1
10
12
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Programmes
Programme
A non-persistent, time-based occurrence. Examples include symposia and conferences, public talks and performances, tours, workshops, open studios.
Short Description
Taking the works in the current show as points of departure, the symposium brings together the artists of the exhibition, as well as curators and scholars researching on the subject matter, to generate a discussion on muted histories and legacies, as they cast light upon past events that still impact society today.
Programme Type
Conference and Symposium
Audience
General
Location
Onsite (CCA)
Offsite
Online
Onsite (CCA)
Collaboration
No
Commissioned Work
No
Education
No
Theme
Place.Labour.Capital.
Climates. Habitats. Environments.
None
Place.Labour.Capital.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Symposium: Ghosts and Spectres – Shadows of History
Subject
The topic of the resource
Mythology
Supernatural
Description
An account of the resource
<div class="event_single_dates text__exhibitions">28 Oct 2017, Sat 09:30 AM - 08:00 PM</div>
<div class="event_single_venue">The Single Screen, Block 43 Malan Road<br /><br /><span>On the occasion of the exhibition </span><em>Ghost and Spectres – Shadows of History</em><span> curated by Professor Ute Meta Bauer and Khim Ong, and the 4th anniversary of NTU CCA Singapore.<br /></span><br />Taking the works in the current show as points of departure, the symposium brings together the artists of the exhibition, as well as curators and scholars researching on the subject matter, to generate a discussion on muted histories and legacies, as they cast light upon past events that still impact society today, particularly in terms of power structures and restriction of social freedom. The role of the moving image—the medium used by the four exhibiting artists—will be analysed to demonstrate how it reveals, as much as it conceals, past traumas that evade representation.<br /><p>Divided into two sessions, the symposium explores the artists’ working processes and methodological approaches through structured conversations consisting of lectures, presentations, and moderated discussions. The focus will lie on the sources of inspiration as well as on the motivations of the artists’ practices, and on the construction and contestation of official narratives. <strong>Ho Tzu Nyen</strong>, <strong>Nguyen Trinh Thi</strong>, and <strong>Park Chan-kyong</strong> will expand on the historical events and socio-political contexts that feed into their work, and on the different strategies employed to revive collective memory. Scholar <strong>Dr Clare Veal</strong> will highlight the medium specificity in the works of Apichatpong Weerasethakul to address conflicted histories, whereas the lectures by curators Dr June Yap and Hyunjin Kim, as well as the keynote lectures by <strong>Dr May Adadol Ingawanij</strong> and <strong>Professor Kenneth Dean</strong>, aim to articulate the complicated geopolitical relations in contemporary Asia.<br /><br /></p>
<p><strong>11.00am – 1.10pm</strong><br /><strong>Session I: <em>Shadows of History</em></strong></p>
<p>Chaired by <strong>Dr Roger Nelson, </strong>curator and art historian, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, School of Art Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), and NTU CCA Singapore</p>
<p>Dedicated to the uncovering of neglected histories, this session will look at the construction of historical narratives and their role in reflecting social, political, and cultural conditions. Occluded by the propagation of progress and nation building, what has been left out and rendered unspeakable in the region’s bid to establish national identities and political autonomy? Referencing the works of Ho Tzu Nyen and Nguyen Trinh Thi, this session traces post-war and Cold War legacies in Asia and investigates their lingering spectres.</p>
<p><strong>2.30 – 5.30pm</strong><br /><strong>Session II: <em>Ghosts and Spectres</em></strong></p>
<p>Chaired by <strong>Dr David Teh, </strong>researcher and curator, Assistant Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore (NUS)</p>
<p>Referencing the works of Park Chan-kyong and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, this session deals with notions of ghosts and spectres as allegories of historical moments and dreamlike realities. Embedded in myths and folklore, what roles do they play in constructing an understanding of the past and in reflecting socio-political circumstances? How do cinematic works engage their medium-specificity in a play of historical phantoms and repressed collective memories, to create a language for portraying trauma, loss, dreams, and nightmares?</p>
</div>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-10-28
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Ute Meta Bauer
May Adadol Ingawanij
June Yap
Nguyen Trinh Thi
Ho Tzu Nyen
Khim Ong
Hyunjin Kim
Park Chan-kyong
Clare Veal
Roger Nelson
David Teh
Kenneth Dean
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Southeast Asia
Asia
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Publications
Description
An account of the resource
A recipient and producer of knowledge, NTU CCA Singapore’s publishing activities contribute to its holistic approach, expanding the connections across the Centre’s exhibitions, residencies, public programming, and academic education.
Research Publication
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Based on DMCI Text type (https://www.dublincore.org/specifications/dublin-core/dcmi-terms/#http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text)
Short Description
Drawing on the rich cultural heritage and trajectories of the Asia Pacific and beyond, the exhibitions, works of art, and essays in <em>Climates.Habitats.Environments. </em>transcend disciplinary boundaries and linear histories to affirm the role of cultural production in the fight for environmental and social justice.
Availability
Electronic (eBook)
Print
Print
Public Resource Centre Affiliation
Artist Research Platform
Library
Video Resource Platform
None
Library
Theme
Place.Labour.Capital.
Climates. Habitats. Environments.
None
Climates. Habitats. Environments.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Climates.Habitats.Environments.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Climate Crisis
Cultural Production
Description
An account of the resource
Published by NTU CCA Singapore and The MIT Press, 2022 <br />Edited by Ute Meta Bauer<br />Design by mono.studio<br />Printed by DZA Druckerei zu Altenburg GmbH<br />© 2022 the artists, the authors, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, Nanyang Technological University <br />ISBN: 978-0-262-04681-7 <br />Distributed by The MIT Press <br />Copies are available for sale at NTU CCA Singapore and through MIT Press S$80/US$60<br /><br />Modeling the curatorial as a method for uniting cultural production and science,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Climates. Habitats. Environments</i>. weaves together image and text to address the global climate crisis. Through exhibitions, artworks, and essays, artists and writers transcend disciplinary boundaries and linear histories to bring their knowledge and experience to bear on the fight for environmental justice. In doing so, they draw on the rich cultural heritage of the Asia-Pacific, in conversation with international discourse, to demonstrate transdisciplinary solution-seeking.<br /><p><span>Experimental in form as well as in method,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Climates. Habitats. Environments.</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>features an inventive book design by mono.studio that puts word and image on equal footing, offering a multiplicity of media, interpretations, and manifestations of interdisciplinary research. For example, botanist Matthew Hall draws on Ovid's<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Metamorphoses</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>to discuss human-plant interpenetration; curator and writer Venus Lau considers how spectrality consumes—and is consumed—in animation and film, literature, music, and cuisine; and critical theorist and filmmaker Elizabeth Povinelli proposes “Water Sense” as a geontological approach to “the question of our connected and differentiated existence,” informed by the “ancestral catastrophe of colonialism.” Artists excavate the natural and cultural DNA of indigo, lacquer, rattan, and mulberry; works at the intersection of art, design, and architecture explore “The Posthuman City”; an ongoing research project investigates the ecological urgencies of Pacific archipelagos. The works of art, the projects, and the majority of the texts featured in the book were commissioned by NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore.</span></p>
<p></p>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
NTU CCA Singapore
The MIT Press
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Ute Meta Bauer
Anna Lovecchio
Michael Marder
Kong Yin Ying
Marian Pastor Roces
Ravi Agarwal
Donna J. Haraway
Matthew Hall
Nikos Papastergiadis
Donna J. Haraway
David Pledger
Dan Koh
Tan Zi Hao
May Adadol Ingawanij
Michael M. J. Fischer
Venus Lau
Elizabeth A. Povinelli
Cynthia Chou
Nina Oeghoede
Philippe Pirotte
Epeli Hau'ofa
Nabil Ahmed
Édouard Glissant
Tania Roy
Alfian Sa'at
Jake Atienza
Kenneth Dean
Faizah Zakaria
Stefanie Hessler
Huang Jui-mao
Anna Källén
Philippa Lovatt
Laura Miotto
Rob Nixon
Khim Ong
Markus Reymann
Dirk Snauwaert
Matariki Williams
Irene Agrivina
Nabil Ahmed
Irwan Ahmett
Tita Salina
Atif Akin
Animali Domestici
Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Martha Atienza
Tarek Atoui
Laura Anderson Barbata
Rosella Biscotti
Guigone Camus
Choy Ka Fai
Roko Josefa Cinavilakeba
Sean Connelly
Ade Darmawan
Lucy Davis
Ines Doujak
Jef Geys
Tue Greenfort
Newell Harry
Ho Tzu Nyen
Chia-Wei Hsu
Pierre Huyghe
ila
inhabitants
The Institute of Critical Zoologists
Kristy H. A. Kang
Susanne Kriemann
Zac Langdon-Pole
Jae Rhim Lee
Liang Shaoji
PerMagnus Lindborg
Armin Linke
Nicholas Mangan
Alice Miceli
Manish Nai
Nguyễn Trinh Thi
Phi Phi Oanh
Lucy + Jorge Orta
Park Chan-kyong
Sophia Pich
Marjetica Potrč
Shubigi Rao
Lisa Rave
Lucy Raven
Bridget Reweti
Hito Steyerl
Melati Suryodarmo
Tanatchai Bandasak
Sung Tieu
Jegan Vincent de Paul
Wu Mali
Vivian Xu
Yeo Siew Hua
Zarina Muhammad
Edouard Glissant
Anna Kallen
Nguyen Trinh Thi
Marjetica Potrc
mono.studio
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Publication
Language
A language of the resource
English
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Southeast Asia
Asia
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Videos
Video
A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation.
Based on DMCI MovingImage type (https://www.dublincore.org/specifications/dublin-core/dcmi-terms/#http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/MovingImage)
Short Description
Session I: Presentation – “On distances between an Artist and her Subjects” by Nguyen Trinh Thi
Video
Embedded video or link to video hosted outside of Omeka
<a href="https://vimeo.com/487137203">https://vimeo.com/487137203</a>
Video ID
Platform ID number for video hosted online (e.g., Vimeo)
487137203
Theme
Place.Labour.Capital.
Climates. Habitats. Environments.
