Politics]]> The Geocultural]]> Technology]]>
Choreographer and artist Cally Spooner shares her fascination with language, politics, and philosophy and how societies’ orders and regimes are reflected in her work. She will elaborate on how subjectivity and its bodies are shaped by technological and performative conditions, where language undergoes damage. Together with her collaborators Maggie Segale and Jesper List Thomsen, they will discuss OFFSHORE, a philosophy school for embodied knowledge, its diverse aspects, forms, and the concept of the laboratory. Moderated by Magdalena Magiera, Curator, Outreach & Education, NTU CCA Singapore BIOGRAPHIES Maggie Segale (United States) is a dancer, artist, and teacher with a focus on performing and interdisciplinary, collaborative work. She graduated from the Juilliard School, where she received multiple awards and fellowships including the 2014 Entrepreneurship Fellowship for her writing on self-image and dance. Segale works with Helen Simoneau Danse, Bryan Arias, and artist Cally Spooner, having collaborated with A24 Films, Center for Innovation in the Arts, Roya Carreras in the upcoming Pussy Riot music video, composer Zubin Hensler, and Matilda Sakamoto. Segale choreographed the opera Role of Reason at the Interarts Festival 2018, and was an Artist-in-Residence at the New Jersey Dance Theatre Ensemble (2016). Cally Spooner’s (United Kingdom/Greece) spatialisations are continuously evolving in accordance to temporal contexts to render society’s orders and social regimes visible. Her projects look at “language-making” and alternative compositions of communication and movement in today’s context, where speech and attention are automated, the body is hired technology, and subjectivity and communication are consistently outsourced. Addressing the damage chrono-normativity can cause, she works with duration and rehearsals as alternative spaces. Appropriating and referencing genres such as the musical, the novel, or the radio play, Spooner builds a new sonic, literary, and living language to trigger public reaction towards the rapidly changing digital communication and how our understanding of the world changes along. Spooner’s work has been widely exhibited since 2008. Recent solo shows include Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève (2018); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2017); New Museum, New York (2016); and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2016). Recent group shows include Serpentine Gallery, London (2017) and the Geneva Moving Image Biennial (2016–17). Upcoming shows include Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2018); Swiss Institute, New York (2018); and Art Institute Chicago (2019). Spooner’s book Scripts was published by Slimvolume in 2016, and her novel Collapsing In Parts was published by Mousse in 2012. Jesper List Thomsen (Denmark/United Kingdom/Greece) is an artist and writer. Recent exhibitions and performances include Hollis and Money, ICA, London and Künstlerhaus, Stuttgart; Speak Through You, Hot Wheels Projects, Athens; A Social Body Event, Serpentine Gallery, London; Micro-Composition, Rozenstraat, Amsterdam; The body, the body, the tongue, Reading International; Hand and Mind, Grand Union, Birmingham; The boys the girls and the political, Lisson Gallery, London; and One Hour Exhibition, South London Gallery, London. A book-length collection of his texts will be published in Autumn 2018 by Juan de la Cosa (John of the Thing). He is also a part of the artist collective Am Nuden Da.

Magdalena Magiera (Germany/Singapore) is Curator, Outreach & Education at NTU CCA Singapore. She was an independent curator, Managing Editor of frieze d/e, and currently Editor of mono.kultur, a quarterly interview magazine. She co-curated Based in Berlin (2011) as well as exhibitions for The Building and SPLACE in Berlin. Magiera was Project Manager of The Maybe Education and Other Programs at dOCUMENTA(13), Kassel (2012) and UNITEDNATIONSPLAZA, Berlin (2006–08). Prior to joining NTU CCA Singapore, she worked for e-flux exhibitions and public programmes in New York City.


A public programme of Stagings. Soundings. Readings. Free Jazz II.]]>
Maggie Segale]]> Cally Spooner]]> Jesper List Thomsen]]> Video]]>
Body]]> Performance]]> 6 Oct 2018, Sat 01:00 PM - 07:00 PM
The Exhibition Hall, Block 43 Malan Road

OFFSHORE IN SINGAPORE Radical Philosophy School for Embodied Knowledge With Maggie Segale, Cally Spooner, and Jesper List Thomsen

OFFSHORE – A structure that enables EVERYONE (some of whom will have met before, some of whom will not have met) to maintain a state of rehearsal, over a number of days, in public.

OFFSHORE IN SINGAPORE is a day-long school, which asks what durations, pragmatics, and cooperative arrangements might upset contemporary, patriarchal states of chrono-normativity and chrono-normative accounts of history. Chrono-normativity, in its simplest terms, may be understood as all life being engineered to run on the same clock: a clock usually set by those in power, to grant control, maximum efficiency, and profit. It is a temporal regime which renders slower and more durational activities such as maintenance and care—crucial to our survival— invisible. Through studying forms of “hidden,” often disavowed time, the school day will open up thoughts around maintenance in correlation to a “continual rehearsal” and the concept of “ongoingness;” forms of practical work that are never “done” and are therefore profoundly reciprocal, as they mould and are moulded by its subjects.

Maggie Segale will be exploring the ways in which a body “keeps count” as an alternative to neo-liberal metrics; the counting, measuring, assessing, and financialising of day-to-day life. Through simple, pedestrian movements Segale will work with the group to realise a stored memory or experience in their bodies (say, frustration in a shoulder, or tension in a hand) and then move with it, to find where time and memory embeds and shapes a present through the body. Jesper List Thomsen will lead a session on how to accumulate language within over time, by sharing several durational pieces of writing he has made, as readings and as a discussion. Cally Spooner will give a lecture on deep time geology and cognitive capitalism.

