Nature – NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore

Centered around the theme of biocultural worlding, these keynote lectures will explore the processes that shape our understanding of the world through the deep interconnections between cultural and biological life. Dr Lisa Onaga, Senior Research Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, will reflect on the intersections of biological materiality, cultural practice, and the authorship of knowledge. Curator and researcher Dr Margarida Mendes will explore the concept of worlding from the ocean point of view. This lecture foregrounds ecosystemic, political and ontological relations across aquatic realms. It introduces ongoing research and activism on ecoacoustics, deep sea mining, and remote sensing, proposing how different modes of ocean monitoring may contribute to plural oceanic worldings and alliances in the making. Together, their lectures will illuminate how Biocultural Worlding unfolds across land and sea, and how attending to these entanglements opens new ways of imagining collective futures in times of environmental and epistemic loss.

22 September 2025
6:30pm – 8:00pm
The Hall, NTU CCA Singapore

Register here

What is ‘Worlding’ in Biocultural Worlding? is supported by CLASS JOINT NTU-ANU NTU-KCL CONFERENCE, SYMPOSIUM, AND WORKSHOP SCHEME.

As the urgency of climate-change induced sea level rise threatens Singapore’s coastlines, many technological solutions have been offered to mitigate its worsening effects. In this lecture, moderated by Professor Ute Meta Bauer, Professor Adam Switzer and media artist, researcher, and NTU ADM PhD student Dewi Tan will explore the different strategies adopted to mitigate urban flood risk and build flood resilience in Jakarta and Singapore, including a discussion on The Long Island Plan. This lecture will address coastal development through the lens of engineering solutions and critical artistic practices to understand the socio-economic and ecological potentials and consequences of this newest terraforming endeavour.

Tuesday,12 November 2024, 6:30 – 8:00pm
The Hall, NTU CCA
Gillman Barracks, Singapore, 108934

About the Climate Transformation: Sustainable Societies Lecture Series
This series brings together artists, policymakers and advocates with academic researchers from NTU’s ‘Climate Transformation Programme’ (CTP) and other academic programmes. Through the triangulation of science-culture-society, we hope to foster a conversation that expands our knowledge of the challenges that confronts us in Singapore and in the broader region.

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

Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss Logo Bar

The Climate Transformation Programme (CTP)—Cross Cutting Theme 1: Sustainable Societies, under which Professor Ute Meta Bauer serves as Senior Principal Investigator (Advisory Panel), consists of a suite of programmes that form a synergistic relay of interdisciplinary research and external outreach. The initiatives aim to cultivate a critical multiplicity of voices, perspectives, knowledges from both within and outside academic realms in the formation of ‘Sustainable Societies’ that engage with questions of climate change.

The Climate Transformation Programme is led by Professor Adam Switzer (Professor, Asian School of the Environment, Nanyang Technological University). The CTP aims to develop, inspire and accelerate knowledge-based solutions and educate future leaders to establish the stable climate and environment necessary for resilient, just, and sustainable Southeast Asian societies.

Key Research Outputs

Climate Transformation: Sustainable Societies Lecture Series Cycle 1 and 2
Climate Transformation Tuesday Gatherings Cycle 1 and 2

This project examines how climate crisis and cultural loss interconnect. The core objective is the co-production of knowledge that can lead to a changed understanding of environmental justice, which, in turn, will suggest changes in existing legal and policy frameworks. The project hypothesises that a fundamental connection between people and their environments has been lost in contemporary urban contexts, resulting in feelings of indifference towards the climate crisis or unexplained feelings of climate anxiety.

It deploys a research team with transdisciplinary methods to build on emerging environmental jurisprudence in the Pacific region and produce narrative visualisations demonstrating the links between cultural loss and climate change. By combining scholarly knowledge with cultural and artistic practices, the project will develop an innovative framework for addressing the impact of accelerated climate change. Using tools from visual studies and forensic architecture, from ethnography and law, to make scientific evidence on climate change socially robust and impactful, it will also create a relay between local perspectives and knowledge generated in different academic fields. Data visualisation and audiovisual presentations of ecological and cultural loss will be instrumental to transform ecological grief and loss into catalysts for climate action. Such narrative visualisations make visible the necessity to re-establish a direct relation between human societies and the environment, especially in the rapidly-changing urban fabric of a metropolis like Singapore.

Research Outputs

Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss Research Presentation, 23 March–13 October 2024, TBA21-Academy Ocean Space, Venice, Italy

Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss Research Presentation, 12 April–24 May 2024, ADM Gallery, 81 Nanyang Drive, Singapore

Special Issue: Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss (Vol. XXVII, 2024), Comparative Law Journal of the Pacific (CLJP), Victoria University of Wellington

Research Publications:

Ahmed, N., Bauer, U. M., & Lallemant-Moe, H. R. (2024, October). Introductions to Cultural loss and climate change. Comparative Law Journal of the Pacific, Special Issue: Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss.

Ahmed, N., Camus, G., Lallemant-Moe, H. R., & Rave, L. (2022, November). Cultural loss and climate change – A new field of research. Comparative Law Journal of the Pacific, 28.

Soh, K. M. (2024, May). Monsoon equinox. Issue 13: Weather. LASALLE College of the Arts.

Shaleh, A. (2024, October). Linking the commons and climate change to collective actions. Comparative Law Journal of the Pacific, Special Issue: Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss.

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.

Artists, Cultural Producers, Curators, Researchers, Educators, Naturalists, Editors, Art Critics, Budding Writers or someone who simply enjoys writing

JASON WEE AND ANCA RUJOIU, ENTANGLEMENTS – WRITING THE ENVIRONMENT. COURTESY NTU CCA SINGAPORE

Join us for an afternoon of drawing, walking, and inquiry inspired by 𝘿𝙚𝙨𝙞𝙜𝙣 𝙀𝙖𝙧𝙩𝙝: 𝙎𝙥𝙚𝙘𝙪𝙡𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙫𝙚 𝙁𝙞𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝘾𝙡𝙞𝙢𝙖𝙩𝙚. In this session, we’ll explore how architectural drawing can be a critical tool to visualise the unseen externalities of deep-sea mining, land reclamation, sand exports, and marine geopolitics—especially in Singapore and its neighbouring shores where earth extraction meets fragile ecosystems.

This Drawing Club invites artists, architects, designers, and students to present their annotated sketches at the NTU ADM Foyer from July to August 2025.

No technical drawing experience needed—just a willingness to trace complexity.
Participants are encouraged to bring dry drawing media (markers, found images, etc) and reading references (articles, books, etc) to share, annotate, and get inspiration from during the session.

DATE
Saturday, 24 May 2025
3:00pm – 5:00pm

VENUE
ADM Gallery 2
NTU School of Art, Design and Media
81 Nanyang Dr, Singapore 637458

EXHIBITION DATES
28 April to 13 June 2025
Open by appointment from 14 June to 15 August 2025

GALLERY HOURS
Monday to Friday: 10:00am to 5:00pm
Saturday: By appointment only
Closed on Sunday and Public Holidays

EMAIL
ADMgallery@ntu.edu.sg

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.

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.

Through collaboration with EOS for the STAR RESIDENCY, Ng Hui Hsien aims to complement scientific tools and methods of environmental studies with indigenous ecological knowledge shaped by lived experience, oral traditions, and direct observation. On one hand, she will engage with materials such as satellite imagery, seismic monitoring systems, and photomicrographs to understand how Earth scientists observe and evaluate environmental changes and geohazards. On the other hand, drawing on her background in ethnography, she plans to conduct field research and engage with communities and individuals imbued with a deep connection to the environment to understand the rhythms of their lives as they unfold on site, the changes they observe, and their knowledge and cosmologies related to natural processes and phenomena. Ultimately, the artist intends to translate this research across different bodies of knowledge into artistic outcomes that deepen the awareness of ecological interconnectedness and convey a sense of reverence for nature.

Ng Hui Hsien (b. 1982, Singapore) works as an artist, educator, and curator. Through her artworks, she seeks to evoke stillness and wonder, especially towards our inner landscapes and the more-than-human world. Her work is informed by phenomenology, one that sees our bodies as sites of knowledge and one curious about our relations with the living earth. Ng has received solo exhibitions at Objectifs Centre of Photography and Film, Singapore (2023), Grey Projects, Singapore (2020-2021), Comma Space, Singapore (2020), and Reykjavík Museum of Photography, Iceland (2018-2019). Her work has been internationally exhibited at institutions and festivals such as Shanghai Art Book Fair, China (2019), Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol, UK (2018), the PhotoBangkok Festival, Thailand (2018), Obscura Festival of Photography, Penang, Malaysia (2018), Dali International Photography Festival, China (2018), and Athens Photo Festival, Greece (2018) among others. She holds a Master of Arts in Photography from University of the West of England and a Master of Social Sciences from National University of Singapore.

NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore is pleased to announce the launch of STAR Residencies (Science, Technology, Art & Research), a new residency programme aimed at fostering the cross-pollination between artistic and scientific research. Through partnerships with select NTU research institutes, STAR Residencies embeds artistic residencies at the core of the University, creating a unique opportunity for exchange between artists and academic researchers. A pioneering programme in the context of Singapore and Southeast Asia, STAR Residencies stems from NTU CCA Singapore’s decade-long expertise in developing innovative platforms for knowledge making, creative experimentation, and transdisciplinary collaborations.