None
Place.Labour.Capital.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Session I: Presentation – “On distances between an Artist and her Subjects” by Nguyen Trinh Thi
Description
An account of the resource
28 Oct 2017, Sat <br /><br />On the occasion of the exhibition Ghost and Spectres – Shadows of History curated by Professor Ute Meta Bauer and Khim Ong, and the 4th anniversary of NTU CCA Singapore <br /><br />SESSION I: SHADOWS OF HISTORY 11.10am – 1.10pm <br /><br />Presentation: “On distances between an Artist and her Subjects” Artist Nguyen Trinh Thi<br /><br /><span>Focusing on the proces of filming </span><em>Letters from Panduranga </em><span>(2015), Nguyen will elaborate on the motives that drive her artistic practice, while foregrounding her research on the Cham community in Vietnam and their threatened existence. The artist will discuss how the epistolatory form of the film, which takes as its basic structure an exhange of letters between a man and a woman, activates broader questions about artistic representation and ethnography. Nguyen will also give an account of her interest in the unknown, which presents itself in her practice against the comprehensibility and linearity of history, the power and authority of the image, and the regimes of narrative and representation.</span>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-10-28
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Nguyen Trinh Thi
Subject
The topic of the resource
Artistic Research
History
Identity
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Video
Language
A language of the resource
English
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Southeast Asia
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Videos
Video
A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation.
Based on DMCI MovingImage type (https://www.dublincore.org/specifications/dublin-core/dcmi-terms/#http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/MovingImage)
Short Description
Session I: In Conversation: Dr Roger Nelson with Ho Tzu Nyen, Nguyen Trinh Thi, and Dr June Yap
Video
Embedded video or link to video hosted outside of Omeka
<a href="https://vimeo.com/487138538">https://vimeo.com/487138538</a>
Video ID
Platform ID number for video hosted online (e.g., Vimeo)
487138538
Theme
Place.Labour.Capital.
Climates. Habitats. Environments.
None
Place.Labour.Capital.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Session I: In Conversation: Dr Roger Nelson with Ho Tzu Nyen, Nguyen Trinh Thi, and Dr June Yap
Description
An account of the resource
28 Oct 2017, Sat <br /><br />On the occasion of the exhibition Ghost and Spectres – Shadows of History curated by Professor Ute Meta Bauer and Khim Ong, and the 4th anniversary of NTU CCA Singapore <br /><br />SESSION I: SHADOWS OF HISTORY <br /><br />In Conversation: Dr Roger Nelson with Ho Tzu Nyen, Nguyen Trinh Thi, and Dr June Yap<br /><br />Dedicated to the uncovering of neglected histories, this session will look at the construction of historical narratives and its role imn reflecting social, political, and cultural conditions. Occluded by propaganda of progress and nation building, what has been left out and rendered unpseakable in the region's bid to establish national identities and politcal autonomy? Referencing the works of Ho Tzu Nyen and Nguyen Trinh Thi, this session traces post-war and Cold War legacies in Asia and investigates its lingering spectres.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-10-28
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Roger Nelson
Ho Tzu Nyen
Nguyen Trinh Thi
June Yap
Subject
The topic of the resource
History
Identity
Politics
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Video
Language
A language of the resource
English
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Asia
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Videos
Video
A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation.
Based on DMCI MovingImage type (https://www.dublincore.org/specifications/dublin-core/dcmi-terms/#http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/MovingImage)
Short Description
Filmic Interferences is a panel that will highlight the aspect of filmmaking from the perspective of contemporary filmmakers.
Video
Embedded video or link to video hosted outside of Omeka
<a href="https://vimeo.com/527101109">https://vimeo.com/527101109</a>
Video ID
Platform ID number for video hosted online (e.g., Vimeo)
527101109
Theme
Place.Labour.Capital.
Climates. Habitats. Environments.
None
Climates. Habitats. Environments.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Conference: "There is no such thing as documentary"<br />Session 2: Filmic Interferences
Description
An account of the resource
Session 2: Filmic Interferences Chaired by Dr Marc Glöde (Germany/Singapore), Assistant Professor, NTU School of Art, Design and Media (ADM)<br /><br />Speakers:<br />Tan Pin Pin (Singapore), film director<br />Nguyên Trinh Thi (Vietnam), artist and filmmaker<br /><br />Respondent:<br />Dr David Teh (Australia/Singapore), Department of English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore<br /><br />Filmic Interferences is a panel that will highlight the aspect of filmmaking from the perspective of contemporary filmmakers. It will address the changing role of categories like “documentary” and the increasing interferences that challenge these ideas. The presentations will take a closer look at the impact of forms and strategies from experimental film and discuss the impact on other filmic discourses such as visual anthropology, feminism or intercultural cinema. By taking the films of Trinh T. Minh-ha as a resonating point, the panel will investigate how these debates have created a development that has changed how we think through the filmic medium, how we think about film, and about filmic representation. Apart from aspects that are very closely related to the ideas of fact, fiction and narration, another focus will be directed towards the general frames of perception and discussion of film.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-02-27
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Marc Glöde
Marc Glode
Tan Pin Pin
Nguyên Trinh Thi
Nguyen Trinh Thi
David Teh
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Southeast Asia
Subject
The topic of the resource
Cultural Production
Knowledge Production
Fiction
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Video
Language
A language of the resource
English
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Programmes
Programme
A non-persistent, time-based occurrence. Examples include symposia and conferences, public talks and performances, tours, workshops, open studios.
Programme Type
Conference and Symposium
Audience
Graduate/Post-Graduate
Programme Series
None
Location
Onsite (CCA)
Offsite
Online
Online
Collaboration
Yes
Commissioned Work
No
Education
No
Theme
Place.Labour.Capital.
Climates. Habitats. Environments.
None
Place.Labour.Capital.
Climates. Habitats. Environments.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Conference: “There is no such thing as <em>documentary</em>”
Subject
The topic of the resource
History
Identity
Description
An account of the resource
<p>As the concluding programme of the exhibition<span> </span><em>Trinh T. Minh-ha. Films</em>. (17 October 2020 – 28 February 2021) at NTU CCA Singapore, this four-part conference brings together scholars and practitioners across filmic, anthropological and curatorial disciplines, addressing notions of multivocality, performativity, and truth in fiction, through Trinh’s practice as a filmmaker and theorist.</p>
<p>As Trinh wrote: “There is no such thing as<span> </span><em>documentary</em>…The words will not ring true.” Both a response and homage to Trinh’s provocation, and at once a close but also an opening, the conference extends multiple threads of inquiry beyond the ontological frames presented in Trinh’s films, to further explore the theoretical parallels and proximities between arrangement and composition, territorialisation and deterritorisalisation, that underscore Trinh’s cinematic works.</p>
<p>Co-organised by Dr Erika Balsom (Canada/United Kingdom), Prof Ute Meta Bauer (Germany/Singapore), Dr Marc Glöde(Germany/Singapore), and Dr Ella Raidel (Austria/Singapore)</p>
<p>Presented in collaboration with King’s College London</p>
<p>Supported by NTU Centre for Liberal Arts and Social Sciences<br /><br /></p>
<p><strong>PROGRAMME SCHEDULE</strong></p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Friday, 26 February 2021, 4.00 – 7.00pm (SGT)</strong></p>
<p><strong>Session 1:<span> </span><em>Speaking Nearby<br /></em>Chaired by Dr Erika Balsom (Canada/United Kingdom), Reader, Film Studies, King’s College London (KCL)</strong><br /><br /><br /></p>
<p>This session will explore historical and contextual approaches to films and writings of Trinh T. Minh-ha, putting her work into dialogue with questions of intercultural cinema, the critique of documentary naturalism, and the relationship between film theory and film practice. In particular, speakers will think through how notions of “speaking nearby” and “speaking about” may serve as a lens through which to open broader considerations of the aesthetics, ethics, and politics of Trinh’s cross-disciplinary work.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>4.00 – 4.10pm Introduction</p>
<p>4.10 – 4.25pm Welcome address by<span> </span><strong>Prof Ute Meta Bauer<br /></strong></p>
<p>4.25 – 5.15pm <span> </span><strong>Keynote Lecture:<span> </span><em>Is there still no such thing as documentary?</em></strong><span> </span>by<span> </span><strong>Dr Erika Balsom</strong></p>
<p>Some thirty years ago, Trinh wrote, “There is no such thing as documentary… The words will not ring true.” This presentation will explore the context and meaning of this declaration. With reference to Trinh’s <em>What About China? </em>(Part I of II, 2020–2021) and other recent works of experimental nonfiction, it will question how this notion resonates today, some thirty years after its original formulation. </p>
<p>5.15 – 5.45pm Break</p>
<p>5.45 – 6.15pm <span> </span><strong>Presentation:<span> </span><em>What about Foreigners? Or, How Far Away is Nearby?</em><em> </em></strong><strong><em>Notes about Harmony, Trinh T. Minh-ha’s What About China? </em></strong><strong><em>and </em></strong><strong><em>Michelangelo<span> </span></em></strong><strong><em>Antonioni’s<span> </span></em></strong><strong><em>Chung Kuo, Cina<span> </span></em></strong>by<span> </span><strong>Prof Chris Berry</strong><span> </span>(United Kingdom), Professor, Film Studies, KCL</p>
<p>This presentation draws on the juxtapositions between Trinh’s focus on harmony in<span> </span><em>What About China?<span> </span></em>(Part I of II, 2020–2021) and Michelangelo Antonioni’s very un-harmonious experiences with his 1972 film<span> </span><em>Chung Kuo, Cina</em>, which was denounced by the Chinese government that had invited him to film in the country. The maintenance of a “harmonious society” (和谐社会) is an ancient Chinese ideal, much cited by the Chinese Communist Party in the twenty-first century. Was Antonioni’s film lacking in aesthetic harmony? Was Antonioni’s behaviour un-harmonious? Is Trinh’s famous “speaking alongside” a harmonious mode of filmmaking? What are some of the different ideas about harmony and the treatment of foreigners that might inform our understanding of these films?</p>
<p>6.15 – 6.45pm <span> </span><strong>Presentation:<span> </span><em>‘About’ theory. About.<span> </span></em></strong>by<span> </span><strong>Dr Nicolas Helm-Grovas<span> </span></strong>(Spain/United Kingdom), Lecturer, Film Studies, Education, KCL</p>
<p>‘About the cinema. About. The words will not ring true.’ In “Documentary Is/Not a Name,” Trinh asks: “How is one to cope with a “film theory” that can never theorise “about” film, but only with concepts that film raises in relation to concepts of other practices?” Whereas film theory is frequently understood as a form of metalanguage—as a systematic, explanatory, conceptual and/or speculative discourse that speaks<span> </span><em>about</em><span> </span>an object discourse, film—here it is precisely the relation of ‘aboutness’ that is criticised. This talk unpacks this objection to ‘aboutness’, arguing that it has both a political or ethical dimension, drawing on a Foucauldian critique of the disciplinary nature of speaking<span> </span><em>about</em>, closely tied to Trinh’s critique of historic forms of documentary representation; and a conceptual or discursive dimension, based on a Barthesian critique of the distinction between science and literature from the standpoint of ‘writing’. Destabilising distinctions between theoretical discourse and artistic discourse, films and writing, theory and practice, what does this critique mean for the practice of film theory, and for the designation of certain films, including Trinh’s, as ‘theoretical’?</p>
