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
Today, a growing number of social interactions, economic transactions, political engagements, and affective relations are enabled and regulated by a global network of online platforms operated through algorithms. As algorithmic infrastructures become enmeshed in the fabric of society, more and more aspects of everyday life are being captured and released in data streams that feed digital entities unilaterally coded and controlled by profit-driven tech companies. Through extensive online and offline fieldwork conducted across the Global North and the Global South, Tiziano Bonini and Emiliano Treré—co-authors of Algorithms of Resistance. The Everyday Fight Against Platform Power (The MIT Press, 2024)—ventured into uncharted alghoritmic territories. They encountered forms of agency, practices of resistance, and bonds of solidarity enacted by users who negotiate their own terms of existence within the platform regime. In this lecture, the speakers will reflect on how grassroots practices can spark emancipatory frictions that reinvent and disrupt the uneven power relation between users and platforms.
This event is generated by bani haykal within Communities of Practice. Techno Diversions, a research programme that aims to propel a transformative understanding of technology through artistic practices and transdisciplinary synergies.
Lecture & Screening of Kimi Takesue’s film That Which Once Was (2011)
Low-lying islands, including Singapore, are increasingly exposed to the risks of sea level rise caused by multiple factors, including the rapid melting of ice at the two poles. This event explores the diverse impacts of climate change, such as displacement. In Kimi Takesue’s fictional film, That Which Once Was, that takes place in 2032, an eight-year old boy from the Caribbean, is coming to terms with a new life in a harsh northern climate. Haunted by memories of the flooding that left him homeless and orphaned, he forms a bond with an Inuk ice carver, likewise displaced, who helps him confront his past. Kim Hie Lim (Associate Professor, Asian School of Environment, and Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering) will introduce the history of forced migration, already caused by rising sea levels, overlaying data on physical landscapes with genomic data in order to trace gene flow from Southeast Asia to South Asia. Followed by a conversation between film director Kimi Takesue, Assistant Professor Kim Hie Lim and Professor Ute Meta Bauer (Professor, School of Art, Design, and Media, Nanyang Technological University and Senior Principal Research Fellow, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore).
Tuesday, 18 March 2025
6:30pm – 8:30pm
The Hall, NTU CCA Singapore
Free admission. Register here.
This event is part of The Cross-Cultural Gaze: A Retrospective of Kimi Takesue’s Films curated by Dr Ella Raidel (Assistant Professor, School of Art, Design and Media, NTU) with the support of NTU CCA Singapore and Women@NTU.
Kimi Takesue’s retrospective is a special segment of the programme Look / See: The Female Gaze in Cinema (7 – 30 March 2025) organised by Asia Film Archive to celebrate International Women’s Day.
Find out about Kimi Takesue’s other talks and screenings through the link below.
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.
ila and anGie Seah (both Singapore)
Between a Rock and a Cloud
Performance, approx. 45 minutes
POSTPONED:
Sunday, 30 September 2023
4.30pm – 5.30pm
NTU CCA Singapore Seminar Room
38 Malan Road, #01-04
Singapore 109441
Event is free.
Thinking about care as a form of labour that is often unnoticed and not adequately remunerated, in this collaborative performance anGie and ila explore a spectrum of physical gestures culled out from both institutional frameworks of care-giving, such as hospitals and clinics, and the more intimate setting of the domestic environment. Through a choreography of bodily movements and sounds that are partly intentional, partly improvised, partly interactive, the two performers reimagine the embodied experience of care-giving bringing forth its physical and emotional gravity as well as its unrelenting quest for comfort, lightness, and relief.
BIOGRAPHIES
ila’s (Singapore) practice encompasses performance, photography, and other mediums, and weaves her own body and emotions to create alternative entry points to encounter the peripheries of lived experiences and unspoken narratives. She often reconfigures and merges speculative fiction with factual histories to conceive sites for empathy and connectivity in her work. She has participated in group shows at Singapore Biennale, National Gallery Singapore and in festivals such as ASEAN-EU Cultural Festival. ila was an Artist-in-Residence at NTU CCA Singapore as part of Cycle 7.
anGie seah (Singapore) thinks about the oneness and porousness of life & art, and thrives on being, lives and practices art with the radical acceptance of the agency of uncertain elements of life. She is fascinated by the splendour of the everyday; her multidisciplinary art practice traverses the mediums of drawing, sculpture, performance art, sound, installation and video. For more than a decade, she has been active in creating participatory art projects with diverse communities locally and internationally. Working within a community gives her a chance to be with the reality of life through people. In recent years she has been involved in local theatre productions, creating set and sound design. anGie is also part of a music band, Qianpima and the artistic director of ITBA (Islands time-based art ) festival in Singapore. anGie was an Artist-in-Residence at NTU CCA Singapore as part of Cycle 2.
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.
