sheworks in the areas of heritage conservation management, architecture education, sustainable architecture, and vernacular architecture. She is a local expert for the development of building control guidelines for the Pyu Ancient Cities, a UNSECO World Heritage Site. Apart from YTU, Pwint has worked with the Myanmar Ministry of Science and Technology. She is a member of the Bagan Master Plan Team, Myanmar ICOMOS, a former executive member of the Association of Myanmar Architects (2015–2018),and was a member of the Three Pyu Ancient Cities Property Management Plan Team (2012–2014).
Richard LIM (Singapore) is an art management professional, currently caring for CapitaLand’s corporate art collection in four broad ways: acquisition, display, promotion, and maintenance. As a champion of art and education, Lim regularly runs art-related activities for the enrichment of family, friends, and colleagues. He is also passionate about supporting emerging regional artists, with a special focus on Singaporean, Indonesian, and Thai art. Lim was invited to be a guest speaker at Art World Forum 2016, and has authored several articles related to corporate art acquisition processes in both English and Mandarin. In Lim’s personal artistic practice, he creates installations, paintings, and various craft-linked media, which often speak as social commentary on contemporary life.
Sharon Siddique is Director, Asian Urban Lab, Singapore; Visiting Professiorial Fellow, Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities, Singapore University of Technology and Design; and Adjunct Professor, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore.
Ute Meta Bauer is a Professor at the School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University Singapore (NTU). She is currently the Acting Director and Principal Research Fellow at the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (NTU CCA Singapore); and is the Chair of the Masters in Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices (MA MSCP) programme. Having served as the Founding Director of NTU CCA Singapore for over a decade, her work as educator and curator over the past years has focused on Climates. Habitats. Environments. At the Centre, she curated and co-curated The Oceanic (2017/2018), Trees of Life. Knowledge in Material (2018), and The Posthuman City (2020). In 2022, she served as curator for the Singapore Pavilion at the 59th Biennale di Venezia, featuring artist Shubigi Rao. Her recent large scale projects include the 17th Istanbul Biennial (2022), co-curated alongside David Teh and Amar Kanwar, and the artistic direction of the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2024. She is a Trustee of the Art Foundation TBA21 and a member of the Governing Council of n.b.k. Berlin. Bauer was recently conferred an Honorary Doctorate of Art and Design by Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Helsinki, Finland.
WANG Dawei (China) is PhD supervisor, Executive Dean of Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, Editor- in-Chief of Public Art Magazine, Vice Director of the Graphic Design Art Committee of the Chinese Artists Association, a member of the Design Discipline Review Group of the State Council Academic Degrees Office, Vice Chairman of the Shanghai Federation of Cultural and Art Circles, and Chairman of the Shanghai Creative Designers Association. His “Public Art Teaching and Research Practice” won the first prize of Shanghai Teaching Achievement in 2009 and himself was awarded the title of “Shanghai Leading Figure.”
