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
As part of his interest in trauma and the potential of ritual healing through performance, during the residency Irfan Kasban intends to work on a long-term research project tentatively titled Port of Reciprocity, with a special focus on “Acoustic Sculptures and Communal Activations for the Burn-out Artist”. Reacting to the tightly-knit architecture of Singapore’s public housing estates where the boundaries of individual and communal life are strictly compartmentalised and sound spillages are regarded as nuisances, the artist aims to unpack the socially-accepted notions that define noise pollution in the country. Irfan will experiment with building acoustic sculptures inspired by organic shapes that will augment the human voice without electronic intervention and enhance conscious listening through communal activations. Oscillating between different sonic dimensions, the human voice will be cast as a mode of disruption and forging connections. Throughout the residency, the artist also intends to conduct interviews and group discussions with fellow artists and creatives as a way of better understanding the causes of burnout and formulating strategies against it.
The transdisciplinary practice of Irfan Kasban (b. 1987, Singapore) weaves together multiple roles such as playwright, theatre director, lighting and sound designer, and multimedia artist. Often engaging in collaborations with fellow artists as a method of experimenting across mediums, Irfan creates intricate worlds guided by a principle of visceral ephemerality in an attempt to redefine boundaries between performance, artwork, artist, and audience. Since 2010, he is the Associate Artist at the Singapore-based theatre company Teater Ekamatra. His recent theatre directions include King (2020-2023) and performance lecture The Death of Singapore Theatre as Scripted By The Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore (2022), and the immersive theatrical installation The Silence of a Fallen Tree (2020) amongst many others. Irfan received National Arts Council Singapore’s Young Artist Award in 2020.
Shifting between individual and communal dimensions, performed in public and private spaces, rest is a powerful counterpoint to the sprawling sense of exhaustion induced by the unrelenting emphasis on work, production, and consumption that prevails in contemporary society. Continuing this ongoing investigation, during the residency the artist will conduct interviews, archival research, and fieldwork to understand notions, practices, and postures of rest in different cultural, historical, and socio-political contexts across Singapore and Southeast Asia focusing specifically on the manifestations of “rest in public spaces”. Through potential collaborations with movement and sound artists, she aims to gradually develop an artistic and performative vocabulary of rest that maps out its personal, political, cultural, and economic meanings.
For our fifth episode of AiRCAST, we entrusted curator and scholar Hsu Fang-Tze to converse with our Artist-in-Residence Han Xuemei. In this insightful exchange, Xuemei discusses how her urgency for engagement steers her fluid theatre practice towards experimenting with different modes of audience participation. As she shares about her current efforts to carve out “intervals of quiet” and “plots of rest” in the hectic context of Singapore, you will also discover that the research on the topic of “rest as resistance” she conducted throughout her residency at NTU CCA Singapore grows out from another residency she did in Taipei a few years ago.
Committed to socially engaged practices, multi-disciplinary theatre practitioner Han Xuemei (b. 1987, Singapore) employs art as a tool for bringing communities together and engaging the audience in visceral and personal ways. In her practice, she creates spaces and experiences that incite participants to think outside the box of existing paradigms and articulate forms of hope and resistance. Since 2012, she is Resident Artist at the Singapore-based theatre company Drama Box. In 2021 she received Young Artist Award, Singapore’s highest award for young arts practitioners.
Hsu Fang-Tze is a lecturer at the Communications and New Media Department, National University of Singapore where she is also a coordinator of the M.A. in Arts and Cultural Entrepreneurship. Her research interests include the formation of audiovisual modernity in Asia, Cold War aesthetics, philosophies of sonic technology, and the embodiment of artistic praxis in everyday life. Apart from her academic work, she is also active as a curator and has curated exhibitions such as Art Histories of a Forever War: Modernism between Space and Home at the Taipei Fine Art Museum, Taiwan (2021-2022) and Wishful Images at National University of Singapore Museum (2020).