Han Nefkens Foundation – Fundació Antoni Tàpies Video Art Production Award
Tekla Aslanishvili
A State in A State
11 Oct 2022, Tue – 6 Nov 2022, Sun
The Screening Room, Block 38 Malan Road, #01-06
12 pm – 7pm, every day except Monday
Film starts every hour
Premier Screening: Tuesday 11 October, 7:00pm-8:30pm
The screening will be followed by a conversation between the artist Tekla Aslanishvili, artistic-scientific collaborator Dr. Evelina Gambino and Assistant Professor Dr. Marc Gloede, School of Art, Design and Media, NTU, Singapore.
The welcome will be given by Ute Meta Bauer, Professor, School of Art, Design and Media, and Founding Director, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, and Dr. Karin Oen, Senior Lecturer and Head of Department, Art History, NTU School of Humanities.
A State in a State is the result of Aslanishvili winning the Han Nefkens Foundation – Fundació Antoni Tàpies Video Art Production Grant 2020, in collaboration with Jameel Art Centre, Dubai; the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design in Manila; NTU CCA Singapore and WIELS, Brussels. The Award appraises the work of emerging artists aged 40 and under, who live in West or Central Asia and have established a solid trajectory but not yet received recognition by international art institutions.
Aslanishvili was selected by an international jury, including NTU CCA Singapore’s Founding Director Ute Meta Bauer and former Deputy Director of Curatorial Programmes, Dr Karin Oen, for her body of meticulously researched work and her commitment to exploring a specific geopolitical context, whilst connecting to a wider discourse on the impact of extractivist economies on a planetary scale.
A State in a State is an experimental documentary following the construction, disruption, and fragmentation of railroads in the South Caucasus and Caspian regions. It examines railways as a technical materialisation of the fragile political borders that have re-emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Revolving around the scenes of delay and waiting that constitute cargo mobility, the film reads the optimistic narratives about the New Silk Road against the grain. It observes how the iron foundation of connectivity can be used as a weapon of exclusion and geopolitical sabotage. Dotting the same lines, other forms of sabotage are deployed by workers to disrupt the political violence. Looking at historic and current practices of resistance, A State in a State explores the potential of railroads for building a different, infrastructural consciousness, and the lasting transnational kinship among the people who live and work around them
The film is developed in artistic-scientific collaboration with Dr. Evelina Gambino, Margaret Tyler Research Fellow in Geography at Girton College, University of Cambridge.
Research & Script: Tekla Aslanishvili / Evelina Gambino
Music: Ani Zakareishvili / Nika Pasuri
Cinematography: Nikoloz Tabukashvili / Tekla Aslanishvili
Typography: Dato Simonia
Editing: Tekla Aslanishvili
Sound: Viktor Bone / Irakli Shonia
Color: Sally Shamas
A State in a State will be also presented at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona from October 8th till November 27th.
BIOGRAPHY
Tekla Aslanishvili (b. Tbilisi, 1988) is an artist, filmmaker and essayist based between Berlin and Tbilisi. Her works emerge at the intersection of infrastructural design, history and geopolitics. Tekla graduated from the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts in 2009 and she holds a MFA from the Berlin University of the Arts – the department of Experimental Film and New Media Art. Aslanishvili’s films have been screened and exhibited internationally at PACT Zollverein, Neue Berliner Kunstverein, Baltic Triennial, Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Kasseler Dokfest, Kunsthalle Münster, EMAF – European Media Art Festival, Videonale 18, Tbilisi Architecture Biennial. She is a 2018–2019 Digital Earth fellow, the nominee for Ars-Viva Art prize 2021 and the recipient of the Han Nefkens Foundation – Fundació Antoni Tàpies Video Art Production Award 2020.
Marc Glöde (PhD), is a curator, critic and film scholar. His work is focusing on the relation of images, technology, space, and the body, as well as the dynamics between fields such as art/architecture, art/film, and film/architecture. Since 2017 he is an Assistant Professor at NTU/ADM, Singapore and Co-Director of the MA in Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices.
About Han Nefkens Foundation
The Han Nefkens Foundation was established in 2009 with the aim of connecting people through art. In 2016, Han Nefkens decided to focus exclusively on supporting emerging and mid-career international video artists through Awards, Production Grants, and Mentorship Grants. The Foundation is not only involved in producing new works with the artists, but also finding international residencies, producing publications, purchasing working tools, finding technical support, and bringing artists into contact with art institutions and peers. With an extensive network in countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea, Ecuador, Peru, Spain, and the Netherlands, the Foundation is able to present artists to a diverse and global audience.
Judging Panel
The winner has been selected by a judging panel chaired by Han Nefkens, Founder of the Han Nefkens Foundation; Carles Guerra, representing the Fundació Antoni Tàpies; Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director of the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art; Dirk Snauwaert, Director of WIELS; Joselina Cruz, Director/Curator at Museum of Contemporary Art and Design and Nora Razian, Head of Exhibitions at Jameel Arts Centre, in the presence of Hilde Teerlinck, Director of the Han Nefkens Foundation; Alessandra Biscaro, Coordinator of the Han Nefkens Foundation; Zoë Gray: Senior Curator of WIELS and Karin Oen, Deputy Director, Curatorial Programmes at NTU Centre for Contemporary Art.
