impasse to verbal by Luca Lum]]> Urbanism]]> Public Sphere]]> Identity]]> impasse to verbal comes out from her continued engagement with the neighbourhood and from her speculations on the slippage between what things are, how they look, and what they do—which the artist defines as the play between description and disposition.

The work is a visual assemblage that merges wall notices, official zoning maps, personal routes, and various extracts sampled from the urban landscape. Through an intricate interplay of stratifications and transparencies, it creates an imploded visual environment where information is simultaneously displayed and withdrawn, revealed and cloaked. Steeped in a pervasive blue glow reminiscent of the light of electronic devices, the signs are left to float and clash into leaky configurations that shatter conventional patterns of readability.]]>
Luca Lum]]> Installation]]> Mixed Media]]> 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]]> Journey of a Yellow Man. Selected Materials from the Independent Archive]]> Performance]]> Activism]]> Politics]]> Identity]]> Artistic Research]]> Archival Practice]]> Lee Wen (Singapore) in 2012. For the past six years, the IA captured the zeitgeist of performance art in Singapore and larger (South-)East Asia through artistic collaborations.

This presentation in The Lab is organised into five chapters —“Condition,” “Body,” “Formation / Gestalt,” “Absence,” and “Memory”—that look at the development of performance art as a new medium as well as its political conditions. Journey of a Yellow Man. takes visitors through the archive with photographs, videos, writings, sketchbooks, while simultaneously, introducing the digital archive. As of today, the Centre has digitalised 20,000 files from the IA.

The practice of Lee Wen is motivated by social investigations that use art to interrogate stereotypical perceptions of culture and society. He became famous for his performance series Journey of a Yellow Man (1992—), where he embodied his Chinese descent and its relationship to oppressive systems.

The presentation provides insight into a continuously expanding resource platform that highlights ephemeral moments in the history of performance art in Singapore. The project addresses the importance of providing historically significant source material for researchers and the wider public. The digitalised files will be integrated into NTU CCA Singapore’s Public Resource Platform and will be accessible at the Centre, the Independent Archive, and the Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong, a collaborative partner of this project.

With IA, a series of public programmes will take place in both The Lab at the NTU CCA Singapore and in the IA. The programme highlights IA as a “living archive” that not only serves as a reference library and archive focusing on time-based and event-specific art, but is also a gathering space that offers dynamic programmes in a vibrant network of artists, musicians, and the public.

Journey of a Yellow Man is curated by Sophie Goltz, Deputy Director, Research and Academic Programmes, NTU CCA Singapore, in collaboration with Lee Wen, artist and Founder, Independent Archive, Singapore, Bruce Quek, Research, Independent Archive, and Kamiliah Bahdar, Public Programmes, Independent Archive. Project Assistant: Ho See Wah, Young Professional Trainee, NTU CCA Singapore. Assistant to Lee Wen: Liu Wen Chao, Library, Independent Archive.

The NTU CCA Digital Resource Platform was initiated in 2016 by Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director, NTU CCA Singapore, and Professor, NTU ADM Singapore and Lee Wen, in collaboration with Chương-Đài Võ, Researcher, Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong. Assistant to the project: Bruce Quek with the support of Samantha Leong Min Yu, Executive, Conferences, Workshops & Archive, NTU CCA Singapore (till May 2018), Corine Chan Li Ling, Executive Archive, NTU CCA Singapore (May to July 2018), and Pooja Paras Mehta (2017), Ho See Wah (2018), Young Professional Trainees, NTU CCA Singapore.]]>
Sophie Goltz]]> Lee Wen]]> Bruce Quek]]> Kamiliah Bahdar]]> Ho See Wah]]> Liu Wen Chao]]> Ute Meta Bauer]]> Chương-Đài Võ]]> Samantha Leong Min Yu]]> Corine Chan Li Ling]]> Pooja Paras Mehta]]> Chuong-Dai Vo]]> Chuong Dai Vo]]> Photography]]> Multimedia Installation]]> Print]]> Video]]> Sculpture]]> Southeast Asia]]>
Landscape Series #1, 2013 by Nguyen Trinh Thi]]> Archival Practice]]> Geopolitics]]> Ecosystems]]> Environmental Crisis]]>
The land bearing witness to the volatile transitions in our geo-political, cultural, and social systems questions the extent of which unsustainable and environmentally-taxing practices effect the environment. Does a landscape harbour ill-feelings towards events and circumstances that have caused it harm? And if it were to break its silence, what forgotten stories would it reveal? Rather than disregarding the land, Nguyen’s photographs suggest these environments contain a plethora of unspoken histories.

Nguyen’s works are built upon and are often generative of one another. Parallel to this presentation, two of her films, Vietnam the Movie (2015) and Fifth Cinema (2018), will be on view in The Single Screen from 28 May – 9 June and 11 – 23 June respectively. This screening is part of the Centre’s Film Screening Programme: Faces of Histories, 14 May – 17 July 2019.]]>
Ngyuen Trinh Thi ]]> Installation]]> Photography]]> Southeast Asia]]>
Loose Leaves. Process, materials, sounds from Listen to my words by Dana Awartani]]> Feminism]]> Indigenous Knowledge]]> Tradition]]> Materiality]]> Loose Leaves offers an intimate foray into the process of making Listen to my words (2018). An immersive installation by Dana Awartani, Listen to my words combines hand-embroidered silk panels and recordings of Arabic poems recited by modern-day Saudi women to confront issues of silencing, invisibility, and gendered divisions of space deeply entrenched in the cultural fabric of the Middle East.

