Experiential – NTU Centre for Contemporary Art 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.

The Observatory is a band whose music and cultural ethos is to responds and speaks back to the contemporary afflictions in Singapore and the global milieu. Its current constellation comprises multi-instrumentalists Cheryl Ong, Dharma and Yuen Chee Wai who tread on improvisation, intermedia, experimentation and noise-adjacent territories. In confronting new forms of disorders, The Observatory restlessly turns upon itself to agitate, to comfort and to resist. Drawing on old and new lexicons, The Observatory seeks to bridge artists and expressions (a bit unclear, maybe consider: diverse artistic expressions?). Two decades on, the band’s polymath practice encompasses music and performance; in-person festivals and online radio shows; touring gigs and interdisciplinary exhibitions.

Embracing a constellatory and process-led approach in her collaboration with multiple researchers at EOS, Zarina Muhammad dedicates STAR RESIDENCY to further her engagement with hybrid forms of ecological witnessing and polycosmologies as well as her exploration of the interdependency of environmental knowledge systems. The artist intends to conduct fieldwork on selected sites where geological and ecological significance resonate with underwater cultural heritage and indigenous knowledge systems, seeking points of convergence with EOS’s work in monitoring and addressing the regional impact of climate change. By exploring remote-sensing techniques and data translations through creative and empirical processes, this research hopes to expand the epistemic frameworks of nonhuman witnessing in the context of environmental crisis. The artist plans to expand her collaborative practice through interdisciplinary exchange, convening scientists, artists, storytellers, and ancestral knowledge keepers to develop speculative maps and multi-layered cartographies inspired by the complexity of environmental data, ecological processes, and trans-indigenous cosmologies.

Zarina Muhammad (b. 1982, Singapore) is an artist, educator, and researcher whose practice critically re-examines oral histories, ethnographic literature, and historiographic narratives of Southeast Asia. Working at the intersections of performance, text, installation, ritual, sound, moving image, and participatory practice, her work explores the enmeshed contexts of ecocultural cosmologies, identities and interactions, mythmaking, haunted historiographies, and geo-spirited landscapes. Her long-term interdisciplinary project investigates Southeast Asia’s evolving relationship with spectrality, ritual magic, polysensoriality, and the immaterial, examining these themes against the backdrop of global modernity, the social production of rationality, and transcultural exchanges of knowledge. Her work has been widely presented at international biennales and institutions, including FotoFest Biennial, Houston, USA (2024), the 2nd Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, Saudi Arabia (2024), the 7th Singapore Biennale (2022), and the 3rd Lahore Biennale, Pakistan (2024). She recently had a solo presentation, curated by Shubigi Rao, at the Singapore Pavilion at the 15th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2024). Zarina is the recipient of the 2022 IMPART Art Prize.

Working across a broad range of mediums, including film, sound, VR, and electronics, ong kian peng (Singapore, 1981) situates his practice at the intersection of art, technology and ecology. His work explores ecological thinking through immersive multi-media environments and installations that address environmental crises, climate change, and the expanding field of human-technology interactions. Delving into the complex relationship between culture, nature, and technology, he creates visionary scenarios and raises existential questions about our role in shaping the future of a vulnerable planet. His work has been featured in international exhibitions and festivals such as, most recently, Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria, 2024) and Singapore Biennale (2022). In 2017, he co-founded Supernormal.space, an independent art space focusing on emerging and experimental art practices. He was awarded the President’s Young Talents award in 2015. He is currently a PhD candidate at the NTU School of Art, Design and Media and a recipient of the NTU Research Scholarship.

After a very successful first iteration of Climate Futures #1: Cultures, Climate Crisis and Disappearing Ecologies its second convening wants to build on its discussions and expand its understanding of the decline in cultural and ecological diversity in the region. It became very clear that such conversations require space and time to process complex issues, if we do not want to simplify and allow more than one way to process how people feel about their situations and want to be heard. Our futures require us to go beyond the status quo of current modes of operating. To not lose cultural knowledge and biodiversity Climate Futures #2: Belonging & Shared Responsibilities will share various narratives and practices that are already in place. It wants to further provide access to communities outside state and institutional structures to further nurture understanding of change in responsibilities and accountability.

The summit intents to further map how the climate crisis informs our contemporary world, and how diverse cultures can adjust or adapt without losing a sense of purpose. It comprises of discussions into alternative approaches to regional studies focusing on urgencies such as rising sea-levels and temperatures and the impact on natural resources of the region. A particular focus will be on areas such as the Mekong River and Delta (Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam) and its water street to Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines including the Straits that plays an essential role in the regions shared history.