Image Credits
Tekla Aslanishvili
A State in A State, 2022
Colour, black and white, AVCHD Digital film; archival & found footage, sound, 47 min.
video still
Commissioned by Han Nefkens Foundation – Fundació Antoni Tàpies Video Art Production Award
Courtesy the Artist
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).
Thinking in terms of borders and boundaries, either physical and symbolic, the artist intends to map out the lived experience of forced mobility and dispossession as well as its underlying power struggles and emotional trails. His research will revolve specifically on migrant songs, a cultural expression often characterized by melancholic melodies and sombre lyrics that speaks of longing, hard work, and perseverance. Conveying the experience of otherness and stirring emotions of communality, migrant songs haunts our times of unprecedented global mass migration and the contemporary debates surrounding exclusionary nationalist politics. Through participatory workshops aimed at lyric writing, music composition, and vocalisation, migrant songs will be created and disseminated in an effort to redraw boundaries of belonging.
In our third episode, we open up this platform for the first time to a guest interviewer. We invited artist and filmmaker Kent Chan to pick the brain of our Artist-in-Residence Yeo Siew Hua. Beyond being both filmmakers and artists, Siew Hua and Kent have been occasional collaborators in the past and, most importantly, they are also long-time friends. Hear them speak candidly about the intertwined cycles of art-making and fund-raising, the blurred line between cinema and visual arts, as well as the philosophical underpinnings and the importance of collaboration in Siew Hua’s practice.
The practice of Yeo Siew Hua (b. 1985, Singapore) spans film directing and screenwriting. His films probe the darkest side of contemporary society through narratives layered with mysterious atmospheres, inscrutable characters, and mythological references, all steeped in arresting visuals and sounds. His last feature film A Land Imagined (2018) harnessed recognition around the world receiving the Golden Leopard at the 71st Locarno Film Festival and the Best Original Screenplay and Best Original Music Score Awards at the 56th Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival.
After A Land Imagined, Siew Hua has created a number of short films, one of which, An Invocation to the Earth (2020), commissioned by the Singapore International Film Festival and TBA21, was co-produced with NTU CCA Singapore. An Invocation to the Earth can be viewed online at www.stage.tba21.org. During the residency, Siew Hua has been completing his next major production titled The Once and Future, an expanded cinema project which will premiere at the Singapore International Festival of Arts 2022. In 2021, he received the Young Artist Award, Singapore’s highest award for young arts practitioners.
Kent Chan (b. 1984, Singapore) is an artist, curator, and filmmaker currently based in Amsterdam. His practice weaves encounters between art, fiction, and cinema with a particular interest in the tropical imagination, colonialism, and the relation between heat and art. He has held solo presentations at Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht, Netherlands (2020-21), National University Singapore Museum (2019-21) and SCCA-Ljubljana, Centre for Contemporary Arts, Slovenia (2017). He was Artist-in-Residence at Jan van Eyck Academie (2019-20) and at NTU CCA Singapore (2017-2018).
Contributors: Yeo Siew Hua, Kent Chan
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
Credits:
06’42”: Audio excerpt from Yeo Siew Hua, A Land Imagined, 2018. Courtesy the artist.
11’46”: Audio excerpt from Yeo Siew Hua, The Obs: A Singapore Story, 2014. Courtesy the artist.
22’55”: Audio excerpt from Yeo Siew Hua, The Once and Future, 2022. Courtesy the artist.
40’49”: Audio excerpt from Yeo Siew Hua, The Lover, The Excess, The Ascetic and the Fool, 2021. Courtesy the artist.
Apolonija Šušteršič, is an architect and visual artist, is a former Visiting Researher at NTU CCA Singapore. Her work is related to a critical analysis of space, usually focused at the processes and relationships between institutions, cultural politics, urban planning, and architecture. Šušteršič broad-ranging interest starts at a phenomenological study of space and continutes its investigation into the social and political nature of our living environment. Together with architect and researcher Meike Schalk, she formed an operative unit, which occasionally produces research, projects, actions, and discussions. Šušteršič is currently Professor of Art & Public Space, Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Norway and has her own art / architecture studio practice in Lund, Sweden and in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Reseach Focus
Contemporary art/ activist practices and current urban struggles over the provision of green spaces in large cities
The artist’s residency was scheduled from July to September 2020. Due to the COVID-19 virus outbreak and international travel restrictions, the residency could not be carried out as planned.
Research Focus
Continuing his long-term critical examination of everyday life focused on the patterns of labour, leisure, and sleep produced by the “eternal wakefulness” of 24/7 capitalist economies, Danilo Correale intends to further investigate the global phenomenon of outsourced labour and its deep ramifications within Southeast Asia. The artist aims to problematize the differences between night- and day-culture by understanding how nocturnal time and urban nightscapes are inhabited and modified by shift workers operating across different time zones, the profound impact on their bodily rhythms, and the affective relationships within their communities. The realm of the night is therefore framed as a ‘back-door’ to examine the effects of late capitalism on society and understand how BPO (Business Process Outsourced) economy alters urban, cultural, and biological human ecosystems. Building upon fieldwork previously conducted in India and the Philippines, Correale will now further develop his project by taking advantage of Singapore’s unique position within the regional and global economic map.