OFFSHORE is an itinerant performance company and school formed by Cally Spooner to draft new vocabulary and terms of how to organise, work, and perform. “Arriving from literature, theatre, and a messy, unrequited love affair with philosophy, OFFSHORE sits somewhere between a philosophy school for embodied knowledge, an engine, an alibi, a backroom, a rehearsal, and some deliberate, unguaranteed, social plumbing.”

Special Performance by Cally Spooner
6.30 – 7.00pm

Part of Stagings. Soundings. Readings. Free Jazz II]]>
Maggie Segale]]> Cally Spooner]]> Jesper List Thomsen]]> Southeast Asia]]>
Performance]]> Embodiment]]> 2 Oct 2018, Tue 07:30 PM - 09:00 PM
The Single Screen, Block 43 Malan Road

Choreographer and artist Cally Spooner shares her fascination with language, politics, and philosophy and how societies’ orders and regimes are reflected in her work. She will elaborate on how subjectivity and its bodies are shaped by technological and performative conditions, where language undergoes damage. Together with her collaborators Maggie Segale and Jesper List Thomsen, they will discuss OFFSHORE, a philosophy school for embodied knowledge, its diverse aspects, forms, and the concept of the laboratory.

Moderated by Magdalena Magiera, Curator, Outreach & Education, NTU CCA Singapore

A public programme of Stagings. Soundings. Readings. Free Jazz II.

]]>
Maggie Segale]]> Cally Spooner]]> Jesper List Thomsen]]> Southeast Asia]]>
Body]]> Performance]]> Identity]]> Institutional Critique]]> Jesper List Thomsen ]]> Europe]]> Stagings. Soundings. Readings. Free Jazz II]]> Body]]> Performance]]> Identity]]> Institutional Critique]]> Stagings. Soundings. Readings. Free Jazz II reviews the performative format that marked NTU CCA Singapore’s inauguration in 2013. Free Jazz 2013 was a series of talks and performances where participants of various disciplines were invited to imagine and envision a new institution and its potential. On its five-year anniversary, the Centre continues advocating for free spaces, celebrating the practice of improvisation, as well as of collective and performative approaches. Discussing ethical values with an expanded sense of community, territorial, and environmental concerns, Stagings. Soundings. Readings. employs an open, multidisciplinary structure that challenges traditional modes of presentation and re-presentation through a range of artistic practices and formats.

Situated within a complex and contemporary understanding of the Centre’s current overarching research topic CLIMATES. HABITATS. ENVIRONMENTS., the featured works link theory and practice, emphasising collectiveness. Today, the planet is witnessing a moment of unprecedented loss of biodiversity, habitat destruction, and cultural transformations. In the face of such agitated times juxtaposed with advanced communicative tools, contemporary social and environmental issues require responses from a collective body, through establishing processes of instigation, negotiation, and collaboration.

Can we learn from what we see as opposed to being merely seduced by images, becoming active participants instead of only passive observers? Stagings. Soundings. Readings. is an enactment between the artists and the audience. The invited artists engage with a less prescribed environment, reflecting on history, collective action, and human interaction.

Located outside the Centre, Maria Loboda‘s sculptural installation is grounded in historical narratives as a reminder that things can change and be taken down overnight, especially by the invisible mechanisms of power. In the Centre’s foyer, Tyler Coburn addresses forms of labour and examines the notion of writing in the 21st century by engaging with complexities of our legal, technological, and geopolitical networks, while Heman Chong analyses motifs of exchange and its boundaries, embracing the space of inter-human connections.

Unfolding in the exhibition space, Cally Spooner brings to Singapore an exercise in building new vocabulary and knowledge through bodily means. Using the space as a laboratory, the work investigates new ways of organising and working together. Alexandra Pirici’s choreography explores the possibility of collectively assembling memories of human and non-human presence on the planet. Carlos Casas presents his long-term multi-format ethnographic research based on the human ecology and richness of one of the world’s highest inhabited villages, Hichigh, located in the Pamir mountain range in Tajikistan. Together with composer Phill Niblock, they will create an audio-visual experience, traversing landscape, soundscape, and contemporary music that changes with every iteration.

In response to the five-year anniversary and by taking the topic of its celebration Free Jazz literally, Ming Wong will stage an improvisational performance. Similarly, Boris Nieslony (Germany), Co-founder of the artist collective Black Market International, will engage with pioneering Singaporean artist Lee Wen with a discussion and performance.

Further probing conventional formats, the accompanying programmes include readings by curator Anca Rujoiu (Romania/Singapore) and poets Peter Sipeli and 1angrynative (both Fiji), as well as Behind the Scenes conversations with contributing artists. In The Single Screen, works by Anton Ginzburg (Russia/United States), Mariana Silva (Portugal/United States), Luke Fowler (United Kingdom), Justin Shoulder and Bhenji Ra (both Philippines/Australia), and others, will add a filmic perspective to the dialogue.

This multitude of celebratory events instigates an active engagement with the now, following a conscious desire to become truly present.

Curated by Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director, NTU CCA Singapore, and Professor, School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University, and Magdalena Magiera, Curator, Outreach and Education, NTU CCA Singapore.]]>
Heman Chong]]> Maria Loboda]]> Cally Spooner]]> Maggie Segale]]> Jesper List Thomsen]]> Tyler Coburn]]> Richard Roe]]> Carlos Casas]]> Phill Niblock]]> Ming Wong]]> Alexandra Pirici]]> Ying Cai]]> Weixin Chong]]> Chloe Chotrani]]> Nina Djekic]]> Farid Fairuz]]> Adam Lau]]> Je Leung]]> Loo Zihan]]> Yue Ru Ma]]> Hanna Mikosch]]> Yulin Ng]]> Rachel Nip]]> Isabel Phua]]> Jamil Schulze]]> Performance]]> Sound]]> Installation]]> Asia]]>