The holistic approach of Climate Futures #1: Cultures, Climate Crisis and Disappearing Ecologies showed already how it can successfully stimulate a debate between artists, designers, and architects, scientists, environmentalists, as well as local voices and policy makers. We seek to reach out to an even wider public including younger scholars and practitioners, as well as community leaders and policy makers from the ASEAN region.

The future of our shared prosperity relies on our collective ability to create an inclusive and sustainable foundation for growth.

Read the programme brochure here.

Thursday, 26 October – Saturday 28 October 2023

Sokhalay Angkor Villa Resort, Siem Reap, Cambodia

Thursday, 26 October
Join the livestream here with the passcode 668981.

9:30am Registration & Coffee

10:00am Opening Addresses

Dr Piti Srisangnam, Executive Director, ASEAN Foundation

H.E. Min Chandynavuth, Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, Cambodia

Prof. Tim White, Vice President (International Engagement); President’s Chair in Materials Science and Engineering; Professor, School of Materials Science & Engineering.

Welcome and Introduction by co-curators Prof. Ute Meta Bauer (Germany/Singapore), Founding Director NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, and Professor School of Art, Design, and Media, NTU Singapore and Magdalena Magiera (Germany/Singapore), Curator Residencies and Programms, NTU Centre of Contemporary Art, Singapore

10:30am The Art of Living Lightly, Keynote Lecture by Rachaporn Choochuey (Thailand), Architect, Co-founder, Design Director, all(zone) ltd

11:40am Between Bots and the Biosphere: Machine Philosophy, Media Ecologies, and Digital Hieroglyphs for Climate Adaptation, Case Study by Nashin Mahtani (Indonesia), Director, PetaBencana.id

12:00pm An Uncommon History of The Common Fence: A Prologue (To the Coast), Case Study by Jason Wee (Singapore), Artist, Writer, Curator

12:20pm Sharing Climate Futures: Developing tools for climate care and action, Case Study by Prof. Ute Meta Bauer (Germany/Singapore), Founding Director NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, and Professor School of Art, Design, and Media, NTU Singapore

1:00pm Discussion with Rachaporn Choochuey (Thailand), Nashin Mahtani (Indonesia), and Jason Wee (Singapore). Moderated by Prof. Ute Meta Bauer (Germany/Singapore)

3:30pm Belonging & Sharing Responsibilities, Closed Workshop by Claudia Lasimbang a.k.a Yoggie, Technical Coordinator Watersheds and Communities, Forever Sabah, Philip Chin a.k.a. Linggit, Technical Coordinator Certified Sustainable Palm Oil, Forever Sabah, and Yee I-Lan (all Malaysia), artist

Friday, 27 October
Join the livestream here with the passcode 400242.

8:45am Registration & Coffee

9:00am Welcome & Introduction

9:10am Creative Digital Lab: how artists, cultural and creative professionals and technologists work together to explore the potentials of XR technology in protecting heritage, safeguarding intangible cultural heritage and contributing to climate action. Lecture by Kamonrat Mali Chayamarit (Thailand), Culture Programme Officer, Lao PDR alternate Focal Point, UNESCO Culture related Conventions Advocate

9:40am Ecology for Non-Futures, Case Study by Binna Choi (South-Korea), Artists, part of Unmake Lab

10:20am Climate impact on social process and social structure, Case study by Daovone Phonemanichane (Laos), Strengthening Climate Resilience Project Manager, Oxfam Mekong Regional Water Governance Program

10:40am When Nature has Economic Value, Case Study by Som Supaprinya (Thailand), Artist

11:20am Discussion with Kamonrat Mali Chayamarit (Thailand), Binna Choi (South-Korea), Daovone Phonemanichane (Laos), and Som Supaprinya (Thailand). Moderated by Bejamin Hampe (Australia), Project Director, KONNECT ASEAN

1:00pm Glimpse of Life on the Water, Closed Workshop Sessions by Sovann Ke (Cambodia), Project Manager, OSMOSE

Saturday, 28 October
Join the livestream here with the passcode 353177.