The practice of Danilo Correale critiques contemporary life and investigates the opacity surrounding complex cultural and economic systems. In recent years, his research revolves around the dichotomy between labour and leisure and the relation between sleep and enforced wakefulness under the neoliberal economic regime. His work has been presented in numerous international group exhibitions and his solo shows include They Will Say I Killed Them, Metropolitan Arts Centre, Belfast, United Kingdom (2019); At Work’s End, Art in General, New York, United States (2017); and Tales of Exhaustion, La Loge, Brussels, Belgium (2016). In 2017, he was awarded both the New York Prize for Italian Young Art and an Associate Research Fellowship at Columbia University.
Investigating Singapore’s role within the growing global phenomenon of “green cities”, Coburn will pursue research into Singapore’s development from “Garden City” to “City in a Garden”. He aims to delve into historical and emerging notions of green urbanism, framing the garden as a pedagogical, philosophical, and literary construct. Focusing on two specific case studies, he will place the multiple functions of Singapore Botanic Gardens in a wider historical prospective and explore the social and economic conditions which underlie the complex eco-tourist structure of Gardens by the Bay.
In recent years, as globalisation accelerates the process of urbanisation, both developed and developing countries are experiencing a significant influx of immigrants. The reality of cities erected entirely through foreign labour has become increasingly common and the flows of temporary migration lead to the formation of “mini-nations” nestled within rapidly growing cities, that is enclaves of migrant workers that congregate, cohabit, and share material and immaterial resources in foreign countries. Pursuing his interest in the social, political, cultural, and economic impact of globalisation, during the residency Lim Sokchanlina investigates bureaucratic and political apparatuses as well as the personal and psychological aspects that define Singapore’s communities of migrant workers in Little India and “Little Burma” considered as case studies to be compared with similar enclaves in Cambodia and Thailand.
In 2018, Prapat Jiwarangsan was awarded a fellowship from the Japan Foundation Asia Center to develop a project on migrant workers in Singapore. On occasion of a fieldtrip to the country, the artist chanced upon Koi Glai Ban (Persons Far from Home), a compilation of short biographies—edited by the late scholar Pattana Kitiarsa—penned by Thai migrant workers. He took particular interest in the stories of oppression and resistance recounted by Ploy, a woman who was employed as a sex worker in a makeshift “jungle brothel” located in the scant forestry of the island city-state. Inspired by Ploy’s diary entry, the artist’s investigation aims to excavate underground stories of transnational labour and frame them within processes of land appropriation for cultural, economic, and leisure pursuits. During the residency, Jiwarangsan will expand his research on migrant workers’ relationship to woodlands with the goal of developing a medium-length documentary film and a new series of works.
Meiya Cheng will look at two exhibition projects, The Great Ephemeral (New Museum, 2015) and Trading Futures (co-curated with Pauline Yao, Taipei Contemporary Art Centre, 2012) relating them to NTU CCA Singapore’s overarching curatorial framework PLACE.LABOUR.CAPITAL. Cheng’s discussion explores the speculative nature of the global market, including the hypothetical systems of labour, value, consumption, and desire.
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.
Featuring:
Denise Yap, Apartment 2079, 2020
Moses Tan, Study for Dramatic Venus, 2020
Ruby Jayaseelan, STOP., 2020
passthejpeg, passthetime, 2020
<!DOCTYPE work> is a curatorial project that encourages people to rethink productivity in creative practices, influenced by forced remote work situations due to the global pandemic. Borrowing a programming language for the compliance of HTML standards, highlights the use of digital tools and formats for telecommuting. It also signifies the start of an experiment that is open-ended and process-based. Given the context of this current situation, it seeks to chart out the process of exhibition-making while reflecting on these questions: How are our creative practices responding to situational changes and remote working? What are the trajectories of discourse that can arise from the idea of “productivity” in the creative field? What does “productivity” mean to us?
This project, conceived by Leon Tan, Shireen Marican, and Tian Lim, is a pilot programme of the Platform Projects Curatorial Award overseen by NTU CCA Singapore. Currently in its inaugural year, this award supports a curatorial project exploring Spaces of the Curatorial by recent graduates of NTU CCA Singapore and NTU ADM’s MA programme in Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices, as well as NTU ADM’s research-oriented MA and PhD programmes.
Tian Lim is Manager, Exhibitions at NTU CCA Singapore from 2020-2021. She graduated from NTU CCA Singapore and NTU ADM’s MA programme in Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices in 2019, and was part of the curatorial team for <!DOCTYPE work> held at The Lab in NTU CCA Singapore in 2020.
Cultural manager, curator, and researcher motivated to advance the engagement of arts and culture with critical global issues; working independently with arts organisations and other creatives to design programmes centred around social issues and strategies that engage with art, culture and heritage.
Leon Tan graduated from NTU CCA Singapore and NTU ADM’s MA programme in Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices in 2019. He co-conceived the project <!DOCTYPE work> with fellow graduates Shireen Marican, and Tian Li, which was presented at The Lab in NTU CCA Singapore in 2020.
passthejpeg is an artist collective based in Singapore.
