Body – NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore

Lecture by Professor Pooi See Lee (Singapore), followed by a conversation with artist Chok Si Xuan (Singapore)

Will electronics become flexible and soft? As technological advances shrink systems and transition from hard robots to soft machines, how will this affect the way we understand and relate to the devices we interact with?

Professor Lee Pooi See, whose research delves into human-machine interface, hybrid materials for soft robotics, and nanostructures, will share about the influences and current trajectories of material sciences and human-machine interfaces articulating her insights into the future of a softer and smaller world of technology. In conversation with Chok Si Xuan, the scientist and the artist will discuss the implications of a world driven by mechanisms that escape human vision and they will exchange ideas about the relational qualities of interfaces and the rise of biomimicry in the realm of technological innovation.

This event is generated by Chok Si Xuan within Communities of Practice. Techno Diversions, a research programme that aims to propel a transformative understanding of technology through artistic practices and transdisciplinary encounters.

Professor Pooi See Lee is the President’s Chair Professor in Materials Science & Engineering at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. Her current research focuses on soft electronics and energy devices, human-machine interface, sensors and actuators, soft robotics and healthtech. Professor Lee received the Nanyang Research Award in 2016, the Nanyang Award for Innovation and Entrepreneurship Award in 2018. She was an awardee of the NRF Investigatorship 2016. She received the SNIC – AsCA2019 Distinguished Woman Chemist Award 2022. She was elected National Academy of Inventors Fellow in 2020, RSC Fellow 2022 and the MRS Fellow 2022.

Shahmen Suku (b.1987, Singapore) is a performance artist who works between Sydney and Canberra, Australia. Drawing from his personal experience of growing up in a matriarchal Tamil household in Singapore, Shahmen’s body of work explore multifaceted perspectives on migration, displacement, race, culture, colonisation, and gender identity. The personal, poignant, and irreverent narratives generated around these themes are conveyed through performances, installations, and video works and they are often voiced by his alter ego, Radha. His recent projects include 5,6.7.8, Penrith Regional Gallery, Australia (2022); Oil Room, Club 4A, 4A Centre for Contemporary Arts, Sydney, Australia (2022); Queer Ecologies – Rivus, Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, Australia (2022); Skin Deep, Queer Contemporary, National Art School, Sydney, Australia (2021). From 2019 to 2022, he was part of Australian ABC TV’s live music television programme The Set. In 2022, Shahmen received the Incubator – NSW Theatre (Emerging) Fellowship with Griffin Theatre Company.

Pursuing her ongoing research into intergenerational conflicts and trauma, Yanyun Chen will spend her residency examining methods of discipline within the family context. With a focus on Singaporean personal and communal childhood histories of discipline and punishment, the artist will explore how the indelible traces of disciplinary behaviour linger on in people’s bodies and minds and bleed into the everyday. Observing the irony and self-deprecating humour that come into play as a self-soothing practice in the retelling of such memories, she will also seek to unpack the heterogeneous ways in which pain and violence are remembered by conducting fieldwork, literary investigations, and interviews. The research weaves through histories of punishment and discipline in Singapore. Ultimately the artist intends to create large scale drawings that address these intergenerational wounds through the lens of medical, ethnographic, historical, and material studies.

Priyageetha Dia is an arts practitioner who experiments with time-based media, 3D animation and game engine software. Her practice addresses the transnational migration of ethnic communities and the intersections of the colonial production with land, labour and capital in Southeast Asia through speculative methods and counter-narratives. She has been invited to participate in several exhibitions including the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India (2022); Attention Seeker, La Trobe Art Institute, Bendigo, Australia (2022); An Exercise of Meaning in a Glitch Season, National Gallery Singapore (2020); 2219: Futures Imagined, ArtScience Museum Singapore (2019). She was a recipient of the IMPART Art Award in 2019.

The migratory movements of her ancestral lineage from Southern India to Malaysia, and later to Singapore, sparked Priyageetha’s deep-seated engagement in South Asian diasporic histories, the labour relations that underlie plantation agriculture in Malaya and the vast terrain of colonial narratives. Interweaving these research threads in her multimedia practice, her works figure alternative histories that empower subaltern forms of existence.

During her residency at Jan Van Eyck Academie, the artist is interested in delving deeper into the emergence and expansion of agro-industrial plantation projects, the dispossession and displacement of lands and communities in Southeast Asia, and their relation to The Netherlands through archival research. Moreover, the residency will provide her with a supportive environment to articulate critical viewpoints and counter-narratives through her ongoing and self-led experiments with computer-generated imagery (CGI), animation technologies and game engine software while also allowing her to gain an understanding of issues related to contemporary transnational interactions within Southeast Asia and Europe.

Through the wide-angle lens of her research-based methodology, the artist will traverse the symbolic mapping of this migrant diaspora’s socio-cultural realities emblazoned in official accounts. She will focus on issues of exploitation and gender exclusion and employ computer-generated imagery and postcolonial linguistics to devise new storytelling approaches that subvert the hegemony of colonial epistemologies and bring to the surface silenced narratives, particularly those of Tamizh women.

Starting off the second season of AiRCAST, we hand over the microphone to curator and writer Anca Rujoiu to interview our Artist-in-Residence Priyageetha Dia. Priyageetha and Anca are fresh out of a year-long collaboration that culminated in Forget Me, Forget Me Not (2022), Priyageetha’s solo exhibition curated by Anca which opened last May. In this conversation they share about the background research, interests, and aesthetic strategies behind the new body of work presented in the exhibition. They also expand upon the significance of colonial histories and marginalised communities, agency and empowerment, as well as media and materials in Priyageetha’s practice.

Spanning moving image, sculpture, as well as performance and installation, the practice of Priyageetha Dia (b. 1992, Singapore) addresses identity politics by questioning dominant narratives, material histories, and socio-spatial relations. In the past few years, she has been experimenting with world-making gestures that rehash stories of repression and envision alternative futures. Her works have been included in several group exhibitions including Attention Seeker, La Trobe Art Institute, Bendigo, Australia (2022); An Exercise of Meaning in a Glitch Season, National Gallery Singapore (2020); 2219: Futures Imagined, ArtScience Museum Singapore (2019).

