NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (NTU CCA Singapore) presents the two-part research presentation Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss. First unfolding at TBA21–Academy’s Ocean Space in Venice, Italy, the research inquiry later materialises in another configuration at ADM Gallery, a university gallery under the School of Art, Design, and Media (NTU ADM) at Nanyang Technological University Singapore.
This twofold exhibition marks the conclusion of the eponymous research project led by Principal Investigator Ute Meta Bauer at NTU ADM. The inquiry started by asking: how has the slow erosion of diverse, multicultural, and more-than-human ways of living over time impacted the environments in which we live, and what are the longer-term consequences on habitats? Can we begin again with culture, to induce a necessary paradigm shift in the way we think about and respond to the climate crisis? Extending connections and conversations seeded during the inaugural cycle of TBA21–Academy’s The Current fellowship programme led by Bauer from 2015 to 2018, Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss continues to build archipelagic networks across the Alliance of Small Island Developing States, deepening existing collaborations with Oceania Centre for Arts, Culture and Pacific Studies in Fiji, and developing new ones further in the South Pacific Ocean, through the art and media non-profit organisation Further Arts in Vanuatu.
Bridging conversations from the Pacific to Singapore in the Riau Archipelago, former fellows of TBA21–Academy’s The Currentand current research collaborators artist Nabil Ahmed, social anthropologist Guigone Camus, artist Kristy H.A. Kang, legal scholar Hervé Raimana Lallemant-Moe, and artists Armin Linke and Lisa Rave, join Singapore-based researchers Co-Investigator Sang-Ho Yun and Denny Chee of the Earth Observatory of Singapore – Remote Sensing Lab (EOS–RS) and the Asian School of the Environment, NTU ADM research staff Soh Kay Min and Ng Mei Jia, historian Jonathan Galka, and community organiser Firdaus Sani, as they explore the impacts of extreme weather, rising seas, climate displacement, ocean resource extraction, and the disappearance of material cultural traditions, occurring across what the visionary Pacific thinker Epeli Hau’ofa has termed “our sea of islands.” Featuring interviews, data visualisations, documentation, writings, and artisanal crafts made in collaboration with or generously gifted to the research team by knowledge bearers, community leaders, scientists, scholars, and artists, including writer and curator Frances Vaka’uta, masi artist Igatolo Latu,human rights defender Anne Pakoa and anthropologist Cynthia Chou, the exhibitions present the rich, complex, and multi-layered research findings accumulated over three years, since the Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss project first started in 2021.
At TBA21–Academy’s Ocean Space, the Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss research inquiry sits adjacent to the exhibition Restor(y)ing Oceania, comprising two new site-specific commissions by Latai Taumoepeau and Elisapeta Hinemoa Heta. Curated by Bougainville-born artist Taloi Havini, whose curatorial vision is guided by an ancestral call-and-response method, the exhibition materialises as a search for solidarity and kinship in uncertain times, in order to slow down the clock on extraction and counter it with reverence for the life of the Ocean.
At ADM Gallery, Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss is presented alongside the companion show Sensing Nature, curated by Gallery Director Michelle Ho. The exhibition showcases artists representing diverse disciplines, each offering their interpretation of the natural world and its intersection with urban life. Through reflection and experimentation, these works invite viewers to reassess our perceptions and behaviors toward the environment and phenomena beyond human influence. They advocate for a renewed understanding of society’s connection to nature and the land.
Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss is supported by the Ministry of Education, Singapore, under its Academic Research Fund Tier 2 grant. The research presentation at Ocean Space coincides with the 60th International Art Biennale in Venice, Italy, with public programmes taking place through the exhibition durations in both Venice and Singapore.
Opening Dates
Ocean Space exhibition preview:
March 22, 6pm
Ocean Space, Venice, Chiesa di San Lorenzo Castello
Opening hours
March 23–October 13, 2024: Wednesday to Sunday, 11am–6pm
Ocean Space
Chiesa di San Lorenzo Castello 5069, Venice
April 12–May 24, 2024: Monday to Friday, 10am–5pm
ADM Gallery
81 Nanyang Drive, Singapore 637458
Registration required via Peatix: medicinalherbs.peatix.com
This programme will be conducted in Mandarin.
Programme will start at NTU CCA Singapore, Block 43 Malan Road and end at NTU Community Herb Garden, Nanyang Technological University, Nanyang Avenue near Jalan Bahar Gate. One-way transportation from NTU CCA Singapore to NTU is provided.