Contributors: Han Xuemei, Hsu Fang-Tze
Editor: Anna Lovecchio
Programme Manager: Kristine Tan
Sound Engineer: Ashwin Menon (The Music Parlour)
Intro & Outro Music: Tini Aliman
Cover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine Tan
CREDITS
12’38”: Audio excerpt from MISSING: The City of Lost Things, 2018. Courtesy Drama Box.
15’07”: Audio excerpt from MISSING: The City of Lost Things, 2018. Courtesy Drama Box.
19’15”: Audio excerpt from FLOWERS, 2019. Courtesy Drama Box.
21’00”: Audio excerpt from FLOWERS, 2019. Courtesy Drama Box.
26’24”: Audio excerpt from Taipei Main Station & Research Field Recording workshop part of Asia Discovers Asia Meeting For Contemporary Performance Artist Lab, 2019. Courtesy the artist.
35’30’’: Audio excerpt from Han Xuemei, field recordings at Tanah Merah, January 2022. Courtesy the artist.
Committed to socially engaged practices, multi-disciplinary theatre practitioner Han Xuemei (b. 1987, Singapore) employs art as a tool for bringing communities together and engaging the audience in visceral and personal ways. In her practice, she creates spaces and experiences that incite participants to think outside the box of existing paradigms and articulate forms of hope and resistance. Since 2012, she is Resident Artist at the Singapore-based theatre company Drama Box. Her recent projects include the experiential installation FLOWERS (2019), the community project The Gift (2018), and the participatory experience Missing: The City of Lost Things (2018).
Yang Fudong was born in 1971 in Beijing and now lives and works in Shanghai. Working primarily in photography and film, Yang’s works are filled with psychological and existential questions. Yang’s work has been shown at many international exhibitions including: Documenta XI, Germany, 2002; the Shanghai Biennale, China, 2002; the Carnegie International, United States, 2005; the Asia Pacific Triennial, Australia, 2006; and the Venice Biennale, 2007.
Eva Meyer is a writer and filmmaker based in Berlin. She is the author of various works of cinematic thinking including What Does the Veil Know? (ed. in collaboration with Vivian Liska, 2009), Frei und indirekt (2010), Zählen und Erzählen. Für eine Semiotik des Weiblichen (1983, reprint 2013). She has taught at various universities and art schools in Europe and the United States, and currently is a faculty member at the Zurich University of the Arts. Since 1997 she has collaborated with the filmmaker Eran Schaerf, focusing on documentary fiction.
Theatrical Fields introduces theatricality as a critical strategy in performance, film and video. This exhibition presents six video installations shown for the first time in Southeast Asia: Voice off by Judith Barry (USA), Suspiria by Stan Douglas (Canada), Lines in the Sand by Joan Jonas (USA), Vagabondia by Isaac Julien (UK), She Might Belong to You by Eva Meyer & Eran Schaerf (Germany / Israel), X Characters Re(hers)AL by Constanze Ruhm (Austria). Situated in juxtaposition, the works generate temporal spaces for experimental action, creating unfamiliar proximities and encounters.
Theatrical Fields was curated by Ute Meta Bauer (Founding Director) with Anca Rujoiu (Curator for Exhibitions), and was first presented and commissioned by the Bildmuseet, Umea in Sweden (2013).
As a collaboration, Bildmuseet Umea and NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore will publish a catalogue including keynotes from the symposium and additional commissioned essays.
Yang Fudong, a leading international figure of contemporary art and one the most important artists to emerge out of China in the 1990s, staged his first major solo exhibition in Southeast Asia at the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore. The exhibition, Incidental Scripts, presented a selection of four works by Yang: An Estranged Paradise (1997-2002), The Fifth Night (II) Rehearsal (2010), On the Double Dragon Hills (2012) and About the Unknown Girl – Ma Sise (2013-2014). These works are emblematic of his multi-faceted approach towards the creation of visual imageries that complicates our understanding of reality / fiction, and our experience of space / time.