Drawn from the significant but scarcely documented tradition of female poets in the Arab world from the pre-Islamic era to the 12th century, the poems selected by the artist express feelings of love, yearning, and pride. They relay modes of awareness, stances of resistance, and acts of empowerment often centred on the female body.

The distinct visual language articulated by the geometric patterns—bearers of sacred values in Islamic culture—references the ornamental motifs found on jali (or mashrabiya), lattice screens used in traditional Islamic architecture to control the circulation of air and light as well as to shield women from the male gaze.

Presented alongside the original audio recording, Loose Leaves layers a selection of preparatory studies in the enclosed space of The Vitrine to provide a glimpse of the subtle negotiations that inform Awartani’s creative journey across different techniques and materials.
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Dana Awartani ]]> Installation]]> Africa]]>
Mary Otis Stevens. The i Press Series]]> Public Sphere]]> Urbanism]]> Geopolitics]]> Activism]]> Politics]]> Mary Otis Stevens (b.1928) is a pioneering American architect. Her architectural designs, along with the founding of i Press (1968-1978), an important publisher of books on architecture, urbanism, and social space, were linked to her ability to radically re-envision space and relationships. In the context of the Cold War and American political activism in the 1960s, her work, which were often in collaboration with her partner, fellow architect and i Press co-founder Thomas McNulty, revealed her foundational training in philosophy and her commitment to de-centralising hierarchies. Revisiting her work more than fifty years later, the themes of active citizen participation in government, integrated planning, and genuine risk-taking to make substantial change in people’s lives remain relevant and crucial means of incorporating a social context into the practice of architecture. On view is Mary’s sensitivity to variations, large and small, visible in her work as a publisher as well as her drawings and architectural designs. This research presentation also explores The Ideal Communist City, an i Press publication by Alexei Gutnov et al. from 1970 that offers a deep dive into a utopian proposition that “the new city is a world belonging to all and to each.”

In order to help introduce the i Press series on the human environment to a wide audience, NTU CCA Singapore, with series editors Ute Meta Bauer (Founding Director, NTU CCA and Professor, NTU ADM), James Graham (Director of Publications, Columbia University GSAPP), and Pelin Tan (2019-2020 Keith Haring Fellow in Art and Activism, Bard College), is currently working with i Press and Mary Otis Stevens to republish several original i Press books with revisions and commentary by contemporary theorists and practitioners.

Mary Otis Stevens. The i Press Series is curated by Dr Karin Oen, Deputy Director, Curatorial Programmes, NTU CCA Singapore]]>
Mary Otis Stevens]]> Karin Oen]]> Print]]> North America]]>
Phyoe Kyi: The Museum Project]]> Architecture]]> The Museum Project stands out as one of the artist’s most ambitious, albeit unfinished, undertakings at the time of his sudden death in 2018. Bringing together its three main stages, the presentation in The Lab reflects the development of the architectural design and features several mediums the artist experimented with: an interactive installation (2013), architectural renderings and sketches of artworks and installations (2014 – 15), and a model based on the last architectural project (2018). The presentation also includes a timeline designed by Tun Win Aung and Wah Nu to illustrate the collaboration which originally sparked The Museum Project.]]> Phyoe Kyi]]> Anna Lovecchio]]> Tun Win Aung]]> Wah Nu]]> Video]]> Multimedia Installation]]> Print]]> Southeast Asia]]> Semangat Kejiranan by Izat Arif]]> Nature]]> Urbanism]]> Botany]]> Izat Arif has conducted experiential and erratic fieldwork in various landscapes in Singapore observing plants, soil, insects, and traces of human presence. This investigation is presented in The Vitrine as a form of a provisional “cabinet of essential items,” which contains a selection of the artist’s notes and drawings, research tools, and findings.]]> Izat Arif ]]> Installation]]> Mixed Media]]> 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]]>
Speed Reading by Sonya Lacey]]> Artistic Research]]> Politics]]> Sonya Lacey addresses the politics of communication by tampering with the concrete textures of language. Specifically conceived for The Vitrine, Speed Reading combines two bodies of work that put the sheer physicality of language to a test. Headlines from The Straits Times and Solar Print Tests (both 2017) result from a series of experiments, undertaken by the artist during her residency at NTU CCA Singapore, where she exposed newsprint paper to both sunlight and artificial light, while Dilutions, an earlier work from 2016, is a sculptural piece involving a movable metal typeface and the process of corrosion determined by lead oxide. Slowly warping over time, the material components entailed in the production and circulation of the written word, Speed Reading alters the boundaries of legibility and shakes the physical foundations of the transmission of knowledge.]]> Sonya Lacey ]]> Installation]]> Mixed Media]]> Southeast Asia]]>