<p>6.45 – 7.00pm Response by<span> </span><strong>Dr Daniel Mann</strong><span> </span>(Israel/United Kingdom), Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, KCL<br /><br /></p>
<p><strong>Saturday, 27 February 2021, 1.30 – 7.00pm (SGT)</strong></p>
<p><strong>Session 2:<span> </span><em>Filmic Interferences<br /></em>Chaired by Dr Marc Glöde (Germany/Singapore), Assistant Professor, NTU School of Art, Design and Media</strong><br /><br /><br /></p>
<p><em>Filmic Interferences</em> is a panel that will highlight the aspect of filmmaking from the perspective of contemporary filmmakers. It will address the changing role of categories like “documentary” and the increasing interferences that challenge these ideas. The presentations will take a closer look at the impact of forms and strategies from experimental film and discuss the impact on other filmic discourses such as visual anthropology, feminism or intercultural cinema. By taking the films of Trinh T. Minh-ha as a resonating point, the panel will investigate how these debates have created a development that has changed how we think through the filmic medium, how we think about film, and about filmic representation. Apart from aspects that are very closely related to the ideas of fact, fiction and narration, another focus will be directed towards the general frames of perception and discussion of film. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>1.30 – 2.00pm Welcome</p>
<p>2.00 – 2.15pm Introduction by<span> </span><strong>Dr Marc Glöde</strong></p>
<p>2.15 – 2.45pm <span> </span><strong>Presentation:<span> </span><em>Framing the Frame<span> </span></em></strong>by<span> </span><strong>Tan Pin Pin</strong><span> </span>(Singapore), film director</p>
<p>In this presentation, Tan will speak about her film practice that now spans over twenty years. She will address the relationship between documentary and experimental film-making in her own work and how some of her filmic topics have oscillated between these fields. Apart from this journey through the formal and thematic aspects of her films, the presentation will delve into how specific institutional frames have created very different dynamics that have an impact on the general perception of the work. These raise the question: how do the works function in the different contexts, for example of the university, the museum, the cinema, or the festival, in society at large?</p>
<p>2.45 – 3.15pm <strong>Presentation:<span> </span><em>Stories and Histories<span> </span></em></strong>by<span> </span><strong>Nguyễn Trinh Thi</strong><span> </span>(Vietnam), artist and filmmaker</p>
<p>In this talk, Nguyễn will share her thoughts about her own filmic practice, addressing aspects of how the process of filmmaking connects with the process of remembering and critical reflection. Her work is always an engagement with socio-cultural environments and never shies away from a critical confrontation—either in relation to surrounding obstacles of society or in relation to the filmic form itself. She addresses these issues in her practice often by combining original footage gathered through extensive field research and found footage which complicates the distinctions between video art and documentary filmmaking. The outcomes of these meticulous compositions are always complex and multilayered renderings of Vietnam’s past and the continuing reverberations of historical events in the present. By highlighting some of these aspects in her works Nguyễn will offer a deeper insight into how this practice asks for alternative methods of accessing unwritten histories. </p>
<p>3.15 – 3.30pm Response by<span> </span><strong>Dr David Teh</strong><span> </span>(Australia/Singapore), Associate Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, NUS</p>
<p>3.30 – 3.45pm Break</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Session 3:<span> </span><em>Performing the Documents<br /></em></strong><strong>Chaired by Dr Ella Raidel (Austria/Singapore), Assistant Professor, NTU ADM and WKWSCI</strong><br /><br />This panel attempts to define documents and performativity in filmmaking in terms of its methods, artistic processes and cultural political significance. To perform the documents means to take action to reveal their inner logic of cultural representation. Through the consideration of documents in relation to poetics, participation and activism it shows the way how colonial truth and knowledge are being constructed and how diasporic histories are experienced. Films become not only cultural-political texts, but also visual and acoustic apparatuses in making aware one’s origins and destinies.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>3.45 – 4.00pm Introduction by<span> </span><strong>Dr Ella Raidel</strong></p>
<p>4.00 – 4.30pm <span> </span><strong>Presentation:<span> </span><em>The Acoustics of the Archipelagic Imagination in<span> </span></em></strong><strong><em>Southeast Asian Artists’<span> </span></em></strong><strong><em>Film,<span> </span></em></strong><strong>Dr Philippa Lovatt</strong><span> </span>(Scotland), Lecturer, Film Studies, and Co-Director, Centre for Screen Cultures, University of St Andrews</p>
<p>How do we conceptualize films in relation? As we seek to trace the connections and affinities we see, hear, and feel across a regional cinema, what kinds of alternative cartographies (affective, aesthetic, cultural, or industrial) emerge? How do we think through and with the aesthetic practices of artists and filmmakers in a way that enables us to avoid both re-inscribing arbitrary lines across territories and disavowing the specific historic and lived conditions of the nation? Drawing from Trinh T. Minh-ha’s writing on the acoustic experience of diaspora and Édouard Glissant on the poetics of relation, this talk will focus on Nguyễn Trinh Thi’s<span> </span><em>Everyday</em><em>’</em><em>s the Seventies<span> </span></em>(2018) and Shireen Seno’s<span> </span><em>Nervous Translation </em>(2017), and will reflect on how we might consider regionality through the acoustic, affective, and emotional cartographies depicted in these works, both of which explore experiences of migration in and out of the region during the 1970s and 1980s. </p>
<p>4.30 – 5.00pm <span> </span><strong>Presentation:<span> </span><em>Performative Documentary Practices<span> </span></em></strong><strong><em>from<span> </span></em></strong><strong><em>The Epistemological South<span> </span></em></strong>by<span> </span><strong>Rosalia Namsai Engchuan</strong><span> </span>(Germany/Thailand), anthropologist and filmmaker</p>
<p>In a world where everything and nothing has changed¾in a state of ongoing coloniality of knowledge production in the aftermath of epistemicide¾this talk acts as a space to valorise and explore artistic epistemologies as openings towards other futures. Contemplating the echoes of Trinh’s seminal provocation of documentary’s indexicality with truth, the talk proposes a shift in the focus of research from<span> </span><em>objects</em><span> </span><em>of art</em><span> </span>towards<span> </span><em>artistic processes</em>, through an ethnographic exploration of the processual, dialogical, social, and material nature of knowledge formation. Drawing from her own artistic practice as well as ongoing conversations with the artists Korakrit Arunanondchai, Stephanie Comilang and Cahyo Prayogo, Rosalia Namsai Engchuan’s presentation responds to Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ call for<span> </span><em>epistemologies of the South</em>, unfolding other ways of learning and knowing, that performatively transcend modernity’s temporally-conceived, institutionalised, and normative divisions of (official) knowledge formation inherited from the colonial order.</p>
<p>5.00 – 5.15pm Response by<span> </span><strong>Silke Schmick</strong>l (Germany/Hong Kong), Curator</p>
<p>5.15 – 5.30pm Break<br /><br /><strong>Session 4:<span> </span><em>Reverberations—Spatialising the Temporal, the Sonic, and the Pictorial<br /></em></strong><strong>Chaired by Prof Ute Meta Bauer (Germany/Singapore), Professor, NTU ADM and Founding Director, NTU CCA Singapore</strong><br /><br /></p>
<p>Reverberation: the prolonging of a sound, a continuing effect. Taking the exhibition<span> </span><em>Trinh T. Minh-ha. Films.</em><span> </span>as its starting point, this panel session discusses the spatio-temporal resonances of Trinh’s cinematic works when curated in an exhibition setting. The panel also explores collaborative curatorial practices, expanding into the realms of research, programming, and production, and how the Trans-Institutional Partnership among NTU CCA Singapore, Rockbund Art Museum, Würtembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, and the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts enables ongoing reverberations of support for an artist’s work across borders and time while allowing for distinction and differentiation based on each organisation’s context and approach.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>5.30 – 5.45pm Introduction by<span> </span><strong>Prof Ute Meta Bauer</strong></p>
<p>5.45 – 6.15pm <strong> Presentation:<span> </span><em>Textures<span> </span></em></strong>by<span> </span><strong>Larys Frogier</strong><span> </span>(France/China), Director, Rockbund Art Museum</p>
<p>Frogier’s presentation is a sincere engagement to go along with the work of Trinh T. Minh-ha, being fully available to unfold multiple relations to in/visibility, opacity, sound/silence, time, displacement and locality. Rather than identifying Trinh as a filmmaker, theoretician, poet, musician, Frogier suggests that it is worthwhile to return to a simple question: how do the textures that surface through image, text and sound making in Trinh’s work make us come alive as people, institutions, and political subjects? How about considering poetry, music, cinema, and theory not only as artistic, intellectual or academic disciplines, but as fundamental acts of life? It further explores the possibilities of curating Trinh’s work as an art institution, sometimes in extremely challenging ideological contexts, in order to develop a vision that, instead of a display or programme, has more to do with the subtle but deep distillation of soul, intuition, and movement.</p>
<p>6.15 – 6.45pm <span> </span><strong>Presentation:<span> </span><em>Loops and Entries: Performing Film in Exhibition Formats<span> </span></em></strong>by<span> </span><strong>Iris Dressler</strong><span> </span>(Germany), Co-director, Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart</p>
<p>Since the 1990s, Iris Dressler and Hans D. Christ have been working in close collaboration with diverse artists on different models of presenting film in the exhibition space. The loop as a mode of repetition and shifting, in particular the shifting of entry points and thus of narrative orders, plays a central role, as well as aspects of the choreography of movement, light, and sound, experiments with the juxtaposition of extreme divergent sizes or with open and closed spaces. Dressler will present a selection of these approaches in her talk.</p>
<p>6.45 – 7.00pm Response by<span> </span><strong>Dr Karin Oen</strong><span> </span>(United States/Singapore), Deputy Director, Curatorial Programmes, NTU CCA Singapore<br /><br /></p>
<p></p>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
26 February – 27 February 2021
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Erika Balsom
Ute Meta Bauer
Marc Glöde
Marc Glode
Ella Raidel
King’s College London
NTU Centre for Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
Chris Berry
Iris Dressler
Rosalia Namsai Engchuan
Larys Frogier
Nicolas Helm-Grovas
Philippa Lovatt
Daniel Mann
Nguyễn Trinh Thi
Nguyen Trinh Thi
Karin Oen
Silke Schmickl
Tan Pin Pin
David Teh
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Southeast Asia
North America
Europe
Africa
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Programmes
Programme
A non-persistent, time-based occurrence. Examples include symposia and conferences, public talks and performances, tours, workshops, open studios.