The exhibition was curated by Ute Meta Bauer (NTU CCA Singapore Founding Director) with Khim Ong (Independent Curator).
NTU CCA Singapore’s first publication, this reader stages conversations between theatre and visual arts, theoretical discourse and artistic practice juxtaposing artists and theoreticians who share a communal interest in theatricality as a critical strategy to address questions of ideology, gender, power relations. The reader includes writings by Antonin Artaud, Mikhail Bakhtin, Ute Meta Bauer, Bertolt Brecht, Giuliana Bruno, Jacques Derrida, Regis Durand, Josette Féral, Jean-François Lyotard, Eva Meyer, Timothy Murray, Katharina Sykora, and Marina Warner, documentation of the exhibition Theatrical Fields, Bildmuseet, Umea (2013) and NTU CCA Singapore (2014) presenting the works of Judith Barry, Marcel Dzama, Stan Douglas, Marie-Louise Ekman, Eva Meyer and Eran Schaerf, Isaac Julien, Joan Jonas, Constanze Ruhm, and Ulrike Ottinger.
Theatrical Fields: Critical Strategies in Performance, Film, and Video
Published by König Books
© 2016
ISBN: 978-981-11-0362-9 · 978-9-81110-362-9
To purchase your copy, please contact ntuccapublications@ntu.edu.sg
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet and playwright. He lived in exile for much of his life—first in Scandinavia and later in the United States, only to return to Berlin and found his own theater company, the Berliner Ensemble. His plays, the best known of which include The Three-penny Opera (1928) and Mother Courage and Her Children (1941), are the foundations of epic theater. This concept radically departed from theater conventions of the time and pushed forward a political theater that embodies revolutionary aims and contributes to social change. His ideas of a self-conscious and actively engaged spectator—a form of theater that addresses the immediate political and cultural circumstances—had a wide influence upon theater and the arts at large.
Bildmuseet is a contemporary art museum in Umeå, northern Sweden.
Giuliana Bruno is a professor in the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University. She is internationally known for her research on the intersections of the visual arts, architecture, film, and media. Her seminal body of work Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film (2002) is an intellectual journey into cinematic spaces, providing new directions for visual studies. In her latest book, Surface: Matters of Aesthetics, Materiality, and Media (2014), she revisits the concept of materiality in the contemporary world. She has contributed to numerous monographs on contemporary artists, including Isaac Julien’s Riot (2014), The Imaginary Landscapes of Jesper Just (2013), Chantal Akerman’s Too Far, Too Close (2012), and Jane and Louise Wilson: A Free and Anonymous Monument (2004), among others. She was a contributing writer for NTU CCA Singapore publication Theatrical Fields: Critical Strategies in Performance, Film, and Video.
Jacques Derrida was a French semiotic theorist and philosopher. Celebrated as the founder of deconstructionist thought, Derrida examined and rejected traditional binary forms of analysis, asserting that duality is in fact always hierarchical. He wrote over forty books, which include his seminal Speech and Phenomena and Writing and Difference, both from 1967. Derrida applied his theory of deconstruction to works in the philosophy of art, while also demonstrating how artworks themselves could be deconstructive of historical discourses on art. His writings on visual arts include his explorations of representation in The Truth in Painting (1978) and later in Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins (1993). Throughout his work, Derrida expressed strong interest in the radicality of Artaud’s theater, aligning the practice of deconstruction with Artaud’s projected new theater.
Jean-Francois Lyotard was a French philosopher. His influential book The Postmodern Condition (1979) would come to define postmodernism. He introduced the concept of “master narrative” as a critique of hegemonic forms of knowledge that attempt to construct and make sense of history. His writings span philosophy, politics, and aesthetics, all unified by a persistent view that reality consists of singular events that cannot be accurately represented. Lyotard made a substantial contribution in theatrical theory where he opposed the analytic rigidity of semiotics. Lyotard’s vision of a “theater of energies,” rather than of signs, was particularly relevant in the theoretical grounding of the concept of performance.