8:45am Registration & Coffee

9:00am Introduction & Welcome

9:15am Every (de)Force Evolves into A (de)Form, Lecture by Gahee Park (South-Korea), Curator, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul

10:00am Pedagogy, Community, Art: Bottom-up Urbanism at Phnom Penh’s Wat Chen Dam Daek, Case Study by Lyno Vuth (Cambodia), Artist, and Eva Lloyd (Australia), Lecturer, University of New South Wales (UNSW)

10:20am Luang Prabang: From Cultural Landscape into Practice, Case Study by Phonepaseth Keosomsak (Laos), Architect, Artist

11:00am Snare for Birds: Rebelling Against an Order of Things, Case Study by Kiri Dalena (Philipines), Artist

11:20am Travelling through time, Case Study by Malin Yim (Cambodia), Artist

11:40am The New Word for World is Archipelago, Case Study by Nice Buenaventura (Philippines), Artist

12:00pm Discussion with Nice Buenaventura (Philippines), Kiri Dalena (Philipines), Phonepaseth Keosomsak (Laos), Gahee Park (South-Korea), Lyno Vuth (Cambodia), and Malin Yim (Cambodia). Moderated by Magdalena Magiera (Germany/Singapore)

2:30pm Visit of Blue Art Centre. Welcome by Sareth Svay (Cambodia), Artists, Director, Blue Art Centre

3:00pm Closing workshop by Cynthia Ong (Malaysia), Chief Executive Facilitator Forever Sabah Institute, LEAP

Curated by NTU CCA Singapore

Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director and Magdalena Magiera, Curator, Residencies and Programmes

Supported by

ASEAN Secretariat

ASEAN-Korea Cooperation Fund

Mission of the Republic of Korea to ASEAN

ASEAN Senior Officials Meeting for Culture and Arts

Programme support by Ministry of Culture and Fine Art, Cambodia

PROJECT PARTNERS

ASEAN FOUNDATION

Since the formation of ASEAN in 1967, ASEAN has embarked on a journey to accelerate economic growth, social progress, and cultural development in the region. After three decades, ASEAN leaders recognised there remained inadequate shared prosperity, ASEAN awareness, and contact amongst the people of ASEAN. As a result, ASEAN leaders established the ASEAN Foundation during the ASEAN 30th Anniversary Commemorative Summit in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia on 15 December 1997.

KONNECT ASEAN

As the post-Cold War reality of a new world has taken shape and formed new directions and conversations, ASEAN has re-entered the contemporary art space via collaborative efforts between various ASEAN bodies. The Republic of Korea celebrated 30 years of diplomatic relations with ASEAN in 2019 and in the same year established KONNECT ASEAN, an ASEAN-Korea arts programme. Supported by the ASEAN-Korea Cooperation Fund and administered by the ASEAN Foundation, KONNECT ASEAN signals both an eagerness by ASEAN to revitalise its once integral role in contemporary visual arts and Korea’s sincerity in establishing closer ties with ASEAN.

The programme celebrates Southeast Asian and Korean arts using different platforms (exhibitions, education and conferences, public programmes, residencies, and publications and archives) to explore and discuss social, political, economic, and environmental issues in the region. The artists’ works and activities engages and strengthen the public’s understanding of ASEAN’s role in facilitating cultural diplomacy. Furthermore, the programme intends to connect with the three major stakeholder groups of government, business, and civil society to achieve the vision of an ASEAN Community. Outcomes provide permanent resources recording why ASEAN matters and its ongoing contribution to the region’s growth, prosperity, and stability.

NANYANG TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY

A research-intensive public university, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has 33,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students in the Engineering, Business, Science, Medicine, Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences, and Graduate colleges. NTU is also home to world-renowned autonomous institutes—the National Institute of Education, S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Earth Observatory of Singapore, and Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering—and various leading research centres such as the Nanyang Environment & Water Research Institute (NEWRI) and Energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERI@N).

Under the NTU Smart Campus vision, the University harnesses the power of digital technology and tech-enabled solutions to support better learning and living experiences, the discovery of new knowledge, and the sustainability of resources. Ranked amongst the world’s top universities, the University’s main campus is also frequently listed among the world’s most beautiful. Known for its sustainability, over 95% of its building projects are certified Green Mark Platinum. Apart from its main campus, NTU also has a medical campus in Novena, Singapore’s healthcare district. For more information, visit ntu.edu.sg.

NTU CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART SINGAPORE

Situated within Singapore’s premier art precinct Gillman Barracks, NTU CCA Singapore is a pioneering institution that has been instrumental in shaping the contemporary art landscape in Singapore and beyond. With a focus on fostering creativity, innovation, and critical thinking, the Centre’s programmes have consistently challenged the status quo, encouraging artists to explore new realms of artistic expression. For more information, visit ntu.ccasingapore.org.