Programme Type
Discussion - Conversation
Location
Onsite (CCA)
Offsite
Online
Onsite (CCA)
Collaboration
No
Commissioned Work
No
Education
No
Theme
Place.Labour.Capital.
Climates. Habitats. Environments.
None
Place.Labour.Capital.
Audience
General
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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<p class="event_single_title">Symposium: <i>Ghosts and Spectres – Shadows of History</i></p>
Session I: <em>Shadows of History</em><br />In Conversation: Dr Roger Nelson with Ho Tzu Nyen, Nguyen Trinh Thi, and Dr June Yap
Description
An account of the resource
28 Oct 2017, Sat 12:40 - 01:10 PM
The Single Screen, Block 43 Malan Road
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-10-28
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Roger Nelson
Ho Tzu Nyen
Nguyen Trinh Thi
June Yap
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Asia
Southeast Asia
Subject
The topic of the resource
History
Mythology
Supernatural
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Programmes
Programme
A non-persistent, time-based occurrence. Examples include symposia and conferences, public talks and performances, tours, workshops, open studios.
Short Description
The artist will discuss how the epistolary form of the film, which takes as its basic structure an exhange of letters between a man and a woman, activates broader questions about artistic representation and ethnography.
Programme Type
Talk and Lecture
Location
Onsite (CCA)
Offsite
Online
Onsite (CCA)
Collaboration
No
Commissioned Work
No
Education
No
Theme
Place.Labour.Capital.
Climates. Habitats. Environments.
None
Place.Labour.Capital.
Audience
General
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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<p class="event_single_title">Symposium: <i>Ghosts and Spectres – Shadows of History</i></p>
Session 1: <em>Shadows of History</em><br />Presentation: “On distances between an Artist and her Subjects” by Nguyen Trinh Thi, artist
Description
An account of the resource
<div class="event_single_dates text__exhibitions">28 Oct 2017, Sat 12:00 - 12:20 PM</div>
<div class="event_single_venue">The Single Screen, Block 43 Malan Road<br /><br />Focusing on the process of filming <em>Letters from Panduranga</em> (2015), Nguyen will elaborate on the motives that drive her artistic practice, while foregrounding her research on the Cham community in Vietnam and their threatened existence. The artist will discuss how the epistolary form of the film, which takes as its basic structure an exhange of letters between a man and a woman, activates broader questions about artistic representation and ethnography. Nguyen will also give an account of her interest in the unknown, which presents itself in her practice as a generative concept that undergirds her strategies of resistance against the comprehensibility and linearity of history, the power and authority of the image, and the regimes of narrative and representation.</div>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-10-28
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Nguyen Trinh Thi
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Southeast Asia
Audience
A class of entity for whom the resource is intended or useful.
General
Subject
The topic of the resource
Identity
History
Artistic Research
-
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��������������
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Programmes
Programme Resource
Collateral and other print or digital materials pertaining to residency programmes. Examples include residency brochures, postcards, etc.
Short Description
The symposium brings together the exhibition's artists, as well as curators and scholars researching on the subject matter, to generate a discussion on muted histories, as they cast light upon past events that still impact society.
Programme Series
None
Theme
Place.Labour.Capital.
Climates. Habitats. Environments.
None
Climates. Habitats. Environments.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Ghosts and Spectres – Shadows of History Symposium Guides
Description
An account of the resource
On the occasion of the exhibition Ghost and Spectres – Shadows of History curated by Professor Ute Meta Bauer and Khim Ong, and the 4th anniversary of NTU CCA Singapore Taking the works in the current show as points of departure, the symposium brings together the artists of the exhibition, as well as curators and scholars researching on the subject matter, to generate a discussion on muted histories and legacies, as they cast light upon past events that still impact society today, particularly in terms of power structures and restriction of social freedom. The role of the moving image—the medium used by the four exhibiting artists—will be analysed to demonstrate how it reveals, as much as it conceals, past traumas that evade representation. Divided into two sessions, the symposium explores the artists’ working processes and methodological approaches through structured conversations consisting of lectures, presentations, and moderated discussions. The focus will lie on the sources of inspiration as well as on the motivations of the artists’ practices, and on the construction and contestation of official narratives. Ho Tzu Nyen, Nguyen Trinh Thi, and Park Chan-kyong will expand on the historical events and socio-political contexts that feed into their work, and on the different strategies employed to revive collective memory. Scholar Dr Clare Veal will highlight the medium specificity in the works of Apichatpong Weerasethakul to address conflicted histories, whereas the lectures by curators Dr June Yap and Hyunjin Kim, as well as the keynote lectures by Dr May Adadol Ingawanij and Professor Kenneth Dean, aim to articulate the complicated geopolitical relations in contemporary Asia.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-10-28
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Ute Meta Bauer
May Adadol Ingawanij
June Yap
Nguyen Trinh Thi
Ho Tzu Nyen
Roger Nelson
Khim Ong
Hyunjin Kim
Park Chan-kyong
Clare Veal
David Teh
Kenneth Dean
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Southeast Asia
Subject
The topic of the resource
History
Politics
Geopolitics
Language
A language of the resource
English
-
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PDF Text
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Exhibition
1 September –
19 November 2017
Ghosts and Spectres
– Shadows of History
Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Ho Tzu Nyen
Nguyen Trinh Thi
Park Chan-kyong
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GHOSTS AND SPECTRES – SHADOWS OF HISTORY
NOTES FROM THE CURATORS
Embedded in the vernacular, ghosts, myths, rituals,
and traditions present a system of shared knowledge
that enables the expression of an unspoken, muted
consciousness. Using this system of metaphors as
a means to convey thoughts and opinions concerning
culturally- and politically-sensitive topics, the video
installations and films presented in this exhibition by
Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand), Ho Tzu Nyen
(Singapore), Nguyen Trinh Thi (Vietnam), and Park
Chan-kyong (South Korea) refer to contested moments
of the past. Each work engages its specific social and
geopolitical context either in East or Southeast Asia. The
artists’ research into their own cultural and historical
backgrounds gain shape through allegories that review
and re-evaluate the social and political reforms in
post-war and Cold War Asia. The complex histories of
the pre-modern, the colonial, the post-colonial, and the
modern are not easily dissected; they are interwoven
and layered. In order to understand the contemporary,
one has to delve into the past.
Film, as a medium, is in itself a mere projection.
Through the cinematic, the featured works combine
the factual with the fictional, alluding not only to
rarely discussed subject-matters but also raise crucial
questions about power and authority, construction
of narratives, repression of identities, and collective
trauma. What is unspoken at times comes to the fore
through allusions embedded in practices of the past. As
shadows of history, ghosts and spectres are themselves
situated between fiction and reality, allowing these
otherworldly messengers to outline what might be
hidden. Obliquely referencing topics that are taboo, the
works explore what is withheld of historical legacies
and still has a grip on society today, in terms of power
structures, corruption, and repression of social freedom.
Ghosts and Spectres – Shadows of History engages disquieted
histories that are not officially recounted and remain
a lingering presence in collective memories through
Cover:
Ho Tzu Nyen,
The Name, 2015.
Courtesy the artist.
Inside Cover:
Apichatpong
Weerasethakul,
Fireworks (Archives),
2014. Courtesy
the artist.
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3
local myths, ghostly figures, and traditional rituals. The
featured works present such historical accounts in their
own language and systems of reference, subversively
rewriting these narratives.
If history is also the record of collective memories,
especially of trauma and loss, it is pertinent to investigate
what is left out. Nguyen Trinh Thi’s as well as Park
Chan-kyong’s artistic practices are concerned with
history and memory, with what is known and what has
been repressed or obscured. Uncovering peripheral
accounts of people and communities, Nguyen’s film essay
Letters from Panduranga (2015) portrays the day-to-day of
the Cham community in Ninh Thuan, formerly known
as Panduranga, at Vietnam’s South Central Coast. This
land, the spiritual centre of the Cham people, is where the
Vietnamese government wants to build two nuclear
plants. Applying the format of a letter exchange between
a man and a woman, the situation is recounted in a poetic
interweaving of landscapes and portraits of people.
Increased interest in investigating unknown histories
challenges mainstream narratives in the scripting
of national histories. In Southeast Asia for example,
communist ideology played an important role in nation
building and independence movements, generating an
optimism for a different political system and a new order
for society based on egalitarian ideals. The two works by
Ho Tzu Nyen look at the ambivalent role of communism
in Malaya. The Nameless (2015) takes the figure of the
infamous triple agent Lai Teck to represent the different
political forces that affected Southeast Asia in the
mid-20th century. The enigmatic figure of the secret
agent—dark, charismatic, mysterious, while at the same
time anonymous and fluid—is alluded to in the work’s
composition of segments taken from different films. Also
employing found footage, The Name (2015) edits excerpts
of Euro-American films that represent the Western
male author, to hint to the little-known writer Gene Z.