For its inaugural cycle, STAR Residencies unfolds in partnership with NTU Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS), a research institute of Nanyang Technological University dedicated to the scientific observation of the forces that shape our changing planet. Regarded as a leader on a broad spectrum of geosciences in the Asia-Pacific region, EOS gathers critical data and develops vital knowledge about geohazards, climate change, and their impact on human societies. This collaboration expands Centre’s long-standing research on Climates.Habitats.Environments. and its continued commitment to critical artistic practices that engage with ecological complexities, climate change, and sustainability to advance the collective awareness of planetary interconnectedness in times of environmental distress.

The artists participating in the first iteration STAR Residencies are: Ng Hui Hsien, The Observatory (Dharma, Cheryl Ong, Yuen Chee Wai), and Zarina Muhammad. They were selected from a pool of 19 candidates (nominated by experts in the field) by a Selection Committee composed of: Dr Karin Oen, Director, NTU CCA Singapore, Senior Lecturer and Head of Department, Art History, NTU School of Humanities; Lauriane Chardot, Assistant Director, Community Engagement, Earth Observatory of Singapore, NTU; and Haeju Kim, Senior Curator and Head of Residencies, Singapore Art Museum.

The first cycle of STAR Residencies takes place from April 2025 to March 2026. Within the programme’s framework, artists are granted unprecedented access to processes and methodologies of fundamental scientific research, state-of-the-art laboratories, data sets, and extensive international networks, being provided with the exceptional opportunity to immerse themselves in EOS’s dynamic scientific community wherein they can expand their intellectual horizon, explore ideas, forge new means of artistic inquiry, and engage creatively with Earth systems and ecological complexities. The programme will conclude with an exhibition in March 2026 that will showcase the research projects developed during the residency. In the words of Karin Oen, “STAR Residencies mark an important new chapter for NTU CCA Singapore in which the intersections of artistic and scientific research can thrive with the support of the broader academic community at NTU.”

With creative practices that span photography, performance, installation, and sound, the artists will conduct independent research on a variety of Earth systems, interweaving different bodies of knowledge in aesthetic outcomes that foster the awareness of ecological interconnectedness and of the complexity of human relation to nature. Drawing on her background in ethnography, Ng Hui Hsien intends to complement the scientific strategies used to evaluate environmental changes and geohazards with indigenous ecological knowledge shaped by lived experience, oral traditions, and direct observation, creating evocative insights into practices of ecological coexistence. The Observatory will expand their engagement with subterranean phenomena and geological formations. Deepening their understanding of the volcanic arcs that shape Southeast Asia and of the processes of rock formation, they will develop a project that resonates from deep time to contemporary existence. Driven by a process-led and constellatory approach to collaboration, Zarina Muhammad will engage with different scientists to expand epistemic frameworks for ecological witnessing, looking at weather formations, underwater ecologies, polycosmologies and the interdependency of environmental knowledge systems.

STAR Residencies is developed and curated by Dr Anna Lovecchio, Curator, NTU CCA Singapore.

DESIGN EARTH‘s latest project is a series of fables that addresses the elephant in the room—the climate crisis—by animating charismatic figures from natural history museums. This design research identifies and leverages figures from the collections all while unsettling the museum apparatus—the devices, archives, histories, and audiences. Some such figures include a taxidermy of an African matriarch elephant, the skeleton of a stranded blue whale, and a composite structure of a Diplodocuscarnegii. The fragmentary remains of such creatures are animated, brought back to life, so to speak in rhyming verse, colorful imagery, and with some poignant humor. These speculative afterlives stir up potent trouble on the breath-taking capture of life in the Anthropocene to ask how cultural institutions may be responsible to calls for decolonisation and decarbonisation. In Singapore, this hands-on, participatory workshop will focus on the cultural prehistory, present, and speculative futures of the Singapore saltwater (estuarine) crocodile and the Malayan tiger. Facilitated by Rania Ghosn, El Hadi Jazairy, and DESIGN EARTH team member Kelly Koh. Beginning with the Artist Talk on 13 June, participants will engage in DESIGN EARTH creative methodologies including site visits and the building of a research archive while looking into the facts and fictions of these creatures and their homes.

For registration, please visit here.

DESIGN EARTH was founded by Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy in 2011. The design research practice deploys the speculative project—drawing and narrative—to make public the climate crisis. Their work has been featured internationally—most recently at Venice Biennale, Bauhaus Museum Dessau, SFMOMA, Milano Triennale—and is in the New York Museum of Modern Art permanent collection. Ghosn and Jazairy are authors of Geographies of Trash (2015); Geostories: Another Architecture for the Environment (3rd ed. 2022), The Planet After Geoengineering (2021) and Climate Inheritance (2023). DESIGN EARTH has been recognized with several awards, including United States Artist Fellowship, Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers, Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture Faculty Design Awards, and Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts Awards.

Rania Ghosn (Beirut, b. 1977) is Associate Professor and Director of the Master of Science in Architecture Studies (SMArchS) in Urbanism at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. El Hadi Jazairy (Algeria, b. 1970) is Associate Professor of Architecture and Director of Master of Urban Design degree program at the University of Michigan.

Join DESIGN EARTH co-founders and co-directors Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy for their first presentation in Singapore, where they will share insights into their collaborative research practice centred on the speculative architectural project as a mode of making the climate crisis public. Their design research brings together spatial history, geographic representation, projective design, and material public assemblies to speculate on ways of living with legacy technologies on a damaged planet. Recipients of the United States Artist Fellowship and the Architectural League Prize for Young Architects and Designers, among other honors, Ghosn and Jazairy have made a practice of telling complex and unwieldy stories of the Earth. Learn more about their ongoing explorations of visual and spatial storytelling.

Friday, 13 June 2025
6:30 – 8:30 pm

The Hall, NTU CCA Singapore
6 Lock Rd, #01-09/10 Gillman Barracks 108934

Free registration here.

This workshop will introduce participants to natural radio. Natural radio is the emission of Very Low Frequency (VLF) and Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) radio waves due to electromagnetic energy from natural phenomena. These emissions originate terrestrially from lightning and from the Sun’s interactions with the Earth’s magnetosphere, they are among the inaudible voices of the environment. If the low frequencies of these electromagnetic outbursts are transformed into acoustic waves, many of these signals may fall within the range of human hearing. Experiencing electromagnetic waves as acoustic waves will allow listeners to connect with the beauty and complexity of natural radio waves in a unique aural experience.

By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to assemble an analogue handheld radio device that tunes in to natural radio frequencies.

Participants are encouraged to bring their own headphones with a 3.5mm audio jack, along with an optional audio recorder to capture and share their auditory discoveries.

This workshop is part of the Empirical Workshop Series of Communities of Practice. Techno Diversions.

This workshop is suitable for age 18 and above.
No prior knowledge of electronics is required.

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

Angela Ricasio Hoten is a research assistant at the School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University supporting the research projects Climate Transformation Programme (2024–Present), Developing and Evaluating Digital Tools for Participatory Climate Change Mitigation (2025–Present) and previously the Environmentally-Engaged Artistic Practices in South, Southeast Asia and the Pacific (2023–2024). Angela holds a BA (Hons) in Environmental Studies and minor in Anthropology from Yale-NUS College, Singapore. She was also the undergraduate research assistant for ‘Lala Land: Singapore’s Seafood Heritage’ edited by Anthony Medrano, published by Epigram Books.

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.

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.

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

At The End of the Course, You Will…

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.

Sea level rise, flash floods, and extreme weather phenomena compel a profound reconsideration of the human relation to the environment. The artist plans to conduct an observational investigation of the island nation to survey a range of existing objects, sites, and development projects and compose them into a visual index of natural and man-made features that may acquire different meanings and functions within advanced climate change scenarios.

In this episode, we invited Viknesh Kobinathan to traverse the trajectory of our Artist-in-Residence Min-Wei Ting’s filmic practice. This conversation marks a full-circle moment for the pair as they first collaborated at the beginning of their careers at the Singapore Short Cuts programme in 2014. In this conversation, they exchange memories that reveal shared notions of space and architecture, while contemplating upon the latent anxieties that stem from the everchanging landscape of Singapore prevalent in Min-Wei’s films. They also touch upon Min-Wei’s ongoing reflections and speculations on the Singapore state’s reactions and endeavours to address climate which he developed during his time in residence at NTU CCA Singapore.

Working primarily with the moving image, Min-Wei Ting explores the politics of space and the dynamic of belonging in his native Singapore. Adopting a first-person perspective where the tension between embodiment and disembodiment is often at play, his films enact gestures of protracted observation and slow movement.

Viknesh Kobinathan is a programmer at the Asian Film Archive (AFA), where he curates film screenings and discursive events that examine issues affecting Asian societies, explore the art of Asian cinema, and furthers the preservation mission of the AFA. He oversees the execution of the commissioning project, Monographs, a series that features critical text-based and audio-visual essays on the moving image.