Ruby Jayaseelan is an interdisciplinary movement artist, who trained in Bharatanatyam with Cultural Medallion recipient Srimathi Neila Sathyalingam of Apsaras Arts (Singapore) and Kalakshetra Foundation (Chennai, India). These, along with her exposure to Western techniques of the somatic and experimental movement, have informed her movement pedagogy and practices. She is currently an Associate Artist with Teater Ekamatra and has worked with local theatre and dance companies in prominent works like Ghost Writer (The Necessary Stage) and Hungry Stones (Chowk). Her own creations Flowers, Birds and Guns, Sakhi, Purushi have been presented at festivals such as Pinkfest.
Moses Tan (b. 1986, Singapore) is a Singapore-based artist whose work explores histories that intersect with queer theory and politics while looking at melancholia and shame as points of departure. Working with drawing, video and installation, his interest lies in the use of subtlety and codes in the articulation of narratives. He graduated from LASALLE College of the Arts with a BA(Hons) in Fine Arts and a BA(Hons) in Chemistry and Biological Chemistry from Nanyang Technological University.
He was awarded the Noise Singapore Award for Art and Design in 2014, Winston Oh Travel Research Grant in 2016, and the LASALLE Award for Academic Excellence in 2016. He has shown in Grey Projects (SG), Hidden Space (HK), Indiana University (US), Sabanci University (TR), Kunst Im Dialog (DE), and at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (SYD) and also completed a residency in Santa Fe Art Institute (US).
In the early 20th century, the South American rubber industry entered a phase of decline as a result of the successful implantation in Southeast Asia of a batch of hevea brasiliensis (rubber plant) seeds, brought to the region from London’s Kew Gardens in 1877. Expanding the lines of inquiry of a previous project—The Skin Labour (2016)—that examined rubber plantations in the Ecuadorian Amazon, Adrián Balseca follows the “trajectory of latex” in the Global South by investigating power relations, labour processes, and patterns of bodily movements devised for rubber harvesting in Singapore and Malaysia at a crucial moment of transition from manual to mechanical techniques. In particular, furthering his investigation of social-environmental issues and the “extractivist” dynamics that underscore capitalistic development, the artist will research designs and graphic patterns of incision employed for tapping rubber trees and the manifold implications entailed by the relocation of labour practices in different political, cultural, and environmental contexts.
Integrated within NTU CCA Singapore’s overarching research framework PLACE.LABOUR.CAPITAL, The Lab will present Darcy Lange: Hard, however, and useful is the small, day-to-day work, taking the video work of New Zealand artist, Darcy Lange (1946 – 2005) as the starting point for a complex discussion concerning the representation of labour. During the 1970s, Lange developed a socially engaged video practice with remarkable studies of people at work that draw from documentary traditions as well as conceptual and structuralist video making. With his seminal style of real-time, unedited, without commentary, lengthy observations of workers that came to characterise his Work Studies series (1972 – 77), Lange aimed to “convey the image of work as work, as an occupation, as an activity, as creativity and as a time consumer”.
Curated by guest curator, Mercedes Vicente.
This ongoing research project is inspired by Amar Kanwar’s The Sovereign Forest. Referencing Kanwar’s artistic approach, The Haze: An Inquiry brought together people from different disciplines in a focus group that takes the haze situation in Southeast Asia as the main topic for investigation.
How do we bridge the gap from the banal to the sensual, the tactical and visceral? What steps of inquiry leads us from the scientific to the notion of immediacy? How do we define abstract terms such as “crime” – Is the haze a crime? What is a crime against society? Different perspectives are offered in this process by participants from diverse backgrounds, including a research scientist, theatre director, community leader, writer, tech consultant, co-founder of a hackerspace, activist, designer and curator, geographer, architect, and postgraduate student.
A core group of specialists from varied fields of law, natural and social sciences, literature, art and architecture, media and theatre, is brought together in a series of workshops and discussions to explore the haze situation as an environmental, human, and legal challenge, given its transnational impact. The aim is to create a collection of “evidence” and to investigate the potential of the haze to be considered a “crime”. This collecting which include factual information and data, compilation of ancestral knowledge, media clippings, commentaries, unrecorded oral knowledge, as well as writings, photographs, and films will be gathered in the space amidst working notes of the core group. Using these “evidences”, participants will uncover social and environmental impacts beyond the haze, and deliberate on questions of social justice, corporate environmental responsibilities, agronomy cultures in industrial developments, amongst others. Each participant brings to the discussion individual responses that stem from their respective interests and disciplines. This research platform aims to assemble a diversity of viewpoints to provoke alternative ways of looking at and talking with a wider public about contemporary situations of urgency.
In addition to the series of closed and public workshops, discussions, and presentations participants in the core group is engaged in, they are also encouraged to invite guests who will make further inquiries into the “evidences” in The Lab and to look into collaborative working methods of shared agency.
