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
What is ‘Worlding’ in Biocultural Worlding? is supported by CLASS JOINT NTU-ANU NTU-KCL CONFERENCE, SYMPOSIUM, AND WORKSHOP SCHEME.
This research is an inquiry into curatorial, artistic, and academic networks of exchange that foster a pluriversal understanding of Southeast Asia. It will highlight the potential of open-ended curatorial, artistic and textual endeavours that formulate their own modus operandi. Analysing motivations, methods, and audiences of three distinct art initiatives by local practitioners will provide valuable insights for the writing of future cultural policies and alternative metrics to evaluate the impact of nonconforming approaches within regional studies. This will reshape and expand policies and programmes that seek to internationalise or regionalise Singapore art scenes. Acknowledging the long-term impact of such critical thinking and the creation of alternative knowledges and transnational networks would advance traditional perspectives in Southeast Asian scholarship and its funding mechanisms.
Research Outputs
Understanding Southeast Asia as a “Geocultural Formation”: Three Case Studies of Artistic Initiatives from the Region Closed-Door Forum
Programme
Welcome by Ahmad Mashadi, Introduction by Ute Meta Bauer and David Teh
ROUND-ROBIN: INTRODUCING THE CASE STUDIES, response by John Tain
The Flying Circus Project, Introduction by SEON, Presentation by Ong Keng Sen
Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary Art and Modern Art in Asia, Introduction by Ho Tzu Nyen, Presentation by Thanavi Chotrapdit, Vera Mey and Roger Nelson
The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia, Introduction by Ong Keng Sen, Presentation by Ho Tzu Nyen
CONVERSATION: PATRICK FLORES & HSU FANG-TZE, moderated by Siddhartha Perez
CONVERSATION: GRIDTHIYA GAWEEWONG & MELATI SURYODARMO, moderated by Ute Meta Bauer
PANEL: HEIDI ARBUCKLE & KATHLEEN DITZIG, moderated by David Teh
Granted by
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
17 Sep 2019, Tue 06:00 PM – 08:00 PM
(Led by Professor Ute Meta Bauer, NTU ADM)
29 Oct 2019, Tue 06:00 PM – 08:00 PM
(Led by Professor Ute Meta Bauer, NTU ADM, and Dr Andreas Spiegl, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna)
The Exhibition Hall, Block 43 Malan Road
Sign up here.
During these reading sessions, participants will look at and discuss texts from books such as Donna Haraway’s Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene and Rosi Braidotti’s The Posthuman. The group will explore the possibility of a critical humanity, ranging from cohabitation with other forms of life to more dystopian scenarios. This links to the Centre’s overarching research topic Climates. Habitats. Environments., which examines, among others, the precarious conditions of human habitats due to climatic shifts, and their impact on geo-political, social, and cultural systems.
Concepts of Concern – A Lexicology of Ecology
Course Details
Date: Monday, 6 December 2021
Time: 7 – 10 pm
Delivery Mode: Online
Standard Course Fees: SGD 90.95 (inc. GST)
REGISTER HERE.
For enquiries please email ntuccaeducation@ntu.edu.sg
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About the Course
Concepts of Concern – A Lexicology of Ecology is a survey of terminology in social, cultural and political ecology. Old and new terms such as recycle, sustainable, green, renewable, biomass, climate change, carbon footprint, global warming or anthropocene constitute what can be called concepts of concern. They are used to propose solutions to waste, advance environmental justice and imagine new worlds, but also to justify new forms of resource extraction, industrial production and economic globalisation as necessarily eco-centric.
The 3-hour online course traces the evolution of specific eco-centric terms and their corollary discourses since the global environmental movements of the 1960s, and examines a lexicology of ecology as a springboard to engage the emerging and heterogeneous field of ecocriticism. This course will also discuss several artistic responses that operate outside the bounds of terminological discourses and its trappings.
This course is divided into three main sections:
Part 1: Overview of dominant terminology in social/cultural/political ecology since the 1960s.
Part 2: Critical examination of selected terms, such as their use in corporate propaganda and political narratives.
Part 3: Survey of non-terminological/artistic responses to the crisis of ecology.
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Your Course Instructor
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.
Open College programmes are offered on 2 tracks; Discovery and Immersive Series. Discovery Series programmes are short exploratory courses that allow participants to explore topics outside their usual fields of interest, and acquire basic knowledge and skillsets that may be transferrable to other areas of study and work. By contrast, Immersive Seriesprogrammes are more in-depth and led by professional educators, researchers and critical thinkers in their fields of expertise. Through a blend of practical projects and discussions to stimulate critical thinking and dialogue, participants will deep dive into a subject matter and gain new perspectives.
Today, a growing number of social interactions, economic transactions, political engagements, and affective relations are enabled and regulated by a global network of online platforms operated through algorithms. As algorithmic infrastructures become enmeshed in the fabric of society, more and more aspects of everyday life are being captured and released in data streams that feed digital entities unilaterally coded and controlled by profit-driven tech companies. Through extensive online and offline fieldwork conducted across the Global North and the Global South, Tiziano Bonini and Emiliano Treré—co-authors of Algorithms of Resistance. The Everyday Fight Against Platform Power (The MIT Press, 2024)—ventured into uncharted alghoritmic territories. They encountered forms of agency, practices of resistance, and bonds of solidarity enacted by users who negotiate their own terms of existence within the platform regime. In this lecture, the speakers will reflect on how grassroots practices can spark emancipatory frictions that reinvent and disrupt the uneven power relation between users and platforms.
This event is generated by bani haykal within Communities of Practice. Techno Diversions, a research programme that aims to propel a transformative understanding of technology through artistic practices and transdisciplinary synergies.
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.
The research-driven conceptual practice of Anthony Chin (b. 1969, Singapore) grows out of site-specific engagements with the historical, social, and architectural stratifications of a place. Through the articulation of ordinary materials into poetic installations, his work unravel the latent power structures and complex geopolitical narratives that undergird the colonial past and the post-colonial present. He has regularly presented his work in Singapore and abroad. His recent solo exhibitions include S$1,996/- S$831.06/-, Comma Space, Singapore (2021); TROPHY, Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Philippines (2020); and Western Pacific, Mo Shang Experiment, Beijing, China (2016). Among the group exhibitions are SAM Contemporaries: Residues & Remixes, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore (2023); For the House; Against the House, Gillman Barracks, Singapore (2022); Concept 88, Comma Space, Singapore (2022); three editions of OH! Open House, amongst others. Anthony has previously taken part in other residency programmes such as National NAC-MET international Artist Residency, Manila, Philippines (2020) and Taipei International Artists Residency season 4, Taiwan (2018).
Tekla Aslanishvili (b. 1988, Georgia) is an artist, filmmaker and essayist based between Berlin and Tbilisi. Her works emerge at the intersection of infrastructural design, history and geopolitics.
Tekla graduated from the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts in 2009 and she holds a MFA from the Berlin University of the Arts – the department of Experimental Film and New Media Art. Aslanishvili’s films have been screened and exhibited internationally at PACT Zollverein, Neue Berliner Kunstverein, Baltic Triennial, Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Kasseler Dokfest, Kunsthalle Münster, EMAF – European Media Art Festival, Videonale 18, Tbilisi Architecture Biennial. She is a 2018–2019 Digital Earth fellow, the nominee for Ars-Viva Art prize 2021 and the recipient of the Han Nefkens Foundation – Fundació Antoni Tàpies Video Art Production Award 2020.
Spanning moving image, sculpture, as well as performative installations, Priyageetha Dia (b. 1992, Singapore) addresses identity politics by questioning dominant narratives and socio-spatial relations. In the past few years, her practice has been consistently experimenting with a variety of world-making gestures that envision alternative futures. Her works have been part of several group exhibitions including, Attention Seeker, La Trobe Art Institute, Bendigo, Australia (2022); An Exercise of Meaning in a Glitch Season, National Gallery Singapore (2020); 2219: Futures Imagined, ArtScience Museum Singapore (2019). She was a recipient of the IMPART Art Award in 2019.
Drawing from ancestral histories of her birthplace, the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, Taloi Havini’s practice delves into colonial histories, the politics of location, and contested sites and materials. Many socio-political and environmental issues have pervaded Bougainville in the aftermath of a civil war that resulted from the contentious operations of the Panguna copper mine. Frequently collaborating with practitioners from her matrilineal clan in Bougainville, Havini’s ongoing research explores the transmission of indigenous knowledge systems and the conflicting interests of fraught sites in Bougainville through dissecting the biases of official archives and personal records. With issues of climate, migration, and extractive industries orienting her research compass, she will use the residency to connect with other thinkers to trigger exchange of perspectives between Southeast Asia and Oceania.
The artist’s residency was scheduled from October to December 2020. Due to the COVID-19 virus outbreak and international travel restrictions, the residency could not be carried out as planned.
Ranging from photography and sculpture to mixed-media installations, the diverse practice of Taloi Havini(b. 1981, Autonomous Region of Bougainville/Australia) explores sites of political conflicts ensuing from colonial occupations unravelling narratives of nation building within the Pacific. In positing personal responses within contested sites and histories of Oceania, her work recalibrates dominant histories and structures of representation. Havini’s solo exhibitions include Reclamation, Artspace, Sydney, Australia (2020) and Habitat, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2017). Her works have been selected as part of group shows such as Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh (2020); A beast, a god, and a line, Kunsthall Trondheim, Norway (2019); and the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland, Australia (2018).
Bojana Piškur (Slovenia) is a writer and curator at the Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana. Her research focuses on political issues and the way in which they relate to, or are manifested in, the field of art looking specifically at the regions of former Yugoslavia and Latin America. She has contributed to numerous publications and lectured extensively on topics such as post avant-gardes in former Yugoslavia, radical education, cultural politics in self-management, and the Non-Aligned Movement.
During his residency, Xu Tan will continue to work and expand on his project Keywords Lab: Socio-botany. First initiated in 2012, the work consisted of investigations and interviews with disparate voices and inhabitants around the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong province, China on their views on urbanisation in China.
By bringing Keywords Lab: Socio-botany into the context of Singapore, Xu hopes to understand Singapore’s view on the complexities that govern our relationship with the natural and built environments that we live in. Proposed points of entry are through local discussions on the history of plants, criteria in urban construction and development, citizen participation in public tree planting programmes and lastly, conditions of food production.
