Migration]]> Indigenous Knowledge]]> Tradition]]> Sustainability]]> Sunday, 19 February 2023
10.00am – 12.00pm
Venue: West Coast Park

This workshop shares the impacts of relocation; from the southern islands to mainland Singapore and the aftermath that still threatens the livelihoods and traditions of active Orang Laut/Pulau community members. It explores food through Orang Laut/Pulau values and traditions that have shaped (and still shape) a more sustainable way of life. With a visit to West Coast Park, where a small Orang Laut/Pulau community still thrives, this session questions Singapore’s progress as a young nation, asking if there is space for indigenous cultures and traditions to stay alive here. The session highlights some ways young individuals in Singapore can contribute to salvaging a lesser-known tradition. It also speaks of heritage and culture through a shared meal. Firdaus shares a tangible aspect of his family’s heritage—its cuisine that reflects a life on the island that is no longer accessible. The food is lovingly cooked by Pulau Semakau islanders who have learnt their ancestors’ original cooking methods and recipes.]]>
Firdaus Sani]]> Southeast Asia]]>
Sustainability]]> Climate Crisis]]> During this residency, Wang Ruobing will expand her ongoing research into sustainability and livability issues brought about by threats to marine ecology, with artistic practice/expression as an avenue to reconfigure our relations to the earth and its inhabitants.

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.

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Wang Ruobing]]> Southeast Asia]]>
Climate Crisis]]> Sea level rise, flash floods, and extreme weather phenomena compel a profound reconsideration of the human relation to the environment. Continuing his filmic meditations on the complexities of contemporary society, Min-Wei Ting will use his residency to research and develop a speculative film project on latent and more prominent traces of climate change in present-day Singapore. The artist plans to conduct an observational investigation of the island nation to survey a range of existing objects, sites, and development projects and compose them into a visual index of natural and man-made features that may acquire different meanings and functions within advanced climate change scenarios.

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Min-Wei Ting]]> Ting Min-Wei]]> Southeast Asia]]>
Artistic Research]]> Mythology]]> Supernatural]]> Branching out from previous collaborative research on spiritual mapping, Zachary Chan will spend his residency developing maps and diagrams as a way of building an archive of the charismatic evangelical movement in Singapore.

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.

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Zachary Chan]]> Southeast Asia]]>
Artistic Research]]> Archival Practice]]> Knowledge Production]]> History]]> Other days by appointment.
Residencies Studio #01-03, Block 37 Malan Road

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.

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Ho Rui An]]> Tan Biyun]]>
Animals]]> Migration]]> Ecology]]> 2021, HD video, sound, colour, 4 min 52 sec

In ancient times, the observation of birds in flight was used in divinatory practices to decipher the present and foretell the future. And A Great Sign Appeared captures the sudden arrival of thousands of Asian openbill storks in Singapore from northern parts of Southeast Asia on 22 December 2019. The artist followed the birds’ week-long futile and ultimately unsuccessful search for a suitable roosting site in the densely populated city-state. As we become increasingly aware that environmental changes and a drastic reduction of resources in their native lands are altering the behavioural patterns and migration routes of many species, the work invites us to ponder on the possible meanings of this unexpected occurrence and on the uncertain future that awaits the planet.]]>
Robert Zhao Renhui]]> Southeast Asia]]>
Ecology]]> Urbanism]]> Nature]]> 2021, video, colour, sound, 17 min 37 sec

Filmed in Singapore, earth, land, sky and sea as palimpsest is an invitation to cross thresholds and observe the unobservable: to see with our skin, hear with our feet, and feel our way above and beneath pathless paths. This poetic and multisensorial wandering is interspersed with historical forays into ways in which human activities unfold and affect the earth. Charting inclusive ecologies, the work subtly suggests that, while we are constantly distracted by rapid urban development, many trees are older than our buildings and spiritual landscapes find a way to survive within modern urban infrastructures. earth, land, sky and sea as palimpsest is the first iteration of a namesake research project initiated by Zarina Muhammad and Zachary Chan that engages with environmental histories, extractive capitalist urbanisation, and archival fragments in order to redraw hegemonic cartographies and seek out a more-than-human understanding of our place in the world.]]>
Zarina Muhammad]]> Zachary Chan]]> Southeast Asia]]>
Mythology]]> During the residency, Russell Morton concentrates on developing his first feature film which tackles the perverse dynamics of crime and punishment as well as the ancient wisdom couched in local stories of haunting and other regional lore. Stemming from personal circumstances—due to his father’s employment as commander of the prison tactical unit, the artist grew up in Changi Prison’s quarters —Morton developed a direct, albeit unspoken, intimacy with the tortuous ethical issues and psychological consequences related to the most extreme form of law enforcement. Through researching archival materials, oral histories as well as literature and films from post-independence Singapore, the artist plans to interweave the nightmares and traumas experienced by both the punisher and the punished by steeping the fictional narrative into Malayan myths, folk music, and vernacular architecture.]]> Russell Morton]]> Film]]> Southeast Asia]]> Identity]]> History]]> Diaspora]]> Migration]]>
Co-presented by NTU CCA Singapore, the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, and Rockbund Art Museum, this convening builds upon the idea of a multiplicity of storytellers and intergenerational, intercultural linkages in art, activism, stories, and histories. A two-part programme, the first segment involves a conversation between artists Hồng-Ân Trương and Ranu Mukherjee (both United States), reflecting on the Wattis’ year-long research season on the practice of Trinh T. Minh-ha. The conversation will close by screening video artworks by Ranu Mukherjee, 0rphan drift, and Genevieve Quick (United States), then the convening flows into a panel discussion with short presentations by Jungmin Choi (Korea), Eunsong Kim (United States), Green Zeng (Singapore) and Billy Tang (United Kingdom/China), exploring intergenerational dialogues, transnational and diasporic identities, and activism in creative practice and public life.

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)

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Hồng-Ân Trương]]> Ranu Mukherjee]]> Kim Nguyen]]> Genevieve Quick]]> Karin Oen]]> Eunsong Kim]]> Jungmin Choi ]]> Green Zeng]]> Billy Tang ]]> Hong-An Truong]]> Asia]]>
Technology]]> Lim Ting Li]]> Southeast Asia]]>