Anca Rujoiu is a Romanian curator and editor who has been living and working in Singapore since 2013. Taking an artist-centred approach, she is committed to artistic practices beyond the West and to what falls through the cracks within its borders. She was a member of the founding team of NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, as Curator of Exhibitions (2013–15) and Head of Publications (2016–18) and she has curated numerous exhibitions, public programs, and publishing projects. Currently, she is a Ph.D. candidate at Monash University with a research focused on institution building, artists-led institutions, and transnational exchanges.

Contributors: Priyageetha Dia, Anca Rujoiu
Editor: Anna Lovecchio
Programme Manager: Nadia Amalina
Sound Engineer: Ashwin Menon
Intro & Outro Music: Yuen Chee Wai
Cover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine Tan

CREDITS
03’03”: Audio excerpt from WE.REMAIN.IN.MULTIPLE.MOTIONS_MALAYA, 2022. Courtesy the artist.
17’17”: Audio excerpt from WE.REMAIN.IN.MULTIPLE.MOTIONS_MALAYA, 2022. Courtesy the artist.
19’10”: Audio excerpt from WE.REMAIN.IN.MULTIPLE.MOTIONS_MALAYA, 2022. Courtesy the artist.
32’07”: Audio excerpt from WE.REMAIN.IN.MULTIPLE.MOTIONS_MALAYA, 2022. Courtesy the artist.

[See Full Transcript]

Spanning moving image, sculpture, as well as performative installations, Priyageetha Dia (b. 1992, Singapore) addresses identity politics by questioning dominant narratives and socio-spatial relations. In the past few years, her practice has been consistently experimenting with a variety of world-making gestures that envision alternative futures. Her works have been part of several group exhibitions including, Attention Seeker, La Trobe Art Institute, Bendigo, Australia (2022); An Exercise of Meaning in a Glitch Season, National Gallery Singapore (2020); 2219: Futures Imagined, ArtScience Museum Singapore (2019). She was a recipient of the IMPART Art Award in 2019.

Committed to socially engaged practices, multi-disciplinary theatre practitioner Han Xuemei (b. 1987, Singapore) employs art as a tool for bringing communities together and engaging the audience in visceral and personal ways. In her practice, she creates spaces and experiences that incite participants to think outside the box of existing paradigms and articulate forms of hope and resistance. Since 2012, she is Resident Artist at the Singapore-based theatre company Drama Box. Her recent projects include the experiential installation FLOWERS (2019), the community project The Gift (2018), and the participatory experience Missing: The City of Lost Things (2018).

Yan Jun will recreate his Living Room Tour project, initiated in 2011,the project was developed as a solo project and later with guests to become the Impro Committe collaboration project (2014, Beijing).

The Living Room Tour project has to takes place at someone’s home, a place while he/she lives. whatever the size is, with or without speakers, has or has no electricity; at least one audience is required and the owner of the home is encouraged to invite audiences. The performers may use furniture, kitchenware or anything available. The initial idea of this project came from feeling tired about low-end speakers and wanting to create a sonic space without the expense or formalities which go with this. He says the concert is a temporary mandala, a metaphor for the world. Within this environment is a destabilisation of hierarchy and there is no difference between large and small or professional and amateur. The quality of listening is from participants’s devotion.

In the last few years, many of Oliver Husain’s projects have spawned from hearsay, rumour, or chance encounters. During the residency, Husain will research and explore the history of the hair animation industry in commercial film and photography which, as the rumour goes, used to be highly developed in Singapore until the rise of digital animation in the 2000s. Fascinated by the abstract and poetic qualities of the purposeless movement of hair freed from narrative constraints and product placement needs, the artist plans to delve into unofficial and queer forms of knowledge by conducting fieldwork in hair salons and interviewing senior hair stylists. At the same time, he will research and collect fashion editorials, photographs, films, and other extant materials of the time in preparation for an experimental hair animation to be possibly realized in collaboration with Computer-generated imagery (CGI) experts in Singapore.

The artist was scheduled to be in-residence from July – September 2020. Due to the COVID-19 virus outbreak and international travel restrictions, the artist was unable to participate in the residency programme physically.

Marianna Simnett made a new film Tito’s Dog (2020) as part of the Residencies Online Screening Programme Stakes of Conscious(ness), conceived by Dr Anna Lovecchio for the three artists whose residency at NTU CCA Singapore has been disrupted by the viral pandemic.

Manuel Pelmuş is a choreographer active in the Bucharest dance community. Pelmuş graduated from the Floria Capsali dance school and worked at the Hamburg Opera; he eventually moved away from his classical training to explore more politically charged, avant-garde styles.

Nanthiyni Aravindan (Singapore) is studying Visual Communication at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. Her passion for illustration and painting has brought her to explore both traditional visual languages and digital techniques. Her artistic production revolves around zoological and mythical creatures. “The New Ordinary” a mix media work she produced in 2020 was selected as a finalist at the Crowbars Award.

Munir Alsagoff (Singapore), or MOON, has 20 years of performance experience as a guitarist and DJ. He is equally adept on the electric and acoustic guitar, and is greatly influenced by classical, jazz, soul, world and dance music. MOON has performed at festivals in Singapore and around the Asia-Pacific region like the renowned Java Jazz in Jakarta. MOON does live collaborations with DJs at venues such as CE LA VI, W Singapore, Zouk and local conscious event, Tropika, and is part of Beatroot, a global inspired music collective that fuses visuals, beats and live music elements into their performances.

Sivakumar Palakrishnan (Singapore) is an actor who has worked in television, film and theatre. Some of his theatrical credits include The Kalinga Trilogy (Miror Theatre) and We Are Like This Only! (HuM Theatre). He has received nominations at the Pradhana Vizha, Vasantham Channel’s Television awards, and won for his performance in Veethi Varai. Siva is recognized for his role in K Rajagopal’s A Yellow Bird, which premiered at the International Critics’ Week at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016. Currently, he is a cast member in Channel 5’s television drama series, Tanglin.

Bharathi Moorthiappan (Singapore) has a Masters Degree in Tamil and interested about teaching, learning, writing and speaking in the Tamil language. Bharathi pursues her passion through her Tamil education company where she encourages reading among her students. Bharathi is also an avid reader of books translated from other languages as a way to experience various cultures and travel the world.

