Bring it to LIFE]]> Migration]]> Capitalism]]> Knowledge Production]]> Public Sphere]]> Bring it to LIFE is a curatorial project that engages with NTU CCA Singapore’s Artist Resource Platform which aims to overcome the mediated experience and create direct encounters with artistic production. Structured in four different episodes, Bring it to LIFE brings to the fore artworks by Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor, Kray Chen, Sufian Samsiyar, and Geraldine Kang that directly engage with the subject matter of PLACE.LABOUR.CAPITAL. through themes of migration and capital transactions. In addition, it uses spatial interventions as a tool to highlight that the production of meaning is also a spatial process and our movement into a confined place impacts upon the way we relate to it and make meaning out of it.

The work of Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor produced during their residency at NTU CCA Singapore is conceived as a visual poem focused on the migrant workers whose individual destinies are influenced by the wider movements of capital flow. Kray Chen’s contribution is a playful installation highlighting how transactional activities such as cutting queues, getting out of a train or simply shopping are punctuating our everyday life. Sufian Samsiyar’s collaborative project tests the thin boundaries between work and life space. Geraldine Kang’s intervention into the spatial arrangement of the Platform is a proposition for another reading and way of engagement with an archive that eschews linearity and prescribed movement into the space.

Conceived by a constellation of voices from NTU CCA Singapore, Bring it to LIFE is curated by Shona Findlay, Curatorial Assistant, Residencies, Syaheedah Iskandar, Curatorial Assistant, Exhibitions, Samantha Leong, Executive, Conference, Workshops & Archive, and Kimberly Shen, Manager, Communications.]]>
Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor]]> Kray Chen]]> Sufian Samsiyar]]> Geraldine Kang]]> Shona Findlay]]> Syaheedah Iskandar]]> Samantha Leong]]> Kimberly Shen]]> Multimedia Installation]]> Video]]> Installation]]> Object]]> Print]]> Southeast Asia]]>
Hard, however, and useful is the small, day-to-day work]]> Labour]]> Capitalism]]> Inequality]]> Politics]]> 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.]]>
Darcy Lange]]> Mercedes Vicente]]> Video]]> Print]]> Oceania]]>
Exhibit 101: Li Ran and Gary Ross Pastrana]]> Artistic Research]]> Regionalism]]> Geopolitics]]> Li Ran and Gary Ross Pastrana will develop projects for The Lab, NTU CCA Singapore’s space for experimentation, which are speculations on how an image is created and deconstructed.

Gary Ross Pastrana’s An ASEAN Exhibition 1 creates an artistic gesture around the idea of Southeast Asia as a reference with no visual referent. The artist engaged DSM Solutions, a young Singaporean creative collective, to stage a “Contemporary Southeast Asia Art Exhibition-Themed Event” and prototype props that could stand in for Southeast Asian artworks. In this manner, the artist has effectively outsourced the sometimes-problematic task of representing Southeast Asia, an implied obligation of artists invited to regionally themed group exhibitions within the region.

Li Ran presents a new project Waiting for the Fog to Drift Away, a collaboration with Singapore Management University (SMU), Assistant Professor Rowan Wang, a specialist in overall planning science. Li Ran will conduct interviews to gain planning advice from Wang in an attempt to define the most successful trajectory for the life of an artist as a business enterprise, estimating production levels and peaks and troughs in key life moments.]]>
Li Ran]]> Gary Ross Pastrana]]> Print]]> Installation]]> Video]]> Southeast Asia]]>
Interrogative Pattern – Text(ile) Weave by Regina (Maria) Möller]]> Materiality]]> Identity]]> Regina (Maria) Möller‘s research focus. Möller’s research in The Lab stems from her interest in the trademark headdress of Samsui women, and will elaborate with time through experimental, collaborative and participatory forms of research practice. During workshops, lectures or formats of story telling, new layers will be added to reflect upon each other and trigger next threads for an ever expanding weave.]]> Regina (Maria) Möller]]> Installation]]> Object]]> Southeast Asia]]> Four Practices: Artist Resource Platform]]> Artistic Research]]> Regionalism]]> Geopolitics]]> Four Practices, a display of resource material of current Artists-in-Residence. Showcasing publications, audio and visual documentation, Four Practices provides an entry point in understanding the artists’ diverse body of works and the complexity of their practices.