Contributors: Min-Wei Ting, Viknesh Kobinathan
Editor: Anna Lovecchio
Programme Manager: Nadia Amalina
Sound Engineer: Ashwin Menon
Intro & Outro Music: Yuen Chee Wai
Cover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine Tan

[See Full Transcript]

In some religious traditions, techniques of spiritual mapping and warfare are employed to identify ‘territorial spirits’ (demons) in specific locations and to fight their malignant influences. In visualising the historical manifestations of these spiritual beliefs within the social and physical fabric of the city, the artist aims to adopt an autoethnographic angle and to create a layered, subjective framework wherein multimedia expressions, such as performance, installation, moving image, and sound, interrogate practices of demonisation and the dichotomy between the demon/the demonised.

This episode features a conversation between two multidisciplinary creatives who are also previous collaborators: Artist-in-Residence Zachary Chan and Singaporean playwright Joel Tan. The two come together for a fascinating exchange revolving around Zachary’s research into the religion he grew up with, Pentecostal Christianity, as well as the practice of spiritual mapping and strategic-level spiritual warfare. This research thread unraveled out of Restless Topographies, a project they developed together during a residency at the Goethe Institute Singapore last year. Throughout the conversation, they weave together personal experiences, insights, and revelations, with discussions of the historical anecdotes and religious texts that Zachary has been poring over during his time in residence at NTU CCA Singapore. They also contemplate upon Zachary’s proclivity for collaborations and how the residency has afforded him time to focus on his solo artistic practice.

Spanning several mediums, the work of Zachary Chan reflects his composite background in visual communications, graphic design, and sonic arts. His practice often unfolds through collaborations with other artists and he has written music and designed sound for experimental films, theatre plays, video games, storytelling, and art installations.

Joel Tan is a writer and performer based between London and Singapore. His interdisciplinary practice examines the ways in which politics distort the personal and spiritual, exploring subjects ranging from colonial history, nature, queer experience, and contemporary Singapore life.

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

[See Full Transcript]

Environmental knowledge and the ways it is communicated through visual arts have been at the core of Wang Ruobing’s practice for the past twenty years. With rising water temperatures and the expansion of the Tropical Warm Pool—a large mass of ocean water that features water temperature above 28 degree within which maritime Southeast Asia is situated—the coastal ecosystems in the region have become a crucial field for environmental research and climate change studies. Drawing equal inspiration from scientific knowledge and from Donna J. Haraway’s theories of ‘sympoiesis’ (making-with), the artist hopes to develop new artworks that reconfigure more sustainable relations to the Earth and all its inhabitants.

In this episode, we hand over the microphone to curator Tamares Goh to interview our Artist-in-Residence Wang Ruobing. Ruobing and Tamares share a long history of working together throughout their careers, one that goes back to 2004 and will continue on in the years to come. This conversation between peers shines a spotlight on Ruobing’s practice rooted in materiality, the importance of found objects in her art-making process, as well as her ongoing research into the symbiotic relationship between environmental sciences and visual arts. They also touch upon the collaborations Ruobing has activated with deep-sea divers and marine scientists, and how these collaborations continue to shape the trajectory of her artistic practice.

Committed to exploring new ways of seeing and methods of knowledge production, the artistic practice of Dr Wang Ruobing stretches from drawing to photography, sculpture, kinetic art, and installation. With a diverse range of methodological approaches to present her ideas, her body of work addresses environmental issues and transcultural discourses on identity and hybridity.

Tamares Goh is the deputy director of Audience Engagement at National Gallery Singapore, overseeing festivals like Light To Night, Painting With Light and the Gallery’s Childrens Biennale. She was the former head of Visual Arts at Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay, and co-headed the Programming department overseeing festivals and programmes. In 2017, she was the Producer for the Singapore Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale.

Contributors: Wang Ruobing, Tamares Goh
Editor: Anna Lovecchio
Programme Manager: Nadia Amalina
Sound Engineer: Ashwin Menon
Intro & Outro Music: Yuen Chee Wai
Cover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine Tan

[See Full Transcript]

Spanning several mediums, the work of Zachary Chan’s (b. 1990, Singapore) reflects his composite background in visual communications, graphic design, and sonic arts. His practice often unfolds through collaborations with other artists and he has written music and designed sound for experimental films, theatre plays, video games, storytelling, and art installations. His most recent solo work was part of the group exhibition Inheritance of Parts, Starch, Singapore (2021). Among his major collaborative projects are Restless Topographies, with Joel Tan and Zarina Muhammad (2021-2022); earth, land, sky and sea as palimpsest with Zarina Muhammad (2021); Pokoknya: Intrusive Transducers, with Tini Aliman (2021); and The Migrant Ecologies Project, with Lucy Davis (2017–ongoing). He is also a co-founder of the design collective crop.sg.

Working primarily with the moving image, Min-Wei Ting (b.1976, Singapore) explores the politics of space and the dynamic of belonging in his native Singapore. Adopting a first-person perspective where the tension between embodiment and disembodiment is often at play, his films enact gestures of protracted observation and slow movement. His works have been presented at venues, screenings, and festivals such Images Festival, Toronto, Canada (2022); Singapore Art Museum and Asian Film Archive, Singapore (2021); Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, Manchester, United Kingdom (2019); The Substation, Singapore (2018); the 46th International Film Festival Rotterdam, Netherlands (2017); 26^th and 27^th Singapore International Film Festival (2016 – 2017). He was shortlisted for the Berlin Art Prize (2019) and the Tiger Awards Competition for Short Films (2015).

From its first iteration in 2013, Free Jazz has pushed boundaries and expanded upon pressing concerns of our times. Free Jazz IV. Geomancers continues this approach, featuring artworks ranging from virtual reality to video, performance, and sound as an exercise in planetary awareness. The exhibition presents significant artistic practices from across the globe that are deeply invested in creating an environmental consciousness and that share an understanding of the world as a vulnerable, yet resilient, mesh of coexistences, correlations, and co-creations. As with geomancy, these artworks can help us to read the signs that our planet is trying to send us and that they can inspire a stronger commitment to create a sustainable future for life on Earth.

Alongside scientists, environmental activists, enlightened policy makers and civil society members, contemporary artists are increasingly concerned with future prospects of ecological collapse and planetary survival. They address these issues through the language of art, creating images, sounds, narratives, and experiences that allow us to establish affective and cognitive connections with the environment and partake in the planetary intelligence of the Earth. Stemming from NTU CCA Singapore’s ongoing engagement with the overarching subject of Climates.Habitats. Environments., Free Jazz IV. Geomancers brings together a selection of creative practitioners who are distinctly alert to these urgencies.

Conceived for Singapore Art Week 2022, this programme consists of a film screening series, a virtual reality installation, a performance and a sound installation. Some of the featured artworks zero in on signs of earthly demise, others indicate pathways of resilience and strategies for regeneration. All the works result from long-term research and extensive fieldwork and, when presented together, they engender a kaleidoscopic overview of the multitudinous forms of ecological entanglements.

Free Jazz IV. Geomancers is supported by National Arts Council Singapore and Nicoletta Fiorucci Russo De Li Galli. NTU CCA Singapore also wishes to thank our collaborators IHME Helsinki, and PUB Singapore’s National Water Agency at Marina Barrage.

Artists: Martha Atienza (Philippines), Ursula Biemann (Switzerland), Carolina Caycedo & David de Rozas (United Kingdom; Spain/United States), Chu Hao Pei (Singapore), Liu Chuang (China), Pedro Neves Marques (Portugal), Katie Paterson (Scotland), Rice Brewing Sisters Club (South Korea), Daniel Steegmann Mangrané (Spain/Brazil), Jana Winderen (Norway), Zarina Muhammad & Zachary Chan (Singapore), and Robert Zhao Renhui (Singapore).

Free Jazz IV. Geomancers is supported by National Arts Council Singapore and Nicoletta Fiorucci Russo De Li Galli. NTU CCA Singapore also wishes to thank our collaborators Appetite, IHME Helsinki, and PUB Singapore’s National Water Agency at Marina Barrage.

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Working towards the production of a solo album, he will gather and sample physical elements present at Gillman Barracks, using forest foliage as sound conductors and collecting field recordings to expand the vocabularies featured in his music. Along the process, the studio will be treated as a site-specific musical instrument which—through a series of recording and interfacing sessions, either individual or collaborative—will be turned into an environment for feedback and interface.

Wrapping up the first season of AiRCAST, in the sixth and final episode former Artist-in-Residence Yuen Chee Wai speaks to Dr Anna Lovecchio, Assistant Director, Programmes.

Get acquainted with Chee Wai as he meditates on his long and expansive journey in experimental music, collaborative networks, and multimedia crossovers. Grown out of an interest in independent music, his creative practice has evolved into a vortex of acts of resistance, melancholic drifts, and world-making gestures that reverberate with critical perspectives on the status quo. Through the course of this exchange, you will also discover how the unprecedented challenges brought about by the pandemic triggered an outburst of creative energy and pushed him even further into the exploration of new alliances and forms of expression.

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.