Loo Zihan is an artist. His work emphasises the malleability of memory through various representational strategies, from performance re-enactments to essay films. Between June and September 2016, Loo was Artist-in-Residence at NTU CCA Singapore where he continued his research into The Ray Langenbach Archive of Performance Art (which documents over 20 years of performance art in Southeast Asia), and developed I am LGB (a participatory performance commissioned by the Singapore International Festival of Arts) that highlights the fragile relation between education and control.
Marjetica Potrč is an artist and architect. Her work includes drawing, architectural case studies, and public art projects. Since 2011, she leads a class of participatory practice, Design for the Living World, at the University of Fine Arts (HFBK) in Hamburg, Germany. In Potrč’s view, the sustainable solutions that are implemented and disseminated by communities serve to empower these communities and help create a democracy built from below. Potrč has received numerous awards, including the Hugo Boss Prize (2000) and the Vera List Center for Arts and Politics Fellowship (2007) at The New School in New York, United States.
Developed during his residency at NTU CCA Singapore, Creatif Compleks (2018) is the culmination of Michael Lee’s reflection on the function of the artist’s studio within the arts ecology of a city. The work takes the form of a diagram about a hypothetical property development consisting of various configurations of the artist’s home/studio. The use of LED light strips, a popular fixture in advertising and interior design, alludes to latent apprehensions about the development and promotion of the arts in Singapore which today are, arguably, at a feverish pitch. Informed by myths and fantasies of artists in their studios, the work takes a speculative leap into the utopian and the absurd.
Amar Kanwar has been filming the industrial interventions that have reshaped and permanently destroyed parts of Odisha’s landscape – a battleground on issues of development and displacement since the 1990s. The resulting conflicts between local communities, the government, and corporations over the use of agricultural lands, forests, revers and minerals, have led to an ongoing regime of violence that is unpredictable and often invisible. A long-term commitment of Kanwar, The Sovereign Forest initiates a creative response to the understanding of crime, politics, human rights and ecology. The validity of poetry as evidence in a trial, the discourse on seeing, and the determination of self, all come together as a constellation of films, texts, books, photographs, objects, seeds and processes.
The Sovereign Forest is produced with the support of Samadrusti, Odisha, India; Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, Austria; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Yorkshire Sculpture Park, United Kingdom; Public Press, New Delhi, India; and dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany.
The exhibition at NTU CCA Singapore and its public programmes are curated by Ute Meta Bauer, Khim Ong, and Magdalena Magiera, in collaboration with Amar Kanwar, Sudhir Pattnaik and Sherna Dastur.
The Sovereign Forest is produced with the support of Samadrusti, Odisha, India; Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, Austria; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Yorkshire Sculpture Park, United Kingdom; Public Press, New Delhi, India; and dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany.
Carles Guerra is an artist, art critic and independent curator based in Barcelona. He was the Chief Curator at MACBA (2011-2013) and Director of La Virreina Centre de la Imatge (2009-2011). Guerra is currently an associate professor at the Universitat PompeuFabra. In 2011, he was awarded the Ciutat de Barcelona Prize for his contribution in the field of visual arts. He is currently the member of the editorial board at Cultura/s since 2001 where he authored numerous essays, N for Negri (2000), Allan Sekula speaks with Carles Guerra (2005) and Negatives of Europe. Video Essays and Collective Pedagogies (2008).
Cecilia Tortajada (Mexico and Spain/Singapore), Senior Research Fellow, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore (NUS). The main focus of her work at present is on the future of the world’s water, especially in terms of water, food, energy and environmental securities through coordinated policies. Tortajada has been an advisor to major international institutions including the United Nations Development Programme, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Canada International Development Research Centre, World Bank, and Asian Development Bank. She is a member of the OECD Initiative in Water Governance, and she was previously President of the International Water Resources Association and also the Third World Centre for Water Management in Mexico
Charmaine Toh is currently Curator at National Gallery Singapore where she researches on contemporary art and photography from Southeast Asia. Recent exhibitions includ Danh Vo, Earth Work 1979 (2016) and Siapa Namu Kamu?: Art in Singapore since the 19th century (2015–). Previously, she was the Programme Director at Objectifs Centre for Photography and Film. Toh was one of the curators for the Singapore Biennale 2013 an the i Light Festival 2012, and founder of The Art Incubator, a residency programme that ran from 2009 to 2014.
Wong Chen-Hsi (Singapore) is a filmaker and educator. Her debut feature film, Innocents (2012), won Best Director -New Talents Award at the Shanghai International Film Festival. Wong’s short films include Who Loves the Sun (2006), which premiered at Clermont-Ferrand, and the documentary short Conversations on Sago Lane (2010). She is an alumna of the Berlin Talents, the Torino Film Lab, and a Film Independent Los Angeles fellow. Wong’s films are often about displacement and the nature of our environment. She is an Assistant Professor in Film at the School of Art, Design and Media Nanyang Technological University.
Chung Chee Kit graduated in Naval Architecture from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom. His career with Keppel Corporation, Straits Steamship and IMC Shipping brought him into contact with ship repair, shipbuilding, offshore engineering, ship management and port development, and he has developed a deep love for all things connected with the sea and ships. Currently retired, he now enjoys painting maritime subjects, and is an advocate of a greater appreciation of maritime heritage in Singapore.