Four Practices complements and expands on NTU CCA Singapore’s Artist Resource Platform, a growing collection of resource materials from more than 80 local and international artists, independent art spaces and NTU CCA Singapore’s Artists-in-Residence.]]>
Haegue Yang]]> Zac Langdon-Pole]]> Zul Mahmod]]> Dennis Tan]]> Print]]> Video]]> Photography]]> Sculpture]]> Southeast Asia]]> Oceania]]> Asia]]>
Artist Resource Platform Activate!]]> Artistic Research]]> Regionalism]]> Geopolitics]]> Knowledge Production]]> Artist Resource Platform: activate! is an ongoing project that engages with and expands upon the Artist Resource Platform, a growing collection of visual and audio materials from over 90 artists and independent art spaces. The series will negotiate with the limitations of an archive by initiating conversations and experimentations, offering the audience multiple access points to the resource materials and the artists’ practices.

This edition of Artist Resource Platform: activate! will feature three curators based in Singapore, providing a conceptual framework to understand their practices and how they are situated within the local and international contemporary art scene.

Public Programme

Artist Resource Platform: activate! I with Sidd Perez (The Philippines/Singapore), Assistant Curator, NUS Museum Wednesday, 18 May, 7.30 – 9.00pm

Artist Resource Platform: activate! II with Selene Yap (Singapore), Programme Manager (Visual Arts), The Substation Friday, 27 May, 7.30 – 9.00pm

Artist Resource Platform: activate! III with Melanie Pocock (United Kingdom/Singapore), Assistant Curator, Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, LASALLE College of the Arts Friday, 10 June, 7.30 – 9.00pm]]>
Sidd Perez]]> Melanie Pocock]]> Selene Yap]]> Print]]> Photography]]> Video]]> Southeast Asia]]>
The Haze: An Inquiry, Ongoing Research Project]]> Climate Crisis]]> Coexistence]]> Geopolitics]]> Capitalism]]> Ecology]]> Labour]]> Politics]]> 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.]]>
Amar Kanwar]]> Ute Meta Bauer]]> Magdalena Magiera]]> Print]]> Video]]> Southeast Asia]]>
Speakers' Corner]]> Politics]]> Activism]]> Archival Practice]]> 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.]]>
Yang Fudong]]> Charles Lim Yi Yong]]> Heman Chong]]> Zac Langdon-Pole]]> Video]]> Southeast Asia]]>
Wrong Indexing: Yeoseong Gukgeuk Archive by siren eun young jung]]> Identity]]> Yeoseong Gukgeuk reached the peak of popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, its success being tightly intertwined with the process of modernisation of South Korea. While today it lingers on the verge of extinction, in the post-colonial period Yeoseong Gukgeuk opened up a space for women to embody “other” identities and perform different subjectivities. Reinventing the traditional Korean theatre, they brought the process of gender-shifting to the limelight and subverted socially acceptable norms by blurring conventional gender binaries. Since 2008, siren eun young jung has investigated the public and private lives of Yeoseong Gukgeuk performers who, after the genre fell out of favour, went on to live disparate lives. This configuration of archival materials offers an insight into the artist’s research process and articulates the politics of recollecting, weaving together queer desires and patterns of resistance, affective matters and subversive subjectivities, gender fluidity and the performance of difference.

Wrong Indexing: Yeoseong Gukgeuk Archive is curated by Dr Anna Lovecchio, Curator, Residencies.]]>
siren eun young jung]]> Anna Lovecchio]]> Photography]]> Asia]]>
The wind that cuts the body by Choy Ka Fai]]> Body]]> Performance]]> Choy Ka Fai focuses his research on choreographic practices in
Asia. The wind that cuts the body presents his current investigation into Butoh, which arose in Japan at the end of the 1950s, encompassing a diverse range of techniques from dance, theatre, and movement. Choy traces the legacy of one of the key founders, Tatsumi Hijikata (1928–1986) who sought a new form of physical expression he referred to as ankoku butō (“dance of darkness”), delving into imageries of the grotesque and sickness of the human form. The research presentation will feature a selection of reference materials from the Tatsumi Hijikata Archive in Tokyo and from the artist’s expeditions, interviews, and documentary sketches. In his pursuit, Choy went to the extent of interviewing the spirit of Hijikata through an itako (Japanese shaman) and to speculate on the technological possibilities of dancing with Hijikata again.

The wind that cuts the body is curated by Khim Ong, Deputy Director, Curatorial Programmes.]]>
Choy Ka Fai]]> Khim Ong]]> Print]]> Video]]> Photography]]> Asia]]>