Ashwinii Selvaraj (Singapore) is an undergraduate studying Political Science in the National University of Singapore. Her keen interest to write in the Tamil language have produced works that have been published in short story collections such as Akkarai Pachai (Greener Pastures). In addition to being a writer, she translates English articles for the Serangoon Times, a Tamil literary magazine published in Singapore. She has also won multiple awards and prizes including the Prime Minister’s Book Prize Award (2015) and National Poetry Festival competition (2015), as well first prize for the ASEAN-India Pravasi Bharathiya Divas Conference Tamil poetry competition (2018).

Mohamed Noor (Singapore) grew up in a musical family, and began his music career playing percussion at the age of 5 for a performance at The Victoria Theater. A multi-instrumentalist, Noor grew up playing the tabla, drums, mandolin, keyboards, clarinet, Indian karnatic flute and saxophone, to name a few. Noor currently plays more than 25 percussion instruments from around the world and has performed in many music festivals including the ASEAN Jazz Festival (Malaysia), Heineken Jazz Festival (Singapore), Big Bang Percussion Festival (London), Singapore Arts Festival, Penang Jazz, Jarusum International Jazz Festival, Nanning International Folk Song Festival, and the Tokyo International Performing Arts festival.

Ramesh Krishnan (Singapore) is a sound designer, music creative and DJ. Ramesh’s inception as a sound designer started in 2004 when he collaborated on Marseilles-based artist Mathieu Briand’s Derrière Le Monde Flottant at the Musée d’art Contemporain in Lyon. He ventured into exploring stimulation, play and perception with electronic music and technology. In 2009, he took on Quest for Immortality and Singapore 1960, exhibitions held at National Museum of Singapore in which he created original compositions by re-arranging historical recordings into experimental soundscapes. Krishnan received the President’s Design Award 2010 for Quest for Immortality.

Liquid Architecture is an Australian organisation for artists working with sound. LA investigates the sounds themselves, but also the ideas communicated about, and the meaning of, sound and listening.

Noor Effendy Ibrahim is an interdisciplinary arts practitioner based in Singapore. He received the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry Singapore Foundation Culture Award in 2007. Effendy was the Artistic Director of The Substation (2010 – 2015) and Teater Ekamatra (2001 – 2006). Effendy had also served on the Singapore National Arts Council (NAC) Board (2004 – 2006; 7th term) and was selected for the NAC Cultural Fellowship programme in 2014. In 2016, Effendy founded the independent non-profit performance art collective akulah BIMBO SAKTI, or I am the MAGIC BIMBO in Malay.

Effendy was a Senior Academic Staff at Republic Polytechnic from 2007 – 2010 and returned as an Associate Lecturer from 2017 – 2019. He has also taught part-time at LASALLE College of the Art, National Institute of Education – an institute of Nanyang Technological University, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts and DigiPen Singapore. Effendy has programmed for the Neon Lights international music festival from 2015 – 2016, and the traditional dance festival Padang Tari (Field of Dance) in 2016 presented by the NAC. Effendy has over 20 years of interdisciplinary art-making experience.

Cheong Kah Kit is a visual artist based in Singapore. He graduated from Umeå Academy of Fine Art, Sweden in 2008. Kah Kit was affiliated with p-10, a Singapore independent curatorial team (2004-2006). In 2016, he co-founded Peninsular, an artist studio / project space in Singapore. Operating in-between the spaces of production and exhibition, Peninsular seeks intimate dialogue in meaning-making and artistic subjectivity between objects and viewers. He is also currently developing an oral history project with Singapore artists, curators, art historians and administrators. Kah Kit was Manager for Research at NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore between 2016-2018. Prior to that, he was Reference Art Librarian at the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library, National Library Singapore (2009-2015).

The filmic and performative practice of Russell Morton (b. 1982, Singapore) explores folkloric myths, esoteric rituals, and the conventions of cinema itself. His film Saudade (2020) was commissioned for State of Motion: Rushes of Time, Asian Film Archives, Singapore, and presented at the 31^st Singapore International Film Festival (2020); The Forest of Copper Columns (2015) won the Cinematic Achievement Award at the 57^th Thessaloniki Film Festival, Greece (2016) and was selected for several festivals including the Short Shorts Film Festival, Tokyo, Japan (2017); the Thai Short Film and Video Festival, Bangkok, Thailand and Jogja-NETPAC Asian Film Festival, Indonesia (both 2016).

Nina Djekić (Ljubljana, 1989), based in Ljubljana and Singapore, graduated with a BA in choreography from School for New Dance Development SNDO and an MFA from Sandberg Instituut, both in Amsterdam.

Her work revolves around choreographic notions in exhibitionary settings. It looks at the psycho-somatic engagements between the artwork and the visitor as well as the affect the uncanny presence of artworks has on the relationship between the visitors themselves. It is important to her practice to think of those encounters as processual and time bound. Her latest work focuses on the sensuality of the gaze and the reconsideration of vision as felt perception.

George Chuais a multidisciplinary artist based in Singapore. Active since the late nineties, he works in the intersection between the body and sound. He has presented works in the form of physical theatre, performance art and sound installations. As an instigator and explorer of sound, he resists development in a singular style or genre. Apart from his solo work and performances, George’s collaborative interests include live sound improvisation, sound design for film and theatre, as well experimental strategies for soundtracks.

Reetu Sattar (Bangladesh) works in Dhaka and Berlin. Her interdisciplinary practice encompasses live performance, documentation and objects as archival memories in an effort to re-examine history and human perception. Her search of a new language as response to the empathetic mind reaches her to working inside seemingly impossible spaces, allowing for contents to be emergent rather than determined as the body negotiates repetition, disruption, meaning and memory. She has presented her work at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Liverpool Biennial, and Dhaka Art Summit, among many other venues. Her performances have been staged internationally at venues in London, Birmingham, Bangkok and Goa.

Jimmy Ong (Singapore/Indonesia) is an artist who currently works from his studios in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Jimmy Ong’s practice involves highly personal inquiries into bodily forms and queer(ed) identities, expanding into broader entanglements with regional myths, archetypes, traditions, and historical narratives.