In conceptualising Quadra Medicinale (2009), Jef Geys asked local collaborators to identify plants that grew on the street, and to research their potential medicinal or beneficial properties. The NTU Community Herb Garden is dedicated to the cultivation of such plants and is home to more than 300 species of tropical plants and herbs with medicinal properties. Ng Kim Chuan founded the Garden in 2009, together with a small group of volunteers consisting of staff, students, and members of the public, to serve as a charitable resource of medicinal herbs for the poor and the needy. Ng will give a tour of the Garden, with the assistance of Lee Jin Long, NTU student, and share his knowledge and work surrounding these medicinal herbs, especially as alternative treatments for cancer and chronic illnesses.
A public programme of Jef Geys Quadra Medicinale Singapore.
“Weeds” are not a group of related plants (like “orchids” or “gingers” or “palms”), nor are they plants with shared physical characteristics (like “trees” or “shrubs”). Although weeds defy easy definition, their name suggests something unwanted or out of place. Many, however, are quite beautiful and merit closer examination and appreciation. This talk will explore different aspects of weeds – what they are, their place in the human psyche, their fascinating life histories – and their inextricable link to human existence.
BIOGRAPHY
Shawn Kaihekulani Yamauchi Lum (United States/Singapore) helped form the Nature Society (Singapore) Plant Group with the intention of promoting an interest in plants and plant conservation as part of a broader effort to promote Singapore’s natural heritage. He is a strong advocate of public participation in nature discovery and monitoring, and believes that our quality of life is made better by becoming acquainted with the beautiful and diverse living world around us.
A public programme of Jef Geys Quadra Medicinale Singapore.
Course Details
Date: 10 September 2022, Saturday
Time: 10:00am – 12:00pm
Venue: NTU CCA Singapore, Block 6 Lock Road, Gillman Barracks, Singapore 108934
Course Fee: $85.60 (incl. GST), per adult/child pair
For enquiries, please email ntuccaeducation@ntu.edu.sg
About The Course
Edible Wild is a 2-hour workshop aimed at bringing parents and their children closer to nature. Despite the greenery that surrounds us in our concrete jungle, it is easy to overlook the plants that flank our sidewalks. As the world moves at an ever-increasing pace, we need the occasional reminder to slow down and reconnect with the earth – and one of the best ways to do so is to learn how to care for it.
This workshop is a gentle introduction to the myriad of herbs – both common and uncommon – that can be found growing around our garden city, as well as a chance to understand their history and uses. Participants will learn simple plant identification techniques, understand the structure of a plant, as well as pick up basic gardening skills that they can use at home. The overall goal is to renew a sense of wonder in our green companions, while providing the skills to identify and care for them.
At The End of the Course, You Will…
● Learn how to identify edible local plants from The Farm at NTU CCA Singapore
● Learn general plant identification techniques (leaf shape, flowers, stem structure etc.)
● Pick up basic gardening techniques to grow and care for your own edible greens (proper watering, checking/enriching the soil, checking for pests, pruning & propagation)
● Create simple infusions with ingredients from the garden
Target Audience
Parent/child groups where the children are 7 years old and above.
Entanglements – Writing The Environment
Course Details
Date: 21, 22, 24 & 25 Feb 2022
Time: 9:00am – 4:00pm
Location: NTU CCA Singapore, The Seminar Room, Block 37 Malan Road, Singapore 109452
Course Fee: $856 (inc. GST) Skillsfuture credits applicable for Singaporeans.
Registration has closed.
For enquiries please email ntuccaeducation@ntu.edu.sg
About the Course
Entanglements – Writing the Environment is a 4-day course which offers participants the opportunity to develop their writing skills and interests in ways that promote and illustrate environmental awareness, concerns, and sensitivities.
Participants will explore diverse issues of the environment captured in writing through experimenting with a variety of writing forms from the glossary definition, annotations, essay, review, poetry, short fiction and novel.
The course format will include examination of literary texts related to environmental themes, class discussions, as well as writing and editing practice to texts produced throughout the course.
By the end of this course, participants will have a new literary appreciation and increased confidence in writing about the natural world. Join us in the sandbox of literature to explore new ideas, experiment with language, and arrange words in new and exciting ways with like-minded individuals.
What You Will Learn
1. To understand different formats of writing and writing conventions that can be applied to other facets of daily life.
2. To integrate environmental concerns in writing of fiction and non-fiction.
3. To identify and analyse developments in the field of environmental literature through the study of specific works.
4. To develop a personal style of writing by connecting ideas and creating an effective narrative.
Who Should Sign Up
Artists, Cultural Producers, Curators, Researchers, Educators, Naturalists, Editors, Art Critics, Budding Writers or someone who simply enjoys writing
Open College programmes are offered on 2 tracks; Discovery and Immersive Series. Discovery Series programmes are short exploratory courses that allow participants to explore topics outside their usual fields of interest, and acquire basic knowledge and skillsets that may be transferrable to other areas of study and work. By contrast, Immersive Seriesprogrammes are more in-depth and led by professional educators, researchers and critical thinkers in their fields of expertise. Through a blend of practical projects and discussions to stimulate critical thinking and dialogue, participants will deep dive into a subject matter and gain new perspectives.