Contributors: Yuen Chee Wai
Conducted by: Anna Lovecchio
Programme Manager: Nadia Amalina
Sound Engineer: Ashwin Menon (The Music Parlour)
Intro & Outro Music: Tini Aliman
Cover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine Tan

Credits
02’15”: Audio excerpt from installation recordings of REFUSE. Courtesy The Observatory.
12’26”: Audio excerpt of George Chua and Yuen Chee Wai live session at Strategies v.02, The Substation, 2003. Courtesy the artist.
27’38”: Audio excerpt from unreleased studio recordings of Ishikawa Ko, Iman Jimbot, and Yuen Chee Wai, for Asian Meeting Festival. Courtesy the artist.
30’36”: Audio excerpt of The Observatory and Haino Keiji, Authority is Alive, Playfreely, 2019. Courtesy the artist.
48’40”: Audio excerpt of Imprisoned Mind from the upcoming album Demon State by The Observatory and Koichi Shimizu, 2022. Courtesy the artist.
56’59”: Audio excerpt from installation recordings of REFUSE. Courtesy The Observatory.
1h00’52”: Audio excerpt from Yuen Chee Wai’s recording of packing up the studio in the last hours of his residency at NTU CCA Singapore, 30 March 2022. Courtesy the artist.

[See Full Transcript]

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).

Come by the studios of our Artists-in-Residence: Tini Aliman and Russell Morton (both Singapore) for a special insight into their artistic process. This session of Residencies OPEN will allow you to encounter works-in-progress, watch a film screening, browse archival materials, and talk to the artists in person!

Tini Aliman, detail of work in progress, 2021. Courtesy of NTU CCA Singapore

TINI ALIMAN
Open Studio

Saturday, 18 September, 1:00 – 7:00 pm
Block 37 Malan Road, #01-03
no registration required

As a new development of her long-term research on plant consciousness and biodata sonification, Tini Aliman has come to regard ‘dead’ trees as potential archives of environmental soundscapes, witnesses of urban development and extractive capitalism, ecological events and climate change. Breathing new life into tree stumps, fragments of felled trees, and repurposed wood from previous artworks, the artist is reconfiguring these materials into kinetic and sound sculpture prototypes and she is experimenting with a range of sensory and mechanical modes of activation. Conjunctly, inspired by the structural and functional similarities between Printed Circuit Board (PCB) etching designs and forest underground network ecosystems, Tini is also speculatively imagining a functioning network of closed electronic circuits that mimics how these trees would have communicated while they were still alive. This project is realised in collaboration with Trying.sg.

Working at the intersection of film, sound, theatre, and installation, 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).

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Studio of Russell Morton (detail), 2021. Courtesy of NTU CCA Singapore

RUSSELL MORTON
Open Studio

Saturday, 18 September, 1:00 – 7:00 pm
Block 37 Malan Road, #01-02 & Block 38 Malan Road, #01-06
no registration required

For the past six months, Russell Morton has dived deep into gathering research materials and audiovisual references for the script of his first feature film. Inspired by a not well-known historical event—a prison riot which took place in Pulau Senang before Singapore’s independence—, the film interweaves the horrific events of the bloody riot with regional folklore. This open studio session presents a generous selection of archival materials, oral histories, and sound recordings relevant to the development of the script as well as the documentation (shot on Super 8mm film) of the artist’ site visits to a kelong, a type of vernacular architecture on the verge of disappearing that will feature prominently in the film.
Furthermore, there will be the opportunity to watch Morton’s most recent short film Mystic and Momok (2021), see below for more details.

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

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RESIDENCIES INSIGHTS

Russell Morton, expired Super 8mm footage of life on a kelong in Singapore waters, 2021, film stills. Courtesy of the artist.

RUSSELL MORTON: ARTIST-LED STUDIO TOUR

Saturday, 18 September, 3:00 – 3:45pm
Block 37 Malan Road, #01-02

In this artist-led studio tour, Russell Morton will talk about his references and unpack some of the research materials that will be woven into the structure of his first feature film: a dark narrative of drifting away from crime and floating in punishment inspired by a grim historical episode which happened in Singapore in the early 1960s.

Due to safe-distancing measures, this event has limited capacity and is by registration only. Please register here.

Tini Aliman, untitled, 2021, photography and digital composition (detail). Courtesy of the artist.

TINI ALIMAN: OF UNDERGROUND SCHEMATICS & THE FALLEN TREE
Artist Talk and Performance

Saturday, 18 September, 4:30 – 5:30pm
Block 37 Malan Road, #01-03

In a two-part event consisting of a talk and a performance, Tini Aliman will share her findings and reflections on plant consciousness and on the parallels between the human and the vegetable sensorium, interweaving them with explorations in acoustic memory and sonic symbolism related to her personal musical journey. In the performance, she will engage with her long-standing collaborator, a ficus microcarpa (Malayan banyan tree) named Ara.

Due to safe-distancing measures, this event has limited capacity and is by registration only. Please register here.

Mystic & Momok, 2021, HD video (16:9), stereo, 18min 10sec. Courtesy of the artist.

MYSTIC & MOMOK BY RUSSELL MORTON
Film Screening (on loop)
HD video (16:9), stereo, 18min 10sec, 2021
Rating: PG

Saturday, 18 September, 1:00 – 7:00pm
The Screening Room
Block 38 Malan Road, #01-06
No registration required. Please expect waiting time if room capacity is reached.

Completed during the residency, Russell Morton’s latest short film revolves around the eclectic and versatile figure of Mohammad Din Mohammad (1955 – 2007). Artist and mystic, traditional healer and idiosyncratic collector of Southeast Asian cultural items, Mohammad Din Mohammad was also an actor and a silat master. Playfully disclosing the production limitations imposed by the pandemic, the film evokes Mohammad’s multifaceted personality through the faces, voices, and memories of the artist’s family members and an experimental process where affects and sounds are mediated by technology. As it unfolds, the film grows into an upbeat stream of visuals and sounds mixed by Momok, a computer algorithm created by artist bani haykal.

Mystic & Momok was commissioned by National Gallery Singapore for the exhibition Something New Must Turn Up: Six Singaporean Artists After 1965 (7 May – 22 August 2021) which featured Mohammad Din Mohammad’s works.

This event marks the opening of The Screening Room, NTU CCA Singapore’s cosy new space dedicated to film screenings and talks.

In a two-part event consisting of a talk and a performance, Tini Aliman will share her findings and reflections on plant consciousness and on the parallels between the human and the vegetable sensoriums, interweaving them with explorations in acoustic memory and sonic symbolism related to her personal musical journey. In the performance, she will engage with her long-standing collaborator, a ficus microcarpa (Malayan banyan tree) named Ara.

Working at the intersection of film, sound, theatre, and installation, 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).

Admission is free but registration is required. Please register here.

This event is part of Residencies OPEN, 18 September 2021 (1.00 – 7.00pm), for more info click here.

Image: Tini Aliman, untitled, 2021 photography and digital composition (detail). Courtesy of the artist.

Newell Harry of South African and Mauritian descent, has for over a decade drawn from an intimate web of recurring travels and connections across Oceania and the wider Asia-Pacific, to South Africa’s Western Cape Province, where the artist’s extended family continues to reside. From Pidgin and Creole languages to modes of exchange in the “gift economies” of the South Pacific, Harry’s interests often culminate in culturally “entangled” installations. Selected exhibitions include Tidalectics, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art 21, Vienna (2017); Endless Circulation: Tarrawarra Biennial, curated Victoria Lynn & Helen Hughes, Tarrawarra, Victoria (2016); The 56th Venice Biennale: All the Worlds Futures (2015);Suspended Histories, Museum Van Loon, Amsterdam (2013); Rendez Vous 11 & 12, Institut d’Art Contemporain, Villebanne (2011) and South African National Gallery, Cape Town (2012); Untitled (12th Istanbul Biennial) (2011); The 17th Biennale of Sydney: The Beauty of Distance, Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age (2010); and The Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Before and After Science (2010).

Between February and April 2015, Harry was Artist-in-Residence at NTU CCA Singapore where he looked into the under-presented colonial connections between the Cape Malay of South Africa and the Straits Settlements.

Formally trained in sculpture, Zul Mahmod has continued to build and expand his practice over the last three years to include sculpted sound and live sound performances. Zul’s practice investigates the aural architecture of spaces in order to explore the emotional, behavioural and visceral responses of its inhabitants. While in residence, Zul will explore the aural relationship between readymade sound sculptures and the architecture of space. Sonic characteristics, forms and textures of everyday objects will be examined in order to compose an orchestra of sonic sculptures.

Continuing to expand The Migrant Ecologies Project , Lucy Davis will focus on Railtrack Songmaps, the first iteration of which was launched as a multimedia installation at Gillman Barracks in 2016. A three-year research project conducted in conjunction with Nature Society of Singapore and National University of Singapore, Railtrack Songmaps features recordings of birds along the Tanglin Halt rail tracks, collecting the fleeting voices of nature to explore interspecies communication and the entanglements of animal life and urban development. Due to its wide-ranging interdisciplinary approach, the project unfolds through collaborations with several artists, scientists, designers, and photographers based in Singapore.

The practice of Lêna Bùi (b. 1985, Vietnam) is deeply drawn to the intangible aspects of life, such as faith, death, and dreams and the ways in which they influence our behaviours and perceptions. Through the incorporation of anecdotes and personal stories, her works articulate intimate reflections upon the impact of rapid development and the relationship between humans and nature. Bùi’s works have been included in group exhibitions and presentations at Sharjah Art Foundation, United Arab Emirates (2018); Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies, Wesleyan University, Middle Town, United States (2018); Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany (2017); The Factory Contemporary Arts Centre, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (2016); and Carré d’Art, Nîmes, France (2014) amongst other venues.