Arahmaiani (Indonesia) is one of Indonesia’s most respected and pioneering artists in the field of performance art. From the 1980’s, she has performed in many public spaces — even during the rule of an oppressive military regime. Since then, she has engaged with issues about the environmental, politics, violence, critique of capital, the female body, and in recent years, with her own identity, which although Muslim, lays between Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, and animist beliefs. Her interactive performances have developed into a community-based practice, bringing attention to subjects prevalent in Indonesia and to issues of violence against the environment on the Tibetan Plateau.

Vivian Wang diverged from her formal training as a classical pianist when she started the avant-rock outfit The Observatory in 2001. A former TV producer-presenter as well as a film music supervisor, Wang focuses solely on music, performance, and interdisciplinary work since 2008. She performs on synth, keyboard, voice, and percussion, and tags Alice Coltrane, Robert Wyatt, Mark Hollis, Bill Evans, and Annapurna Devi as her all-time favourite musical heroes.

Galina Mihaleva (Bulgaria/Singapore) is Associate Professor at the School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University, where she teaches Technology, Art and Fashion. Her research investigates the physical and psychological relationship we have with garments or what she calls “wearable technology.” Mihaleva taught at Arizona State University for more than 15 years in costume design, where she often worked with renowned choreographers worldwide. She is the founder of Galina Couture in Scottsdale, Arizona where her team develops exclusive and unique collections making use of new materials. Mihaleva received the Rumi award in the US and won first place at Tiffany’s Paris Fashion Week, 2016.

Cheryl Ong (Singapore) is a percussionist active in performance and education and a regular member of the avant-rock group The Observatory. In recent years she has been exploring improvisational and experimental practices for her music, while hunting down new ideas and sounds. Her recent performances include All Ears,Festival (2020, Norway) and AngelicA Festival (2019, Bologna) in a duo with Vivian Wang. Ong participated as a musician for the dance performance by Pichet Klunchun x Wu-kang Chen at Behalf (2019, UCC, Singapore). Her solo composition Hejira was used in Yeo Siew Hua’s award winning film, A Land Imagined.

Denim Szram (Poland/Switzerland) a sound and media artist, whose artistic work oscillates between music production, performance, multimedia installations and immersive sound compositions. As an electronic musician he creates compositions for spaces, dance and theatre. An expert in the field of 3D audio and uses this for his acoustic scenography, he expands sound with other media and creates audio visual systems and musical interfaces to explore expression with new technology. His work has been shown internationally and institutions like ZKM Karlsruhe, House of electronic arts in Basel, and the Audio Art Festival Krakow.

In her videos, services, concoctions and drawings, Ana Prvacki uses a gently pedagogical and comedic approach in an attempt to reconcile etiquette and erotics. Prvacki’s practice also centres around the human negotiation involved in endeavours such as hospitality, team efforts through music or questioning our normative cultural codes around ways of being in and navigating a contemporary life.

Andrew S Yang (United States) works across the visual arts, sciences, and history to explore emerging ecologies of the Anthropocene. Yang’s work has been exhibited from Oklahoma to Yokohama, including the 14th Istanbul Biennial (2015), Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2016), the Spencer Museum of Art (2019), and the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History (2020). His writing and research can be found in Art Journal, Leonardo, Biological Theory, and Antennae. He is an Associate Professor in the Liberal Arts Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a research associate at the Field Museum of Natural History.

Christa Donner (United States) is an artist, writer, and organiser who investigates anatomy and its metaphors. Donner employs a range of artistic media in her creative research, including drawing, audio performance, large-scale installations and small-press publications that create multi-layered, community-centred but intimate projects. Her creative research focuses on the human and non-human body as a site for conflict and adaptation: from the internal activities of the microbiome to the creative potentials of care work and community. She is currently an adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Contemporary Practices at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Working at the intersection of film, sound, theatre, and installation and often through collaborative projects, the sonic and spatial experiments of Tini Aliman (b. 1980, Singapore) focus on forest networks, plant consciousness, bioacoustics, and data translations via biodata sonification. Her recent projects and collaborations have been presented at Free Jazz III: Sound. Walks. NTU CCA Singapore (2021); An Exercise of Meaning in a Glitch Season, National Gallery Singapore (2020); Sound Kite Orchestra, Biennale Urbana, Venice, Italy and Stories We Tell to Scare Ourselves With, Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei, Taiwan (both 2019).

Joyce Bee Tuan Koh (Singapore) composes concert music and creates sound installations and multi-media works. Versatile and collaborative, Joyce has a wealth of experience working with musicians, choreographers, theatre-makers, artists, writers, philosophers, filmmakers, and architects. Originating from her interests in architecture and interdisciplinarity, her work explores notions of sonic canvas, space, and theatre of music. As described by the International Piano Quarterly, her sound world “engages the intellect and requires a different approach”. Her works have been presented at international festivals notably, International Computer Music Conferences, International Symposium on Electronic Arts, World Stage Design, Biennale Musiques France, Sir Henry Wood Promenade UK, Melbourne Arts Festival, Sydney InsideOut Festival, Singapore Arts Festival, Singapore Dan:s Festival, and Soundislands Festival.

Collaborative and experimental by nature, Free Jazz III builds upon its past iterations by activating and challenging common understandings of exhibition-making and the use of space. Sound walks. Machines listen. We are living through unusual times.

As the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore approaches a major transformation away from a permanent exhibition space in early 2021, Free Jazz III continues to explore the possibilities of an international research centre for contemporary art, featuring many artists who have been part of NTU CCA Singapore’s exhibitions, residencies, and programs since 2013, when the Centre presented Free Jazz as its inaugural event. The project began as a form of inquiry and an active tool to generate new possibilities for conceptualizing and programming an art institution. Free Jazz III convenes diverse projects united by themes of adaptation via masterful improvisation, trans-mediatic pivots, and the conscious renegotiation of our relationships to nature, technology, and each other. The disparate components of Free Jazz III explore the elements of dissonance, resistance, and innovation embedded in its musical namesake and the ability for sound and art to transcend physical and social distance. Embracing sound and walking as two powerful ways to overcome distance and bring people together, Free Jazz III comprises projects that can take place in non-gallery spaces, independently, asynchronously, or in purposeful syncopation with the present moment, reflecting on the past and looking forward to the future.

Admission to all programmes and events is free.

