Building upon the NTU CCA Singapore’s research theme Climates. Habitats. Environments. and IdeasCity’s exploration of the role of art and culture beyond the walls of the museum, IdeasCity Singapore’s residency and public program will examine the urgency of solidarity structures in negating climate change and its impact on Southeast Asia and communities worldwide.
Twenty practitioners have been selected from an international open call for the residency program at the NTU CCA Singapore to develop independent research at the intersection of art and ecology. Throughout the residency, participants will engage in workshops and lectures presented by local artists, practitioners, and community leaders, including Heman Chong, Lynette Chua, Drama Box, Charles Lim, Zarina Muhammad, and Post-Museum, along with organizations such as New Naratif, The Projector, Singapore Community Radio, soft/WALLS/studs, and The Substation.
Residency Fellows include: Francisco Brown (United States), Jane Chang Mi (United States), Kar-men Cheng (Singapore), Lingying Chong (Singapore), Chloe C. Chotrani (Philippines/Singapore), Calvin Chua (Singapore), Fataah T. Dihaan (United States), ila (Singapore), Heider Ismail (Singapore), Lily Kwong (United States), Clarissa Ai Ling Lee (Malaysia), Michelle Lai (Singapore), Kwan Q Li (Hong Kong), Angela Mayrina (Indonesia/United Kingdom), John Kenneth Paranada (Philippines/United Kingdom), Patricia Sayuri (Japan/Brazil), Pen Sereypagna (Cambodia), Shahmen Suku (Singapore/Australia), Ruby Thiagarajan (Singapore), Dat Vu (Vietnam), Nikan Wasinondh (Bow) (Thailand) and Jason Wee (Singapore). For more information please visit: http://www.ideas-city.org.
On February 22, 2020 at NTU CCA Singapore, IdeasCity Singapore will present and broadcast a series of dialogues between local and international artists and community leaders on topics including food sovereignty (Angela Dimayuga and Emeka Ogboh), underground archives (Heman Chong and Monica Narula of Raqs Media Collective), image and power (Ho Rui An and Shumon Basar), ecofeminism (Marwa Arsanios), and traces of migration (Kunlé Adeyemi, Eleena Jamil, Bouchra Khalili and Alfian Sa’at). A sequence of debate circles will examine the roles of solidarity and speculation in addressing climate injustice, featuring interdisciplinary perspectives from speakers such as Becca D’Bus, Kirsten Han, Prasoon Kumar and Zarina Muhammad.
Workshops and conversations facilitated by Bakudapan Food Study Group and a presentation of new VR work by artist Rindon Johnson will invite select audiences to engage directly with artists envisioning pathways to equitable and sustainable futures. The programme will also feature screenings, showings, and remarks by performance artist ila and Digital Minister of Taiwan, Audrey Tang.
Responding to the context of climate crisis, in which artists, activists, and scholars around the world are working today, IdeasCity Singapore will include a series of programmes across Southeast Asia in collaboration with The Forest Curriculum and Nomina Nuda (Los Baños, Philippines), Malaysia Design Archive (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia), House of Natural Fiber (Yogyakarta, Indonesia), The Land (Chiang Mai, Thailand), Sàn Art (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam) and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (Boston, United States).
Facilitated by IdeasCity and workshopped at NTU CCA Singapore with an advisory council of Singaporean community members whose work exemplifies equitable practices, a community agreement was developed that details best practices for achieving an accountable, sustainable, and authentic collaboration in Singapore.
Programme on 22 February 2020
10.00am
Start and Finish by Ute Meta Bauer and Vere van Gool
10.15am
Dialogues by Shumon Basar and Ho Rui An on capitalism and the extreme self
11.00am
Lecture by Kirsten Han on emergent medias and speech
11.20am
Film screening by ila
12.00pm
Presentation by Heman Chong on archives as commons
12.15pm
Lecture Screening by Marwa Arsanios on ecofeminism and community
1.00pm
Presentation by Monica Narula on submarine horizons
1.30pm
Performance by Radha “Midnight Masala”
1.55pm
Hologram lecture by Audrey Tang
2.00pm
Conversation between Becca D’Bus and Fellows on solidarity with nature
3.00pm
Discussion by Shumon Basar, Heman Chong, Vere van Gool, Charles Lim, and Zarina Muhammad on sovereignty and indigenous contexts
4.00pm
Lecture by Emeka Ogboh on food diasporas
4.15pm
Reading by Alfian Sa’at on the poetics of migration
4.30pm
Presentations by House of Natural Fiber and the Land Foundation on strategies for combatting climate change
5.00pm
Video Presentation by Angela Dimayuga on culture and cookbooks
5.10pm
Discussion by Ute Meta Bauer, Vanessa Ho, and Prasoon Kumar on trust networks and sustainability
6.00pm
Kitchen Mapping Workshop by Bakudapan Food Study Group
6.30pm
VR Demo by Rindon Johnson on speculative futures
7.00pm
Roundtable by Fellows
7.45pm
Live Music by Bani Haykal
8.00pm
Lecture Screenings by Kunlé Adeyemi, Eleena Jamil, and Bouchra Khalili on the poetics of migration
10.00pm
Start and Finish by Ute Meta Bauer and Vere van Gool
NTU CCA Ideas Fest 2020 is guest-curated by IdeasCity, New Museum, New York.