Hanrahan. Accompanied by a series of Hanrahan texts
taken from his publications, including The Communist
Struggle in Malaya in 1954, the “ghosts” of the spy and the
writer, mutable yet enveloped in mystery, question
the construction of historical narratives and shared
identities. The cinematic quality of these works blurs
the boundaries of what might be real and what is imagined
and therefore confront the narration of history.
Above:
Ho Tzu Nyen
The Nameless, 2015.
Courtesy the artist.
Opposite:
Nguyen Trinh
Thi, Love Man Love
Woman, 2007.
Courtesy the artist.
The documentary Love Man Love Woman (2007) follows
the everyday life of gay Vietnamese men whose respite
is found in the Dao Mau (Mother Goddess Worship, an
ancient religion) community that willingly accepts
them, allowing an open expression of their sexuality.
Park’s three-screen video installation Citizen’s Forest
(2016) deploys a tapestry of fragmented memories
and references and evokes the traditional rite of spiritexorcism as a means to address and heal historical
trauma. In this installation, the artist references victims
of various historical as well as more recent tragedies in
South Korea. Rich, haunting imageries and soundtracks
permeate the work which ends with the departure
of these phantoms of disasters as a symbolic gesture of
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5
finding solace and a relief from their tragic past. As in his
other works, Park exposes in Citizen’s Forest the collective
amnesia in Korean society inherent to extremely
rapid technological and infrastructural developments
intertwined with societal change.
Pere Portabella (Spain), and Jean Rouch (France),
expanding the view towards the allegorical use of the
cinematic. A symposium with scholars from various
disciplines and the exhibiting artists will explore
the applied strategies to resuscitate elapsed collective
memories.
Ghosts and Spectres – Shadows of History extends to two
ongoing research projects by siren eun young jung (South
Korea) and Choy Ka Fai (Singapore/Germany), both
recent NTU CCA Singapore artists-in-residence, that
will be presented in The Lab, the Centre’s research
project space. While jung focuses on Yeoseong Gukgeuk,
a vanishing form of traditional Korean theatre featuring
only female performers, Choy brings up his long-time
research into Butoh, also called “dance of darkness.”
Like shadows, dreams live in the in-between and like
ghosts, resist control and surveillance. Apichatpong
Weerasethakul maintains a habit of recording his
dreams which are, according to him, “more exciting
[than films]. They are movies in an idealised form,
without frames.” Memories of his own personal
experiences interweave with those from other sources
and dreams, presenting a true, even if fragmentary
and fleeting understanding of the world. Oscillating
between dream and nightmare, Apichatpong’s filmic
experimentation with light and shadows can be seen as
an attempt to record shifting memories: “Light makes
darkness disappear. It makes the shadows of some things
vanish but brings up and reveals those of others.”
In his immersive installation Fireworks (Archives) (2014),
the artist takes the viewers on a nocturnal stroll through
Sala Keoku, a Buddhist-Hindu garden inhabited by
monumental sculptures of mythical creatures. For him,
Sala Keoku, formerly a military target that was believed
to be a communist hiding place, is in itself an act
of protest.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a public
programme that includes screenings of films by Jean
Cocteau (France), Maya Deren (Ukraine/United States),
Ghosts and Spectres – Shadows of History proposes a renewed
understanding of the past to situate the present through
vignettes of collective memory and personal experiences.
Professor Ute Meta Bauer
Founding Director, NTU CCA Singapore and
Professor, NTU ADM
Khim Ong
Deputy Director, Curatorial Programmes,
NTU CCA Singapore
Above:
Park Chan-kyong,
Citizen’s Forest,
2016. Courtesy Art
Sonje Center and
Kukje Gallery.
Opposite:
Apichatpong
Weerasethakul,
Fireworks (Archives),
2014. Courtesy
the artist.
�6
7
APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL
FireWorkS (ArCHiveS)
2014, single-channel HD video installation, sound,
6 min 40 sec
The immersive moving-image installation Fireworks
(Archives) is a nocturnal stroll through Sala Keoku,
a Buddhist-Hindu garden inhabited by monumental
sculptures of mythical deities and hybrid creatures.
Illuminated by pyrotechnics and strobe lights, the flashes
of images are like recalled fragments of dreams, desires,
and the past, evoking moments beyond our conscious
perception. Dream or nightmare, the film is accompanied
by the crackling sounds of exploding firecrackers
resembling gunshots. Closing the film is a slideshow
of portraits of rebels from northeastern Thailand who
were killed during the communist revolts in the 1970s,
thus commenting on the power of Thailand’s military,
the country’s most dominant institution.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul (b. 1970, Thailand) is an
award-winning filmmaker and artist based in Chiang Mai,
Thailand. He earned his bachelor degree in architecture from
Khon Kaen University Thailand, and his Master’s degree
in filmmaking from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
In 1999, Apichatpong co-founded the production company
Kick the Machine which has produced many of his own
as well as other experimental Thai films. Recognised as one
of the most original voices in contemporary cinema, his films
have won him widespread international recognition and
numerous awards, including the Cannes Palme d’Or
for Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010);
Cannes Competition Jury Prize for Tropical Malady (2004);
and the Cannes Un Certain Regard for Blissfully Yours
(2002). The Serenity of Madness (2016), an exhibition curated
by Gridthiya Gaweewong, has been shown at MAIIAM in
Chiang Mai, Para Site in Hong Kong, and MCAD in Manila,
soon touring to the United States. Other exhibitions include
Mirages, Tate Modern, London (2016); Fireworks, SCAI
Bathouse, Tokyo (2014); Photophobia, Stenersen Museet, Oslo
(2013); For Tomorrow For Tonight, UCCA, Beijing (2012);
Apichatpong Weerasethakul: PRIMITIVE, The New Museum,
New York (2011); For Tomorrow For Tonight, The Irish
Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2011). He participated
in numerous biennials, including the Sharjah Biennial,
(receiving the Sharjah Biennial Prize, 2013); documenta(13),
Kassel (2012); Singapore Biennale (2008); and Guangzhou
Triennial (2008).
Made in the wake of the 2014 military coup, Fireworks
(Archives) is one of Apichatpong’s most explicitly
political works. The temple, inspired by Buddhism,
Hinduism, and mysticism, has been partially destroyed
by the army as it was believed to be a hiding place for
communists. Today it has become a tourist attraction, but
it is not officially recognised by the state or registered as
a historic site. It is located in the northeast of Thailand,
where Apichatpong grew up, a region with a long
history of revolts against the government. For the artist,
Sala Keoku is in itself an act of protest—it was deemed
by the government to be on the fringe as its design brings
together various religions.
As in his other works, Apichatpong explores the idea of
sleep as both a form of escape and as an act of rebellion.
The dreamlike state allows for the unconscious to
surface, creating an “archive” of political memory where
the work becomes a homage to the victims of state
violence and repression. The overarching metaphor of
light as source of knowledge and understanding alludes
to a new and more conscious way of perceiving the
world, triggering a reflection on the multiple distortions
of reality through lenses, experience, and memory.
Opposite & Spread:
Apichatpong
Weerasethakul,
Fireworks (Archives),
2014. Courtesy
the artist.
�6
APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL
FireWorkS (ArCHiveS)
2014, single-channel HD video installation, sound,
6 min 40 sec
The immersive moving-image installation Fireworks
(Archives) is a nocturnal stroll through Sala Keoku,
a Buddhist-Hindu garden inhabited by monumental
sculptures of mythical deities and hybrid creatures.
Illuminated by pyrotechnics and strobe lights, the flashes
of images are like recalled fragments of dreams, desires,
and the past, evoking moments beyond our conscious
perception. Dream or nightmare, the film is accompanied
by the crackling sounds of exploding firecrackers
resembling gunshots. Closing the film is a slideshow
of portraits of rebels from northeastern Thailand who
were killed during the communist revolts in the 1970s,
thus commenting on the power of Thailand’s military,
the country’s most dominant institution.
Made in the wake of the 2014 military coup, Fireworks
(Archives) is one of Apichatpong’s most explicitly
political works. The temple, inspired by Buddhism,
Hinduism, and mysticism, has been partially destroyed
by the army as it was believed to be a hiding place for
communists. Today it has become a tourist attraction, but
it is not officially recognised by the state or registered as
a historic site. It is located in the northeast of Thailand,
where Apichatpong grew up, a region with a long
history of revolts against the government. For the artist,
Sala Keoku is in itself an act of protest—it was deemed
by the government to be on the fringe as its design brings
together various religions.
As in his other works, Apichatpong explores the idea of
sleep as both a form of escape and as an act of rebellion.
The dreamlike state allows for the unconscious to
surface, creating an “archive” of political memory where
the work becomes a homage to the victims of state
violence and repression. The overarching metaphor of
light as source of knowledge and understanding alludes
to a new and more conscious way of perceiving the
world, triggering a reflection on the multiple distortions
of reality through lenses, experience, and memory.
Opposite & Spread:
Apichatpong
Weerasethakul,
Fireworks (Archives),
2014. Courtesy
the artist.
�8
9
HO TZU NYEN
THe NAMe
2015, single-channel HD projection, sound, 16 min 51 sec,
Installed with 16 books by the author Gene Z. Hanrahan
THe NAMeLeSS
2015, synchronised double-channel HD projection,
sound, 21 min 51 sec
The Name takes excerpts of more than 20 Euro-American
films that represent the Western male writer as
omniscient narrator and historian. The accompanying
texts, read by three professional voiceover artists, consist
of excerpts from various writings by Gene Z. Hanrahan,
an author that completely deviates from the romantic
ideal presented in the chosen film excerpts. The littleknown writer attempted one of the earliest histories
of the Malayan Communist Party, having written
The Communist Struggle in Malaya in 1954, published by
the Institute of Pacific Relations.
The Nameless pieces together the story of the infamous
triple agent Lai Teck, a Sino-Vietnamese with over
50 aliases, who served as the General Secretary of the
Malayan Communist Party from 1939 to 1947. He worked
for the French and British secret forces, as well as the
Japanese kempeitai (secret police) during the Japanese
occupation of Malaya. Not much is known about him,
not even his real name, except that he was killed in
Thailand after being exposed as a triple agent.
The film is accompanied by 16 books by the same mysterious author that the artist has been avidly collecting.