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.
To Burn, Forest, Fire takes place as a series of incense burning ceremonies that awaken our sensorium and elicit an intimate, intuitive relation to the natural world confronting us with the sensorial richness of forest ecologies and the prospect of extinctions caused by humanity. Stemming from collaborations with scientists across different disciplines, the work speculates on the olfactory qualities of the first and last forest on our planet. The earliest forest is believed to have formed in present-day Cairo (New York State, United States) about 385 million years ago; whereas the last forest before environmental collapse is identified with the Yasuni Biosphere Reserve, in the Ecuadorian Amazon, an ecosystem threatened by rampant deforestation and unsustainable agricultural practices. Katie Paterson’s interdisciplinary investigation resulted in the creation of incense sticks, blended by Japanese incense maker Shoyeido, that propagate the distinct fragrances of the two forests pushing our understanding of reality beyond the domain of the visible.
Admission is Free. Entrance is on a first-come first-served basis up to the capacity allowed by the prevailing social distancing measures. Audiences are to arrive at least 15 minutes before the performance starts. Please note that the performance entails the burning of incense inside an indoor space.
The projects of Katie Paterson (b. 1981, Scotland) consider our place on Earth in the context of geological time and change. Her artworks make use of sophisticated technologies and specialist expertise to stage intimate, poetic, and philosophical engagements between people and their natural environment. Combining a Romantic sensibility with a research-based approach, conceptual rigour and minimalist presentation, her work collapses the distance between the viewer, the edges of time, and the cosmos. Her solo exhibitions were presented at NYLO The Living Art Museum, Reykjavík, Iceland (2021); The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (2020); and the Utah Museum of Modern Art, Salt Lake City, United States (2017). To Burn, Forest, Fire is a IHME Helsinki Commission 2021.
Find out more about Free Jazz IV. Geomancers
Isabelle Desjeux is a Umeå (Sweden) and Singapore-based artist and researcher. Using her training in Molecular Biology, she creates new kinds of scientific method-based artworks. Working closely with scientists, she encourages others to cross the divide and take on the role of scientists in her interventions, whether in a class, during a workshop, or as part of an installation. As such her work has often been labelled as participatory, with “experiment” being a strong part of her practice.
She received her MAFA from Lasalle (2011), was the recipient of both the French-Singapore New Generation Artist (2011) and the Lasalle Research Fellowship (2017). Her work has been exhibited in museums across Singapore, in Japan and USA. She teaches regularly across disciplines from pre-school to post-graduate level, inviting students into her practice.
Ceci n’est pas une exposition. This is not an exhibition. Perhaps this sounds like a counter-intuitive way to introduce an exhibition, or a space like this that has a lot in common with exhibitions.
So if this is not an exhibition, what is it? The French word “expérience,” sounds like the English word “experience,” but translates to “experiment.” It is definitely both an experiment and an experience. It is also a project, comprising interactive gallery-based installations and the activation of the ideas explored in those installations through related programmes. We borrow the idea that “Ceci n’est pas…” or “this is not…what it seems to be” from the Belgian artist René Magritte (1898-1967). Hopefully, this invites us to think about what is possible when one looks beyond what seems to be, and instead thinks about what could be.
Ceci n’est pas une exhibition, but it is art, it is science, it is play, it is imagination, it is nature, it is technology, and it is, above all, an invitation, and a space to be activated by your presence and participation.
This project presents the work of Dr Isabelle Desjeux, an artist, scientist, and educator who spent 25 years in Singapore, from 1999 to 2024. The project is simultaneously a reflection on her training as a molecular biologist, her experiences making art and building community, and a proposition for things that are yet to come. Things that she will do, and things that she hopes that you will take in new directions. Now, having recently relocated to Sweden, she is certain that some aspects of her practice in Singapore will adapt to her new environment, and some will not be transplantable.
Desjeux’s interests in following questions down meandering paths, tapping into curiosity about the environment, and in sharing meaningful experiences with others are common threads throughout her work for the past 25 years. This project invites you to be part of these experiences—not by simply viewing or learning from the installation areas within the gallery, but by participating in them, and making them your own. If you are ready to start down some meandering paths, you should stop reading here, and jump right into the experiment!
For those of you who are interested to learn more, here are a few more facts and speculations about this work, and the artist-scientist behind them.
The works in these galleries are just some of the many projects that Isabelle embarked upon while in Singapore. They were selected for this presentation as some of the pieces that best embody her way of working by collaborating with and learning from others; her interest in iterating projects in different spaces and contexts; and her genuine curiosity for the world.