Interested in chemical processes caused by human interference in nature, the practice of Susanne Kriemann unfolds slowly across extended periods of time. Splitting her residency into two parts, the first of which took place last August, the artist is conducting field research on the presence of (micro)plastics in the intertidal mangrove habitats of Singapore and the Riau Archipelago. Since the 1950s, plastic has become the chief material of industrial mass production due to its lightweight, durability, and low production costs. With a decomposition time of about 500 years, all plastic items ever produced are still extant on the planet. Through most disposal systems, they enter the oceans where ultraviolet light, heat, wind, and waves progressively reduce them to “mermaid tears”, pellet-shaped particles with a diameter of approximately five millimetres. Kriemann recently participated in a residency in Colombo, Sri Lanka to investigate similar habitats and will spend this final month re-examining and consolidating the gathered materials.

Over the course of the residency, Chan will delve into his longstanding interest for the rainforest seen as a site of contemporary art. Regarding the opulent wilderness of tropical nature as the physical and conceptual obverse of the white cube space, the artist will research an episode of Singapore’s curatorial history: the first group exhibition of Singaporean artists in the West. Titled Paintings by Singapore Artists, the exhibition took place at the former Imperial Institute in London in 1955 and was organised by the chairman of the Singapore Art Society, Ho Kok Hoe (1922-2015). It is rumoured that the artworks were brought to London without prior arrangements about the venue, leaving the materialisation of the show a matter of conjecture. Focusing on the 1955 exhibition, Chan will explore the epistemological connections between the colony and the imperial capital while also excavating the anxieties that lurk in the global peripheries of the art world.

During the residency, North will be conducting photographic investigations on the ways in which local plant species manage to adapt to Singapore’s constantly changing built environment. In alignment with his long-standing interest in the intersection between the natural and the artificial, North regards Singapore as a radical case study to observe the complex tensions brimming at the interface between nature and human-made structures. He will also focus on the inescapable cycles of decomposition and renewal that, accelerated by the high humidity of the tropical climate, blur the boundaries between the organic and the man-made.

Jamie North (b. 1971, Australia) is an artist based in Sydney. His practice explores the concurrence and conflict between architectural structures and the biological world. Initially working with photography, North’s interest in the ability of plants to recover, regenerate, and reclaim an environment after human intervention has shifted towards the creation of living sculptural installations. His work has been presented at the 20th Biennale of Sydney, Australia, 2016; Tophane-i Amire Cultural and Arts Center, Istanbul, Turkey, 2015; Monash University, Melbourne, 2015, amongst other venues.

Following her fascination for the unstable properties of matter and the ungraspable substance of the atmosphere, Iris Touliatou intends to pursue a research that goes under the provisional title of Animal Storms. The project approaches Singapore from “a climatic perspective,” it frames the weather as a metaphor of uncertainty, a form of language, and a space of collective resistance that allows us to talk about our futures, bodies, hopes, and fears. Through a combination of fieldwork and studio-based practice, the artist will mobilise diverse methodologies to expand the notion of air and water through physical, symbolic, imaginary, metaphorical associations as well as through states of movement. During the residency, the studio will become a laboratory to develop an open-ended body of works and activities, artistic interventions and temporary collective platforms that variously engage the irrational, the ambiguous, the performative, and the hallucinatory.

The artistic practice of Iris Touliatou (b. 1981, Greece) composes and decomposes concepts, narratives, objects, and bodies through subtle alchemical operations that probe the enigmatic nature of existence. By experimenting with an ever-growing array of materials and techniques, she seeks moments of slippages, instances of misalignments, chance meetings, and unexpected findings that are out of the experimenter’s control. Amongst her solo exhibitions are at Radio Athènes, Athens, Greece (upcoming, June 2019), Woman spinning at Palermo, Stuttgart, Germany (2019) and Some Seine, HYLE, Athens, Greece (2017). She has participated in international group exhibitions such as May the bridges I burn light the way, 5x5x5: Selected Projects, Manifesta 12, Palermo, Italy (2018) and Expanded Ecologies, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece (2009).

Since 2013, Zhao has been collecting old photographs of Singapore, focusing specifically on images that capture the city’s landscape and elements related to her natural history. The project for his residency, provisionally titled The Museum of Disappearance, sets out to unravel the dormant narratives embedded in the photographs in order to shed a different light onto the complex history of our relationship with nature. Further expanding on his interest in the interaction between humans and the natural environment, he plans to conduct extensive fieldwork in the backwoods behind his studio, a patch of secondary forest stretching from Malan Road to Henderson Road, documenting its trees and natural habitat.

Working with drawing, sculpture, installation, and cognitive mapping, the practice of Monica Ursina Jäger (b. 1974, Switzerland/United Kingdom) unfolds through a multidisciplinary reflection on concepts of space, landscape, and architecture that scrutinizes the relationship between the natural and the constructed environment.

Her work has been presented at the Biennale Kulturort Weiertal, Winterthur, Switzerland (2017); Haus Konstructiv, Zurich, Switzerland (2017); Kunstverein Wagenhallen, Stuttgart, Germany (2016) amongst other venues. She was the recipient of the Swiss Art Award 2007 and is currently a research associate and lecturer at the Institute of Natural Resource Sciences IUNR, University of Applied Sciences Zurich ZHAW, Switzerland.

Marianna Simnett (b.1986, United Kingdom) lives and works in London. Her interdisciplinary practice includes video, installation, performance, sculpture and watercolour. Simnett uses vivid and visceral means to explore the body as a site of transformation. Working with animals, children, organs, and often performing herself, she imagines radical new worlds filled with untamed thoughts, strange tales, and desires. Simnett has shown in major museums internationally. Recent solo exhibitions include LAB RATS, Kunsthalle Zürich, Switzerland (2019), My Broken Animal, Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, Netherlands (2019), CREATURE, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia (2019), Blood In My Milk, New Museum, New York, United States (2018) among others. She is a joint winner of the Paul Hamlyn Award 2020, received the Jerwood / FVU Award in 2015, and was shortlisted for the Jarman Award in 2017.

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

During the residency Chong will develop The Economy of Birds (and Maximum Standard of Living), a research-based project that looks at how contemporary societies in Southeast Asia determine the minimum standard of living. The artist investigates the notion of “human dwelling” through a comparison between the human and the animal world by drawing a parallel between the practice of farming swiftlet birdhouses for sale and consumption and the typology of the metropolitan apartment block. In the artist’s vision, a comparative analysis of airflows, relative humidity, air temperature distribution, and light intensity that characterize the farming of edible bird’s nests and the technical requirements that make a human dwelling comfortable and efficient, is instrumental to rethink the guidelines for socially acceptable living environments as well as their implications in terms of economics and human rights.

The eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 can perhaps be considered the last grandiose natural disaster before the advent of moving images. For Casas, the historical eruption is an active producer of multiple narratives and imaginaries. Fascinated by its sublime stature and by the unique visual, sonic, and meteorological phenomena occurred in the aftermath of the eruption, the artist aims to investigate its socio-symbolic entanglements with Indonesia’s colonial history while also continuing his longstanding meditation on how natural disasters affect our understanding of nature and of our position on the planet. Through archival research and on-site shooting, the artist will collect historical, optical, and sonic data from various research stations and archives in Singapore and Indonesia in preparation for a new work.

Lim Kim Seng is a senior member of Nature Society of Singapore (NSS). He assisted The Migrant Ecologies Project by Lucy Davis in the identification of 105 bird species around Tanglin Halt.

Lim Kim Chua is a senior member of Nature Society of Singapore (NSS). He assisted The Migrant Ecologies Project by Lucy Davis.

Wang has been working on an on-going project on Hong Kong. The project that began in 2012 is an examination of Hong Kong’s cultural anxiety and crisis through a set of cinematic explorations of the city’s space. In Singapore while in the residency, he will study the role of sand in Singapore, by not only tracing its physical circulation as a fundamental element for the state’s development but also its symbolic role in the cultural sphere.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Admission to all programmes and events is free.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Partner programmes:

Machine Listening, a curriculum
From October 2020 (Online)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

During her residency, Alice Miceli plans to expand her current project, In Depth (landmines) (2014-ongoing). So far she has conducted field research in Cambodia, Colombia, and Bosnia where she photographed several mine-contaminated areas. The artist plans to examine other sites where landmines and unexploded ordnance remain an active deadly threat. She is especially interested in the landmine situation in Angola, the most heavily mined country in the world as a result of decades of conflict and civil war. The process of gathering relevant materials and managing the complex logistics required by trips to such dangerous areas are all essential components of the work. The artist intends to use her studio to experiment with different spatial presentations of In Depth (landmines) and to initiate new lines of research around the subject of landscape, looking into areas affected by plagues and epidemics and exploring the possibilities involved in their photographic representation.

Since the establishment of the first human settlements in the late 19th century, the ecosystem of Christmas Island—a small volcanic outcrop in the Indian Ocean which was transferred from Singapore to Australia in 1958—underwent dramatic changes. Along with human settlers, several non-indigenous species alighted on the island disrupting the endemic biodiversity that had thrived undisturbed thanks to geographical remoteness and almost nil human interference. The accidental introduction of invasive species severely impacted a fragile ecosystem, imperilling the island’s wildlife and causing the extinction of a number of native species. As a result, extreme biocontrol strategies are currently being undertaken in an attempt to restore the island’s biodiversity.