Xu Tan is an artist. His ongoing project Searching for Keywords analyses video interviews of different communities to identify keywords based on meanings that reveal the values and motivations of contemporary Chinese society. Between June and August 2016, Xu was Artist-in-Residence at NTU CCA Singapore where he expanded his work on the project Keywords Lab: Socio-botany (first initiated in 2012), conducting interviews with various local practitioners engaged in the practice of urban farming in Singapore.
Tan Pin Pin is a Singapore filmmaker who questions gaps in history, memory, and processes of documentation. Self-reflective in their addressing of the complexities of the filmic medium, her films include: Moving House (2001), Singapore GaGa (2005), Invisible City (2007), To Singapore with Love (2013), and In Time To Come (2017). They have been shown at numerous international film festivals around the world and have won multiple awards. She had retrospectives at RIDM Montreal, DOK Leipzig. She was the executive producer of award-winning Unteachable (2019). She is a co-founding member of filmcommunitysg, a community of independent filmmakers and was a board member of the Singapore International Film Festival, The Substation and the National Archives of Singapore. She was awarded the S. Rajaratnam scholarship to study for an MFA at Northwestern University, USA. She was awarded the S. Rajaratnam scholarship to study for an MFA at Northwestern University, USA, and was called to the Singapore Bar upon completion of her law degree from Oxford University.
During her residency at NTU CCA Singapore between May and September 2016, Tan was working on her five-year project In Time to Come (2017), a contemplative film on daily rituals in Singapore, from school ceremonies to opening protocol in a bookstore, in which constant repetition provides a sense of frozen time in a city that always looks forward.
Tan Pin Pin will use her time in residence to read as well as continue her practice of walking around Singapore, taking photos to gather material for future projects. She will also be exploring the idea of performance in documentaries and how this form may bring us closer to the truth.
Over the course of the residency, Taiki Sakpisit plans to develop A Certain Illness Difficult to Name, an installation that addresses instances of trauma and violence embedded in the process of nation building in Singapore and Thailand through the lens of an individual’s point of view. Looking at historical events through the eyes of a single character is an intentional strategy aimed to personalize and humanize history while, at the same time, composing an allegory of collective torment. Having so far mostly produced experimental short films, Taiki aims to use the space of the studio to test a more complex visual and aural installation that can elicit the sensorium of the viewer and trigger out-of-body experiences.
Svay Sareth’s works in sculpture, installation and durational performance are made using materials and processes intentionally associated with war – metals, uniforms, camouflage and actions requiring great endurance. While his critical and cathartic practice is rooted in an autobiography of war and resistance, he refuses both historical particularity and voyeurism on violence. Rather, his works traverse both present and historical moments, drawing on processes of survival and adventure, and ideas of power and futility. More recently, Svay confronts the idea that “the present is also a dangerous time” through the appropriation and dramatisation of public monuments that hint at contentious political histories. During his residency, Svay will research Singapore-Cambodia relations and history, and make use of libraries and archives specific to Singapore.
Kent Chan (b. 1984, Singapore) is a Singaporean artist, filmmaker, and curator. Addressing the relationship between moving images and the contemporary city, his work often results in films and in installations that merge text and time-based media. Lately, he has focused his interest on the symbolic and political aspects of the tropical imagination, regarding the equatorial vegetation as a site generative of alternative aesthetics and narratives. Chan has participated in numerous group exhibitions abroad and has received solo exhibitions at SCCA-Ljubljana, Centre for Contemporary Arts, Slovenia (2017); Grey Projects, Singapore (2016); Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2014); The Substation, Singapore (2013). His recent curatorial projects include State of Motion 2017: Through Stranger Eyes and Superposition(s), ICA, Singapore (2016).
Belgrade-based collective Škart is set to research the relationship between Singapore and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), excavating the historical, political, and cultural circumstances that framed Singapore’s adhesion to the movement in 1970. In recent years, the artists have been reflecting on the emancipatory potential and radical ideas purported by a movement which actively promoted the process of decolonization by subscribing to principles of cultural equality and mutual respect. Having focused so far mostly on European and South American countries, the residency provides the artists with the opportunity to expand their lines of inquiry into the context of Southeast Asia.
During her residency, siren eun young jung will research the politics of gender in the Singapore social context while considering a significant transition in her artistic development towards what she defines “Another Asian aesthetics.”
Often drawing on her experience, emotions and memories, Shooshie Sulaiman makes works and situations that create highly nuanced and personal interactions with their subjects and audiences. After receiving her BA in Fine Art from the MARA University of Technology (UiTM), Malaysia, in 1996, she received the National Art Gallery of Malaysia‚ prestigious Young Contemporaries Award, and has participated in numerous exhibitions and residencies in Malaysia and internationally.
In her paintings, drawings, books, and collages, Sulaiman infuses the social and artistic histories of Malaysia with her own responses and experiences. Between June and August 2015, she was Artist-in-Residence at NTU CCA Singapore. Her research on rubber plantation histories between Singapore and Malaya took the shape of a series of portraits executed within and outside her studio, making use of organic material such as soil and wood.
Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn (b. 1979, Canada) is an artist based in Montreal and Stockholm. In her artistic practice, she mobilizes archival materials and a variety of mediums to investigate issues of historicity, collectivism, utopian politics, and multiculturalism within the framework of feminist theories revealing the political significance of apparently trivial historical anecdotes. She has participated to numerous group shows in North America and Europe. Her most recent solo shows include: Space Fiction & the Archives at MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina, Canada (2017); Black Atlas, Museum of Ethnography, Stockholm, Sweden (2016); For An Epidemic Resistance, MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels), Canada (2014). In 2010, she completed the Whitney Independent Study Program.
Working together since 2010, Irwan Ahmett and Tita Salina are an artist duo from Jakarta, Indonesia. Their tactical interventionist approach is developed in response to their experience of living in Jakarta, a megacity of 15 million people fraught with political power struggles. In their practice, they frequently translate social issues into events that unfold spontaneously in the public sphere as a form of “urban play,” generating critical alternatives to complicated issues. Their work has been exhibited at ST PAUL St Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand (2016); Biennale Jogja, Yogyakarta, Indonesia (2015); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2014); and Singapore Biennale (2013).
Irina Botea Bucan (b. 1970, Romania) and Jon Dean (b. 1966, United Kingdom) have been working together since 2013. Their artistic collaboration unfolds through filmmaking enquiries premised on the close scrutiny of and active engagement with specific social contexts. Over the years, they developed a methodology based on the symbiotic triangulation of their roles as artists-educators-researchers. Bucan and Dean share an interest in socio-political dynamics, the de-centralisation of discourses, and they are committed to nurturing cultural differentiation outside hegemonic value systems. Their works have been shown internationally at several venues including Centre for Contemporary Art, Torun, Poland (2018); National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest, Romania (2017); The Phillips Museum of Art, Lancaster, United States (2017), and International Film Festival Rotterdam, Netherlands (2015) among others.
Research Interests:
– History of Singapore
– Iraq relations Personal and institutional archives
– Global networks of petroleum and weapons trade
– Counterterrorism intelligence
– International warfare coalitions
Instigated by a familial connection to Singapore dating to 1965, when her grandfather was sent on a training assignment to the Shell Eastern Petroleum Company in Singapore to address labour disputes, Rand Abdul Jabbar is interested in exploring the evolution of the complex bilateral relationship between Singapore and Iraq over the past 60 years, particularly pertaining to politics and counterterrorism intelligence and training.
By probing both institutional and personal archives, the research project will attempt to track relevant petro-histories, workforce tensions, the movement of arms across global trade networks, counterterrorism warfare coalitions, and conflict resolution to map out the elaborate trajectories that characterise the bonds across these two nations.
The residency of Rand Abdul Jabbar was scheduled for January – March 2021, but the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak rendered international travel impossible. In order to continue to support artistic research and foster collaborations beyond borders, the NTU CCA Residencies Programme initiated Residencies Rewired, a project that trailblazes new pathways to collaboration.
Research Liaison: Rafi Abdullah
Through research, writing, and curating, cultural worker Rafi Abdullah entwines politics of space and personal histories. He recently completed his BA in Arts Management at LASALLE College of the Arts.
Pelin Tan is involved in research-based artistic and architectural projects that focus on urban conflict & territorial politics, gift economy, the condition of labour and mixed methods in research. She has also done research into artist-run-spaces whilst she was a research fellow with The Japan Foundation in 2012. While in residence, Tan will connect with local artists and institutions whilst exploring the larger region of Southeast Asia.
The time and space of the residency are being used by Ho Tzu Nyen to map out his current and forthcoming projects for the next three years as well as their conceptual and aesthetic kinships. Other than further iterations of his growing multi-part work The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia (2014-ongoing), the artist is currently engaged in a series of works that probe Asia’s political histories and spiritual thought systems. Specifically, he is interested in the histories of revolt and subversion sited at both the ‘left’ and the ‘right’ end of the political spectrum, paying attention to figures, moments, and movements that eschew classification under an obsolete scheme of polarized opposition. At the same time, he is also intent on speculating about the relevance these questions will carry in 50 years’ time when our existing epistemological frameworks will be drastically altered by accelerated technological transformations, geopolitical shifts, and ecological crises at a planetary level.
Prompted by recent shifts in the political climate of his own country, Munem Wasif is currently working on a film project titled Goom (forced disappearance, kidnapping in Bangla.) The work revolves around the increasing phenomenon of people gone missing, disappearances that often remain unexplained and unaccounted for. Less interested in excavating factual and political circumstances, the artist rather plans to focus on the human figures of the disappeared, tracing the emotional and psychological repercussions of their violent vanishment as an attempt to ultimately reinstate their visibility. Still at an initial stage of development, Goom is conceived as an experimental process which borrows from various techniques and methodologies to capture the affective landscape generated by loss. During the residency, Munem Wasif will try to hone his poetic visual language to convey memory and recollection of these violent losses.
In his artistic practice, Min Thein Sung (b. 1978, Myanmar) engages with daily life in Myanmar addressing the complex history of a country that was long isolated from the world. Often playful and poetic, his works conjure up patterns of creativity and modes of imagination that circulate under restrictive political regimes.
His work has been exhibited internationally at the 8th Asia Pacific Triennial, Brisbane, Australia, 2015; the 5th Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale, Japan, 2014; H Project Space, Bangkok, Thailand, 2011; Kunstverein Bad Aibling, Germany, 2010.