Image: Climate Futures #1, Jakarta (Indonesia), 2022. Courtesy NTU CCA Singapore, Konnect ASEAN & ASEAN Foundation.

Dr. Yanyun Chen (b. 1986, Singapore) is a visual artist who works across drawings, new media, and installation. Her artistic practice unravels fictional and philosophical notions of embodiment exploring how heritage and legacies are grounded in the physicality of human and botanical forms. Her solo exhibitions include Stories of a Woman and Her Dowry, Grey Projects, Singapore (2019) and Scars that write us, part of the President’s Young Talents 2018, Singapore Art Museum (2018). She has participated in group exhibitions such as While She Quivers, Objectifs – Centre for Photography and Film, Singapore (2021); Thailand Biennale, Korat 2021 (2021); Clouds: The 6th International Exhibition on New Media Art 2020, CICA Museum, South Korea (2020); Fiction Non Fiction, Cultural Affairs Bureau, Macau (2019); 2291: Futures Imagined, Art Science Museum, Singapore (2019) among others. Yanyun has received the Young Artist Award in 2020 and the IMPART Art Prize in 2019. Her works were also awarded the Prague International Indie Film Festival Q3 Best Animation Award (2020), National Youth Film Awards Best Art Direction Award (2019), Singapore Art Museum President’s Young Talents People’s Choice Award (2018), and the Lee Kuan Yew Gold Medal Award (2009).

Incorporating elements of performance in the most advanced capacities of VR technology, The Insensible Cities results from the artists’ shared interest in addressing and challenging the ideological and historical frameworks that govern one’s origins and identities. Through the sensory documentation of the multiple layers of time, memory, perception, and ideas, The Insensible Cities is a unique VR experience that reintroduces, reinterprets, and restructures the changing dimensions of everyday life in Asia beyond the conventions of cinema and performing arts.

The Insensible Cities is supported by Arts Council Korea (ARKO) and International Arts Joint Fund Korea-Singapore International Exchange Program.

Dr Ella Raidel (Austria/Singapore), is a filmmaker, artist, and researcher. She is an Assistant Professor at the School of Art, Design and Media and at the WKWSCI School of Communication and Information (both Nanyang Technological University). Her interdisciplinary practice—encompassing films, videos, and research—creates a discursive space for filmmaking, art, and research focused on the socio-cultural aspects of globalisation, urbanisation and the representation of images.

In his writings, films, and performance pieces, Dr Hyun-Suk Seo (South Korea) investigates places and senses. He is Professor at the Graduate School of Communication and Arts at Yonsei University (South Korea). His performance projects unfold in actual places as site-specific work. He often uses virtual reality technologies to construct layers of memories and experiences that question our senses and the boundaries of artworks.

Location
NTU CCA Singapore Residencies Studios
Blocks 38 Malan Road, #01-07
Singapore 109441

Date
Saturday 26 March, 2:00 – 6:00pm

Musician, artist, designer, and curator Yuen Chee Wai (b. 1975, Singapore) is known for his commitment to improvised music and experimental projects that explore memory and loss, indeterminacy and invisibility. Ranging from the obsolescent and the newfangled, his eclectic toolbox comprises noise, field recordings, found sounds as well as guitars and various electronic instruments which reverberate with critical perspectives inspired by philosophy, literature, film, and politics. Together with FEN (Far East Network), an improvised music quartet he co-formed in 2008, Yuen is active in triggering multifaceted collaborations across Asia. Since 2014, he is Project Director of Asian Music Network for which he co-curates Asian Meeting Festival. Yuen is also a member of the experimental band The Observatory with whom he plays guitar, efx and objects, and organises a range of projects such Playfreely and BlackKaji.

Yan Jun is a musician, born in Lanzhou in 1973 and based in Beijing. His activities involve improvised music, field recordings and site-specific sound works/events. His feedback improvisation set always follows the unstable relationship between microphones, speakers, the space and his own body movement. He often plays with the environment and found objects at audiences‚ homes, along or with other artists, through the Living Room Tour project.

He is member of FEN, Tea Rockers Quintet and Impro Committee. He has performed in more than 20 countries in North America, Australia, Europe and Asia. As a poet and artist he has attended Rotterdam International Poetry Festival, Berlin International Poetry Festival and Shanghai Biennale.