Conrad H. Philipp (Germany/Singapore), Future Cities Laboratory, Singapore-ETH Centre
Eugene Heng (Singapore), Founder and Chairman, Waterways Watch Society;
Dr Hilde Van Gelder is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at KU Leuven. Her research focuses on how the photographic and moving image contribute to shaping insights of the global political and socio-economic sphere. Van Gelder contributed to NTU CCA Singapore’s public programming in 2015, conducting a workshop and participating in an international symposium held in conjunction with the NTU CCA Singapore exhibition Allan Sekula: Fish Story, to be continued (2015).
Hyungmin Pai (South Korea) is a historian, critic, and curator. Currently a Professor at the Univeristy of Seoul, he recieved his PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, and is a two-time Fulbright Scholar. Pai is author of The Portfolio and the Diagram (2002), Sensuous Plan: The Architecture of Seung H-Sang (2007), and The Key Concepts of Korean Architecture (2013). He was twice curator for the Korean Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2008, 2014), and in 2014 was awarded the Golden Lion for best national participation. Pai was Head Curator of the 4th Gwangju Design Biennale (2010-11), guest curator for numerous international exhibitions and is presently Director of the inaugural Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism.
Jonathas de Andrade is one of the most promising Brazilian artists of his generation. Over the last decade, he has developed works in photography, video, and installation that stem from observations of everyday life in Brazil and what he regards as its “urgencies and discomforts.” He considers how the Brazilian national identity and labour conditions have been constructed in the midst of colonialism and slavery, and reinterprets the methodologies of education and social sciences to question underlying assumptions. De Andrade studied communications at Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Brazil, and has had solo exhibitions worldwide.
Joshua Comaroff is an academic geographer and designer at Lekker Architects. He studied literature and creative writing at Amherst College before joining the Master of Architecture and Master of Landscape Architecture programmes at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Comaroff’s doctoral research focused upon the subject of haunted landscapes and urban memory in Singapore. In recent years, he has written about architecture, urbanism, and politics, with an Asian focus, and is the co-author (with Ong Ker-Shing) of Horror In Architecture(2013). In addition to practice, Comaroff teaches at Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD).
Lucy Orta (B. Sutton Coldfield, UK, 1966) and Jorge Orta (B. Rosario, Argentina, 1953) founded Studio Orta in 1991. Lucy and Jorge’s collaborative practice focuses on the social and ecological factors of environmental sustainability. They present their work using a diverse range of media that includes drawing, sculpture, installation, couture, painting, silkscreen, photography, video and light, as well staged interventions and performances. Among their most iconic series are: refuge wear and body architecture portable minimum habitats bridging architecture and dress; hortire cycling the food chain in global and local contexts; 70 x 7 the meal the ritual of dining and its role in community networking; nexus architecture alternative modes of establishing the social link; the gift a metaphor for the heart and the biomedical ethics of organ donation; ortawater and clouds water scarcity and the problems arising from pollution and corporate control; Antarctica international human rights and freer international migration; and Amazonia – the value of the natural environment to our daily lives and to our survival. In recognition of their contribution to sustainability, the artists received the Green Leaf award in 2007 for artistic excellence with an environmental message. This was presented by the United Nations environment programme in partnership with the natural world museum at the Nobel peace center in Oslo, Norway. In 2013 the artists’ monumental meteoros clouds was selected for the inaugural terrace wires public art commission for St Pancras international in London.
Lukas Feireiss (Germany) works as curator, writer, art director, and educator in the international mediation of contemporary cultural reflexivity beyond disciplinary boundaries. He attained his graduate education in Comparative Religious Studes, Philosophy and Ethnology. Feireiss’ Berlin-based creative practice Studio Lukas Feireiss aims at the critical cut-up and playful re-evaluation of creative and intellectual production modes and the diverse socio-cultural and medial conditions. He is author and editor of numerous books, and curator of manifold exhibitions. Feireiss has lectured and taught at various universities worldwide, and is Head of the new Masters Programme Radical Cut-Up at Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam. With the publisher Gestalte, Feireiss had edited numerous volumes, including Imagine Architecutre: Aristic Visions of the Urban Real (2014), Utopia Forever: VIsions of Architecutre and Urbanism (2011), and Architecture of Change 1 &2: Sustainability and Humanity in the Built Environment (2008 and 2009).
Mercedes Vicente is a curator, writer, and currently interim Director of Education and Public Programmes at the Whitechapel Gallery, London. Vicente was Darcy Lange Curator-at-Large at Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Zealand and expanded her research on the pioneering work of Lange through an AHRC-funded PhD at the Royal College of Art, London. In conjunction with the NTU CCA exhibition Allan Sekula: Fish Story, to be continued (2015), Vicente curated in The Lab the project Darcy Lange: Hard, however, and useful is the small, day-to-day work.