Sound. Walks.
January–March 2021 (On-site and online)

Reflecting on the loss of physicality through increased virtual interactions as well as many histories of sound and walking, artists address common life and communality in times of social distancing. In this series of performative explorations of sound, music, and community building, reflections take the form of soundwalks, sonic wayfinding and other physical and aural experiences, offering multiple ways for the public to actively witness, listen and participate, both remotely and on-site. Soundwalks by Tini Aliman (Singapore), Christa Donner and Andrew S Yang (United States), and Diana Lelonek (Poland) and Denim Szram (Poland/Switzerland) are propelled by sonic outputs of nature. Storytelling, correspondence, and the impossibility of direct communication factor into projects by Cheryl Ong (Singapore), Ana Prvački (Romania/Germany) in collaboration with Joyce Bee Tuan Koh (Singapore) and Galina Mihaleva (Bulgaria/Singapore), and Vivian Wang (Singapore/Switzerland). Sound, history, culture, and space overlap and intertwine in works by Arahmaiani (Indonesia) and Jimmy Ong (Singapore), bani haykal (Singapore) and Lee Weng Choy (Malaysia), Reetu Sattar (Bangladesh), and anGie Seah (Singapore).

Free Jazz III. Sound. Walks. is curated by Magdalena Magiera (Germany/Singapore), NTU CCA Singapore Curator, Education and Outreach, and Dr Karin Oen (United States/Singapore), NTU CCA Singapore Deputy Director, Curatorial Programmes

Under the Skin
1 December 2020 – 31 January 2021 (Online)

World premiere and special performance
1 December 2020, 7pm SGT

This trio of performative works by artists George Chua (Singapore), Nina Djekić (Slovenia/Singapore/Netherlands), and Noor Effendy Ibrahim (Singapore) engages with sound, bodily movements, and performance. These new pieces are cinematically translated into the medium of video by filmmaker Russell Morton (Singapore) and viewed online, acknowledging the curatorial premise that, “the pandemic has pushed us into a space of dramatic convergence—where a deep tech, hyper-connected future collides with social political unrest,” in both the work itself and the medium in which it is presented.

Under the Skin is curated for Free Jazz III by artist Cheong Kah Kit (Singapore) as part of Proposals for Novel Ways of Being, a united response to the changes brought about by COVID-19 hosted by twelve Singapore arts institutions, initiated by the National Gallery Singapore and Singapore Art Museum.

Partner programmes:

Machine Listening, a curriculum
From October 2020 (Online)

Expanded collaborations and explorations of curatorial spaces also took form in support of Machine Listening, a curriculum instigated by Melbourne-based Liquid Architecture. This evolving online resource, comprising existing and newly commissioned writing, interviews, music and artworks is a new investigation and experiment in collective learning around the emergent field of machine listening. It premiered with three online sessions open to all as part of Unsound 2020: Intermission, an experimental sound festival in Krakow, Poland. NTU CCA Singapore and Liquid Architecture will convene another collaborative online session open to the public in early 2021.

Machine Listening, a curriculum is curated by Sean Dockray, Dr James Parker, and Joel Stern (all Australia).

Visit the evolving open source curriculum and the recorded Unsound sessions:

(Against) the coming world of listening machines
Lessons in How (Not) to be Heard
Listening with the Pandemic

Sollum Swaramum
26 February 2021, 7.30 – 9.00pm
On-Site at Blk 43 Malan Road

Presented in collaboration with The Arts House’s Poetry with Music series, the 4th edition of Sollum Swaramum, brings together musicians Ramesh Krishnan, Mohamed Noor and Munir Alsagoff in exploration of the synergies between music and text, with devised and improvised texts based on the work of Tamil literary stalwarts P Krishnan, Ma Ilangkannnan and Rama Kannabiran. These newly devised texts are written by Harini V, Ashwinii Selvarai and Bharathi Moorthiappan, performed by Sivakumar Palakrishnan, and art direction by Laura Miotto.

Curated by Magdalena Magiera, Curator, Outreach and Education, and Dr. Karin Oen, Deputy Director, Curatorial Programmes, NTU CCA Singapore.

Free Jazz III. Sound. Walks. presented in partnership with Proposals for Novel Ways of Being, The Arts House, Liquid Architecture, as part of Singapore Art week, supported by National Arts Council.

Stagings. Soundings. Readings. Free Jazz II reviews the performative format that marked NTU CCA Singapore’s inauguration in 2013. Free Jazz 2013 was a series of talks and performances where participants of various disciplines were invited to imagine and envision a new institution and its potential. On its five-year anniversary, the Centre continues advocating for free spaces, celebrating the practice of improvisation, as well as of collective and performative approaches. Discussing ethical values with an expanded sense of community, territorial, and environmental concerns, Stagings. Soundings. Readings. employs an open, multidisciplinary structure that challenges traditional modes of presentation and re-presentation through a range of artistic practices and formats.

Situated within a complex and contemporary understanding of the Centre’s current overarching research topic CLIMATES. HABITATS. ENVIRONMENTS., the featured works link theory and practice, emphasising collectiveness. Today, the planet is witnessing a moment of unprecedented loss of biodiversity, habitat destruction, and cultural transformations. In the face of such agitated times juxtaposed with advanced communicative tools, contemporary social and environmental issues require responses from a collective body, through establishing processes of instigation, negotiation, and collaboration.

Can we learn from what we see as opposed to being merely seduced by images, becoming active participants instead of only passive observers? Stagings. Soundings. Readings. is an enactment between the artists and the audience. The invited artists engage with a less prescribed environment, reflecting on history, collective action, and human interaction.

Located outside the Centre, Maria Loboda‘s sculptural installation is grounded in historical narratives as a reminder that things can change and be taken down overnight, especially by the invisible mechanisms of power. In the Centre’s foyer, Tyler Coburn addresses forms of labour and examines the notion of writing in the 21st century by engaging with complexities of our legal, technological, and geopolitical networks, while Heman Chong analyses motifs of exchange and its boundaries, embracing the space of inter-human connections.

Unfolding in the exhibition space, Cally Spooner brings to Singapore an exercise in building new vocabulary and knowledge through bodily means. Using the space as a laboratory, the work investigates new ways of organising and working together. Alexandra Pirici’s choreography explores the possibility of collectively assembling memories of human and non-human presence on the planet. Carlos Casas presents his long-term multi-format ethnographic research based on the human ecology and richness of one of the world’s highest inhabited villages, Hichigh, located in the Pamir mountain range in Tajikistan. Together with composer Phill Niblock, they will create an audio-visual experience, traversing landscape, soundscape, and contemporary music that changes with every iteration.