Intrigued by the state-control of language and the memorialisation of individuals in Singapore, in the past three months Daniel Hui has been researching the forgotten figure of Tan Chu Boon. He was the older brother of Tan Chay Wa (1948–1983), a Malayan political dissident and official of the Malayan National Liberation Front, a militant organisation linked to the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM). With the exacerbation of the relationship between the CPM and both the Singaporean and the Malaysian governments in the post-independence period, Chay Wa was executed in Kuala Lumpur on the charge of possessing firearms. Shortly after burying his brother in Singapore, Chu Boon was imprisoned because the tombstone inscription, which eulogised Chay Wa as a martyr, was deemed by the government “prejudicial to the security of Singapore.” This research will lead to the production of a new work that intertwines personal testimonies, anecdotes, and official histories.
Intrigued by the power tensions embedded in historical narratives, during the residency Chang Wen-Hsuan will further her research on two different projects. Drawing comparisons between the conflicting relationship of the Taiwanese Communist Party, Japan, and China in Taiwan, and the Malayan Communist Party, Japan, and the United Kingdom in Singapore, the artist aims to excavate influences and discrepancies between different colonial legacies and forms of resistance. In parallel, she will also expand Writing FACTory, a roaming platform for writing and publishing that produces discourse, research, and printed matters as a space for artistic and political practice. This latter project, first launched in Taiwan in 2018, performs a critical examination of how writings are framed, shared, and circulated in today’s digital age. Chang will further develop it in the context of Singapore through library research and interviews conducted with independent local publishers, artists, and artist book fair organisers.
Iranian-born artist Siah Armajani merges architecture and conceptual art in his sculptures, drawings, and public installations. Informed by democratic ideologies and inspired by American vernacular architecture, his works include gathering spaces for communality, emphasizing the “nobility of usefulness.” His highly acclaimed public art and architectural projects have included bridges, gardens, and outdoor structures, that have been commissioned and presented worldwide. A retrospective featuring his artistic career spanning over more than five decades was recently on view at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and inaugurates in March at The MET Breuer, New York.
Ready, Steady, Go (2 — 8 August 2017)
Incidental Scripts (10 — 15 August 2017)
Proximities and Encounters (16 — 22 August 2017)
Islanded (23 — 31 August 2017)
Speakers’ Corner is a selection of video documentations of former public events and related research materials from its archives. Here, the term “Speakers’ Corner” stands as a metaphor for public discourses created through the various programmes of NTU CCA Singapore. Outreach not only means to create discussions but also to find different languages, or to question under what premises we create our knowledge. Altogether this is what creates a public discourse or a “speakers’ corner” within an institution, which can be academic, literary, or performative. It opens up the possibility for encounters with the known and unknown, the expected and unexpected, as a form of its lively activities.
NTU CCA Singapore’s public programmes reflect on our present world through culture and art. Unfolding over two months will be four chapters: Islanded, Incidental Scripts, Proximities and Encounters, and Ready, Steady, Go. Each chapter is related to an exhibition held at NTU CCA Singapore such as Incidental Scripts by Yang Fudong (2014) or SEA STATE by Charles Lim Yi Yong (2016), or to invited local and international Artists-in-Residence and their artistic research and practices like Heman Chong (2017) or Zac Langdon-Pole (2014). On a broader scheme, the events offer an expanded reading and understanding of the complexity and diversity of the contemporary art production of today and how it intersects with current developments in culture, society, and politics.
Cyprien Gaillard lives and works in Berlin. In his work, he reflects upon meanings and memories of monuments and landscapes that have been erased and replaced by the effects of time and social and cultural transformation. He had numerous solo exhibitions, including MOMA P.S.1, New York (2013); Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2011, 2008); the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2011). In 2011 he was awarded the Preis der Nationalgalerie für junge Kunst and the Prix Marcel Duchamp.
Isaac Julien, CBE RA is a distinguished filmmaker and installation artist, and Professor, UC Santa Cruz. His multiscreen film installations and photographs incorporate different artistic disciplines to create a poetic and unique visual language. Julien’s notable documentary-drama, Looking for Langston (1989), garnered him a cult following. His works have shown in solo shows internationally, and he has participated in various biennales. Most recently, he received the Charles Wollaston Award (2017) for most distinguished work at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, and in 2018 he was made a Royal Academician. Julien was awarded the title Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the Queen’s birthday honours, 2017.
Integrated within NTU CCA Singapore’s overarching research framework PLACE.LABOUR.CAPITAL, The Lab will present Darcy Lange: Hard, however, and useful is the small, day-to-day work, taking the video work of New Zealand artist, Darcy Lange (1946 – 2005) as the starting point for a complex discussion concerning the representation of labour. During the 1970s, Lange developed a socially engaged video practice with remarkable studies of people at work that draw from documentary traditions as well as conceptual and structuralist video making. With his seminal style of real-time, unedited, without commentary, lengthy observations of workers that came to characterise his Work Studies series (1972 – 77), Lange aimed to “convey the image of work as work, as an occupation, as an activity, as creativity and as a time consumer”.
Curated by guest curator, Mercedes Vicente.
This ongoing research project is inspired by Amar Kanwar’s The Sovereign Forest. Referencing Kanwar’s artistic approach, The Haze: An Inquiry brought together people from different disciplines in a focus group that takes the haze situation in Southeast Asia as the main topic for investigation.
How do we bridge the gap from the banal to the sensual, the tactical and visceral? What steps of inquiry leads us from the scientific to the notion of immediacy? How do we define abstract terms such as “crime” – Is the haze a crime? What is a crime against society? Different perspectives are offered in this process by participants from diverse backgrounds, including a research scientist, theatre director, community leader, writer, tech consultant, co-founder of a hackerspace, activist, designer and curator, geographer, architect, and postgraduate student.
A core group of specialists from varied fields of law, natural and social sciences, literature, art and architecture, media and theatre, is brought together in a series of workshops and discussions to explore the haze situation as an environmental, human, and legal challenge, given its transnational impact. The aim is to create a collection of “evidence” and to investigate the potential of the haze to be considered a “crime”. This collecting which include factual information and data, compilation of ancestral knowledge, media clippings, commentaries, unrecorded oral knowledge, as well as writings, photographs, and films will be gathered in the space amidst working notes of the core group. Using these “evidences”, participants will uncover social and environmental impacts beyond the haze, and deliberate on questions of social justice, corporate environmental responsibilities, agronomy cultures in industrial developments, amongst others. Each participant brings to the discussion individual responses that stem from their respective interests and disciplines. This research platform aims to assemble a diversity of viewpoints to provoke alternative ways of looking at and talking with a wider public about contemporary situations of urgency.
In addition to the series of closed and public workshops, discussions, and presentations participants in the core group is engaged in, they are also encouraged to invite guests who will make further inquiries into the “evidences” in The Lab and to look into collaborative working methods of shared agency.
On the occasion of the launch of the Digital Resource Platform, NTU CCA Singapore is presenting a selection of materials from Singapore’s Independent Archive (IA), a research and resource platform dedicated to time-based media, established by internationally-renowned artist Lee Wen (Singapore) in 2012. For the past six years, the IA captured the zeitgeist of performance art in Singapore and larger (South-)East Asia through artistic collaborations.
This presentation in The Lab is organised into five chapters —“Condition,” “Body,” “Formation / Gestalt,” “Absence,” and “Memory”—that look at the development of performance art as a new medium as well as its political conditions. Journey of a Yellow Man. takes visitors through the archive with photographs, videos, writings, sketchbooks, while simultaneously, introducing the digital archive. As of today, the Centre has digitalised 20,000 files from the IA.
The practice of Lee Wen is motivated by social investigations that use art to interrogate stereotypical perceptions of culture and society. He became famous for his performance series Journey of a Yellow Man (1992—), where he embodied his Chinese descent and its relationship to oppressive systems.
The presentation provides insight into a continuously expanding resource platform that highlights ephemeral moments in the history of performance art in Singapore. The project addresses the importance of providing historically significant source material for researchers and the wider public. The digitalised files will be integrated into NTU CCA Singapore’s Public Resource Platform and will be accessible at the Centre, the Independent Archive, and the Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong, a collaborative partner of this project.
With IA, a series of public programmes will take place in both The Lab at the NTU CCA Singapore and in the IA. The programme highlights IA as a “living archive” that not only serves as a reference library and archive focusing on time-based and event-specific art, but is also a gathering space that offers dynamic programmes in a vibrant network of artists, musicians, and the public.
Journey of a Yellow Man is curated by Sophie Goltz, Deputy Director, Research and Academic Programmes, NTU CCA Singapore, in collaboration with Lee Wen, artist and Founder, Independent Archive, Singapore, Bruce Quek, Research, Independent Archive, and Kamiliah Bahdar, Public Programmes, Independent Archive. Project Assistant: Ho See Wah, Young Professional Trainee, NTU CCA Singapore. Assistant to Lee Wen: Liu Wen Chao, Library, Independent Archive.
The NTU CCA Digital Resource Platform was initiated in 2016 by Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director, NTU CCA Singapore, and Professor, NTU ADM Singapore and Lee Wen, in collaboration with Chương-Đài Võ, Researcher, Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong. Assistant to the project: Bruce Quek with the support of Samantha Leong Min Yu, Executive, Conferences, Workshops & Archive, NTU CCA Singapore (till May 2018), Corine Chan Li Ling, Executive Archive, NTU CCA Singapore (May to July 2018), and Pooja Paras Mehta (2017), Ho See Wah (2018), Young Professional Trainees, NTU CCA Singapore.
Campur, Tolak, Kali, Bahagi, Sama Dengan (Add, Subtract, Multiply, Divide, Equals) is a solo project by late and cherished artist Roslisham Ismail aka Ise. In 2016 during a short trip in Germany, Ise jotted down in his notebook the title of a much-contemplated solo project: Campur, Tolak, Kali, Bahagi, Sama Dengan (Add, Subtract, Multiply, Divide, Equals), to which he returned two years later when eventually, such an exhibition became possible in Kuala Lumpur. Ise saw in basic arithmetic operations and their specific properties, a reflection of his artistic process Actions are performed differently; the results could be the same. “Painters 100 years ago—” explains Ise in an interview “—also went to the market to buy vegetables and put them in a still life painting. For me it was the same. I went to the market and put the food on display. It’s just another way of working.”
An exhibition that takes place a little more than one year since the artist’s passing rightfully carries deeper significance and responsibility. While this exhibition was not conceived as a survey of Ise’s broad practice, it is defined, as the title suggests, by a reflexive scope. Although produced four years apart, the two bodies of work that shape this project intimately interconnect. Seamlessly they capture Ise’s art-making process, his distinctive ways of navigating the world and embedding the serendipity of life and social encounters in artistic practice.