In the past two years, The Institute of Critical Zoologists has been researching the escalating chain of events brought about by the human presence on Christmas Island gathering a varied collection of research materials that merge factual and fictional elements. By surveying the impact of human beings on an endemic habitat, Final Report of the Christmas Island Expert Working Group maps out lines of invasion and retreat, it investigates dynamics of connectedness and isolation triggering reflections on states of vulnerability and conditions of survival in the age of globalisation.

Curated by Anna Lovecchio, Curator, Residencies

By inhabitants in collaboration with Margarida Mendes

Deep sea mining is a new frontier of resource extraction located on the ocean seabed. It is set to begin in the next few years, as the technology is currently under development. Mining companies are, at present, leasing areas for exploitation in national and international waters in order to assess the potential to extract minerals and metals such as manganese, cobalt, gold, copper, iron, and other rare earth elements. The main geological sites targeted are areas rich in polymetallic nodules, seamounts, and hydrothermal vents; areas typically found where tectonic plates meet. The areas to be mined could cover parts of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the Clarion Clipperton Zone in the Pacific Ocean in international waters, and national waters off the islands of Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Tonga, New Zealand, Japan, and the Portuguese archipelago of the Azores. Assessment of the impact on deep sea ecosystems is underway, though their cumulative effects remain difficult to comprehend given the unprecedented variety and expanse of the mining sites targeted. At the same time, local and indigenous communities living in these regions are not being adequately consulted.

The prospects of this form of mining re-actualise a colonial, frontier mentality and are redefining extractivist economies for the twenty-first century. What is Deep Sea Mining? addresses both knowledge of the deep sea and ocean governance, but also efforts to defend a sustained ocean literacy beyond the United Nations’ “blue economy” at a time when the deep ocean, its species, and its resources remain largely unmapped and understudied.

Episode 1, Tools for Ocean Literacy, is historical and geographical introduction to deep sea mining, playing with Charles and Ray Eames’ 1977 film Powers of Ten.

Episode 2, Deep Frontiers, tells a story about knowledge of the seabed and its alien life, written by anthropologist Stefan Helmreich.

Episode 3, The Azore Case, focuses on the Portuguese Azores nine island archipelago, following European Union plans to mine in the region, based on a series of interviews with marine biologists and politicians conducted in the islands.

Episode 4, A Glossary on Mining, offers a brief glossary of terms that can be used to better tackle the issue of mining reserves and monopolies on land, which in turn may lead to the potential threat of deep sea mining.

Episode 5, The Papua New Guinea Case, addresses the plans to mine off the coast of Papua New Guinea as well as the long activist struggle by local communities across the Pacific against deep sea mining. Episode 5 will be premiered at NTU CCA Singapore, simultaneously in the Lab space and online on social media and the websites of NTU CCA Singapore’s website, the funding and partner institution TBA21 – Academy’s website, and inhabitants-tv.

James Jack is an artist and Assistant Professor of Visual Art, Yale-NUS College, Singapore. His practice is concerned with rejuvenating fragile connections that exist in the world, making artworks in direct relationship to a place and the people that live there. Between February and April 2015, Jack was Artist-in-Residence at NTU CCA Singapore, where he expanded his artistic research on the project Stories of Khayalan Island (2013–ongoing).

Jegan Vincent de Paul is an artistic researcher with an interest in large-scale technopolitical phenomenon with a focus on physical infrastructures. He received his Ph.D in Art, Design and Media from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore in 2021. His doctoral thesis Infrastructure, Narrative, Impact: A Counter-Reading of Belt and Road uses art as a research methodology to show how “the Belt and Road” is a rhizomatic global narrative constructed in the process of interpretation and analysis. He has worked internationally as a researcher and designer and was a visiting scholar and lecturer at the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology (2010–12). He has exhibited at the 4th ZERO1 Biennial in San Jose, California, Space in Kingston, Jamaica and the Centre for Contemporary Art in Singapore. Vincent de Paul holds a Master of Architecture from University of Toronto and a Master of Science in Visual Studies from MIT.

The mixed-media selection presented in The Vitrine stems from Railtrack Songmaps, a project exploring competing claims to nature and culture that resound along the former Malaysian railway tracks at Tanglin Halt. For at least five decades, birds, nature lovers, songbird clubs, tree shrines, kampung gardeners and foragers have roosted and seeded themselves along the tracks, nurturing a tangled patch of urban wild that is currently undergoing redevelopment. The particular constellation of elements on display – photographs, Malay pantuns, embroidery on paper, and delicate airborne assemblages of images, cut-outs and coconut sticks – weave in and out of memories of Lim Kim Seng, who together with his brother Lim Kim Chua, joined the Nature Society of Singapore (NSS) as teenager. Both are now senior members of the NSS Bird Group. Kim Seng assisted The Migrant Ecologies Project in the identification of 105 bird species around Tanglin Halt. In an accompanying soundtrack he recalls how an early encounter with a kingfisher first drew him into a bird zone.

The Migrant Ecologies Project was founded in 2010 by artist, art writer, and educator Lucy Davis. Investigating movements and migrations of nature and culture in Southeast Asia and beyond, the project unfolds through collaborations with sound artists, photographers, scientists, and designers.

Lucy Davis has been an Artist-in-Residence at NTU CCA Singapore from April to June 2017.

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.

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

Tuan Andrew Nguyen (Vietnam) graduated in Fine Arts from the University of California, Irvine (1999) and received his MFA from The California Institute of the Arts (2004). His work investigates the body as site and as moment of resistance in public space, exploring the impact of mass media. Nguyen has exhibited at international exhibitions and film festivals, having works in the collection of the Queensland Art Gallery; Carre d’Art; the Museum of Modern Art; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. He is co-founder and board member of Sàn Art, an artist- initiated exhibition and educational space in Ho Chi Minh City. In 2006, he founded the art collective The Propeller Group, which has participated in numerous exhibitions including the New Museum Triennial (2012); Los Angeles Biennial (2012), New Orleans Triennial (2014), and the Venice Biennale (2015).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Professor Chan is a member of the Social Science Research Council of SIngapore, a member of the Founding Editorial Board, Oxford Bibliographies of Chinese Studies; member of the Board of Directors, Consortium of Humanities Centres and Institutes; Chairman of the Board of Directors, Confucius Institute, NTU; member of the Board of Directors, International Confucian Association; member of the International Advisory Panel, Asia Competiveness Institute, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, NUS; member of the Editorial Board, Journal of Daoist Studies (USA) and Frontiers of Daoist Studies (China); and member of several other Boards. Previously, he served on the Board of Directors, Singapore Examination and Assessment Board (2007–2010).

His recent publications include “From Uncrowned King to the Sage of Profound Greatness: Confucius and the Analects in Early Medieval China” in Companion to Confucius (2017); “Rujia sixiang zhong de xiao de pubianxing he wenhua texing” 儒家思想中的孝的普遍性和文化特性 (Universality and Cultural Specificity of Filial Piety in Confucian Philosophy) (2016); and “The Art of Hearing and the Promise of Harmony in Confucian Self-Cultivation” in New Directions in Chinese Philosophy (2014). He has also developed a Massive Open Online Course, Explorations in Confucian Philosophy.

Professor Chan has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto, University of Washington, University of Yangon, Kyoto University and Chinese University of Hong Kong.

He received his PhD from the University of Toronto, Canada, in Chinese and comparative philosophy and religion.

Andrew Foran (Australia/Fiji) is Head of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Pacific Centre for Environ- mental Governance, and is also the IUCN Regional Programme Coordinator (acting) for Oceania. He has worked in the sustainability field for over 15 years. Previously, Foran was the Chief Executive Officer of the Centre for Sustainability Leadership in Australia, and has also worked on sustainable supply chains and green product development and marketing with companies including BP, National Australia Bank, Qantas, Boeing, and Toyota. Before entering the environment sector, he was the founder and general manager of a successful aquaculture business supplying markets in Australia and Asia, and has a Master of Business Administration and a Graduate Diploma in Environmental Management and Planning. Foran currently volunteers as treasurer for the Fiji Surf Association, and as strategic advisor for the Pacific Environment and Climate Exchange.

Armin Linke is a photographer and filmmaker who combines a range of contemporary image-processing technologies in order to blur the borders between fiction and reality. He was Research Affiliate at MIT Visual Arts Program Cambridge, guest professor at the IUAV Arts and Design University in Venice, and professor for photography at the University for Arts and Design Karlsruhe. Linke analyses the formation, the gestaltung of our natural, technological, and urban environment, perceived as a diverse space of continuous interaction. His photographs and films function as tools to become aware of the different design strategies. Concerned with different possibilities of dealing with image archives and their respective manifestations, Linke works with his own archive, as well as with other media archives, challenging conventional practices, whereby the questions of how photography and film are installed and displayed become increasingly important. In a collective approach with artists, designers, architects, historians, and curators, narratives are procured on the level of multiple discourses.

Atif Akin (Turkey/United States) is an artist and designer, and Associate Professor at Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Akin’s work examines science, nature, mobility, and politics through an (a)historical and contemporary lens. Through a series of activities made up of research, documentation, and design, his work considers transdisciplinary issues through a techno-scientific lens, in aesthetic and political contexts. In 2015, Akin received the apexart Franchise Program award in New York, organising the zine project and exhibition Apricots from Damascus, hosted by SALT, Istanbul. His ongoing long-term research-driven project on nuclear mobility and archaeology, Mutant Space, was presented at the 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial (2016). Tepoto Sud morph Moruroa was exhibited in Tidalectics, curated by Stefanie Hessler, at TBA21–Augarten in Vienna.