Isabelle enjoys the quote by filmmaker Agnes Varda that, “I don’t want to show things, but give people the desire to see.”
You might see evidence of Isabelle’s own interest in giving people the “desire to see” in her work with lenses and modes of refracting images. In her playful explorations of cameras through low-tech manipulations of light inside the gallery you will find variations on the camera obscura – the term for a “dark chamber” in Latin and an important ancestor of the photographic camera that dates back to antiquity. The simple design of a camera obscura projects an inverted image of the outside world into a darkened space via a small opening.
Isabelle’s series of cameras obscura include both small scale sculptural objects designed to be worn over the viewer’s head (her series of papier-maché cameras include a teapot and several objects that look like aquatic creatures!) and larger-scale chambers that visitors can step inside. Her experiments with pinhole cameras operate on the same principle, using a small light-proof chamber containing light-sensitive paper and the timed uncovering of a small pinhole to expose that paper and make it a photograph – an image “written in light.” To see the image, this paper would have to be developed in a darkroom, which is another one of Isabelle’s objects that you will encounter: a light proof box that is small enough to carry out into the world. This wooden crate has been outfitted with the legs of well-worn jeans to cover the photographer’s arms and a small red viewing window that allows viewers to peer at the evolving photograph inside while filtering out the wavelengths of light that would overexpose the paper inside. Like many of her objects, this one begs multiple questions. Is it a work of engineering? A work of design? A work of art? Is it a tool to create something else, or an object of curiosity in its own right?
In the section dedicated to cameras, you will also find a fuchsia jumpsuit worn by Isabelle on her daily visits to neighbourhood community spaces for the Lengkok Bahru Pinhole Project (2019). Can an article of clothing be a way of making images? Is the invitation for community members to co-create photographs about the images themselves, or the relationships that can be formed by coming together to look at the world differently?
Nearby to the artists’ cameras, we find the Insect Inventorium (2023-2024), presented as a collaboration with the artist Quek See Yee. This project involves looking at and getting to know insects that have already been studied by entomologists, then using materials gathered from the natural world to imagine and visualise insects that might someday be discovered or known to us. Is the artist-scientist’s role to observe, or to speculate? Is it possible to do one without the other? Is science, or art, a fundamentally solitary endeavour, or a group activity?
On the other side of the gallery’s partition wall, an assortment of Isabelle’s “interactive objects” including a scarecrow and a large bird mask, bring up slightly different questions about our modes of engaging with the world around us. Does a functional scarecrow, activated by the weight of birds resting on it, protect us from or bring us in dialogue with our avian neighbours? How can interactivity remind us of how we are animals and sensory beings, part of the ecosystems in which we live?
In another section of the gallery, we encounter the House of Weeds (2020-2024), presented as a collaboration with the artist Debbie Ding. This project explores local weeds as botanical specimens brought together as subjects to be observed and investigated (especially by small observers of the world!), and as components of a sonic machine that integrates these plants into its electrical circuitry. Is it an interactive art installation? An educational experience? An example of citizen science? A carefully engineered series of surprises?
At the entrance to the gallery, we find Heavealogy – a series of works related to the study of the Parà rubber tree, Hevea brasiliensis. This series is simultaneously an investigation and portrait of the plant itself, including its exploding seeds, and research into why and how this type of tree was planted in Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand. It also provokes questions of what our understanding of this plant might mean for our future, and the future of the ecosystem in which it grows. In 1000 Rubber Seeds and One Mutant (2014), one of the works in this series, we see some of the threads of Isabelle’s practice woven together—her facility with photographic imaging, her curiosity for the interactions of nature and culture in Singapore and Southeast Asia, and her experience as scientific researcher with extensive knowledge of genetics. All of this is brought together by her humorous sensibility and penchant for finding inspiration and true beauty in the absurd and the counterintuitive. An artist-scientist who has operated in the formal and informal spaces of both art and science, and someone who has been part of the Institute of Unnecessary Research as the Head of Failure and later the Head of Curiosity Awareness, Isabelle Desjeux asks questions, experiments with process, gleefully deviates from plans, and invites others to do the same. In the artists’ book written to accompany the Heavealogy project in 2018 she invites and implores her readers to: “Ask questions with CURIOSITY, seek answers with EXCITEMENT, but leave a place for FAILURE in your interpretations.”