Aimed to foster connections between artists and a new context, to provide much-needed time and space for reflection and encounters, artist-in-residence programmes represented an important catalyst in the development of Ise’s artistic practice. Their nature suit Ise’s method of working, social flair, endless curiosity and conceivably offered a means to take distance from a familiar environment and reflect on it from afar. A ramification of his residency project at Bangkok University Gallery, Operation Bangkok (2014) maps Ise’s encounters with the city and its inhabitants. From the abandoned New World Mall, Thieves’ Market, Crocodile Temple (Wat Chakrawat) to anti-government protests in Lumpini Park, to name a few, Ise guides us to places and events meaningful to those for whom Bangkok is home. We discover through Ise’s eyes and interactions, Bangkok as a living city rather than a tourist destination on the global market.
Fictional characters have been recurrent in Ise’s drawings informed by the visual vernacular of comics. In 2018, he started a collaboration with the comic book artist Ibrahim Hamid (Pak Him), whose work Ise knew since primary school. In the vicissitudes of life, they first met at the hospital in Kota Bharu, where both were undergoing dialysis treatment. Ise commissioned Pak Him to execute, following his instructions and study drawings, a series of graphic novel illustrations. These comics, displayed in mobile lightboxes, employ strategies of self-narration situating Ise inside the story as protagonist. Checked for hours at Christchurch’s customs under the odd suspicion of being a “drug designer”; mugged in Barcelona at knifepoint; stopped by the police in Jakarta after Malaysia won a regional cup in a football match against Indonesia but backed by his peers, and so on, Ise revived his micro-narratives through a fictionalised persona and Pak Him’s craftsmanship. Portraying himself within a world with many others, friends and strangers alike, Ise affirmed his continuous interest in the virtues and intricacies of the social.
The publication of this exhibition takes the format of a special issue of SentAp!, the magazine founded by curator Nur Hanim Khairuddin and Ise in 2005. Dedicated to Ise, this issue is designed by Yan; and it includes a welcome note by Ute Meta Bauer, a series of interviews by writer Tan Zi Hao with the curators Ark Fongsmut, Nur Hanim Khairuddin, and Russell Storer; an essay and a conversation with ruangrupa by curator Anca Rujoiu.
Roslisham Ismail aka Ise’s solo project is realised in collaboration with Ise parkingproject Foundation with the support of A+ Works of Art and NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore. The exhibition is presented in The Lab at NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore between 16 January – 28 February 2021.
anGie seah’s multidisciplinary practice traverses the mediums of drawing, sculpture, performance art, installation, sound and video. Seah allows spontaneity and intuition to navigate a range of shifting emotional resonances and psychological states. Experimenting with articulations of spoken language, she searches for authentic expression and primal beauty. For more than a decade, she has been working with diverse communities on participatory projects. Since 1997 anGie has exhibited widely including at ZKM Centre for New Media, Germany; Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Japan; and the Palais de Tokyo, France; as well as at NTU CCA Singapore and the Singapore Biennale.
“Speaking nearby” to the exhibition Trinh T. Minh-ha. Films., this research presentation showcases the Wattis Institute’s year-long research season on Trinh’s multifaceted practice as a filmmaker, writer and theorist. What does the promise of “speaking nearby” rather than “speaking about” look like today? What are the politics of hospitality? What are the problematics of “post-feminism,” and how do we challenge the West as the authoritative subject of feminist knowledge? Expanding the discursive orbit of these questions, the presentation features projects by artists Hồng-Ân Trương (US) and Genevieve Quick (US), and is accompanied by the online convening Mother Always Has a Mother, a result of the ongoing research collaboration between NTU CCA Singapore, Rockbund Art Museum (Shanghai), and the Wattis Institute.
Conceived by Kim Nguyen (Canada/United States), Curator and Head of Programs, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts (Wattis), San Francisco.
Mona Vătămanu (b. 1968, Romania) and Florin Tudor (b. 1974, Swtizerland) have worked together since 2000. Their artistic practice spans diverse media including film, photography, painting, performance, and site-specific projects. Vatamanu and Tudor’s broad-reaching practice has positioned them among the most compelling and literate interpreters of our contemporary post-communist condition, which extends far beyond their native Romania. Widely shown in Europe, Vatamanu and Tudor’s artistic practice involves bringing history into the present tense, whether in the form of performative re-enactment or symbolic recuperation. A deep interest in architecture as a repository of both personal and collective memory and as a mark of communist power underlies many of their projects.
Confounding ordinary notions of legibility, the work of Sonya Lacey addresses the politics of communication by tampering with the concrete textures of language. Specifically conceived for The Vitrine, Speed Reading combines two bodies of work that put the sheer physicality of language to a test. Headlines from The Straits Times and Solar Print Tests (both 2017) result from a series of experiments, undertaken by the artist during her residency at NTU CCA Singapore, where she exposed newsprint paper to both sunlight and artificial light, while Dilutions, an earlier work from 2016, is a sculptural piece involving a movable metal typeface and the process of corrosion determined by lead oxide. Slowly warping over time, the material components entailed in the production and circulation of the written word, Speed Reading alters the boundaries of legibility and shakes the physical foundations of the transmission of knowledge.
The exhibition China. The Arts – The People, Photographs and Films from the 1980s and 1990s by acclaimed filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger (b. 1942 in Constance, Germany) is the first large-scale exhibition by the award-winning filmmaker and artist in Asia. The selection of works focuses on Ottinger’s research and travels in China and Mongolia during the 1980s and 1990s, comprising four films and more than one hundred photographs. The photographs, created largely in parallel with the production of her films, will be unfolded along the artist’s leitmotifs.
Starting with China. The Arts – The People (1985), the exhibition leads a journey through the cultures and geographies of China, while also exploring the relationship between moving image and still life. The three acts of the documentary are presented on a three-screen installation, documenting everyday life in Beijing (February 1985), Sichuan Province (March 1985), and Yunnan Province (March 1985). While meeting the film director Ling Zifeng in one chapter, a Bamboo factory is visited in another, and in parallel the Sani people, a minority group, show their habitat, the Stone Forest.
Taiga. A Journey to Northern Mongolia (1992), a documentary over eight hours long that will be presented on multiple monitors throughout the exhibition space, looks into the everyday life of nomadic peoples in Mongolia. Furthermore, on view in the cinematic space of the Centre, The Single Screen, will be Exile Shanghai (1997), a film telling the six life stories of German, Austrian, and Russian Jews intersecting in Shanghai after their escape from Nazi Germany, as well as Johanna d’Arc of Mongolia (1989), Ottinger’s only feature fiction film presenting a cast starring Badema, Lydia Billiet, Inés Sastre, and Delphine Seyrig.
From 1962 to 1968, Ulrike Ottinger was living as an independent artist in Paris, where at the University of Paris-Sorbonne she attended lectures on ethnography and religion of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Louis Althusser, and Pierre Bourdieu. Over the decades, she has created an extensive image archive, including films, photographs of her own as well as collections of postcards, magazine illustrations, and other iconographic documents from times and places worldwide. Driven by her curiosity for people and places, the artist’s images alternate between documentary insight and theatrical extravagance, presenting encounters with everyday realities at the intersection of the contemporary, the traditional, and the ritual.
The extraordinary filmic and photographic oeuvre from China and Mongolia of the 1980s and 1990s prove her outstanding practice and beyond. Fighting for permission to travel and film in communist China, Ottinger’s interest in Asia also broke with the Cold War stereotype of that time. Her inimitable universe of provinces and regions of China is filled with rich imagery of various provinces in China and nomadic societies in Northern Mongolia and their history, paying attention to the presence of local details and reaching far beyond its described territory.
The exhibition is accompanied by an intensive public programme, starting with a Behind the Scenes discussion with the artist on her practice as photographer and filmmaker. The programmed talks and screenings will reflect on the notion of the documentary, the intersection of documentary and fiction, and the potential that artistic production can have for anthropology, cultural studies, and history.
Initially a painter, Ottinger came to filmmaking in the early 1970s. She furthermore produced operas, several theatre plays, and radio dramas. Her films have received numerous awards and have been shown at the world’s most important film festivals, as well as appreciated in multiple retrospectives, including Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival (2013), Centre Pompidou, Paris (2010), Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid (2004), The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2000), and Cinémathèque française, Paris (1982). Her work has been featured in major international exhibitions such as Documenta (2017, 2002), Gwangju Biennale (2014), Berlin Biennale (2010, 2004), and Shanghai Biennale (2008). Recent solo shows include, among others, Johanna Breede Photokunst, Berlin (2015, 2013), Sammlung Goetz, Munich (2012), Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2011), Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin (2011), and Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (2004). Major monographs include Ulrike Ottinger: World Images (2013), Ulrike Ottinger (2012), Ulrike Ottinger: N.B.K. Ausstellungen Band 11 (2011), Floating Food (2011), and Image Archive (2005). In 2011, she was awarded the Hannah Höch Prize for her creative work, and in 2010 honoured with the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Ulrike Ottinger: China. The Arts – The People, Photographs and Films from the 1980s and 1990s is curated by Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director, and Khim Ong, Deputy Director, Exhibitions, Residencies and Public Programmes.
Bani Abidi’s early engagement with video led her to performance and photography. The Guggenheim acquired three works by Abidi, The Boy Who Got Tired of Posing (2006), The Ghost of Mohammed Bin Qasim (2006), and This Video Is a Reenactment (2006), which include installations of video photography, and text. Through these elements, the figure of Mohammad bin Qasim, considered Pakistan’s early colonial founder in state history, is brought to life in a lighthearted and candid portrayal that provides an opportunity to reflect on the history of the South Asian nation. Solo exhibitions of Abidi’s work have been presented at the Baltic Center for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, United Kingdom (2011); and Experimenter, Kolkata (2012–13). Important group exhibitions include: Making Normative Orders: Demonstrations of Power, Doubt and Protest, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt (2012); and Documenta 13 (2012). Abidi lives and works in Karachi and New Delhi.
Ghosts and Spectres — Shadows of History features video installations and films by Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand), Ho Tzu Nyen (Singapore), Nguyen Trinh Thi (Vietnam), and Park Chan-kyong (South Korea). The artists’ research into their own cultural and historical backgrounds gain shape through allegories that re-evaluate the social and political reforms in Post-War and Cold-War Asia. The cinematic works in the exhibition combine fact and fiction. They not only allude to rarely discussed subject-matters but also raise crucial questions about power and authority, construction of narratives, repression of identities, and collective trauma.