Barney Broomfield (United Kingdom/ United States) is a Sundance award-winning and Oscar-Shortlisted filmmaker and cinematographer. As a graduate of the London School of Economics, Broomfield’s career began with National Geographic in the United Kingdom which funded his first documentary film after university, Welcome to the Real World, a 12,000 mile motorbike journey from Kolkata, India to London, England undergone to raise money for an orphanage in India. Since then Broomfield has travelled extensively around the globe directing and shooting films for the industry’s top broadcasters including HBO, CNN, BBC, National Geographic, Discovery Channel, MTV, Sundance, Channel Four (UK), ITV, SKY, and PBS.

Cofounder of SUPERFLEX (Denmark) in 1993, SUPERFLEX challenges the role of the artist in contemporary society and explores the nature of globalisation and systems of power. SUPERFLEX has gained international recognition for projects and solo exhibitions around the world, including Kunsthalle Basel; the Mori Museum, Tokyo; Van AbbeMuseum, Eindhoven; South London Gallery; and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa. The group has participated in international biennials such as the Gwangju Biennale; Istanbul Biennial; São Paulo Biennial; Shanghai Biennial; and in the Utopia Station at the Venice Biennale. SUPERFLEX is represented in several art institutions, such as MoMA, New York; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen; The Hammer, Los Angeles; Kunsthaus Zurich; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; and Colección Jumex, Mexico City.

Dr Cresantia Frances Koya Vaka‘uta (Fiji) is the Director of the Oceania Centre for Arts, Culture and Pacific Studies & Pacific Heritage Hub, UNESCO Faculty of Arts, Law and Education at The University of the South Pacific, Fiji. She was previously a senior lecturer in Education at The University of the South Pacific. Her doctoral thesis explored Pacific understandings of ESD through an examination of Samoan and Tongan Heritage Arts. Koya Vaka’uta’s research interests include Pacific island education, Pacific Island Arts, art as a social learning tool, Protest Poetry, Pacific Research and Evaluation, Pacific indigenous research methodologies, and Education for Sustainability in the islands. A poet and artist, she is interested in the potential role that the arts can play in formal and non-formal education with reference to issues of resilience, sustainability, and crisis in the Pacific islands.

Dr Cynthia Chou (Singapore/United States) is C. Maxwell and Elizabeth M. Stanley Family Chair Professor of Asian Studies and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Iowa, United States. She received her PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom in 1994. Dr Chou is internationally known for her pioneering study of the life and lifestyles, as well as identity and change, of the indigenous Malays in Southeast Asia. She was awarded in 2011 the highest Danish academic degree of dr phil by the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, in recognition of her work on the Orang Suku Laut (sea nomads). Her publications include The Orang Suku Laut of Riau, Indonesia: The Inalienable Gift of Territory (2010) and Indonesian Sea Nomads: Money, Magic, and Fear of the Orang Suku Laut of Riau (2003).

Emily Chua is an anthropologist working at the intersections of “the media,” information technology, global capitalism and authoritarian state politics, in China and in Singapore. She did her PhD in Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. She also holds an MA in History from NUS, and a BA in Studio Art and History from Wesleyan University.

Filipa Ramos (Portugal/United Kingdom) is a writer and editor, currently Editor-in-Chief of art-agenda, commissioning and publishing experimental and rigorous writing on art. She is a lecturer in art and moving image at the Experimental Film MA Programme of Kingston University, and at the MRes Art: Moving Image of Central Saint Martins/ University of the Arts, both in London, and works with the Master Programme of the Institut Kunst, Basel. She is co-founder and co-curator of Vdrome, and was previously Associate Editor of Manifesta Journal; contributed to documenta 13 (2012) and 14 (2017). Interested in the way art, and particularly time-based work, provides a site of encounter for humans and nonhumans, Ramos has written, lectured, and curated exhibitions and film programmes on the topic, having edited Animals (Whitechapel Gallery/ MIT Press, 2016). Ramos was a Writer-in- Residence at NTU CCA Singapore in 2016. She has been a guest curator at several institutions and her writing has been published in several magazines and catalogues.

Dr Guigone Camus (France) holds a PhD in Social Anthropology and Ethnology (EHESS), and since 2002 has lectured at l’Ecole du Louvre in Paris, l’Institut Catholique de Paris (IRCP), and the University of French Polynesia in Tahiti. Camus has worked on the social organisation of Kiribati, which is a small atoll country covering a large part of the Central Pacific. During two missions (2015 and 2017), she observed the I-Kiribati symbolic representations of Nature, their social organisation, and the kin ties between their cosmology and genealogies. In 2014, she published Tabiteuea Kiribati, a book dedicated to Tabiteuea Island (Hazan). As a Scientific Advisor of the Ocean and Climate Platform, she is committed to putting light on issues related to the consequences of global warming on the preservation of biodiversity, and the livelihoods of the human societies living in small island countries, addressing physical and psychological security, food security, and migration. She also works on the pragmatic and emotional perception of climate change and on the political and social parameters influencing the protection of natural resources.

Dr Hervé Raimana Lallemant-Moe (French Polynesia) is a member of the Governance and Insular Development Research Team (GDI – University of French Polynesia) and the Center of International Law (CDI – University of Lyon III). His research interests include environmental law, international law, and oversea communities’ legal issues, particularly for French Polynesia, and his specialty is climate change legal issues. Lallemant-Moe is teaching law at the University of French Polynesia, where he is an alumnus. He also graduated from the University of Western Brittany (France) and the University of South Pacific (Fiji). Lallemant-Moe is the assistant of Maina Sage, Member of the French National Assembly (French Parliament). He previously worked several years for the Polynesian Government and was a member of the High Council of French Polynesia, a group of legal experts who served as advisors to the President of the country.

Joey Tau (Papua New Guinea/Fiji) is the Media and Extractives Campaigner with the Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) based in Suva, Fiji. Tau has a background in media, having worked in mainstream media in Papua New Guinea and the Pacific. PANG is the region’s alternative voice in defending and promoting Pacific people’s right to economic self-determination, mobilising and advocating based on substantive research and analysis to challenge neoliberal development agendas in the region.

Julian ‘Togar’ Abraham is an artist and musician. His practice develops at the junction between art, environment, science, technology, and culture. Between April and June 2016, Togar was Artist-in-Residence at NTU CCA Singapore where he researched on the possibilities of converting diabetic urine into a renewable source of energy. Drawing on his research and his interest in DIY production, Togar led several workshops during his residency, spreading knowledge and first-hand experience about processes of fermentation and distillation.

Kat Davis is the Assitant Director at TBA21-Academy.

Kazuo Okanoya is a professor at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo, and Research Director of the ERATO Okanoya Emotional Information Project. Through the study of the psycho-biological properties of emotional information in animals that rely heavily on vocal communication, such as birds and rodents, as well as pre-linguistic, language-acquiring infants, children, and adults, he seeks to understand the mechanisms of the human brain and language.

Kray Chen is an artist. His practice brings attention to the peculiar characteristics of forms, gestures, and behaviours in society to discuss the value of progress. Between April and August 2016, Chen was Artist-in-Residence at NTU CCA Singapore where he developed a Feng Shui survey of his residency studio and the larger Gillman Barracks precinct, with the aim to enliven and invigorate a site of art that is aiming to establish itself as a vibrant cultural hub.

Kristy H.A. Kang is a practice-based researcher whose work navigates the triangulation of place, geographies, and cultural memory. She is Associate Professor of Urban Media Art and Design in the GAME School and the ASU Media and Immersive eXperience (MIX) Center, Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. Prior to joining ASU, she was Assistant Professor at the School of Art, Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and received her doctorate in media arts and practice at the School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California. Her research interests combine urban and ethnic studies, mapping, and emerging media arts to visualise cultural histories of cities and communities. Her works have been presented at the Gwangju Design Biennale, South Korea; the Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore; the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles; the Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe; and the Jewish Museum, Berlin, among others and received the Jury Award for New Forms at the Sundance Online Festival.

Lisa Rave is an artist, filmmaker, and photographer. In her work, she often explores issues surrounding postcolonialism, and history’s repeating patterns in the complex interplay of culture, economy, and ecology, as well as natural phenomena. Rave studied experimental film at the University of the Arts Berlin and photography at Bard College, New York. She was a fellow artist at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart in 2014. Some of her recent exhibitions and screenings include Lofoten International Art Festival (2017); Arsenal Kino Berlin (2017); Glasmoog Cologne (2017); Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary–Augarten (2017); Württembergischer Kunstverein (2016); 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial (2016); FLORA ars+natura, Bogota (2015), Meulensteen Gallery, New York (2014); Kunstverein Wiesbaden (2013); Chisenhale Gallery, London (2012); Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (2011); and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2011).

Artist and writer Lucy Davis’ (b. 1970, United Kingdom) interdisciplinary practice examines notions of nature in art and visual culture, science and indigenous knowledge, natural histories, materiality and urban memory primarily but not exclusively in Southeast Asia. Most notably, Davis is the founder of The Migrant Ecologies Project – the product of her longstanding interest in the mid-twentieth century Singapore Modern Woodcut movement which later informed a six-year long, material-led cumulative series of investigations under the auspices of The Migrant Ecologies Project. Davis was also the founding editor of the Singapore critical publication series focas: Forum on Contemporary Art & Society from 2000-2007. She was previously Assistant Professor at School of Art, Design and Media (ADM) at Nanyang Technological University.