In response to the five-year anniversary and by taking the topic of its celebration Free Jazz literally, Ming Wong will stage an improvisational performance. Similarly, Boris Nieslony (Germany), Co-founder of the artist collective Black Market International, will engage with pioneering Singaporean artist Lee Wen with a discussion and performance.

Further probing conventional formats, the accompanying programmes include readings by curator Anca Rujoiu (Romania/Singapore) and poets Peter Sipeli and 1angrynative (both Fiji), as well as Behind the Scenes conversations with contributing artists. In The Single Screen, works by Anton Ginzburg (Russia/United States), Mariana Silva (Portugal/United States), Luke Fowler (United Kingdom), Justin Shoulder and Bhenji Ra (both Philippines/Australia), and others, will add a filmic perspective to the dialogue.

This multitude of celebratory events instigates an active engagement with the now, following a conscious desire to become truly present.

Curated by Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director, NTU CCA Singapore, and Professor, School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University, and Magdalena Magiera, Curator, Outreach and Education, NTU CCA Singapore.

Stagings. Soundings. Readings. Free Jazz II public programmes

Luke Fowler is an artist, filmmaker and musician based in Glasgow. His work explores the limits and conventions of biographical and documentary filmmaking, and has often been compared to the British Free Cinema of the 1950s. Working with archival footage, photography and sound, Fowler’s filmic montages create portraits of intriguing, counter cultural figures, including Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing and English composer Cornelius Cardew.

Peter Daniel Sipeli is passionate about storytelling because he believes that stories humanise people by showing that we all face the same choices, struggles, and triumphs. A well-known spoken word artist, he was instrumental in the revitalisation of the Fiji SLAM in Suva. He founded the Poetryshop Fiji to fill a development gap for new and emerging local writers, as well as the only online Pacific islands arts magazine ARTalk. Having worked for 10 years with NGOs as a human rights and LGBTQ activist, he has also worked in the Fiji Arts Council and in the Dean’s Office at the Fiji School of Medicine. Additionally, he managed the popularised ROC Sunday street market.

Driven by his interest in exploring the conditions of the human body, multi-disciplinary artist Choy Ka Fai focuses his research on choreographic practices inAsia. The wind that cuts the body presents his current investigation into Butoh, which arose in Japan at the end of the 1950s, encompassing a diverse range of techniques from dance, theatre, and movement. Choy traces the legacy of one of the key founders, Tatsumi Hijikata (1928–1986) who sought a new form of physical expression he referred to as ankoku butō (“dance of darkness”), delving into imageries of the grotesque and sickness of the human form. The research presentation will feature a selection of reference materials from the Tatsumi Hijikata Archive in Tokyo and from the artist’s expeditions, interviews, and documentary sketches. In his pursuit, Choy went to the extent of interviewing the spirit of Hijikata through an itako (Japanese shaman) and to speculate on the technological possibilities of dancing with Hijikata again.

The wind that cuts the body is curated by Khim Ong, Deputy Director, Curatorial Programmes.

Tarek Atoui studied contemporary and electronic music at the French National Conservatory of Reims. He navigates between the vocabularies and aesthetics of the visual arts, performing arts, and music, redefining contemporary composition and sound production. In 2012, Atoui launched Serpentine Gallery’s Memory Marathon event in London with a five-hour performance that blended influences of traditional Arabic music with contemporary genres including electronic and hip-hop. He was co-artistic director of the Bergen Assembly 2016, a triennial in Norway. Recent projects have taken place at the Tate Modern, London (2016); Fondation Louis Vuitton, Bois de Boulogne (2015); Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm (2013); and Norbergfestival (2013). Selected exhibitions include Art or Sound, Fondazione Prada, Ca’ Corner della Regina, Venice (2014); Within, Sharjah Biennial 11 (2013); Metastable Circuit, la Lutherie and Dimis Reconnected, dOCUMENTA 13, Kassel (2012). His work has been part of biennials including the Marrakech Biennale (2016); 8th Berlin Biennial (2014); 9th Biennale do Mercosul, Porto Alegre (2013); and the 9th and 11th Sharjah Biennial (2009/13).

NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (NTU CCA Singapore) is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in Southeast Asia by sound artist and composer Tarek Atoui, conceived as a composition that unfolds in space with its unique sound library and instruments. It is the first large-scale exhibition that Atoui has created through interweaving objects, instruments, and recordings, some borrowed from pre-existing projects, others newly collected and produced.

The Ground: From the Land to the Sea comprises two layers of auditory experiences that interact with each other as well as with the spatial and sonic qualities of NTU CCA Singapore’s exhibition hall, merging them into a single composition. Enveloping the main exhibition space are a set of speakers that play the sounds of underwater environments as well as human and industrial activities in the harbours of Athens and Abu Dhabi, recorded for the project I/E (2015–ongoing). Building upon the sound collection, Atoui has, as part of this presentation in Singapore, recorded at local harbours and waterfronts, together with composer and sound artist Éric La Casa.

The recording process in Singapore took Atoui and La Casa to a range of waterfront sites and islands including the Jurong Fishery Port, Pulau Sebarok (an oil storage facility and refuelling port off the Southern coastline), on an oil tanker, and along the Singapore shores. During these trips, the duo picked out acoustic features of these environs, both underwater and on land, and captured them in their diverse forms—as vibrations, audible noise, and inaudible audio waves, etc.— using devices such as a recorder, a hydrophone, contact microphones, and selfmade omnidirectional microphones. Drawing reference to the emergence of acoustic ecology, which attempts to understand and analyse characteristics of sonic environments such as geological formations, organisms, and human interactions, Atoui’s auditory library is an artistic interpretation of the ecology of our times. Set within a “white cube,” the audience is transposed into an immersive audio-visual topography, becoming part of the installation.

Most of the instruments shown are part of The Ground project, the result of the artist’s five-year-long investigation of natural cycles in the Pearl River Delta, first presented at Mirrored Gardens, a project space in Guangzhou, China, in 2017. Also presented are instruments created for previous projects, such as The Reverse Collection (2014–16) and WITHIN (2012–13). This ensemble of unusual instruments is enriched with new additions, including a set of porcelain and ceramic discs, on which traditional Arabic rhythms are engraved, and a customised record player that rotates at irregular speeds, never reading a disc the same way twice.