Embedded in the vernacular, ghosts, myths, and rituals present systems of knowledge that enable the expression of unknown worlds. Ghosts and Spectres — Shadows of History brings to light clouded histories at times not officially recounted but those that remain a lingering presence in collective memories through local mythologies, ghostly figures, and traditions. The works create their own language and systems of reference, reflecting current efforts of exposing written historical accounts and contemporary situations that subvert mainstream narratives.
In parallel, The Lab, NTU CCA Singapore’s platform for research in-progress, will be featuring projects by siren eun young jung (South Korea) and Choy Ka Fai (Singapore/Germany), both recent NTU CCA Singapore artists-in-residence. While jung focuses on Yeoseong Gukgeuk, a vanishing form of traditional Korean theatre featuring only female performers, Choy brings up his long-time research into Butoh dance, also called “dance of darkness,” and looks at its evolution and influence through one of the Butoh founders, Tatsumi Hijikata.
Ghosts and Spectres—Shadows of History is curated by Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director, NTU CCA Singapore, and Professor, School of Art, Design and Media, NTU, and Khim Ong, Deputy Director, Curatorial Programmes.
Norberto Roldan’s work offers a commentary on the social, political, and cultural conditions of the Philippines via assemblages of object, text, and image. Roldan’s F-16 (2012), acquired for the Guggenheim’s collection, draws a relationship between the colonization of the Philippines and events on today’s global stage. In 1986, he founded Black Artists in Asia, a Philippines-based group focused on socially and politically progressive practice. He is also the cofounder of the Manila gallery Green Papaya Art Projects. Roldan has had solo exhibitions at Now Gallery, Manila (2011 and 2012); and Vulcan Artbox, Waterford, Ireland (2012). He was also a finalist for the Philip Morris Philippines Art Award, Manila, in 1996, 1997, and 1999. In 1998, he was selected as Juror’s Choice for the same award, as well for the Art Association of the Philippines Annual Art Competition. Roldan lives and works in Manila.
Tayeba Begum Lipi makes paintings, prints, installations, and videos. Lipi cofounded the Britto Arts Trust, Bangladesh’s first artist-run alternative arts platform, which has extended its reach beyond Bangladesh through exhibitions, residencies, talks, collaborations, and exchanges. Her 2012 work Love Bed, acquired for the Guggenheim’s collection, addresses themes of female identity, and references the double bind of political and gender-specific violence. Lipi was awarded the Grand Prize at the Asian Art Biennial, Dhaka, in 2004, and was the commissioner for the Bangladesh Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011). She has had solo exhibitions at Alliance Française (1998 and 2004) and Bengal Gallery (2007) in Dhaka. Notable group exhibitions include the Venice Biennale (2011) and Colombo Art Biennial (2012). Lipi lives and works in Dhaka.
Tran Luong’s practice spans painting, installation, and performance art. The artist came to international prominence as part of a group of artists called the Gang of Five, and was responsible for leading the development of contemporary art in Vietnam in the late 1980s and early ’90s. Acquired for the Guggenheim’s collection, Tran’s video installation Lập Lòe (2012) features the red scarf—an item of historical and political significance associated with communism—waving, floating, and being snapped against the artist’s body. Tran is a member of the curatorial team for the 2013 Singapore Biennial, and has participated in notable group exhibitions including Negotiating Home, History and Nation: Two Decades of Contemporary Art in Southeast Asia 1991–2011, Singapore Art Museum (2011). Tran lives and works in Hanoi.
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 is pleased to present The Oceanic, an exhibition focusing on large-scale human interventions in oceanic ecospheres with contributions by 12 artists, filmmakers, composers, and researchers who engage with both the long cultural histories of Pacific Ocean archipelagos and their current conditions. As part of Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary–Academy’s (TBA21–Academy) The Current, an ongoing research initiative into pressing environmental, economic, and socio-political concerns, NTU CCA Singapore’s Founding Director Professor Ute Meta Bauer was invited to lead the project’s first cycle of expeditions from 2015–17. The featured contributors in The Oceanic are The Current Fellows who joined the expeditions on TBA21–Academy’s vessel Dardanella to Papua New Guinea (2015), French Polynesia (2016), and Fiji (2017).
The expedition to Papua New Guinea, with Laura Anderson Barbata (Mexico/United States), Tue Greenfort (Denmark/Germany), Newell Harry (Australia), and Jegan Vincent de Paul (Sri Lanka/Canada), took as a starting point the concept of the Kula Ring, a ceremonial exchange system practiced in the Trobriand Islands. The second excursion, to French Polynesia, titled Tuamotus, the Tahitian name for distant islands, included Nabil Ahmed (Bangladesh/United Kingdom), Atif Akin (Turkey/United States), PerMagnus Lindborg (Sweden/Singapore), and Filipa Ramos (Portugal/United Kingdom). The atolls Mururoa and Fangataufa were the sites for 193 nuclear tests between 1966 and 1996, despite being declared a biosphere reserve by UNESCO in 1977. Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the first atomic weapons test on Mururoa, then considered a French colony in Polynesia, this expedition discussed the still neglected long-term impact of nuclear experiments in the Pacific on the populations and the environment. On the third and last expedition of this cycle, the Fijian practice of the Tabu/Tapu, where a community chief demarcates something as “sacred,” or “forbidden,” continued the enquiry on the Polynesian Rahui—a traditional rule system that in recent times became significant for marine conservation and resource management. This journey to the Fijian Lau Islands was joined by The Current Fellows Guigone Camus (France), Lisa Rave (United Kingdom/Germany), and Kristy H. A. Kang (United States/Singapore). Participating in all three expeditions was Armin Linke (Italy/Germany), who not only documented these journeys with his camera, but also questioned the role of image production in such unique yet loaded encounters.
Stemming from this cycle of expeditions, the exhibition addresses various ecological urgencies affecting the ocean and its littorals as a habitat for humans, fauna, and flora, as well as particular aspects of sea governance. Questions addressed in the show include: Who are the regulators of global oceans? Why should communities who only contribute one per cent of the global carbon footprint be among the first ones to be fatally affected by the rise of sea levels caused by global warming? Is the economic benefit of land- and seabed mining evenly shared with the impacted communities? What are the long-term effects of such industries? Who owns the ocean?
The interest in exposing the technology behind the human infrastructures is present in Armin Linke’s video installation OCEANS – Dialogues between ocean floor and water column (2017) while Tue Greenfort explores complex ecosystems and scientific production practices, challenging human understanding of and relationship with nature and culture.
Inspired by the materials used for gift exchanges such as the Kula Ring, Newell Harry documents this practice in his black-and-white photo series (Untitled) Nimoa and Me: Kiriwina Notes (2015–16), and also creates (Untitled) Anagrams and Objects for RU & RU (2015) with text on tapa, a cloth made from softened bark. Likewise incorporating items by artisans from Milne Bay Province, Laura Anderson Barbata produced striking costumes for the performative piece Ocean Calling (2017), created as part of TBA21–Academy’s intervention on World Ocean Day 2017 at the plaza in front of the United Nations Headquarters in New York.
Addressing the exploitation of finite resources, Nabil Ahmed collaborates with other researchers to call for an Inter-Pacific Ring Tribunal (INTERPRT) (2016–ongoing), a long-term investigation into environmental justice in the Pacific region. Lisa Rave’s film Europium (2014) investigates this rare eponymous mineral that has become one of the allures of deep-sea mining—the new gold rush spreading across the global oceans. In Europium, Rave also draws the often-invisible connections between colonialism, ecology, and currencies.
The exhibition will also include a sound component by PerMagnus Lindborg who recorded the land and underwater soundscapes of the Tuamotus in French Polynesia, as well as a film programme selected by Filipa Ramos and other The Current Fellows. Jegan Vincent de Paul will expand his research on socio-economic networks into the Pacific region. In The Lab, the Centre’s project space, anthropologist Guigone Camus will display documentation from the Fiji expedition, as well as diverse materials from her extensive research in Kiribati, while Kristy H. A. Kang will reflect on her experience in Fiji through an iterative installation and research process that will explore vernacular forms of mapping cultural memory and spatial narrative.
The Oceanic marks the start of NTU CCA Singapore’s new overarching research topic Climates.Habitats.Environments., which will inform and connect the Centre’s various activities—ranging from research to residencies and exhibitions—for the next three years. This is the third exhibition by the Centre, following Allan Sekula’s Fish Story, to be continued (2015) and Charles Lim Yi Yong’s SEA STATE (2016), to feature long-term, critical enquiries by artists about the radical changes for communities whose livelihoods are inseparable from the sea, the precarious labour at sea, and the irreversible impact of technologically driven human interventions on one of the Earth’s most precious resources, the oceans.
This opportunity has led to a Memorandum of Understanding between TBA21 and the Nanyang Technological University in developing academic and scientific relationships.
From 25 – 27 January 2018, on the occasion of the exhibition and coinciding with Singapore Art Week 2018, The Current Convening #3, conceived by Professor Bauer, Markus Reymann, Director of TBA21–Academy, and Stefanie Hessler, Curator of TBA21–Academy, will take place at the Centre, featuring conversations, roundtables, workshops, performances, and screenings. The event will focus on modalities of exchange and shared responsibilities, while addressing the rights of nature and cultures.
Vincent Leong’s practice often concentrates on the production of nation and culture across media including photography and video. Acquired by the Guggenheim in 2012, Leong’s pair of portrait photographs, Keeping Up with the Abdullahs (2012), assembles family members from two minority ethnicities in Malaysia—Chinese and Indian—addressing the subject of assimilation in a multiethnic country. Leong’s work has been presented in solo exhibitions at Valentine Willie Fine Art, Kuala Lumpur (2007 and 2012), and Sculpture Square, Singapore (2007). The artist has also been featured in the following notable group exhibitions: Some Rooms, Osage Gallery, Hong Kong (2009); Our Own Orbit, Tembi Contemporary, Jogya, Indonesia (2009); and Tanah Ayer: Malaysian Stories from the Land, Selasar Sunaryo Art Space, Bandung, Indonesia (2011). Leong lives and works in Kuala Lumpur.
Amar Kanwar has been filming the industrial interventions that have reshaped and permanently destroyed parts of Odisha’s landscape – a battleground on issues of development and displacement since the 1990s. The resulting conflicts between local communities, the government, and corporations over the use of agricultural lands, forests, revers and minerals, have led to an ongoing regime of violence that is unpredictable and often invisible. A long-term commitment of Kanwar, The Sovereign Forest initiates a creative response to the understanding of crime, politics, human rights and ecology. The validity of poetry as evidence in a trial, the discourse on seeing, and the determination of self, all come together as a constellation of films, texts, books, photographs, objects, seeds and processes.