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.

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

Markus Reymann is the Director of TBA21–Academy. He joined TBA21 in 2011 and subsequently cofounded TBA21–Academy with TBA21 Foundation Chairwoman and Founder Francesca von Habsburg. As a central programming unit of TBA21, the Academy provides a moving platform of cultural production and interdisciplinary exchange. Since 2011, Reymann initiated and conducted numerous expeditions, each trip designed as a collaboration with invited artists, scientists, and thinkers eager to embark on oceanic explorations. The Academy commissions ambitious projects inspired by these unusual encounters.

Maureen Penjueli (Fiji) is the Coordinator of the Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) based in Suva, Fiji. She has a vast experience working with a number of key regional organisations in the Pacific, including Greenpeace and the Foundation of the Peoples of the South Pacific International (FSPI). PANG is the region’s alternative voice in defending and promoting Pacific people’s right to economic self-determination, mobilising and advocating based on substantive research and analysis to challenge neoliberal development agendas in the region.

Nabil Ahmed holds a PhD in Research Architecture from Goldsmiths, University of London, and is a senior lecturer at the Cass School of Architecture at London Metropolitan University. As an artist and researcher, Ahmed looks at environmental violence and new forums for environmental justice through spatial analysis, writing, and interdisciplinary projects. Since 2013, he has been investigating the impact of mining, land grabs, and self-determination in West Papua. He is the founder of Inter-Pacific Ring Tribunal (INTERPRT), a long-term project on ecocide in Oceania and the Pacific region, commissioned by TBA21–Academy. He has participated in the two-year Anthropocene Project at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin; the 2016 Oslo Architecture Triennial; the 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial (2016); and numerous other exhibitions. More recently he has published in art, science, and architecture publications such as Third Text, Scientific Reports, Forensis: The Architecture of Public Truth (Sternberg, 2014), Volume, and South Magazine (Documenta 14).

Paul Feigelfeld is the Data and Research Architect at TBA21-Academy.

Dr PerMagnus Lindborg is a composer, sound artist, and researcher. He has authored more than 100 media artworks and compositions presented worldwide, notably at Xuhui Art Museum, Shanghai (2017); Tonspur, Vienna (2016); National Gallery Singapore (2015); Onassis Centre, Athens (2014); World Stage Design, Cardiff (2013); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2008); and Centre Pompidou, Paris (2003). Lindborg studied piano and composition at the Norwegian Music Academy in Oslo, music computing at IRCAM in Paris, contemporary musicology at Université de Paris Sorbonne, and holds a PhD in sound perception and design in multimodal environments from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm (2015). Since 2005, Lindborg has taught at institutions in France and Singapore. He has published 33 peer-reviewed articles and papers in PLoS One, Leonardo, Applied Acoustics, and Applied Sciences, and book chapters for IRCAM-Delatour and Springer-LNCS, as well as numerous conference proceedings. He created the biannual Soundislands Festival (2013, 2015, and 2017).

Phyoe Kyi (b. 1977, Myanmar) is a painter, graphic designer, and a self-taught installation and performance artist based in Taunggyi, Shan State, Myanmar. Working with a variety of mediums, his conceptual and experience-based practice triggers conversations on existing social systems and the complexities of human nature, often giving voice to oppressed and forgotten people. His works has been exhibited widely across Myanmar and has been included in numerous international shows such 3rd Fukuoka Asian Art Triennial, Japan (2005) and 11th Asian Art Biennale, Bangladesh (2004). His most recent solo show, The White Clothes took place at Myanm/art Gallery, Yangon, Myanmar (2016). He curated the 1st Mingun Biennale, Mingun, Myanmar (2015).

Dr. Nielsen received his Ph.D. from UC-Berkeley in 1998, did postdoctoral research at Harvard University and worked as an assistant professor at Cornell University from 2000-2004. From 2004 he has been a Professor of Biology at the University of Copenhagen and he joined the faculty at the departments of Integrative Biology and Statistics at Berkeley in Jan. 2008.

One of the central problems he has been interested in is the molecular basis of evolutionary adaptation. What happens at the molecular levels as one species is transformed into another over evolutionary time? To address this question he has developed a number of computational methods and applied them to large scale genomic data, such as genomic comparisons of humans and chimpanzees.

He has also worked on understanding human genetic variation. He uses both classical statistical methods and evolutionary inferences to identify genetic variants that affect phenotypic variability in humans, including genetic adaptations to diet and local environmental factors. He has studied the genetic basis of human adaption to high altitude, changes in diet, and cold climates. He has also worked extensively on analyses of ancient DNA derived from fossils to understand human origins and diversification.

Robert Zhao Renhui (b. 1982, Singapore) is a multi-disciplinary artist and the founder of the Institute of Critical Zoologists. Persistently twisting reality and fiction, his artistic practice addresses the human relationship with nature challenging accepted parameters of objectivity and scientific modes of classifications. Over the years, Zhao has appropriated codes and convention of documentary photography and museum display to compose compelling narratives that subtly destabilize our notion of truth.

Zhao received his Bachelor‚ and Master‚ degree in Photography from Camberwell College of Arts and London College of Communication respectively. His work has been exhibited in international group show such as Jiwa: Jakarta Biennale, Indonesia, 2017; 7th Moscow Biennale, Russia, 2017; 20th Sydney Biennale, Australia 2016; Les Recontres d‚Arles, France, 2015. Amongst his more recent solo exhibitions in Singapore are The Nature Museum, commissioned by Singapore International Festival of Art (SIFA) and The Bizarre Honour, realized for OH! Open House, both in 2017. Zhao has undertaken residencies at the Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, France, and Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco, United States, and the Fukuoka Art Museum, Japan. He was awarded Young Artist Award by National Arts Council in 2010 and is currently a finalist of Hugo Boss Asia Art Award.

Roko Josefa Cinavilakeba (Fiji) was the son of the then Roko Sau, or the paramount chief of Totoya in Lau. Roko Rusiate Sogotubu grew up in Totoya before moving to the city for further studies. After completing his tertiary studies at the Fiji Institute of Technology, now the Fiji National University, he worked as architectural draftsman before joining the Pacific Blue foundation team. Towards the end of the same year, he was formally installed to his traditional role as the paramount chief of Totoya, one of the acknowledged traditional leaders in the Lau Group. He is also an executive member and trustee of the Fiji Locally Managed Marine Area (FLMMA) and the vice chairman of the Lau Provincial Council.

Working at the intersection between media arts and biology, Soyo Lee (b.1976, South Korea) mobilises archival materials and museological codes of display to critically examine conventions of collecting, manipulating, and displaying life-forms. In 2017, she initiated Lifeforms in Culture, an independent publishing platform dedicated to artistic and cultural inquiries about biological organisms. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at venues such as Seoul Museum of Art (2018); Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea (2015, 2016) and Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia (2016). The installation Wet Specimen Conservation (2014) is on permanent display at the Mütter Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, United States. She holds a PhD from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, United States.

Valérie Portefaix (France/Hong Kong) is Director of MAP Office, a multidisciplinary platform based in Hong Kong since 1996, co-founded with Laurent Gutierrez. The relation between bodies and territories is at the centre of its research-based artistic production. With 20 years of multifaceted navigations, publications, and exhibitions, MAP Office’s practice has evolved across multiple fields and disciplines, having recently developed a specific focus on islands and other liquid territories as a subject and object of study. Through these investigations, and after more than a decade of exploring the effects of globalisation and urbanisation in Hong Kong and China, MAP Office is investigating a new geography of archipelagos that characterise the transient and globalised environment of the Anthropocene age. MAP Office’s last cross-disciplinary research Our Ocean Guide was published in 2017 by Lightbox.

SEA STATE by artist Charles Lim Yi Yong, commissioned for the Singapore Pavilion for the 56th Venice Biennale and curated by Shabbir Hussain Mustafa, will be presented at the NTU CCA Singapore from 30 April to 10 July 2016. For over a decade, Lim’s ongoing project SEA STATE examines the biophysical, political and psychic contours of Singapore through the visible and invisible lenses of the sea. SEA STATE is an in-depth inquiry by an artist that scrutinises both man-made systems, opening new perspectives on our everyday surroundings, from unseen landscapes and disappearing islands to the imaginary boundaries of a future landmass.

SEA STATE pubic programmes

First held at the Palazzo Franchetti on the occasion of the Singapore Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale, the symposium The Geopolitical and the Biophysical: a structured conversation on Art and Southeast Asia in context will continue and expand upon the debate with a second iteration at NTU CCA Singapore during Lim’s exhibition on 17 and 18 June 2016.

The Geopolitical and the Biophysical: a structured conversation on Art and Southeast Asia in context, Part II symposium

The presentation of SEA STATE and the symposium The Geopolitical and the Biophysical: a structured conversation on Art and Southeast Asia in context, Part II held at NTU CCA Singapore are generously supported by the Ministry of Culture, Community & Youth, National Arts Council Singapore and the Singapore Tourism Board.

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Entanglements – Writing The Environment

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