With rising water temperatures and expansion in size of the Tropical Warm Pool (the largest area of ocean on Earth), within which Singapore is situated, the marine coastline ecosystem has become a crucial field of research. Rapid demographic growth and concentrated economic activity, such as sea shipments, within the region has intensified the relationship between humans and marine life. Spurred by the region’s rapidly changing environmental, social, and political conditions, the artist intends to deepen her understanding of the effects of marine pollution on the coastline ecosystem through potential collaboration with scientific research centres. Drawing inspiration from Donna J. Haraway’s theories on the Cthulhuscene and ‘sympoiesis’, or “making-with”, she hopes to develop a body of new research and artworks that investigates and speculates ways of living with the damages caused by humankind, as a way of making sense of the present and discovering the means of building a more sustainable future.
]]>Using ideas of spiritual mapping, where ‘territorial demons’ of a geographical location are identified, the artist intends to chart the history of the charismatic movement in Singapore beginning from the first recorded instance of glossolalia to current Christian eschatologies. In the process of charting such histories through maps and diagrams, conceptualisations of the ‘territorial spirits of the land’, the dichotomy between the demon/demonised, and the understanding of material spaces through such a lens will be dissected. Using self-portraiture alongside map-making, the research grounded in discourses of spiritual warfare will serve as a form of autoethnography. Through image-making, the artist hopes to formalise the research into frameworks that will structure his development within performative expressions, installations, the moving image, and sound.
]]>Future Trees and the Pulp of History (2) is a combined presentation by Artist-in-Residence Ho Rui An and artist Tan Biyun that explores the artists’ shared interests in participatory democracies, historical archives and speculative futures. Their works engage various strategies to rearrange existing narrative structures and activate new forms of political imagination.
As a consolidation of the research undertaken during his residency with NTU CCA, Ho presents a selection of material relating to the history of foresight, both globally and within the Singapore public sector. This includes a set of images extracted from a CD-ROM produced on the occasion of an exhibition organised in celebration of Public Service 21 (PS21), an initiative that can be regarded as a precursor to the current Smart Nation programme. Together, these materials variously project forms of millennial optimism or anxiety—the former exemplified by Peter Schwartz and Peter Leyden’s seminal essay “The Long Boom”, the latter by two national scenarios created by the Scenario Planning Office in Singapore describing the city-state in states of crisis.
Against this history of the future presented in Ho’s collection, Tan posits a speculative near-future where the history of Singapore faces the fate of being pulped. Tan conjures a scenario where students, sick of the propaganda purveyed in their textbooks, have abandoned the study of History altogether, prompting the Ministry to recall and destroy all textbooks in circulation. Conceived as a “protest against forgetting” (Eric Hobsbawn), Tan’s The Unforgetting Space seeks a more inclusive understanding of the past and triggers the process of reclaiming the writing of history from the authorities. This participatory project features several textbooks dating from the 1970s and two old typewriters on which audiences are invited to retype historical episodes selected from the books. They are also encouraged to contribute a text based on their own sources should a historical episode be found to be missing or misrepresented.
]]>10.00 – 11.00am
In Conversation: Hồng-Ân Trương (United States) and Ranu Mukherjee (United States), moderated by Kim Nguyen (Canada/United States)
11.00 – 11.20am
Video Art Screenings: Home and the World (2015) and Dear Future (2020) by Ranu Mukherjee(United States), IF AI / AIBOHPORTSUALC (2020) by 0rphan drift (Ranu Mukherjee and Maggie Roberts), and Planet Celadon: Operation Completed (2020) by Genevieve Quick (United States)
11.30am – 1.00pm
Panel Discussion: The Welling Up and the Very Coursing of Water: On the Transnational, the Transgenerational, and the Diasporic
Moderators: Kim Nguyen and Dr Karin Oen (United States/Singapore)
Panelists: Jungmin Choi (Korea), Eunsong Kim (Korea/United States), and Green Zeng (Singapore)
Respondent: Billy Tang (United Kingdom/China)