The Sovereign Forest is produced with the support of Samadrusti, Odisha, India; Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, Austria; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Yorkshire Sculpture Park, United Kingdom; Public Press, New Delhi, India; and dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany.
The exhibition at NTU CCA Singapore and its public programmes are curated by Ute Meta Bauer, Khim Ong, and Magdalena Magiera, in collaboration with Amar Kanwar, Sudhir Pattnaik and Sherna Dastur.
The Sovereign Forest is produced with the support of Samadrusti, Odisha, India; Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, Austria; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Yorkshire Sculpture Park, United Kingdom; Public Press, New Delhi, India; and dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany.
NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore is pleased to present Arus Balik – From below the wind to above the wind and back again, an exhibition project that initiated from a conversation between Belgian curator Philippe Pirotte and Jakarta-based artist Ade Darmawan. Reconsidering Indonesian author Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s epic book Arus Balik (1995), which could be translated into English as a “turning of the tide,” the eponymous exhibition takes the novel as a starting point to reflect on perspectival shifts in geopolitical, cultural, social, religious, and natural spheres.
In his fictional account, Pramoedya elaborates on the weakening of the maritime culture of Javanese kingdoms in the early 16th century, the progressive Islamisation, and the beginning of Portuguese occupation on parts of the now Malay and Indonesian peninsula and archipelago. Important is that Pramoeda’s reversal of perspective as a meta-geographical impulse is comparable to the notion of the “inverted telescope” Benedict Anderson advances in his seminal book Spectre of Comparisons (1998): as a non-Eurocentric method of comparison in which for example Portugal is viewed from the standpoint of Southeast Asia, as through an inverted telescope, which causes a kind of vertigo. Pramoedya suggests that the final decline of the Majapahit empire, and the “change from traditional independence to colonial possession,” was largely caused by the different Javanese kingdoms having gradually turned their backs to the sea.
The participating artists expand on this prompt through installations, sculptures, films, performances, and texts, both existing works as well as new commissions. Ade Darmawan re-read Arus Balik with a special focus on how protagonists use natural resources, and will create a distilling dispositive with alkaline water from the straits, recalling that all the scrambling for the control of the archipelago was about the extraction of ore and goods. ila questions what it means to be Boyanese, Buginese, Minangkabau, or Javanese through encounters with Singapore residents now conflated as Malay. Their testimonies will be written on her body and wither, while exposed to salty water and weather on reclaimed areas of Singapore island. Paradise Blueprint (2017), a wallpaper designed by Zac Langdon-Pole, based on a cyanotype photogram of the removed legs of a so-called “Bird of Paradise,” addresses the history of cultural exchange and mythology surrounding the birds native to Papua New Guinea. Lucy Raven creates silk paintings or monoprints, made by imprint of sedimentation in erosion tables, as scrim backdrops she uses for a forthcoming film-production, called Kongkreto, inspired by the 1991 eruption of Mt Pinatubo in the Philippines that finally chased off the Americans from Clark Airbase. Book-aficionado, artist, and writer Shubigi Rao delves into the stories related to the difficult conditions, but also extraordinary examples of solidarity Pramoedya faced on prison island Buru while writing Arus Balik. A new video-installation by Melati Suryodarmo, Dancing under the Black Sky (2019), traces the history behind Reog performances, an art form of resistance and criticism of Ponorogo people of East Java towards Bhre Kertabhumi, a Majapahit king who slowly lost his authority in the 15th century, before Islam became a major force in Demak and controlled the coastal region of Java.
The exhibition Arus Balik aims to imagine the implication of histories and politics in processes of transition, such as colonisation and decolonisation, or shifts in maritime power for people and ports below (the straits of Malacca, South China Sea, Java Sea, and further east) and above (the Indian Ocean and further West) the wind. Have the multiple colonisations in Southeast Asia alienated the people from the sea coast? Is it possible to attempt a return? The reversal of the colonial fact, the promise of reversal of a geo-political, -cultural, and social systems, initially embodied by the Bandung conference in 1955, caused Afro-American author Richard Wright to write that “it smacked of tidal waves, of natural forces.”
The accompanying public programmes further investigate the topics raised, including a conversation on Saturday, March 23, around the book Arus Balik and the reception of Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s oeuvre. On Saturday, May 25, another conversation will focus on living with the sea and the history of the straits.
Arus Balik – From below the wind to above the wind and back again is NTU CCA Singapore’s response and contribution to this year’s nation-wide bicentennial commemorations that reflect on Singapore’s history since the arrival of the British statesman Sir Stamford Raffles in 1819, considered the founder of modern Singapore.
Guest curated by Philippe Pirotte, Rector, Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste – Städelschule, and Director, Portikus, Frankfurt, and Visiting Professor (2018/19), MA Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices, School of Art, Design and Media, NTU.
Considered a leading figure in public art, Iranian-born artist Siah Armajani merges architecture and conceptual art in his sculptures, drawings, and public installations. Informed by democratic ideologies and inspired by American vernacular architecture, his works include gathering spaces for communality, emphasizing the “nobility of usefulness.” His highly acclaimed public art and architectural projects have included bridges, gardens, and outdoor structures, that have been commissioned and presented worldwide. A retrospective featuring his artistic career spanning over more than five decades was recently on view at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and inaugurates in March at The MET Breuer, New York.
Taking centre stage in the exhibition, the large-scale installation Sacco & Vanzetti Reading Room #3 (1988) will unfold along its several comprising elements, such as two rooms, tables, chairs, and racks with books, magazines, and pencils noticeably arranged like spikes. The Reading Room is designed as a functional and inviting space for the visitors of the exhibition to use. The books populating the space are by or about the poets, philosophers, and political activists Armajani has dedicated different works to, many from his Tomb series. Initiated by Armajani in 1972, the Tomb series include drawings and models, of which seven are also on view in the exhibition.
The list of authors includes: Theodor Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, John Berryman, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, John Dewey, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Luigi Galleani, Emma Goldman, Hafez, Martin Heidegger, Thomas Jefferson, Frank O’Hara, Sylvia Plath, Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Rimbaud, Richard Rorty, Sacco and Vanzetti, Ahmad Shamlou, Henry David Thoreau, Alfred North Whitehead, Walt Whitman, and Nima Yooshij.
READING GROUPS
NTU CCA Singapore has selected books by and about the philosophers, poets, and political activists that Siah Armajani has dedicated works to, as part of the installation, which is designed for use by the visiting public as a functional and inviting space. Throughout the exhibition period, the installation will host reading groups or other events that respond to the displayed books.
OPEN CALL
In addition, NTU CCA Singapore is seeking interested individuals, groups, or organisations to engage with the artist’s works. The Sacco and Vanzetti Reading Room #3 is available to be used for readings, gatherings, discussions, workshops, or other events. Interested parties can appropriate the installation and exhibition space, including the books accompanying the installation, and respond to the exhibition and its title, the artist and the work, or related topics.
Siah Armajani: Spaces for the Public. Spaces for Democracy. is curated by Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director of the NTU CCA Singapore, and Professor, School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
The exhibition is made possible by generous loans from the MMK Museum for Modern Art, Frankfurt, and Rossi & Rossi, Hong Kong.
Special thank you to Susanne Pfeffer, Director, and Mario Kramer, Head of Collection, MMK, as well as Fabio Rossi and Josie Browne, project liaison.
With gratitude to Siah Armajani and Barbara Armajani.
Invisible to the human eye, geological kinships flow under the oceans and lay deep into the earth’s crust. When they manifest themselves, it is often in apocalyptic forms that disrupt existing ecosystems and the course of human life. In geography, The Ring of Fire denotes the volcanic belt and the collision zone of tectonic plates running around the edges of the Pacific Ocean, a deadly area where the majority of the world’s earthquakes and eruptions occur. For Irwan Ahmett and Tita Salina, this geologically unstable territory demarcates a field of artist inquiry.
Since 2014, the Indonesian duo have embarked upon a journey that engages issues of social injustice, political struggles, colonial histories, and environmental crises encountered along erratic routes that stretch from Indonesia to New Zealand, from Taiwan and South Korea to Japan. The Ring of Fire (2014–ongoing) brings together for the first time the most significant works realised by the artists, either together or individually, since the inception of the project.
Mary Otis Stevens (b.1928) is a pioneering American architect. Her architectural designs, along with the founding of i Press (1968-1978), an important publisher of books on architecture, urbanism, and social space, were linked to her ability to radically re-envision space and relationships. In the context of the Cold War and American political activism in the 1960s, her work, which were often in collaboration with her partner, fellow architect and i Press co-founder Thomas McNulty, revealed her foundational training in philosophy and her commitment to de-centralising hierarchies. Revisiting her work more than fifty years later, the themes of active citizen participation in government, integrated planning, and genuine risk-taking to make substantial change in people’s lives remain relevant and crucial means of incorporating a social context into the practice of architecture. On view is Mary’s sensitivity to variations, large and small, visible in her work as a publisher as well as her drawings and architectural designs. This research presentation also explores The Ideal Communist City, an i Press publication by Alexei Gutnov et al. from 1970 that offers a deep dive into a utopian proposition that “the new city is a world belonging to all and to each.”
In order to help introduce the i Press series on the human environment to a wide audience, NTU CCA Singapore, with series editors Ute Meta Bauer (Founding Director, NTU CCA and Professor, NTU ADM), James Graham (Director of Publications, Columbia University GSAPP), and Pelin Tan (2019-2020 Keith Haring Fellow in Art and Activism, Bard College), is currently working with i Press and Mary Otis Stevens to republish several original i Press books with revisions and commentary by contemporary theorists and practitioners.
Mary Otis Stevens. The i Press Series is curated by Dr Karin Oen, Deputy Director, Curatorial Programmes, NTU CCA Singapore
The national archives contain numerous documents related to public assemblies (strikes, sit-ins, student protests, demonstrations, etc.), and yet collective gatherings aimed at voicing dissent have disappeared from the streets of present day Singapore. How do today’s youth address social issues and global emergencies? Where do they voice concern and manifest disagreement? Focusing specifically on student bodies, Green Zeng plans to investigate the history of public expressions of dissent and assess their relevance for younger generations. His efforts will be first directed at creating an archive of public assemblies in Singapore. This will allow him to engage university students on a series of workshops and participatory platforms aimed at understanding the performative function inherent in such actions. Ultimately, he will devise strategies of (re)enactment to reflect on how public assemblies embody the often strained relations between power and the people and shape our understanding of democracy, freedom, and civil rights.