4 October – 7 November 2024
Free Entrance
Gallery, Level 2
Alliance Française de Singapour
Opening hours
Tuesday to Friday: 1.00 pm – 7.30 pm
Saturday: 9.00 am – 5.00 pm
Artist
Dr Isabelle Desjeux, artist-scientist
Collaborators
Quek See Yee, multidisciplinary designer and art practitioner
Debbie Ding, an artist-scholar
Exhibition Curator
Karin G. Oen
Director, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore
Ng Mei Jia is currently Research Associate at the School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University, managing the research projects Climate Transformation Programme (2024–2027), Developing and Evaluating Digital Tools for Participatory Climate Change Mitigation (2025–2026) and a research assistant on Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss (2021–2024), Environmentally-Engaged Artistic Practices in South, Southeast Asia and the Pacific (2021–2023), and Understanding Southeast Asia as a ‘Geocultural’ Formation (2021–2023). She was previously a Project Officer (Intangible Cultural Heritage) at the National Heritage Board, Singapore. Mei Jia holds an MA in Southeast Asian Studies from the National University of Singapore.
Course Details
Date: 10 September 2022, Saturday
Time: 10:00am – 12:00pm
Venue: NTU CCA Singapore, Block 6 Lock Road, Gillman Barracks, Singapore 108934
Course Fee: $85.60 (incl. GST), per adult/child pair
For enquiries, please email ntuccaeducation@ntu.edu.sg
About The Course
Edible Wild is a 2-hour workshop aimed at bringing parents and their children closer to nature. Despite the greenery that surrounds us in our concrete jungle, it is easy to overlook the plants that flank our sidewalks. As the world moves at an ever-increasing pace, we need the occasional reminder to slow down and reconnect with the earth – and one of the best ways to do so is to learn how to care for it.
This workshop is a gentle introduction to the myriad of herbs – both common and uncommon – that can be found growing around our garden city, as well as a chance to understand their history and uses. Participants will learn simple plant identification techniques, understand the structure of a plant, as well as pick up basic gardening skills that they can use at home. The overall goal is to renew a sense of wonder in our green companions, while providing the skills to identify and care for them.
At The End of the Course, You Will…
● Learn how to identify edible local plants from The Farm at NTU CCA Singapore
● Learn general plant identification techniques (leaf shape, flowers, stem structure etc.)
● Pick up basic gardening techniques to grow and care for your own edible greens (proper watering, checking/enriching the soil, checking for pests, pruning & propagation)
● Create simple infusions with ingredients from the garden
Target Audience
Parent/child groups where the children are 7 years old and above.
Since 2020, Joy Chee has been the resident bartender/gardener (or bardener, if you will) at Native, a Singaporean restaurant-bar focused on working with local and regional craftsmen and communities. Drawn to them for their ethos of sustainability and commitment to highlighting native produce, she has been working on rewilding the gardens with local kampung herbs and supporting the garden-to-table concept. When she’s not elbow-deep in compost, she can be found shaking up a cocktail or two at 52 Amoy Street.
Against the developmental emphasis on order, cleanliness, and control, weeds are often singled out as plants that grow in the wrong place where they can flourish in spite of being unwanted. In their resistance against human impulses to control and manicure nature, weeds are regarded by the artist as a manifestation of the beauty and resilience of wilderness and chaos. By observing both the physiology and formal qualities of weeds, Chua plans to experiment with a variety of light-sensitive and other photographic techniques to capture their intricate beauty and frame their value for nature and society.
Artist-in-Residence Chua Chye Teck speaks to Dr Anna Lovecchio, Assistant Director, Programmes, in our fourth episode of AiRCAST. Follow Chye Teck’s stream of consciousness as he tells us about his journey with the medium of photography and his enduring fascination for fleeting forms and makeshift compositions. In recent years, Chye Teck is developing a more experimental attitude towards the image-making process creating works that respond to the specificity of a site, rather than to a subject matter, and reverberate with emotional vibrations. He has also become involved in several collaborations with other artists and he is cultivating a new fascination for cellphone images and the creative potential of readily available, off-the-shelf digital technologies.
The evocative and subtly layered works of Chua Chye Teck (b. 1974, Singapore) result from prolonged visual and experiential quests. His body of work draws attention to the discarded and the overlooked articulating a reflection on the multiple processes of disappearing that result from the impact of progress and development on the natural environment. His works have been exhibited in venues such as at Singapore Art Museum (2021), Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2020), Jendela Esplanade, Singapore (2018, 2015), Institute of Contemporary Arts, Singapore (2017), Chiang Mai University Art Centre, Thailand (2015), and Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany (2010).
Contributor: Chua Chye Teck
Conducted by: Anna Lovecchio
Programme Manager: Kristine Tan
Sound Engineer: Ashwin Menon (The Music Parlour)
Intro & Outro Music: Tini Aliman
Cover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine Tan
The evocative and subtly layered works of Chua Chye Teck (b. 1974, Singapore) result from prolonged visual and experiential quests. His body of work draws attention to the discarded and the overlooked articulating a reflection on the multiple processes of disappearing that result from the impact of progress and development on the natural environment. His works have been exhibited in venues such as at Singapore Art Museum (2021), Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2020), Jendela Esplanade, Singapore (2018, 2015), Institute of Contemporary Arts, Singapore (2017), Chiang Mai University Art Centre, Thailand (2015), and Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany (2010).