Nikolaus Hirsh is an architect, editor and curator. He was the Director of Städelschule and Portikus in Frankfrut, Germany, and currently teaches at Columbia University in New York, United States. His architectural work includes the award-winning Dresden Synagogue (2001), Hinzert Document Center (2005), Cybermohalla Hub in Delhi (2008-2012), an artist residency building at The Land (with Rirkrit Tiravanija), and Museum of Immortality in Mexico City (2016). Hirsch curated numerious exhibition at the Portikus, the Folly project for the Gwangju Biennale (2014), and Wohnungsfrage (Housing Question) at HKW in Berlin (2015). He is the co-founder and editor of the Critical Spatial Practice series at Sternberg Press and the new e-flux Architecture platform.
Paul Teng (Singapore) is Principal Officer at the National Institute of Education, and Adjunct Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of Internaitional Studies, Nanyang Technology University. His experience on agrifood security issues is from the WorldFish Center, the International Rice Research Institute, and Monsanto Company. Professor Teng is a Fellow of the American Phytopathological Society and The World Academy of Sciences, and he has won prestigious awards such as the Eriksson Prize (Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences), and an Honorary Doctorate in Science for his work on food security. He chairs several international and national scientific groups and has published 9 books and over 250 technical papers.
Samson Young, Para Site, Hong Kong (2016); A Luxury We Cannot Afford, Para Site, Hong Kong (2015); Why Stay If You Can Go?, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2012); Three Artists Walk Into A Bar…, de Appel, Amsterdam (2012); and Telah Terbit: Out Now,, Singapore Art Museum (2006).
Xyza Cruz Bacani, Arrow Factory, Beijing (2016); Orchestrations
Qinyi Lim (Singapore) is an independent curator and writer. She previously held curatorial positions at Para Site, Hong Kong: National University of Singapore Museum, and the Singapore Art Museum. Lim completed the de Appel Curatorial Programme in 2012. Her past projects include The Outlier
Regina Bittner (Germany) studied Cultural Theory and Art History at Leipzig University, and recieved her doctorate from the Institute for European Ethnology, Humboldt University of Berlin. As Head of the Academy and Deputy Director of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, she conceptualises and teaches the postgraduate programme for architecture and modern research. Bittner has curated numerous exhibitions on the architectural, urban and cultural history of modernism, her research focus being international architectural and urban research, the modern era and migration, the cultural history of modernism and heritage studies. Recent publications include In Reserve: The Household! Historic Models and Contemporary Positions from the Bauhaus (with Elke Krasny, 2016), and The Bauhaus in Calcutta: An Encounter of the Cosmopolitan Avant-Garde (with Kathrin Rhomberg, 2013). She has also conducted extensive research on Singapore’s public housing commonly referred to as HDBs.
Roger Buergel is an art critic, a curator, and a member of Parasophia: Kyoto International Festival of Contemporary Culture 2015’s Professional Advisory Board. Before serving as a guest curator for the Museum of Contemporary Art Barcelona he taught art history at Luneburg University (1999–2005) and the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe (2007–09). He was appointed the artistic director of Documenta XII (Kassel, 2007) with art historian and curator Ruth Noack. Buergel also served as the artistic director of the 6th Busan Biennale (2012). In 2010, he was appointed the Founding Director of the Johann Jacobs Museum in Zurich, an exhibition space and research institution dedicated to the cultural residue of global trade routes.
Sissel Tolaas is a smell researcher and artist. Since 1990 she has collected an archive of 7,800 scents and has conducted City SmellScape research of and for 52 cities around the world. Tolaas is the founder of the Institute of Functional Smells and SMELL Re_searchLab. In 2016, Tolaas was Visiting Research Fellow at NTU CCA Singapore where she researched on the smell identities of Singapore’s diverse neighbourhoods and presented her work as part of the exhibition Incomplete Urbanism: Attempts of Critical Spatial Practice (2016–17).
Research Focus
Fellowship period: 1 July – 31 December 2016
During her fellowship, Sissel Tolaas will be carrying out fieldwork and research on everyday smells in urban environments: smell and tolerance, smell and communication, smell and navigation, etc. Her research focus is on the smell identities of Singapore’s diverse neighbourhoods. Tolaas will carry out fieldwork in selected neighbourhoods, particularly areas that have been developed by Singaporean architect William Lim. She will collect and investigate the smell phenomena of each neighbourhood, mapping these neighbourhoods according to their smells. The outcome of Tolaas’ research will be presented in NTU CCA Singapore’s forthcoming exhibition Incomplete Urbanism: Attempts of Critical Spatial Practice.
Dr Yvonne P. Doderer is Professor for Gender & Cultural Studies at the University of Applied Sciences in Düsseldorf, and runs the Office for Transdisciplinary Research & Cultural Production. Her work focuses on the linkage of urbanism, gender, and contemporary art. Her most recent publication is Shining Cities. Gender and Other Issues in Urban Development of the Twenty-First Century (2017). Doderer was Visiting Research Fellow at NTU CCA Singapore in 2014, and returned in 2017 as a participant of the Centre’s public summit Cities for People NTU CCA Ideas Fest 2016/17.