Želimir Žilnik is best known as one of the major figures of the Yugoslav Black Wave film movement of the 1960s and 1970s. He is noted for his socially engaging style of filmmaking and focus on contemporary issues— social, political and economic assessments of everyday life. His feature film Early Works (Rani Radovi) won him a Golden Berlin Bear Award at the 19th Berlin International Film Festival. Not only has his work been included in programmes of art galleries and museums worldwide, he is also a mentor and executive producer in many international workshops for students in South-Eastern Europe. He is also a visiting lecturer at film schools.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul is an artist and filmmaker. Recognised as one of the most original voices in contemporary cinema, his feature films, short films and installations have won him widespread international recognition and numerous awards, including the Cannes Palme d’Or in 2010 with Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives; the Cannes Competition Jury Prize in 2004 with Tropical Malady; and the Cannes Un Certain Regard Award in 2002 with Blissfully Yours. His latest feature Cemetery of Splendour was released to critical acclaim at the 68th Cannes Film Festival in 2015. Apichatpong began making films and video shorts in 1994 and completed his first feature, Mysterious Object at Noon in 2000. He has also mounted exhibitions and installations in many countries since 1998. Lyrical and often mysterious, his film works are non-linear, dealing with memory in subtle ways, invoking personal politics and social issues. Working independently of the Thai commercial film industry, Apichatpong devotes himself to promoting experimental and independent filmmaking through his company Kick the Machine Films, founded in 1999, which also produces all his films. Major installations have been presented at dOCUMENTA(13) (2012) and in solo exhibitions in Oslo, London, Mexico City, Kyoto, and New York.
Jeroen de Rijke and Willem de Rooij were a collaborative artist duo creating video installations, performances, TV programmes and 16mm film shorts. They met while attending the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and worked together from 1994 until de Rijke’s passing in 2006. They chose film as a medium to engage their audience for a longer period and with greater intensity. An efficient use of the inherent time and light qualities of the film medium in their static camera work gives their subjects an almost meditational quality. Their work has been shown worldwide, most notably at the 2005 Venice Biennale. They were also nominated for the 2005 Hugo Boss Prize.
Ella Raidel, Ph.D., is a filmmaker, artist and researcher. Since April 2019 she is Assistant Professor at NTU Singapore at ADM School of Art, Design and Media and WKWSCI School of Communication and Information.
Fritz Lang was an influential filmmaker, producer and actor. He moved to the United States at the age of 46 and is best known as an émigrés from the German school of Expressionism. He had directed 23 features in his 20-year American career and is considered to have set the precedence for the evolution of American genre cinema; more specifically to film noir. His work consists of a variety of genres revolving around fate and justice.
Heidrun Holzfeind is an artist and filmmaker, explores the interrelations between history and identity, individual histories and political narratives of the present.
Ho Rui An (b. 1990, Singapore) is an artist and writer working in the intersections of contemporary art, cinema, performance and theory. His work investigates the emergence, transmission and disappearance of images within contexts of globalism and governance. Working primarily across the mediums of lecture, essay and film, his recent research considers questions surrounding liberal hospitality, participatory democracy and speculative futures.He has presented projects both locally and internationally, gaining attention for his discursively compelling performances that sift through historical archives and contemporary visual culture to probe into the shifting relations between image and power. Ho has presented work at Queensland University of Technology Art Museum, Australia (2016); Hessel Museum of Art and CCS Bard Galleries, United States (2015); LUMA/Westbau, Switzerland (2015); Para Site, Hong Kong (2015); Witte de With, The Netherlands (2014); Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India (2014); and Serpentine Galleries, United Kingdom (2013), among others.
Ho was Artist-in-Residence at NTU CCA Singapore, between September 2016 and January 2017, where he continued his research into the aesthetics of “futurecraft” and “horizon scanning” programmes run by state and private entities in Singapore and beyond. He also contributed to NTU CCA Singapore’s public programming in January 2015 when he conducted an Exhibition (de)Tour as part of Yang Fudong’s exhibition, Incidental Scripts.
Premised on complex sets of references, the artistic production of Ho Tzu Nyen (b.1976, Singapore) harnesses film, video, performance, and installation. His richly layered and technically challenging works weave together facts and myths to mobilise different understandings of Southeast Asia’s history, politics, and belief systems. Recent solo exhibitions were held at Edith-Russ-Haus For Media Art, Oldenburg, Germany (2019); Kunstverein in Hamburg, Germany (2018); Shanghai Ming Contemporary Art Museum, China (2018); Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong (2017) among others. His works have also been included in major group exhibitions such as: Aichi Triennale, Japan (2019); Sharjah Biennial 14, United Arab Emirates (2019); Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2018); Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh (2018) among many others. He is co-curator of the 7th Asian Art Biennal, Taichung, Taipei (2019). Ho represented Singapore at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011).
Ho was an Artist-in-Residence from October 2019 to April 2020. He also presented video works at NTU CCA Singapore for Ghosts and Spectres — Shadows of History in 2017.
Jan Peter Hammer is an artist who creates films and performances that connects literature and cinema. He is primarily interested in the narrative structure of a work. His videos, films, and synchronised slideshows allow for a literary reading or a point of view for criticism. He studied painting and sculpture before attending courses at the New School’s Film Theory department and graduating in Fine Arts at the Hunter College. In 2016 he was selected as artistic research fellow at KHiO – Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Norway. His works have been shown in international solo and group exhibitions and screened at several international film festivals.
Jean Rouch is a ethnographer-turned-filmmaker, was the father of modern cinéma vérité together with his collaborator, Edgar Morin. Their work has had great influence on French New Wave filmmakers.
Joris Ivens was a documentary filmmaker whose career spanned over 60 years. He filmed more than 50 international documentaries that explored leftist social and political concerns during the 20th century. Named film commissioner in 1944 for the Dutch East Indies, he later resigned in protest over the Dutch’s resistance to decolonisation. Among the notable films he has directed or co-directed, there are A Tale of the Wind (1988), The Spanish Earth (1937), and Far from Vietnam (1967). In 1988, Ivens received the Golden Lion Honorary Award at the Venice Film Festival and in 1989, he was knighted in the Order of the Dutch Lion.
Karpo Godina is a prominent filmmaker and cinematographer. He is an essential figure and a pioneering member of the Yugoslav Black Wave film movement of the 1960s and 1970s. His film career was launched in the 1960s when he independently produced 8mm experimental shorts and numerous sociocritical films. His film Artificial Paradise was screened at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival.
Kimi Takesue is an award-winning filmmaker and recipient of the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Fellowships in Film.
Laleen Jayamanne is a filmmaker and Professor of Cinema Studies at the Power Department of Fine Arts at the University of Sydney, Australia.
Working with photography, video, installation, and performance the multidisciplinary practice of Lim Sokchanlina (b. 1987, Cambodia) scrutinizes the developments in the social, political, cultural, economic, and environmental landscape of Cambodia brought about by a rampant process of modernisation. Recent solo and group exhibitions include Sunshower: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia 1980s to Now, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan (2017); Urban Aspiration, The Physics Room Contemporary Art Space, Auckland, New Zealand (2016); and Urban Street Nightclub, SA SA BASSAC, Phnom Penh, Cambodia (2013).
Lim is committed to a number of community-based projects that foster research, education, and collaborative methodologies in Phnom Penh. In 2007, he co-founded the collective Stiev Selapak which, in 2010, evolved into the artist-run space Sa Sa Art Projects. He also collaborated to establish Analogue Prints Laboratory, the first public-access darkroom in the capital of Cambodia.
Lucy Walker is an esteemed Emmy-winning film director who uses dramatic filmmaking techniques to make documentary films. Renowned for her ability to connect with audiences through creating riveting character-driven nonfiction, she follows memorable characters on transformative journeys that grant unique access inside closed worlds. Walker obtained her MFA from the Graduate Film Programme at the New York University Tisch School of the Arts on a Fulbright Scholarship after graduating at the top of her class with a BA Hons and MA Oxon in Literature at Oxford University. She has twice been nominated for an Academy Award and her films have been nominated for seven Emmys, having won over one hundred film awards.
Dr Marc Glöde is a curator, critic and film scholar. He is currently an Assistant Professor, School of Art, Design and Media, NTU, Singapore and Co-Director of the Master of Arts in Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices. He received his PhD at The Free University Berlin (FU Berlin). He taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden, FU Berlin, Academy of Fine Arts Berlin, and as Assistant Professor at the ETH Zürich. He curated the exhibition “STILL/MOVING/STILL – The History of Slide Projection in the Arts” at Knokke, Belgium. He was a senior curator of Art Film, Art Basel’s film program from 2008 – 2014. He was co-editor of Umwidmungen (2005), Synästhesie-Effekte (2011) and his writings are widely published. He was previously a Visting Research Fellow at NTU CCA Singapore from 25 February to 26 May 2016. Dr Glöde is a regular contributor to NTU CCA Singapore’s programmes.
Research Focus
Residency period: 25 February – 26 May 2016
Dr Marc Glöde’s work is informed by his interest in questions concerning images and image politics, as well as the correspondences between different artistic disciplines or cultural positions. For his research at NTU CCA Singapore he will specifically address the dynamics of the relation between images and the development of urban ideas and architecture – on the impact of images on a critical reflection of urbanism.By re-visiting the landmark project “Cities on the Move” almost 20 years after its occurrence, one of the key questions will be how this exhibition/debate has left its imprint on the discussion in Asia and how the situation has developed since then. From there Dr Glöde’s research will dig deeper into the impact of artists, filmmakers, and curators on the discussion. Dr Glöde’s research will be accompanied by a combination of workshops, film screenings, and discussions with artists and architects from the region.
Mark Nash is a curator and writer, and Professor, University of California Santa Cruz. He was Head of Department Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art London, and prior Director of Fine Art Research at Central St Martins. He was a senior lecturer in Film History and Theory at the University of East London, visiting lecturer at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, and visiting research fellow at the NTU CCA Singapore (2015). He holds a PhD from Middlesex University. Nash has written extensively on artists’ work with the moving image, having curated One Sixth of the Earth, ecologies of image at ZKM, Karlsruhe and MUSAC, Leon (2012-13) and Experiments with Truth, Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia (2004-5).