Art Labor will recreate a Hammock Café serving traditional Vietnamese coffee, akin to the many itinerant roadside-resting spots of the Central Highlands of Vietnam. The café will be a place for visitors to sit together, chat, rest, observe, think or simply pass time, alluding to the café culture central to Vietnamese daily life. The name Jarai Dew Hammock Café is an introduction into Art Labor’s long-term project. That takes inspiration from the Jarai people of Vietnam’s Central Highlands and their philosophy on the cycle of life. After death, humans will go through many stages to get back to their origins of existence. The final stage is that they transform into dew (ia ngôm in Jarai language) evaporating into the environment – a state of non-being – the beginning particles of a new existence.

Joan Jonas is one of the most significant video and performance artists and important female artists active in the 1960s and 1970s. She pioneered the use of the two genres in visual art and was influential also in other art forms. Incorporating different media, she presents multiple viewpoints and layers of material, texture, and meanings in her work to address current issues. In 1972, she began producing video works that were ground-breaking in emphasising the experience of the medium as a conceptual device and is known for merging various genres in her fragmented video narratives.

Eran Schaerf’s multidisciplinary work focuses on the architecture of narration. He has exhibited in group-exhibitions such as Venice Bienniale (2011), Fake or Feint (2008), Territories (2003), Manifesta (1998), Listener’s Voice, Brussels (2001), DOCUMENTA IX (1992). Among his publications are: fm-scenario – where palms stand – mask –delay, London (2012), Blue Key, Cologne (2002), Listener’s Voice, Brussels (2001), Re-enactment, New- York (1996).

Theatrical Fields introduces theatricality as a critical strategy in performance, film and video. This exhibition presents six video installations shown for the first time in Southeast Asia: Voice off by Judith Barry (USA), Suspiria by Stan Douglas (Canada), Lines in the Sand by Joan Jonas (USA), Vagabondia by Isaac Julien (UK), She Might Belong to You by Eva Meyer & Eran Schaerf (Germany / Israel), X Characters Re(hers)AL by Constanze Ruhm (Austria). Situated in juxtaposition, the works generate temporal spaces for experimental action, creating unfamiliar proximities and encounters.

Theatrical Fields was curated by Ute Meta Bauer (Founding Director) with Anca Rujoiu (Curator for Exhibitions), and was first presented and commissioned by the Bildmuseet, Umea in Sweden (2013).

As a collaboration, Bildmuseet Umea and NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore will publish a catalogue including keynotes from the symposium and additional commissioned essays.

Theatrical Fields public programmes

As artist and musician, bani haykal (Singapore, b. 1985) experiments with language, sound, and fiction. His work revolves around human-machine relationships/intimacies, and cultural identity formations reflecting critically on how language, tools and technologies have shaped and continue to shape our life experiences. From interfaces to interactions, from fictions to frictions, from commuting to communicating, the creative output of his research often involves the creation of DIY tools and it encompasses site-responsive installations, poetry, and performance as well as publications and music releases.

Marie Menken was an underground experimental filmmaker known as “the mother of the avant-garde,” having influenced and worked with internationally renowned artists such as Andy Warhol. She progressed from painting to filmmaking in 1945, when she made her first avant-garde film using a handheld Bolex camera. Since then, she was celebrated for her intuitive, free-form cinematic style and for taking filmmaking to a new direction with the way she created poetic patterns of light, colour, and texture. Her films are fragmentary encounters with friends, landscapes, and her urban surroundings.

Shirley Clarke was an esteemed figure in the American avant-garde cinema of the 1950s and 1960s, and a pioneer of video in the 1970s. She brought a distinctive aesthetic of “choreography of images” to her work as a trained dancer and manipulated image, time, and space by applying choreographic editing and technical effects as a dramatic, expressive language. She co-founded Film-Makers Cooperative and Film-Makers Distribution Center in New York, which offered alternative distribution methods for independent filmmakers. She was also the winner of an Academy Award for her 1964 documentary film Robert Frost: A Lover’s Quarrel With the World.

The Disappearance situates itself in the architectural setting of a previous exhibition Paradise Lost. It works with what is left out: the traces of the show in the space; its echoes in our memory, The Disappearance conceals and reveals: what has happened before and what will follow. Subject to operations of installation and de-installation, an exhibition space if continuously edited: we erase one text to inscribe another. The Disappearance acknowledges the inherent changes into an exhibition space and its continuous rewriting. What happens after an exhibition is over? What we remember? How we remember?

Curated by Anca Rujoiu (Curator for Exhibitions) and Vera Mey (Curator for Residencies), The Disappearance is conceived as a durational event unfolding over two days including a continuous series of manifestations from live performances to film screenings.