These writings and publications, spanning from 1943
to 1985, vary enormously in scope, from anthologies
of confidential political documents related to the 1910
Mexican Revolution, oil trading histories from
the Middle East, and accounts of the Pacific War by
US Marines to military strategies, Brazilian Marxism,
and Ernest Hemingway compilations.
Looking at disquieted histories and political developments
in the region, The Name challenges our understanding
of authorship, authenticity, and authority. Here, Ho Tzu
Nyen raises questions about the role of narratives in the
deliberate construction of history and shared identities.
The film consists of found footage appropriated from
16 different films featuring the iconic Hong Kong actor
Tony Leung Chiu Wai across two decades, a number of
which feature him in the roles of traitors, informers,
and stool pigeons. For the artist, Leung was the perfect
representation of a mysterious persona—his unique
acting style shows a certain passive restraint yet with
a kind of anxiety in his eyes. Through re-colouring
the different segments, Ho Tzu Nyen creates a seamless
narrative of this ambiguous and contentious figure
from the post-war, pre-independence period.
Above & Spread:
Ho Tzu Nyen
The Name, 2015.
Courtesy the artist.
In its installation format, The Nameless mirrors the
content of the film by making it function and
communicate like a triple agent itself. With voiceover in two different languages, the double-channel
installation is set up in a way that only allows viewers
to see one version at a time, yet catch a glimpse of the
viewers watching the other, confusing one’s experience
of the structure and making the “real story” as enigmatic
as the character on-screen. As much as it is about an
ambiguous agent representing all the political forces
that affected Southeast Asia during that period, the
work is also about the ambiguity of storytelling and
the manipulation of narratives by official accounts.
�8
HO TZU NYEN
THe NAMe
2015, single-channel HD projection, sound, 16 min 51 sec,
Installed with 16 books by the author Gene Z. Hanrahan
The Name takes excerpts of more than 20 Euro-American
films that represent the Western male writer as
omniscient narrator and historian. The accompanying
texts, read by three professional voiceover artists, consist
of excerpts from various writings by Gene Z. Hanrahan,
an author that completely deviates from the romantic
ideal presented in the chosen film excerpts. The littleknown writer attempted one of the earliest histories
of the Malayan Communist Party, having written
The Communist Struggle in Malaya in 1954, published by
the Institute of Pacific Relations.
The film is accompanied by 16 books by the same mysterious author that the artist has been avidly collecting.
These writings and publications, spanning from 1943
to 1985, vary enormously in scope, from anthologies
of confidential political documents related to the 1910
Mexican Revolution, oil trading histories from
the Middle East, and accounts of the Pacific War by
US Marines to military strategies, Brazilian Marxism,
and Ernest Hemingway compilations.
Looking at disquieted histories and political developments
in the region, The Name challenges our understanding
of authorship, authenticity, and authority. Here, Ho Tzu
Nyen raises questions about the role of narratives in the
deliberate construction of history and shared identities.
Above & Spread:
Ho Tzu Nyen
The Name, 2015.
Courtesy the artist.
�10
11
NGUYEN TRINH THI
Love MAN Love WoMAN
2007, documentary film, sound, 52 min
Ho Tzu Nyen (b. 1976, Singapore) works primarily in film,
video, and (theatre) performance, and develops immersive
multimedia installations. He earned a BA in Creative Arts
from Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne
(2001), and an MA in Southeast Asian Studies from the
National University of Singapore (2007). Drawing from
historical and philosophical texts and artefacts, he appropriates
the structures of epic myths, invoking their grandeur while
revealing that these are not merely stories, but discursive
tools. In 2015 he was awarded the prestigious DAAD
Scholarship and in 2011 he represented Singapore at
the 54th Venice Biennale. His works have been shown
at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (2015); Guggenheim
Museum, New York (2013); Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2012);
Witte de With, Rotterdam (2012); Artspace, Sydney (2011);
Tate Modern, London (2010); the 6th Asia-Pacific
Triennial, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane (2009); the
1st Singapore Biennale (2006); and the 26th São Paulo
Biennale (2004). His films have premiered at the Sundance
Film Festival in Park City, Utah (2012); Cannes Film Festival
(2009); and the 66th Venice International Film Festival
(2009). He has presented theatrical works at the Asian Arts
Theatre, Gwangju (2015); Wiener Festwochen, Vienna
(2014); Theater der Welt, Essen and Mühlheim (2010);
the Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels (2008, 2006); and the
Singapore Arts Festival (2008, 2006). He has also written
extensively on art as a critic.
Love Man Love Woman (“ai nam ai nu”, a term used to
refer to gay men in Vietnam) follows Master Luu Ngoc
Duc, one of the most prominent spirit mediums in
Hanoi of the Dao Mau (Mother Goddess Worship), an
ancient religion recognised by UNESCO. Living in a
predominantly homophobic country, effeminate and
gay men have found community and acceptance in the
traditional Dao Mau temples, where they are able to
express their sexuality openly, blurring conventional
gender boundaries.
Left:
Ho Tzu Nyen
The Nameless, 2015.
Courtesy the artist.
Opposite:
Nguyen Trinh
Thi, Love Man Love
Woman, 2007.
Courtesy the artist.
The film portrays this vibrant community through
their rituals and everyday life. The priestesses are the
Dong Co (Woman’s Spirit), effeminate gay men who act
as mediums for female spirits and the Mother Goddess.
Their rites have similar elements to Western drag,
such as crossdressing and sharp-tongued humour,
and include dazzling altars, eccentric costumes, and
extravagant rituals with candles, incense, sequins, and
feathers. Shaman Duc shares his insights into the Dao Mau
religion and his perspectives on identity and individual
expression open up discussions about the mostly
conservative Vietnamese society, revealing how this
unique religion allows its practitioners the freedom to
be accepted and celebrated as they are.
�12
13
LeTTerS FroM PANdurANGA
2015, single-channel video, sound, 35 min
Nguyen Trinh Thi (b. 1973, Vietnam), is a Hanoi-based
independent filmmaker and video/media artist. She studied
journalism and photography at the University of Iowa,
and International Relations and Ethnographic Film at the
University of California, San Diego. She is the founding and
acting director of DOCLAB, a centre founded in 2009 for
documentary filmmaking and video art in Hanoi. Her diverse
practice has consistently investigated the role of memory in
the necessary unveiling of hidden, displaced or misinterpreted
histories, and examined the position of artists in the
Vietnamese society. Her films and video art works have been
shown at festivals and art exhibitions, including Prudential
Eye 2016, ArtScience Museum, Singapore; Rotterdam
International Film Festival (2016); Satellite 8, Jeu de Paume,
Paris, and CAPC Bordeaux (2015); the Lyon Biennale (2015);
Asian Art Biennial, Taiwan (2015); 5th Fukuoka Triennale,
Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (2014); If The World Changed,
4th Singapore Biennale (2013); 15th Jakarta Biennale (2013);
Bangkok Experimental Film Festival (2012); Artists’ Films
International (2012); Oberhausen International Film
Festival (2011); Summer Exhibition, DEN FRIE Centre of
Contemporary Art, Copenhagen (2011); and Kuandu Biennale,
Tapei (2010); and DMZ International Documentary Film
Festival, South Korea (2011).
In this film essay between documentary and fiction,
Nguyen portrays the everyday life of the Cham
community, an indigenous matriarchal Hindu culture
dating back nearly 2,000 years. Ninh Thuan, a province
in the South Central Coast of Vietnam formerly known
as Panduranga, is the Cham’s spiritual centre and their
last surviving territory. Knowing that this land is where
the Vietnamese government plans to build the country’s
first nuclear plants, the artist spent several periods of
residency there. The situation is recounted in a poetic
interweaving of landscapes and portraits of people,
tracing back a history of conquest and submission that
is not taught in schools or in any media.
In making this film, Nguyen is avidly conscious of
her status as an outsider and openly mindful of not
representing or speaking on behalf of the other. Made
in the format of a letter exchange written from the
perspective of the observers, the work raises relevant
and critical questions regarding artistic research, the
role of the artist, the accessibility of history and ongoing
colonialisms, as well as present-day instrumentalisation
of historical events. Through the pensive voices of a
man and woman reading the letters, the thoughts are
formulated against intimate portraits of individuals and
communities, beautiful landscapes, and images of leisure
and sacred spaces. While giving form to little spoken
realities and ideas, the film becomes a portrait of the artist
herself, expressing a wish to engage but also to disappear.
Above, Opposite
& Spread:
Nguyen Trinh,
Letters from
Panduranga, 2015.
Courtesy the artist.
�12
LeTTerS FroM PANdurANGA
2015, single-channel video, sound, 35 min
In this film essay between documentary and fiction,
Nguyen portrays the everyday life of the Cham
community, an indigenous matriarchal Hindu culture
dating back nearly 2,000 years. Ninh Thuan, a province
in the South Central Coast of Vietnam formerly known
as Panduranga, is the Cham’s spiritual centre and their
last surviving territory. Knowing that this land is where
the Vietnamese government plans to build the country’s
first nuclear plants, the artist spent several periods of
residency there. The situation is recounted in a poetic
interweaving of landscapes and portraits of people,
tracing back a history of conquest and submission that
is not taught in schools or in any media.
In making this film, Nguyen is avidly conscious of
her status as an outsider and openly mindful of not
representing or speaking on behalf of the other. Made
in the format of a letter exchange written from the
perspective of the observers, the work raises relevant
and critical questions regarding artistic research, the
role of the artist, the accessibility of history and ongoing
colonialisms, as well as present-day instrumentalisation
of historical events. Through the pensive voices of a
man and woman reading the letters, the thoughts are
formulated against intimate portraits of individuals and
communities, beautiful landscapes, and images of leisure
and sacred spaces. While giving form to little spoken
realities and ideas, the film becomes a portrait of the artist
herself, expressing a wish to engage but also to disappear.
Above, Opposite
& Spread:
Nguyen Trinh,
Letters from
Panduranga, 2015.
Courtesy the artist.
�14
15
PARK CHAN-KYONG
CiTizeN’S ForeST
2016, three-channel video installation,
ambisonic sound, 26 min 6 sec
The three-channel video installation is composed by
fragmented memories and references, addressing the
serious rupture between South Korea’s past and present
created by the country’s rapid economic development.