Within the framework of this project, tree stumps are regarded as witnesses to the ecological and anthropogenic changes resulting from land development, extractive capitalism, and climate change. Despite being seemingly devoid of life, felled trees and their stumps are in fact connected to underground forest ecologies and are part of sprawling fungal and bacterial networks through which plants communicate and send out signals that are not immediately graspable by the human ear. Shifting the acoustic experience of listening to one that is attuned to the sonic manifestation of non-human organisms, the artist will attempt to translate these signals into audible frequencies that merge deep listening and site-specificity. Furthermore, drawing parallels between the organic plant networks and the structure of printed circuit board (PCB), she will also map various sonic and spatial trajectories of plant sensing, survival, and communication.
In the first episode of AiRCAST, NTU CCA Singapore curator Dr Anna Lovecchio speaks to Artist-in-Residence Tini Aliman about how her sonic practice revolves around a close listening of the natural environment. Tini shares about the experience of growing up in a fast-developing city, her encounters with nature, the human and other-than-human sources of inspiration for her work, and the sonification of tree stumps she is experimenting with during the residency. As a special treat to our ears, the conversation is punctuated with excerpts from her recordings.
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 and plant consciousness, bioacoustics and 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).
Contributor: Tini Aliman
Conducted by: Anna Lovecchio
Programme Manager: Kristine Tan
Sound Engineer: Rudi Osman
Intro & Outro Music: Tini Aliman
Cover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine Tan
Credits:
9:11: Recording of plants in Fort Canning Park, Aug 2018. Courtesy the artist.
17: 20: Audio excerpt from Plants emit sound when stressed, ILTV Israel News, Dec 11, 2018, https://youtu.be/5YHnVdA2ZG8
24:01: Audio excerpt from Zarina Muhammad, Flowers of our Bloodlines, lecture performance, NTU CCA Singapore, 2017. Courtesy the artist.
26:35: Audio excerpt from Tini Aliman, Pokoknya, performance, 17 January 2020, NTU CCA Singapore. Courtesy the artist.
30:37: Audio excerpt from Tini Aliman, Pokoknya: Organic Cancellation, 2020, mixed media installation. Courtesy the artist.
36:08: Sounds from Tini Aliman’s studio. Courtesy the artist.
44:54: Underground sounds from the forest at Gillman Barracks captured by Tini Aliman with a geophone, August 2021. Courtesy the artist.
49:06: Field recordings of a walk through the forest at Gillman Barracks, December 2020. Courtesy the artist.
Dirk Snauwaert is Artist Director of WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels, and was involved in its creation since July 2004. At WIELS, Snauwaert has curated exhibitions of Tauba Auerbach (2013) and Mike Kelley (2008). Prior, Snauwaert was Co-Director of the Institut d’art contemporain Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alps where he was in charge of the exhibition programme and the development of the FRAC Rhône-Alpes collection. He was Director of the Kunstverein Munich from 1996 to 2001, where he curated solo shows by Rita McBride (1999), William Kentridge (1998), David Lamelas (1997), and Fareed Armaly (1997). He was also the curator of Jef Geys at the Pavilion of Belgium, 53rd Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition. Snauwaert was an NTU CCA Singapore Curator-in-Residence in 2015.
Research interests:
– Botanical studies and urban planning
– Regional folklore, ghost myths, animistic practices
– Alternative historiographies
Inspired by the recent felling of Khaya senegalensis (a tree species native to West Africa) in one of Ho Chi Minh City’s oldest streets for urban development purposes, Lêna Bùi’s project revolves around widespread regional beliefs about hungry and unresolved spirits residing in trees. The artist plans to delve deeper into the intersections between botanical studies, colonial histories, and urban planning in Indochina, framing them against the backdrop of ancestral wisdom and haunting presences. The research will eventually lead to an articulation of unspoken stories from times gone by.
The residency of Lêna Bùi was scheduled for April – June 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak rendered international travel impossible. In order to continue to support artistic research and foster collaborations beyond borders, the NTU CCA Residencies Programme initiated Residencies Rewired, a project that trailblazes new pathways to collaboration.
Research Liaison: Elizabeth Ang
Elizabeth Ang is a freelance creative and writer who holds a BA in International History from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research interests include Cold War historiography as well as social, cultural, and religious histories of Southeast Asia.