At the core of Atoui’s practice lies an ongoing process of inviting composers, musicians, and artists to collaborate on his pieces in search of new ideas, gestures, and experiences. For the current exhibition, Atoui will engage with local and international musicians who will be invited to appropriate his composition and intervene in the exhibition space. He will work with acclaimed sound artists and musicians Vivian Wang and Yuen Chee Wai, as well as music curator Mark Wong, who in turn will invite other musicians and sound artists to inhabit the installation throughout the course of the exhibition.

The exhibition is curated by Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director, NTU CCA Singapore, and Professor, School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University, and Khim Ong, Deputy Director, Curatorial Programmes, NTU CCA Singapore. Supported by Institut français, with the additional support of the Embassy of France in Singapore and Institut français Singapour.

Tarek Atoui has invited local and international musicians to engage with his exhibition and appropriate the installation for given periods of time. He worked with acclaimed sound artists and musicians Vivian Wang and Yuen Chee Wai, as well as music curator Mark Wong, who each will host three other musicians and sound artists. The guests will inhabit the exhibition and freely experiment with Atoui’s instruments throughout the course of the exhibition. Schedule for upcoming Guest Musicians in the Exhibition Hall: Vivian Wang (Singapore): 26 – 30 March Yuen Chee Wai (Singapore): 31 March – 3 April Darren Ng (Singapore): 7 – 10 April Uriel Barthélémi (France): 13 – 17 April Tini Aliman (Singapore): 28 April – 1 May Wu Junhan (Singapore): 2 – 5 May The Analog Girl (Singapore): 10 – 13 May Cheryl Ong (Singapore): 19 – 22 May Zai Tang (Singapore): 31 May – 3 June Bani Haykal (Singapore): 4 – 7 June Dharma (Singapore): 13 – 16 June Sudarshan Chandra Kumar (Malaysia): 19 – 22 June

Éric La Casa has worked in the field of sound creation since the early 1990s through recording, record production, installation, radio, and various types of written publications. Through his aesthetic of capturing sound, his work fits equally into the fields of sound art and music, offering an interesting critical approach to the practice of sound landscape, and questioning our listening methods and schemes. He has recently examined the sound dimension of public spaces and the places in which we spend our private and domestic lives in the context of the project entitled Habiter, and the relation between waiting and listening in L’attente. La Casa collaborated with Tarek Atoui on recording the harbour of Abu Dhabi in 2017 and of Singapore in 2018 for the I/E project.

Alexandra Pirici is an artist with a background in choreography that works undisciplined across different mediums, both in galleries and in public space. Her work has been exhibited within the decennial art exhibition Skulptur Projekte Munster 2017; the Romanian Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale; Tate Modern, London; New Museum, New York; 9th Berlin Biennale; Manifesta 10; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the Museum Ludwig Cologne; among others.

Anton Ginzburg is known for his films, sculptures, paintings, and text-based printed work that investigates historical narratives and poetic studies of place, representation, and post-Soviet identity. He earned a BFA from The New School for Social Research and an MFA from Bard College, Milton Avery Graduate School of Arts. His work has been shown at the 54th Venice Biennale; the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston; Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Canada; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; White Columns, New York; Lille 3000, Euralille, France; and the first and second Moscow Biennales. His films have been screened at the Whitechapel Gallery, London; Rotterdam International Film Festival; Dallas Symphony Orchestra; Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas; Les Rencontres Internationales, Paris; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; and New York Film Festival/Projections; among others.

Bhenji Ra is an interdisciplinary artist who reframes performance through a combination of dance, choreography, video, and installation. Her work is often concerned with the dissection of cultural theory and identity. She uses spectacle and her own personal histories to explore themes of race, sexuality, and gender, giving voice to hidden and marginalised communities, and suggesting alternative modules of community. He is part of Sydney-based collective Club Ate.

Boris Nieslony has worked intensively as a performance artist, curator, archivist, and independent scholar, staging various installations, interventions, and artist projects since the 1970s. He is the Co-founder of Black Market International, a performance group that meets regularly in various configurations to realise group performance projects. And also the instigator of the ASA Foundation, a platform for a self-organising rhizomatic network of performance artists and theorists. Nieslony is recognised as one of the most prolific and significant contributors to performance art. He creates unpredictable and unrepeatable improvisational performance works that manifest “an encounter and its effects.”

Cally Spooner is an artist based in Athens. Her installations unfold in evolutionary phases, in conjunction with the delivery of a project or an exhibition. Recent solo shows include Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève; Whitechapel Gallery, London; The New Museum, New York; and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Her book Scripts was published by Slimvolume in 2016 and her novel Collapsing In Parts by Mousse in 2012.

Carlos Casas is a filmmaker and artist whose practice encompasses film, sound, and the visual arts. His films have been screened and awarded in festivals around the world such as the Venice Film Festival; International Film Festival Rotterdam; Buenos Aires International Film Festival; and Mexico International Film Festival; among others. His work has been exhibited and performed in international art institutions and galleries, including Tate Modern, London; Fondation Cartier, Palais de Tokyo, and Centre Pompidou, Paris; and Hangar Bicocca, Milan. He was an NTU CCA Singapore Artist-in-Residence from December 2017 to February 2018.

Jesper List Thomsen is an artist and writer. Recent exhibitions and performances include Hollis and Money, ICA, London and Künstlerhaus, Stuttgart; Speak Through You, Hot Wheels Projects, Athens; A Social Body Event, Serpentine Gallery, London; Micro-Composition, Rozenstraat, Amsterdam; The body, the body, the tongue, Reading International; Hand and Mind, Grand Union, Birmingham; The boys the girls and the political, Lisson Gallery, London; and One Hour Exhibition, South London Gallery, London. A book-length collection of his texts will be published in Autumn 2018 by Juan de la Cosa (John of the Thing). He is also a part of the artist collective Am Nuden Da.

Justin Shoulder works in performance, sculpture, and video. His main body of work, Fantastic Creatures, comprises invented beings and alter-personas based on interpretations of mythology, folktale, and fantasy. These creatures are embodied through movement and elaborate, hand-crafted costumes and prostheses, forging connections between queer, migrant, spiritual, and intercultural experiences. He is part of Sydney-based collective Club Ate.