The video is inspired by two Korean artworks: Oh Yoon’s
incomplete painting The Lemures (1984), a panoramic
sketch depicting the victims of major events in modern
Korean history, including the Donghak Peasant
Revolution (1894), the Korean War (1950-53), and the
Gwangju Massacre (1980), along with the celebrated poem
Colossal roots by Kim Soo-Young, which both subverts
and accepts certain elements of tradition.
More than a memorial to victims of injustice and
violence, the work confronts historical trauma by
enacting its transformation through a traditional
shamanistic ritual and proposing a different approach
towards the recent but unfamiliar past. Using tradition
as a tool to appease the hovering shadows from tragic
histories, reconciliation comes through a symbolic
gesture: as the phantoms find peace and relief, they
depart from the forest one by one. Park exposes the
collective amnesia in Korean society, demanding
a certain maturity and a disposition to confront and
overcome, rather than try to evade and forget.
Following Oh Yoon’s cue and giving form to ghostly
figures of the past, the black-and-white video conjures
up victims of Korea’s various historical as well as
more recent tragedies together in a forest. Each figure
representing a specific fatal event, the haunting past is
gradually exorcised through a gut, a traditional Muist
(shamanic) rite largely neglected in contemporary
Korean society. The accompanying sounds are funeral
songs by elderly men from Jindo Island as well as
the sound of gut performed by elderly women from
Jeju Island.
Above, Opposite
& Spread:
Park Chan-kyong,
Citizen’s Forest,
2016. Courtesy Art
Sonje Center and
Kukje Gallery.
�14
14/1
PARK CHAN-KYONG
CiTizeN’S ForeST
2016, three-channel video installation,
ambisonic sound, 26 min 6 sec
Park Chan-kyong (b. 1965, South Korea) is a media artist,
film director, and writer. He graduated from Seoul National
University with a BFA in Painting in 1988, and the California
Institute of the Arts with a MFA in Photography in 1995.
Park served as the Artistic Director of the SeMA Biennale
Mediacity Seoul in 2014. His major works include Manshin:
Ten Thousand Spirits (2013), Night Fishing (2011, co-directed
with Park Chan-wook), Sindoan (2008), Power Passage (2004),
and Sets (2000). Park’s work has been exhibited internationally
in numerous solo and group exhibitions including Haus der
Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2017); Taipei Biennial (2016);
Anyang Public Art Project (2016); Iniva, London (2015); Art
Sonje Center, Seoul (2013); and Atelier Hermès, Seoul (2012,
2008). Park was awarded the Hermès Korea Art Award in
2004, and the Golden Bear for best short film at the Berlin
International Film Festival in 2011 for Night Fishing. His
works are included in the collection of major art institutions,
such as the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary
Art, Korea; KADIST, Paris and San Francisco; Musée des
Beaux-Arts de Nantes; Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art,
Seoul; Seoul Museum of Art; Gyeonggi Museum of Modern
Art, Ansan; and Art Sonje Center, Seoul.
The three-channel video installation is composed by
fragmented memories and references, addressing the
serious rupture between South Korea’s past and present
created by the country’s rapid economic development.
The video is inspired by two Korean artworks: Oh Yoon’s
incomplete painting The Lemures (1984), a panoramic
sketch depicting the victims of major events in modern
Korean history, including the Donghak Peasant
Revolution (1894), the Korean War (1950-53), and the
Gwangju Massacre (1980), along with the celebrated poem
Colossal roots by Kim Soo-Young, which both subverts
and accepts certain elements of tradition.
Following Oh Yoon’s cue and giving form to ghostly
figures of the past, the black-and-white video conjures
up victims of Korea’s various historical as well as
more recent tragedies together in a forest. Each figure
representing a specific fatal event, the haunting past is
gradually exorcised through a gut, a traditional Muist
(shamanic) rite largely neglected in contemporary
Korean society. The accompanying sounds are funeral
songs by elderly men from Jindo Island as well as
the sound of gut performed by elderly women from
Jeju Island.
Above, Opposite
& Spread:
Park Chan-kyong,
Citizen’s Forest,
2016. Courtesy Art
Sonje Center and
Kukje Gallery.
�14
PARK CHAN-KYONG
CiTizeN’S ForeST
2016, three-channel video installation,
ambisonic sound, 26 min 6 sec
The three-channel video installation is composed by
fragmented memories and references, addressing the
serious rupture between South Korea’s past and present
created by the country’s rapid economic development.
The video is inspired by two Korean artworks: Oh Yoon’s
incomplete painting The Lemures (1984), a panoramic
sketch depicting the victims of major events in modern
Korean history, including the Donghak Peasant
Revolution (1894), the Korean War (1950-53), and the
Gwangju Massacre (1980), along with the celebrated poem
Colossal roots by Kim Soo-Young, which both subverts
and accepts certain elements of tradition.
Following Oh Yoon’s cue and giving form to ghostly
figures of the past, the black-and-white video conjures
up victims of Korea’s various historical as well as
more recent tragedies together in a forest. Each figure
representing a specific fatal event, the haunting past is
gradually exorcised through a gut, a traditional Muist
(shamanic) rite largely neglected in contemporary
Korean society. The accompanying sounds are funeral
songs by elderly men from Jindo Island as well as
the sound of gut performed by elderly women from
Jeju Island.
Above, Opposite
& Spread:
Park Chan-kyong,
Citizen’s Forest,
2016. Courtesy Art
Sonje Center and
Kukje Gallery.
�16
17
RESEARCH PROJECTS IN THE LAB
siren eun young jung
Wrong indexing: Yeoseong Gukgeuk Archive
Presented in collaboration with Dr Anna Lovecchio, Curator, Residencies
9 September – 8 October 2017
Choy Ka Fai
The wind that cuts the body
Presented in collaboration with Khim Ong, Deputy Director, Curatorial Programmes
13 October – 10 December 2017
As a genre of theatre that features exclusively women actors, 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.
Driven by his interest in exploring the conditions of the human body, multidisciplinary
artist 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
(1928–86) 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.
siren eun young jung (b. 1974, South Korea) works across a wide range of mediums such
as film, photography, performance, and installation. She focuses on the politics of affect and
historical and political acts of resistance. Jung was artist-in-residence at NTU CCA Singapore
from December 2016 to February 2017. Her works have been included in numerous group
exhibitions such as the Taipei Biennial (2016-2017); The 8th Climate (What does art do?), 11th
Gwangju Biennale (2016); Discordant Harmony, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary
Art (2015); and 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, QAGOMA, Brisbane (2015),
among others. She was awarded the Hermès Foundation Missulsang Prize in 2013.
siren eun young
jung, Wrong
Indexing, 2016,
photographs,
dimensions variable.
Courtesy the artist.
Choy Ka Fai (b. 1979, Singapore), currently based in Berlin, works freely across the various
disciplines of dance, theatre, and visual art. He graduated from the Royal College of Art, London,
with an MA in Design Interaction, and was conferred the Young Artist Award by the National
Arts Council, Singapore in 2010. Choy was artist-in-residence at NTU CCA Singapore (2017),
Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2014–15), and his projects have been presented at major festivals
worldwide, including Sadler’s Wells, London (2016), ImPulsTanz Festival, Vienna (2015), and
Tanz Im August, Berlin (2013, 2015). He is currently a resident artist at tanzhaus nrw Düsseldorf.
Choy Ka Fai,
A Pilgrimage,
2016, Kamaitachi
Museum, Tashiro,
Japan, 2017.
Courtesy the artist.
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SYMPOSIUM:
GHOSTS AND SPECTRES – SHADOWS OF HISTORY
propagation of progress and nation
building, what has been left out and
rendered unspeakable in the region’s
bid to establish national identities and
political autonomy? Referencing the
works of Ho Tzu Nyen and Nguyen
Trinh Thi, this session traces post-war
and Cold War legacies in Asia and
investigates its lingering spectres.
On the occasion of the
Four-Year Anniversary of
NTU CCA Singapore
Saturday, 28 October 2017
9.30am – 8.00pm
The Single Screen,
Block 43 Malan Road, Gillman Barracks
Admission fee S$35.
Free for NTU students.
Register at symposium-ghosts-andspectres.peatix.com
On the occasion of the exhibition
Ghosts and Spectres – Shadows of History
and NTU CCA Singapore’s four-year
anniversary, this symposium brings
together the exhibiting artists as well as
curators and scholars from the region to
expand on the subjects approached by
the works. Taking as a point of departure
the artworks’ impulse of bringing to
light past events and revive collective
memory, each session in the symposium
deepens the understanding of the varied
artistic processes and strategies through
structured conversations consisting of
lectures, presentations, and moderated
discussions.
9.30 – 10.00am
Registration
10.00 – 10.10am
Welcome Address by
Professor Ute Meta Bauer
10.10 – 11.10am
Keynote Lecture by curator and
moving image theorist
Dr May Adadol Ingawanij
Focusing on artists cinema and moving
image installations in Southeast Asia,
the lecture addresses the relationship
between contemporary moving image
aesthetics, historical invocation, and the
politics of enunciation. Dr Ingawanij will
expand on how everyday life, conflicts,
violence, and historical erasures specific
to places in Southeast Asia are sources
of inspiration and motivation for many
artists.
11.10am – 1.10pm
Panel: Shadows of History
Chaired by curator and art historian
Dr Roger Nelson
Lecture by curator and art historian
Dr June Yap
Presentations by artists Ho Tzu Nyen
and Nguyen Trinh Thi
Dedicated to the uncovering of neglected
histories, this session will look at the
construction of historical narratives
and its role in reflecting social, political,
and cultural conditions. Occluded by
1.30 – 2.00pm
Introduction of Exhibition
Ghosts and Spectres – Shadows of History
by Khim Ong
2.30 – 4.30pm
Panel: Ghosts and Spectres
Chaired by researcher and curator
Dr David Teh
Lecture by curator Hyunjin Kim
Presentations by artist Park Chankyong and art historian Dr Clare Veal
(on Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
This session deals with notions of
ghosts and spectres as allegories to
historical moments and dreamlike
realities. Embedded in myths and folklore
traditions, what roles do they play in
constructing an understanding of the
past and in reflecting socio-political
circumstances? How do cinematic works
engage its medium-specificity in a play
of historical phantoms of repressed
collective memories to create a language
for portraying trauma, loss, dreams,
and nightmares?