Sourcing oral histories and female accounts, delving into archives, and mapping sites associated with different forms of mining, exploitation, and confinement, Rossella Biscotti will deepen her research interest into colonial structures of power and management at the turn of the 20th century and the way in which these structures are interwoven with contemporary practices of production and distribution. Expanding on a recently produced body of works that explore the physical and aesthetic properties of rubber—notably its resistance and its resemblance to human skin—the artist aims to research its production process on site. She will conduct archival research on colonial trade, botanical imports, and intensive cultivations in preparation for her field trips to rubber and oil palm plantations in the region.
Premised upon the methodologies of ethnographic fieldwork, Matthias Sohr’s (b. 1980, Germany) artistic practice results in sculptures and installations that draw from technology and social sciences to reflect a wide range of research interests, from medical anthropology to “Bureaucracy Studies”. He is currently pursuing a PhD in the History of Medicine, University of Lausanne, Switzerland.
Matthias Sohr obtained a Master of Visual Arts from the University of Art and Design Lausanne, Switzerland in 2013. He has been a visiting lecturer at the University of Arts and Industrial Design Linz, Austria (2011-2012); Berlin University of the Arts, Institute of Spatial Experiments, Germany (2010). His work has been exhibited at Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT), Japan (2011) and Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany (2014), among others.
The Colony (2017 – ongoing) is the title of Marvin Tang’s long-term research project which examines the impact of botanical institutions on the movement of seeds, plants, and people in the colonial era. For the next iteration of the project, the artist intends to focus on the history and evolution of the Wardian case, a glass container for growing and transporting flora devised by British physician Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward in 1833. The direct precursor of the modern terrarium, this transportable receptacle proved instrumental in allowing the circulation of plants across the globe in the 19th century. Here, it is framed as a point of departure to excavate the social, economic, and environmental implications of planetary plant movements and the displacement of labour forces required to sustain booming plantation economies. During the residency, the studio will be used to conduct durational experiments with natural substances and photographic materials and try out different modes of display.
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).
Interested in the contiguities and frictions between the natural and urban environment, Izat Arif has conducted experiential and erratic fieldwork in various landscapes in Singapore observing plants, soil, insects, and traces of human presence. This investigation is presented in The Vitrine as a form of a provisional “cabinet of essential items,” which contains a selection of the artist’s notes and drawings, research tools, and findings.
NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore is embarking on an inquiry into natural materials, exploring the knowledge they embody as biological forms as well as within social, geopolitical, and historical contexts.Trees of Life – Knowledge in Material is part of the Centre’s long-term research cluster Climates.Habitats.Environments.
This exhibition focuses on materials from four plants deeply rooted in Asia: indigo (Indigofera tinctoria), lacquer (Rhus succedanea and Melanorrhoea usitata), rattan (Calamoideae), and mulberry (Morus). The works trace the ongoing involvement with these plants in the artistic practices of Manish Nai (India) with indigo, Phi Phi Oanh (United States/Vietnam) with lacquer, Sopheap Pich (Cambodia) with rattan, and Liang Shaoji (China) and Vivian Xu (China) with mulberry silk. While the featured installations serve as a starting point to uncover the materiality of the chosen plants, the study of their natural and cultural DNA allows further exploration into their biological processes and diverse usages at their locale.
The artworks intertwine with selected research documents that address the complex histories and circulation, as well as the effects of human intervention on these natural resources. Starting from the properties and characteristics of the materials themselves, the project expands into their cultural representation and significance for communities and their crafts.
The longstanding social and cultural practices associated with indigo, lacquer, rattan, and mulberry silk have accumulated a vast repository of knowledge, whether formal or tacit. Beyond the format of the exhibition, topical seminars will be dedicated to each of the four materials, further investigating their social applications over centuries in terms of their materiality, cultural references, or expanded ecology, and as arising from technological advancements. The lectures, panels, talks, and workshops feature the participating artists, as well as craftsmen, scientists, ethnobotanists, anthropologists, scholars, and designers who are working with these materials and researching innovative applications. From the diverse perspectives offered by the contributors, the public programme excavates layers of meanings and reiterates the deeper role art and craft traditions have in supporting local communities and their ecosystems.
Topical seminars take place between 21 July and 8 September 2018.
On Lacquer: 21, 22 July
On Rattan: 25, 26 August
On Indigo: 4, 19 August, and 1 September
On Mulberry: 8 September
The project Trees of Life – Knowledge in Material is led by Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director, NTU CCA Singapore and Professor, NTU School of Art, Design and Media (ADM); Laura Miotto, Associate Professor and Co-director, MA Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices, NTU ADM; and Khim Ong, Deputy Director, Curatorial Programmes, NTU CCA Singapore.
NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore presents Quadra Medicinale Singapore, the late Belgian artist Jef Geys’s first institutional exhibition in Asia. Geys’s conceptual practice adopted an interdisciplinary and collaborative process of research and knowledge-formation, and was driven by his belief that art should be intertwined with the everyday.