Josette Féral is a professor in the Drama Department of the Université du Québec à Montréal, where she has taught since 1981. She was vice president of the International Federation for Theatre Research from 1995 until 1999 and its president from 1999 to 2003. Her publications include Teatro, teoría y práctica: Más allá de las fronteras; Mise en scène et Jeu de l’acteur, volumes I and II, which deal with many European as well as North American stage directors; Rencontres avec Ariane Mnouchkine (1995) and Trajectoires du Soleil (1999) on Mnouchkine’s work; and La culture contre l’art: Essai d’économie politique du théâtre (1990).
König Books is an imprint of Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König (VWKG), a publishing house which was founded in 1968 in Köln/New York by Walther and Kasper König.
Katharina Sykora is a curator and professor of Art History at Braunschweig University of the Arts and author of Die Tode der Fotografie (vol. I, 2009; vol. II, 2015). She was the Max Kade Visiting Professor at Bloomington University, Indiana, research fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, and an Opus Magnum Research Fellow, a joint venture between the VolkswagenStiftung, Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, Bucerius Stiftung, and Deutscher Wissenschaftsverband. Since 2013 she has been the head of the Photographic Dispositif PhD program funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.
Marina Warner has written several studies in cultural history, as well as novels and short stories. Much of her work explores symbols and figures in myth and fairy tales, from Catholic cults to the Arabian Nights. Her books include Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (1976), Monuments and Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form (1985), and Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights (2011). Warner has also curated exhibitions and contributed to a range of contemporary art matters, exploring new ways of seeing and connections with our cultural heritage. She is professor of English and Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, University of London. She was awarded the Holberg Prize in 2015 and made a Dame the same year.
Regis Durand is an art critic and independent curator based in Paris. He has served as the artistic director of the Printemps de Cahors Festival, director of the Centre National de la Photographie, and director of the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris. He was written extensively on contemporary art, with a focus on the practice of photography, and has co-authored monographs on the work of Cindy Sherman, Thomas Demand, and Orlan, among others.
Timothy Murray is director of the Society for the Humanities, curator of the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, professor of Comparative Literature and English at Cornell University, and codirector of the Cornell/East China Normal University Center for Comparative Culture. His publication Mimesis, Masochism & Mime: The Politics of Theatricality in Contemporary French Thought (1997) brought together essays by leading French thinkers, highlighting the political importance of theatricality and its contribution to continental theory. His interest in the theatrical and cinematic has been explored in other publications including Digital Baroque: New Media Art and Cinematic Folds (2008); Drama Trauma: Specters of Race and Sexuality in Performance, Video, Art (1997); and Like a Film: Ideological Fantasy on Screen, Camera, and Canvas (1993).
Ute Meta Bauer is a Professor at the School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University Singapore (NTU). She is currently the Acting Director and Principal Research Fellow at the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (NTU CCA Singapore); and is the Chair of the Masters in Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices (MA MSCP) programme. Having served as the Founding Director of NTU CCA Singapore for over a decade, her work as educator and curator over the past years has focused on Climates. Habitats. Environments. At the Centre, she curated and co-curated The Oceanic (2017/2018), Trees of Life. Knowledge in Material (2018), and The Posthuman City (2020). In 2022, she served as curator for the Singapore Pavilion at the 59th Biennale di Venezia, featuring artist Shubigi Rao. Her recent large scale projects include the 17th Istanbul Biennial (2022), co-curated alongside David Teh and Amar Kanwar, and the artistic direction of the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2024. She is a Trustee of the Art Foundation TBA21 and a member of the Governing Council of n.b.k. Berlin. Bauer was recently conferred an Honorary Doctorate of Art and Design by Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Helsinki, Finland.