Lee Wenwas awarded the Cultural Medallion of Singapore in 2009. He entered the art scene comparatively late in the ‘80s, but quickly gained attention. His early practice was associated with The Artists Village in Singapore and later forged a more individuated artistic career. Lee Wen has been exploring different strategies of time-based and performance art since 1989. He helped initiate both R.I.T.E.S. (Rooted In The Ephemeral Speak) (2009-) and Future of Imagination (2003-), an international performance art event. Since 2012, he has taken an active interest in the memory of Singapore’s performance art history through the initiation of the Independent Archive. Recent group exhibitions include SUNSHOWER: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia 1980s to Now, The National Arts Centre and Mori Art Museum, Japan (2017), Secret Archipelago, Palais de Tokyo, France (2015) and a solo show at the Singapore Art Museum (2012). Lee Wen was an NTU CCA Singapore Artist-in-Residence from August 2014 to February 2015.

Maggie Segale is a dancer, artist, and teacher with a focus on performing and interdisciplinary, collaborative work. She graduated from the Juilliard School, where she received multiple awards and fellowships including the 2014 Entrepreneurship Fellowship for her writing on self-image and dance. Segale works with Helen Simoneau Danse, Bryan Arias, and artist Cally Spooner, having collaborated with A24 Films, Center for Innovation in the Arts, Roya Carreras in the upcoming Pussy Riot music video, composer Zubin Hensler, and Matilda Sakamoto. Segale choreographed the opera Role of Reason at the Interarts Festival 2018, and was an Artist-in-Residence at the New Jersey Dance Theatre Ensemble (2016).

Maria Loboda is a Berlin-based artist who creates enigmatic spaces that dive deep into rich historical narratives and the current state of affairs. She has exhibited at dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel; Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid; Kunstverein Braunschweig; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; among others. She will have solo exhibitions at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, in November 2018, and at Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City, in 2019.

Mariana Silva has exhibited and screened her work at Anthology Film Archives, New York (2018); Gwangju Biennale (2016); Moscow Biennale (2016); and EDP Foundation, Lisbon (2015); among others. Solo shows include For more Information, fluent, Santander (2018); Camera Traps, Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon (2018); Audience Response Systems, Parkour, Lisbon (2014); P/p, Mews Project Space, London (2013); Environments, e-flux exhibition space, New York (2013); and The Organization of Forms, Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon (2011). She was a resident at Gasworks (2016), Zentrum Paul Klee Sommerakademie, Bern (2010), and at ISCP, New York (2009–10). Together with artist Pedro Neves Marques, she runs Inhabitants, an online channel for exploratory video and documentary reporting (inhabitants-tv.org).

Mark Wong has been active in experimental music, sonic arts and independent music practice in the last decade, playing multiple roles as organiser, programmer, artist, curator, writer, and label producer. His sound compositions, site-specific works, sound walks, sound objects, and multi-channel installations have been exhibited at Singapore Art Museum, 8Q@SAM, Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, Jendela (Visual Arts Space), and Yavuz Gallery. In 2010, Wong conceived Ujikaji as a music label and event organiser with a focus on experimental music in Singapore and Southeast Asia.

Ming Wong builds layers of cinematic language, social structure, identity, and introspection through re-telling world cinema and popular culture in videos, installations, and performances. He often “mis-casts” himself in multiple roles in a foreign language, interconnecting concepts of gender, representation, culture, and identity. Wong represented Singapore at the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009). He has had solo exhibitions at leading institutions worldwide and has participated in international biennials, including Performa, New York; Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane; and Sydney Biennale, among others.

Phill Niblock is a New York-based minimalist composer and multi-media musician, and director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation born in the flames of 1968’s barricade-hopping. He has been a maverick presence on the fringes of the avant-garde ever since.

Tyler Coburn is a New York-based artist and writer whose practice focuses on the entanglement of technology and human subjectivities, information systems and those who make them. Coburn’s work has been presented at Centre Pompidou, Paris; Kunsthalle Wien; South London Gallery; Kunstverein Munich; Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm; Art Sonje Center, Seoul; Sculpture Center, New York; and in the 11th Gwangju Biennale and 10th Shanghai Biennale. Coburn was an NTU CCA Singapore Artist-in-Residence from June to July 2017.

Vladimir Erofeev was a pioneer of expedition cinema in the Soviet Union, advocating for increased attention and investment in edifying non-fiction films made to win the interest of broad audiences. In summer 1927, a trek to the mountainous Pamir region, known as the “Roof of the World,” in present-day Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, was organised by the Sovkino studio in co-operation with the Geological Committee. Erofeev worked with prominent geologist Dmitrii Nalivkin and ethnographer Mikhail Andreyev, who had both extensively researched the area and contributed to the planning for the crew’s journey. The film starts off in Moscow, the symbolic centre of the new empire, leading through Samara and Orenburg, to Tashkent and Osh, and further on to the Pamir Mountains of Central Asia. The film features the expedition’s progress through crossing mountain rivers, traversing snowy passes and descending into valleys in bloom, while at the same time recording the daily practices of the Krygz nomads, the religious customs of a Tajik village community, finally entering Dushanbe, observing the city life in the capital of Soviet Tajikistan. The final result demonstrates a portrait of a rich and vibrant region in which the interaction of various cultures have not yet fully streamlined to the requirements of the uniformed all-Soviet world.

How to breathe deeply and sing expressively in this moment when the mouth and nose embody danger? How to have pleasure in music when in its essences it is airborne and moist?

Let us return power and agency to the mouth and voice while still protecting ourselves and others. Let us express our emotions freely into the air that we all share. The Mouthful mask is both conceptual and practical. It exposes the breath and gives us an earful and eyeful of air. Mouthful projects a new sound which follows the guidelines of our time while it overcomes and embraces the obstacles we face with poetry and humor.

Mouthful is conceived by Ana Prvački, produced and manifested by Galina Mihaleva and activated by Reginald Jalleh and Zerlina Tan with original music by Joyce Bee Tuan Koh. A transdisciplinary, collaborative work, Mouthful is realized with two performative activations and as an installation and sound work in The Vitrine at NTU CCA Singapore, Block 43 Malan Road.