Collaborative and experimental by nature, Free Jazz III builds upon its past iterations by activating and challenging common understandings of exhibition-making and the use of space. Sound walks. Machines listen. We are living through unusual times.
As the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore approaches a major transformation away from a permanent exhibition space in early 2021, Free Jazz III continues to explore the possibilities of an international research centre for contemporary art, featuring many artists who have been part of NTU CCA Singapore’s exhibitions, residencies, and programs since 2013, when the Centre presented Free Jazz as its inaugural event. The project began as a form of inquiry and an active tool to generate new possibilities for conceptualizing and programming an art institution. Free Jazz III convenes diverse projects united by themes of adaptation via masterful improvisation, trans-mediatic pivots, and the conscious renegotiation of our relationships to nature, technology, and each other. The disparate components of Free Jazz III explore the elements of dissonance, resistance, and innovation embedded in its musical namesake and the ability for sound and art to transcend physical and social distance. Embracing sound and walking as two powerful ways to overcome distance and bring people together, Free Jazz III comprises projects that can take place in non-gallery spaces, independently, asynchronously, or in purposeful syncopation with the present moment, reflecting on the past and looking forward to the future.
Admission to all programmes and events is free.
Sound. Walks.
January–March 2021 (On-site and online)
Reflecting on the loss of physicality through increased virtual interactions as well as many histories of sound and walking, artists address common life and communality in times of social distancing. In this series of performative explorations of sound, music, and community building, reflections take the form of soundwalks, sonic wayfinding and other physical and aural experiences, offering multiple ways for the public to actively witness, listen and participate, both remotely and on-site. Soundwalks by Tini Aliman (Singapore), Christa Donner and Andrew S Yang (United States), and Diana Lelonek (Poland) and Denim Szram (Poland/Switzerland) are propelled by sonic outputs of nature. Storytelling, correspondence, and the impossibility of direct communication factor into projects by Cheryl Ong (Singapore), Ana Prvački (Romania/Germany) in collaboration with Joyce Bee Tuan Koh (Singapore) and Galina Mihaleva (Bulgaria/Singapore), and Vivian Wang (Singapore/Switzerland). Sound, history, culture, and space overlap and intertwine in works by Arahmaiani (Indonesia) and Jimmy Ong (Singapore), bani haykal (Singapore) and Lee Weng Choy (Malaysia), Reetu Sattar (Bangladesh), and anGie Seah (Singapore).
Free Jazz III. Sound. Walks. is curated by Magdalena Magiera (Germany/Singapore), NTU CCA Singapore Curator, Education and Outreach, and Dr Karin Oen (United States/Singapore), NTU CCA Singapore Deputy Director, Curatorial Programmes
Under the Skin
1 December 2020 – 31 January 2021 (Online)
World premiere and special performance
1 December 2020, 7pm SGT
This trio of performative works by artists George Chua (Singapore), Nina Djekić (Slovenia/Singapore/Netherlands), and Noor Effendy Ibrahim (Singapore) engages with sound, bodily movements, and performance. These new pieces are cinematically translated into the medium of video by filmmaker Russell Morton (Singapore) and viewed online, acknowledging the curatorial premise that, “the pandemic has pushed us into a space of dramatic convergence—where a deep tech, hyper-connected future collides with social political unrest,” in both the work itself and the medium in which it is presented.
Under the Skin is curated for Free Jazz III by artist Cheong Kah Kit (Singapore) as part of Proposals for Novel Ways of Being, a united response to the changes brought about by COVID-19 hosted by twelve Singapore arts institutions, initiated by the National Gallery Singapore and Singapore Art Museum.
Partner programmes:
Machine Listening, a curriculum
From October 2020 (Online)
Expanded collaborations and explorations of curatorial spaces also took form in support of Machine Listening, a curriculum instigated by Melbourne-based Liquid Architecture. This evolving online resource, comprising existing and newly commissioned writing, interviews, music and artworks is a new investigation and experiment in collective learning around the emergent field of machine listening. It premiered with three online sessions open to all as part of Unsound 2020: Intermission, an experimental sound festival in Krakow, Poland. NTU CCA Singapore and Liquid Architecture will convene another collaborative online session open to the public in early 2021.
Machine Listening, a curriculum is curated by Sean Dockray, Dr James Parker, and Joel Stern (all Australia).
Visit the evolving open source curriculum and the recorded Unsound sessions:
(Against) the coming world of listening machines
Lessons in How (Not) to be Heard
Listening with the Pandemic
Sollum Swaramum
26 February 2021, 7.30 – 9.00pm
On-Site at Blk 43 Malan Road
Presented in collaboration with The Arts House’s Poetry with Music series, the 4th edition of Sollum Swaramum, brings together musicians Ramesh Krishnan, Mohamed Noor and Munir Alsagoff in exploration of the synergies between music and text, with devised and improvised texts based on the work of Tamil literary stalwarts P Krishnan, Ma Ilangkannnan and Rama Kannabiran. These newly devised texts are written by Harini V, Ashwinii Selvarai and Bharathi Moorthiappan, performed by Sivakumar Palakrishnan, and art direction by Laura Miotto.
Curated by Magdalena Magiera, Curator, Outreach and Education, and Dr. Karin Oen, Deputy Director, Curatorial Programmes, NTU CCA Singapore.
Free Jazz III. Sound. Walks. presented in partnership with Proposals for Novel Ways of Being, The Arts House, Liquid Architecture, as part of Singapore Art week, supported by National Arts Council.