Chương-Đài Võ, Researcher, Asia Art Archive]]>
This programme is jointly organised by Asia Art Archive (AAA) and NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (NTU CCA Singapore). The Lee Wen Archive was digitised through a collaborative project initiated in 2017 by NTU CCA Singapore and AAA, with National Gallery Singapore as an additional partner, to give access to culturally significant materials recording the arts of Singapore and beyond.]]>
Chương-Đài Võ]]> Chuong-Dai Vo]]> Chuong Dai Vo]]> Asia]]>
Trinh T. Minh-ha]]> Ute Meta Bauer]]> Asia]]> Supernatural]]> Ritual]]> Co-produced by NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore and Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21) for st_age

Single channel HD Video, colour, sound, 16 min, 16:9


Deep in the tropical rainforest of Southeast Asia, a series of incantations invoke the spirits of yore, including those of the nimble, tricksy Kancil (mouse-deer) and the ferocious Buaya (crocodile). The ancient animals enact their folkloric vendetta in a furious dance of dominance, yet long-overdue vengeance is shrouded in smoke. Meanwhile, an effigy of a tree is burning, summoning a whole other host of spectres and ancestors. Conceived during the month of the Hungry Ghost Festival in 2019, while large-scale fires were consuming the forests of Indonesia, Yeo Siew Hua’s An Invocation to the Earth confronts climate collapse through the lens of pre-colonial folktales and animistic rituals. Through spoken spells and bodily entanglements, the video conjures up the fallen environmental defenders of a region ridden with ecological threats in the hope that their spirits will be reborn once again.]]>
Yeo Siew Hua]]> Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21)]]> https://vimeo.com/463724815]]> Southeast Asia]]>
Public Sphere]]> Cultural Production]]> In this series, the Centre looks back at the Residencies Programme’s archives of talks, conversations, and performances to periodically highlight select events that take on particular resonance with the present times.

From extant buildings to the lack of arts infrastructure, reflections on the social roles of the built environment cut across these talks where artists address cultural spaces not just as containers but also as agents in the production of contemporary art and in the development of collective consciousness. Addressing different scenarios, the artists expound on the spatial contours of cultural life and their multiple oscillations between creation and recreation asking: How does the built environment shape ways of working, sharing, and being together? How can we reimagine the premises on which these spaces come to exist?

Creatif Compleks
– Artist talk by Michael Lee (Singapore), Artist-in-Residence

17 March 2018

Unravelling a series of intersecting reflections on the function of the artist’s studio within the arts ecology of a city, Michael Lee presents Creatif Compleks, a project developed during the residency for The Vitrine, the Centre’s smallest Space of the Curatorial. Through a diagrammatic reconfiguration of a hypothetical studio, the work takes a speculative leap into the utopian and the absurd, rendering visible the physical, psychological, and social factors layered in the most private and intimate environment of creative making.

On Museums Made by Artists, Artist talk by Tun Win Aung (Myanmar)
30 July 2019

In this talk, artist Tun Win Aung highlights the challenges related to envisioning a contemporary art institution in the context of Myanmar. As he speaks about the creation of transient museums through collaborative processes and continuous conversations with local artists, Tun Win Aung recalls on his friendship and multiple artistic partnerships with the late Phyoe Kyi, a former Artist-in-Residence, focusing on the conception and development of The Museum Project.

Residencies Insights: Models of Organisation. Images as Comrades, Film screening and discussion with Irina Botea Bucan and Jon Dean (Romania and United Kingdom), Artists-in-Residence
10 December 2019

Previous Artists-in-Residence, Irina Botea Bucan and Jon Dean, present past films and discuss their collaborative practice. Examining the formation of cultural spaces, the duo draws attention to the cumulative energies and community engagement that lie at the core of their long-term comparative research on the history, usage, and imagination of community centres as spaces for collective authorship of culture.

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Michael Lee]]> Tun Win Aung]]> Irina Botea Bucan]]> Jon Dean]]> Southeast Asia]]>
Labour]]> Decolonialism]]> History]]>
Introduction by Vladimir Seput.]]>
Joris Ivens]]> Vladimir Seput]]> Southeast Asia]]> Oceania]]> Europe]]>
Cultural Production]]> Institutional Critique]]> In this series, the Centre looks back at the Residencies Programme’s archives of talks, conversations, and performances to periodically highlight select events that take on particular resonance with the present times.

In Corona Virus Capitalism – And How to Beat it, Canadian scholar and activist Naomi Klein invokes Milton Friedman’s insight into the connection between crises and change to expand our sense of the possible. In the economist’s words: “Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.” If crises can be magnets for radical change, which ideas should be rehashed as we build our future? Ideas that are lying around reminds us that proposals to operate differently are already there. In these three talks, previous Curators-in-Residence Maria Hlavajova, Anthony Huberman, and Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez distinctly question conventional parameters of exhibition-making and advance propositions for news modes of existence for art institutions. 

The Making of an Institution – Reason to Exist: The Director’s Review. Instituting Otherwise, talk by Maria Hlavajova (Slovakia/Netherlands), Curator-in-Residence
22 March 2017

Drawing upon the practice of BAK, basis voor actuele kunst in Utrecht (Netherlands), Curator-in-Residence Maria Hlavajova discusses the notion of “instituting otherwise”. Dedicated to thinking aboutwith, and through art at the intersection of research and social action, she addresses the long-term strategies of BAK aimed to collectively confront the urgencies that define our contemporary. 

Residencies Insights: Against Efficiency, lecture by Anthony Huberman (Switzerland/United States), Curator-in-Residence
31 Jan 2018 

In this talk, Curator-in-Residence Anthony Huberman reflects upon the criteria of efficiency and fast-paced consumption that inform most of contemporary art production and proposes institutional approaches that favour small scale, slowing-down and, perhaps, even inefficiency, in order to complicate an understanding of the world where only efficiency and productivity are rewarded.

Residencies Insights: On the Necessity of Transforming One’s Practice, curator talk by Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez (Slovenia/France), Curator-in-Residence
27 Feb 2019 

In the context of her latest project, Contour Biennale 9: Coltan as Cotton (2019), Curator-in-Residence Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez discusses the necessity to slow down one’s way of working and being, to imagine new ecologies of care as a continuous practice of support, and to open up institutional borders to render them more palpable, audible, sentient, soft, porous and, most of all, decolonial and anti-patriarchal. 

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Maria Hlavajova]]> Anthony Huberman]]> Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez]]> Europe]]> North America]]>
Coexistence]]> Identity]]> Alecia Neo]]> Southeast Asia]]> Botany]]> Nature]]> Trevor Yeung]]> Southeast Asia]]> Materiality]]> Botany]]> Rossella Biscotti]]> Southeast Asia]]> Identity]]> History]]> Mythology]]> Fyerool Darma]]> Southeast Asia]]>