Research Focus
1. Historical legacy of independence and liberation struggles and cold war politics, including the non-aligned movement, in terms of the different affective relationships these alternative world views propose particularly as realised in South East Asian art
2. Alternative philosophies and aesthetics of the moving image – e.g. how Chinese or Indonesian artists approach the moving image, and the concepts of the image embedded in their linguistic etymology
3. Moving image and photographic works along the Asian part of the Silk Road
Mikhail Kalatozov was a prominent film director who largely contributed to both Georgian and Russian cinema. He studied economics before starting his extensive filmmaking career in 1923. He had his solo directorial debut in 1930 with the documentary Salt for Svanetia and directed several propaganda films during World War II. He also worked as a cultural attaché at the Soviet Embassy in the United States, and was later appointed Deputy Film Minister of the Soviet Union. He is best known for his World War II drama, The Cranes Are Flying (1958), which won the Palm d’Or at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival.
Nguyen Trinh Thi is a Hanoi-based filmmaker and moving image artist. Her diverse practice—traversing boundaries between film and video art, installation and performance—consistently engages with memory and history, and reflects on the roles and positions of art and artists in society and the environment. Nguyen studied journalism, photography, international relations, and ethnographic film in the United States. Her films and video art works have been shown at festivals and art exhibitions including Asia Pacific Triennale of Contemporary Art (APT9) in Brisbane (2018); Sydney Biennale 2018; Jeu de Paume, Paris; CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux; the Lyon Biennale 2015; Asian Art Biennial 2015, Taiwan; Fukuoka Asian Art Triennial 2014; Singapore Biennale 2013; Jakarta Biennale 2013; Oberhausen International Film Festival; and the Rotterdam International Film Festival. Nguyen is founder and director of Hanoi DOCLAB, an independent centre for documentary film and the moving image art since 2009. She previously showed at NTU CCA Singapore in the exhibition Ghosts and Spectres – Shadows of History (2017).
Ousmane Sembène was a preeminent Senegalese film director and writer. His writings observed the political scene in Senegal where he wrote several volumes on the developing national consciousness. In the early 1960s, he turned to film and went to study in Moscow. He is often called the “Father of African Cinema,” a title befitting the first African to make a film distributed outside of Africa. His works examine the multiplicities of a continent emerging from the colonial era, at grips with the tensions of independence and modernity, historicising Africa’s political and social transformation throughout the 20th century.
Park Chan-kyong is a media artist, film director and writer. He graduated from Seoul National University with a BFA in Painting in 1988, and the California Institute of the Arts with a MFA in Photography in 1995. Park served as the Artistic Director of the SeMA Biennale Mediacity Seoul in 2014. His major works include Manshin: Ten Thousand Spirits (2013), Night Fishing (2011, co-directed by Park Chan-wook), Sindoan (2008), Power Passage (2004) and Sets (2000). Park’s work has been exhibited internationally in numerous solo and group exhibitions including Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2017), Taipei Biennial (2016), Anyang Public Art Project (2016), Iniva, London (2015), Art Sonje Center, Seoul (2013), and Atelier Hermès, Seoul (2012, 2008). Park was awarded the Hermès Korea Art Award in 2004, and the Golden Bear for best short film at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2011 for Night Fishing. His works are included in the collection of major art institutions, such as the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea; KADIST, Paris and San Francisco; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes; Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul; Seoul Museum of Art; Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Ansan; and Art Sonje Center, Seoul.
The practice of Prapat Jiwarangsan (b. 1979, Thailand) is rooted in a deep fascination with archival materials which the artist peruses and reconfigures in order to question the relationships between nationalism and history, memory and politics in Thailand. In recent years, he has turned his focus tothe experience of migrant workers outside of their home countries. His films and installations havebeen included in international group exhibitions such as, most recently, Singapore Biennale 2019: Every Step in the Right Direction; DIASPORA: Exit, Exile, Exodus of Southeast Asia, MAIIAM ContemporaryArt Museum, Chiang Mai, Thailand (2018), and festivals including the 47th International Film FestivalRotterdam, Netherlands (2018) and the 27th Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival,Chicago, United States (2016).
Sir Ridley Scott is a visionary director, acclaimed producer and one of the greatest British filmmakers. His work, known for an atmospheric and highly concentrated visual style, continues to push boundaries in style and genre. He was awarded the BAFTA Fellowship in 2018 and an honorary doctorate by the Royal College of Art in 2015. In 2003, Scott was knighted at the Queen’s New Year Honours in the United Kingdom for having made substantial contribution to the British film industry.
Shireen Seno studied architecture and cinema at the University of Toronto before relocating to Manila. Her work addresses memory, history and image-making, often in relation to the idea of home.
Stan VanDerBeek was an American experimental filmmaker at the forefront of technology. He began making films in 1955 and working with computers in 1965, when he produced multimedia pieces and computer animation in collaboration with Bell Labs. In the 1970s, he constructed “Movie-Drome,” an immersive audio-visual laboratory for a new kind of cinema-stage. His multimedia experiments in “expanded cinema” included movie murals, projection systems, planetarium events, and explored early computer graphics and image processing systems, merging art with technology and dance with films. He was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT (1969–72 and 1976–77).
Svay Sareth (b. 1972, Cambodia) was born during a period of political turmoil and violence that would last until he was 18 years old. Svay began making art as a young teenager in the Site 2 refugee camp, near the Thai-Cambodian border. He describes life as a refugee as “void nationality…a time and place you imagine escaping from.” Drawing and painting became a daily activity for Svay ‚ a process of bearing witness to the psychological and physical violence that was an everyday experience, as well as a way to symbolically escape and dream of change. After the wars ended, Svay went on to co-found Phare Ponlue Selepak, a non-governmental organisation and art school in Battambang that continues to thrive today. In 2002, the artist continued his studies in France, earning the Diplôme National Supérieur d’Études des Arts Plastiques / MFA in 2009, after which he returned to Siem Reap to live and work.
Taiki Sakpisit (b.1975, Japan) is a Thai artist and filmmaker based in Bangkok. He applies his cinematic skills to create haunting evocations of memory through the repetition and imperceptible manipulation of images that interweave found footage and archival material. Featuring rich soundscapes produced in collaboration with a sound designer, his films produce heightened and uneasy modes of spectatorship that often relate to the tumultuous socio-political climate in Thailand. Taiki’s most recent solo exhibition Until the Morning Comes took place at S.A.C. Subhashok The Arts Centre, Bangkok, Thailand (2018) and his work has been presented at numerous exhibitions, screenings, and film festivals.
Tomás Gutiérrez Alea is a prominent and highly celebrated Cuban film director. He is an influential figure in shaping Cuba’s film industry. Originally trained in law, he went on to study filmmaking in Italy. His socially-driven works expose the plight of the working class and the Cuban revolution. He explored various genres such as Neorealism, comedy, and historical film to reflect on the lives and people of Cuba.
Vladimir Seput is a curator and researcher based in London. He studied film in Zagreb and did postgraduate research in film/video studies at University Paris 8 (2013-14), where he wrote about Mediterranean iconography in film and moving image, and researched the cinematic aspects of the sea as a place where politics, history, and mythology intersect. He holds a Masters in Film Curation from Birkbeck, University of London (2017). For the last 10 years, he has published on film and moving image art, and translated and edited books on philosophy, literary criticism, and contemporary art for various publications in Croatia and the United Kingdom.
Yee I-Lann is an artist. Her practice speculates on issues of culture, power, and the role of historical memory in our social experience by way of allusion to historical, popular, and everyday references, often through the medium of photography. Recent exhibitions include Away from the Long Night, MSAC, Taipei (2014); The Roving Eye: Contemporary Art from South East Asia, ARTER, Istanbul (2014); Welcome to the Jungle: Contemporary Art in Southeast Asia, Yokohama Museum of Art (2013); Suspended Histories, Museum Van Loon, Amsterdam (2013); Art of Memory: Contemporary Textile Expressions, Jim Thompson Art Center, Bangkok, Thailand (2013). She was a member of the curatorial team for the 2013 Singapore Biennale. Yee also works in the film industry in Malaysia.
Between April and July 2015, Yee was Artist-in-Residence at NTU CCA Singapore where she continued her research on folkloric ghost stories of female spirits, specifically the figure of the Pontianak, depictions of which are found throughout Southeast Asia.
Envisioned in 1956 by Indonesian artist Iljas Hussein*, along waves of gravity –a solidar y of holes was to be a monument to the short-lived Principal Liaison Centre (PLC) established in Singapore in 1926. Pivotal in the international surge of anti-colonial struggles, the PLC was a point of liaison between the 3rd International and the region and it was meant to serve as an organ for the amplification of the voices of the marginalised and the oppressed.
At the Asian-African Conference held in Bandung in 1955, Hussein was entrusted with the task of imagining a monument that encapsulated the spirit of the PLC. One year later, he presented the idea for along waves of gravity –a solidar y of holes: a triangulation of holes strategically placed across the island that would gather and continuously echo the voices uttered into them. Inspired by theories of general relativity and topological properties of continuous deformation, Hussein’s design articulates, spatially as well as acoustically, an anti-monumentalist stance. Rather than asserting an univocal shape, the monument retreats into the ground as a series of interconnected and shapeshifting vessels which reverberate and transform sound waves throughout time. Hussein kept experimenting with these ideas until his death in 1989 but, due to its scale and technical complexity, his visionary project remained unbuilt. The surviving renderings and audio experiments of the unrealised monument are now displayed in The Vitrine.
* Iljas Hussein is a fictional artist conceived by Kin Chui. The name is one of the many aliases used by Tan Malaka (1897 –1949), an influential revolutionary thinker and fighter in the political struggles for Indonesia’s independence. Specifically, this alias was used to pen Malaka’s magnum opus Madilog (1943), the Indonesian acronym for Materialisme Dialektika Logika (Materialism Dialectics Logics).
How to breathe deeply and sing expressively in this moment when the mouth and nose embody danger? How to have pleasure in music when in its essences it is airborne and moist?
Let us return power and agency to the mouth and voice while still protecting ourselves and others. Let us express our emotions freely into the air that we all share. The Mouthful mask is both conceptual and practical. It exposes the breath and gives us an earful and eyeful of air. Mouthful projects a new sound which follows the guidelines of our time while it overcomes and embraces the obstacles we face with poetry and humor.
Mouthful is conceived by Ana Prvački, produced and manifested by Galina Mihaleva and activated by Reginald Jalleh and Zerlina Tan with original music by Joyce Bee Tuan Koh. A transdisciplinary, collaborative work, Mouthful is realized with two performative activations and as an installation and sound work in The Vitrine at NTU CCA Singapore, Block 43 Malan Road.