For Quadra Medicinale (2009), Geys invited residents of Villeurbanne, New York, Moscow, and Brussels to demarcate a geometrical quadrant, with their home or workplace at the centre, and document 12 unassuming street plants, or “weeds.” From this collection, the collaborators uncovered the productive, and often times medicinal, properties of these plants.
Quadra Medicinale is structured as a universal manual capable of being replicated anywhere and has, since its first presentation at the Pavilion of Belgium during the 53rd Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition in 2009, been realised and shown in various cities including at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (2010). The exhibition was followed by similar methods of botanical and medicinal plant studies as documented in the accompanying publication Kempens Informatieblad. This alternative model set up by Geys for collective knowledge production, sharing, and documentation has, underlying its process, a socially-active role: Geys asked questions such as, “What can a homeless person who has a toothache, for example, chew-on to ease the pain, and to eventually cure the problem?”
On view will be four chapters of the project, including a newly-created Singapore chapter following Geys’s instructions with contributions by local collaborators, Louise Neo and Teo Siyang. Each chapter includes framed plant specimens with their characteristics labelled, photographs of the site where the plants were originally found, as well as maps of the geographical quadrant explored. Through inciting a collaborative process, Geys created a unique model for knowledge production and sharing.
Questioning mainstream and organised systems of urban planning and information dissemination, Geys casted doubt on the fundaments of language and visual representation, interrogating art’s relation to meaning-making. He produced a text explaining the Quadra Medicinale project that has been translated into 10 languages, with annotations by the artist himself on the translations. Their display as large-format scrolls, further probes systems of interpretation, communication, and accessibility. A selection of these text scrolls and a Malay translation, produced for this exhibition, will be shown.
Quadra Medicinale Singapore introduces an artistic practice that questions the hierarchies and adaptability of nature and society, provoking reflections on both their communicable and imperceptible structures. It also poses the question of whether conceptual artworks can be continued after an artist’s passing.
In addition to the elements from Quadra Medicinale, the exhibition includes two paintings from Geys’s Seed-bags series (1963–2018), a long-term project the artist started when, during his own gardening process, he discovered that the image of the vegetables or flowers pictured on the bag did not match the actual plant. With these paintings, which Geys would create every year, he challenged the accuracy and truth of commercial photography. The medium, however, played a significant role in the artist’s practice enabling him to accumulate an extensive archive of his own projects and interests.
In The Single Screen, Day and Night and Day… (2002), his 36-hour-long film produced for Documenta 11 (Kassel, Germany), will be screened in parallel to the exhibition. This film is a mesmeric sequence composed of thousands of black-and-white photographs Geys took from the mid-1950s to 1998.
The exhibition is made possible by generous loans from the Jef Geys Estate and Air de Paris.
Quadra Medicinale Singapore is curated by Dirk Snauwaert, Artistic Director at WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels, in collaboration with Ute Meta Bauer and Khim Ong, NTU CCA Singapore. Snauwaert was the Curator of Jef Geys: Quadra Medicinale in Venice 2009, commissioned for the National Pavilion of Belgiumby the Flemish Community. Snauwaert was an NTU CCA Singapore Curator-in-Residence in 2015.
The Singapore Chapter, Quadra Medicinale Singapore (2018), is now permanently installed at NTU, Earth Observatory of Singapore, as a gift of Jef Geys Estate. Please click here for the English translation of the Malay scroll on view.
Jef Geys was among Europe’s most respected yet under-acknowledged artists. Producing artwork since the 1950s, Geys’ practice probes the construction of social and political engagement, and his work radically embraces art as being intertwined with everyday life. Geys graduated from the Antwerp Arts Academy before settling in Balen in the Kempen region of Belgium, where from 1960 to 1989, he taught art at a state school, focusing on educational experimentation in the arts. Since the late 1960s, Geys has been the editor and publisher of his local newspaper, the Kempens Informatieblad, and subsequently produced them in line with his exhibitions. He is known for his meticulous archive of his work, which in turn becomes generative of other works.
Louise Neo is a botanical researcher and the co-author of Wayside Flowers of Singapore, a full-colour guidebook that showcases the diversity of wildflowers in Singapore and interesting facts about each species. Neo is a contributor to Urban Forest (uforest.org), a non-profit online platform that aims to provide an accessible and convenient identification guide to the diversity of plants in Singapore and the region.
Teo Siyang is a full-time data analyst with a biology degree and the founder of Urban Forest (uforest.org), which aims to provide information about the diversity of plants in Singapore. The platform was built on the belief that the first step in conservation is enabling people to identify the nature around them so they can foster a deeper connection with it.