4.30 – 5.30pm
Closing Keynote Lecture by scholar
Professor Kenneth Dean
Professor Dean will reflect on the day’s
discussions from the perspective of
local historical research, and expand on
them through referencing folkloric and
vernacular practices.
5.45 – 6.30pm
Book Launch:
Thai Art: Currencies of the Contemporary
(MIT Press, 2017) by Dr David Teh
With introduction by the author and
conversation with Dr May Adadol
Ingawanij and Dr Roger Nelson
Since the 1990s, Thai contemporary art
has achieved considerable international
recognition. But while many Thai
artists have shed identification with
their nation, “Thainess” remains an
interpretive crutch for understanding
their work. Dr David Teh examines the
competing claims to contemporaneity
staked in Thailand, and on behalf of
Thai art elsewhere, against a backdrop of
sustained political and economic turmoil.
7.00 – 8.00pm
The Critical dictionary of Southeast Asia
volume 4: v for voice
Performance by artists Ho Tzu Nyen
and Bani Haykal
Ho Tzu Nyen’s The Critical Dictionary
of Southeast Asia (cdosea, 2012-ongoing)
has generated a number of works for
the artist including The Name and The
Nameless. Since 2016, Ho has been
working with a group of collaborators to
manifest cdosea, resulting in the creation
of an algorithm that composes endless
combinations of audio-visual materials
extracted from the Internet (cdosea.org).
This experimental performance is the
first time cdosea is presented in a live
context, with sound artist Bani Haykal
improvising in response to images
generated in real time.
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About the Contributors
Professor Ute Meta Bauer (Germany/
Singapore) is the Founding Director of the
NTU CCA Singapore, and Professor at the
School of Art, Design and Media, NTU, and
was prior Associate Professor (2005-12) at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
where she served as the Founding Director
of the MIT Program in Art, Culture, and
Technology. Professor Bauer is a curator for
contemporary art, film, video, and sound,
with a focus on transdisciplinary formats.
Since 2015 she is an expedition leader
of TBA21 Academy The Current exploring
Pacific Archipelagos and littorals that are
most impacted by climate change and human
interventions in their environments.
Dr Kenneth Dean (Canada/Singapore)
is Head of Chinese Studies Department at
the National University of Singapore. His
research interests include Chinese religions,
temples, and Daoist studies. He received
his BA in Chinese Studies from Brown
University and PhD in Asian Studies from
Stanford University, and has taught at McGill
University, where he was Director of the
Centre for East Asian Research. Dean has
been published widely and is the author of
numerous books on Daoism and Chinese
religions. He has produced a documentary,
Bored in Heaven (2010), about ritual
celebrations around Chinese New Year
in Southeast China.
Bani Haykal (Singapore) is an artist,
composer, and musician. Haykal considers
music (making/processes) as a metaphor
for cybernetics. His projects revolve around
interfacing and interaction in feedback/feedforward mechanisms. An artist-in-residence at
NTU CCA Singapore (2015), he is a member
of b-quartet and Soundpainting ensemble Erik
Satay & The Kampong Arkestra.
Ho Tzu Nyen – Please refer to page 10
Dr May Adadol Ingawanij (Thailand/
United Kingdom) is a moving image theorist,
teacher, and curator, and co-director of
the Centre for Research and Education in
Arts and Media (CREAM), University of
Westminster. She is currently writing a
book titled Animistic Cinema: Moving Image
Performance and Ritual in Thailand. Her
publications include Exhibiting Lav Diaz’s
Long Films: Currencies of Circulation and
Spectatorship (2017); Nguyen Trinh Thi’s Essay
Films (forthcoming); and Animism and the
Performative Realist Cinema of Apichatpong
Weerasethakul (2013). Dr Ingawanij’s
curatorial projects include Lav Diaz Journeys,
London (2017), and On Attachments and
Unknowns, Phnom Penh (2017).
Hyunjin Kim (South Korea) is a curator,
writer, and researcher, currently teaching
at R.A.T School, Seoul. She is an advisor of
Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong. Her recent
curatorial and interdisciplinary practices
explore disparate points of regional modernity,
in various forms and productions. She was
Director at Arko Art Center, Seoul (2014-15),
and a co-curator of 7th Gwangju Biennale
(2008). She curated numerous exhibitions and
projects including Tradition (Un)Realized, Arko
Art Center, Seoul (2014); Perspective Strikes
Back, L’appartement22, Rabat (2010); PlugIn#3-Undeclared Crowd, Van Abbemuseum,
Eindhoven (2006), and published extensively
on contemporary artists including Park Chankyong (Colossal Roots, Tradition-Reality and
Contestation of Asian Modernity in Flash Art).
Khim Ong (Singapore) is Deputy Director,
Curatorial Programmes, NTU CCA Singapore.
Prior, she worked as independent curator
and held curatorial positions at the Institute
of Contemporary Arts Singapore, LASALLE,
and Osage Gallery, Hong Kong. She was
Manager, Sector Development (Visual Arts),
at the National Arts Council during which
she contributed to conceptualising NTU CCA
Singapore. She co-curated with Founding
Director Professor Ute Meta Bauer the
exhibitions Incomplete Urbanism: Attempts of
Critical Spatial Practice (2016), Amar Kanwar:
The Sovereign Forest (2016), and Yang Fudong:
Incidental Scripts (2014). Selected curatorial
projects include the Southeast Asia Platform,
Art Stage Singapore (2015), and Landscape
Memories, Louis Vuitton Espace, Singapore
(2013).
Dr Roger Nelson (Australia/Singapore)
is an art historian and curator. He joined
NTU ADM and NTU CCA Singapore as a
Postdoctoral Fellow in September 2017. Prior
to this, he pursued his PhD in Phnom Penh,
researching modern and contemporary arts of
Cambodia. Nelson is a co-founding co-editor
of Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary
and Modern Art in Asia, a journal published
by NUS Press. He co-convened Gender in
Southeast Asian Art Histories, an international
symposium at the University of Sydney (2017).
Nguyen Trinh Thi – Please refer to page 13
Park Chan-kyong – Please refer to page 15
Dr David Teh (Australia/Singapore) is a
researcher based at the National University
of Singapore and is the director of Future
Perfect, a project platform in Singapore.
His curatorial projects have included TRANSMISSION, Jim Thompson Art Center, Bangkok
(2014); Video Vortex #7, Yogyakarta (2011);
Unreal Asia, 55. Internationale Kurzfilmtage
Oberhausen (2009); The More Things Change,
5th Bangkok Experimental Film Festival
(2008); and Platform (2006). His writings
have appeared in Third Text, Afterall, Theory
Culture & Society, LEAP, Aan Journal and
The Bangkok Post. His new book, Thai Art:
Currencies of the Contem-porary was published
in 2017 by MIT Press.
Dr Clare Veal (Australia/Singapore) is a
lecturer in the MA Asian Art Histories
programme at LASALLE College of the
Arts, Singapore. She undertakes research on
Southeast Asian photography, art, and visual
culture, with a particular focus on Thailand.
She received her PhD from the Department of
Art History and Film Studies at the University
of Sydney for her thesis entitled Thainess
Framed: Photography and Thai Identity,
1946-2010. Dr Veal was the sub-editor for
Asian Art for the Routledge Encyclopaedia
of Modernism (2016) and has contributed
papers to a number of publications, including
Journal of Aesthetics and Culture and Trans-Asia
Photography Review.
Dr June Yap (Singapore) is Director of
Curatorial Programmes and Publications at
Singapore Art Museum. Selected curatorial
projects include No Country: Contemporary
Art for South and Southeast Asia for the
Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative;
The Cloud of Unknowing by artist Ho Tzu
Nyen at the 54th Venice Biennale; The
Future of Exhibition: It Feels Like I’ve Been
Here Before, Institute of Contemporary Arts,
Singapore; Das Paradies ist Anderswo / Paradise
is Elsewhere, IFA, Germany; and Bound for
Glory, NUS Museum. She is the author of
Retrospective: A Historiographical Aesthetic in
Contemporary Singapore and Malaysia (2016).
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Free admission to all programmes,
unless otherwise stated.
All programmes take place at NTU
CCA Singapore, Block 43 Malan Road,
Gillman Barracks, unless venue is stated.
For updates on the programmes,
please visit the NTU CCA Singapore
website (www.ntu.ccasingapore.org) and
Facebook page (www.facebook.com/
ntu.ccasingapore).
Friday, 8 September 2017
7.30 – 9.00pm
Art After Dark x Gillman Barracks
5th Anniversary Celebrations
Screening: Anyang, Paradise City,
Park Chan-kyong, South Korea,
2010, 101 min
PUBLIC PROGRAMMES
Friday, 22 September 2017
7.30 – 9.00pm
Park’s first full-length feature film,
Anyang, Paradise City is a mix between
documentary and fiction, inspired by
a seldom-remembered incident during
the Olympic Games in 1988, where
22 female workers were killed in a
fire in Anyang. The “glorious” past of
Anyang (a Buddhist term for “paradise”)
allegedly includes the existence of a
huge temple surrounded by the beautiful
mountains and streams around 1,000
years ago. Researching into Buddhism
and the history of Anyang, Park follows
the temple excavations and searches
for the 500-year-old “grandma tree.”
The film traces this past through the
natural landscape and alludes to the
future through the city’s mayoral
election. Seemingly travelling between
paradise and hell, the camera hunts,
rests, and plays as if dancing with the
cityscape, while layering narrative,
history, contemporary life, landscape/
architecture, and politics.
Park Chan-kyong – Please refer to page 15
Exhibition (de)Tour:
Flowers from our Bloodlines
Lecture Performance by artist Zarina
Muhammad in collaboration with
choreographer Stefania Rossetti
Therianthropy, the mythological ability
of humans to metamorphose into
other animals through shapeshifting,
has marked myth and folklore across
cultures and times, remaining one of
the most common tropes in magical and
otherworldly narratives. Drawing from
concepts of the demonised and desired
body, gender-based archetypes, and
mythmaking, this lecture performance
invokes family histories and revokes the
lineages of colonisation in Southeast
Asia. The event unfolds through the
layering of personal memory, collective
history, and fragments of ancestral and
indigenous knowledge on healing and
killing. Remembering the rites of
the Wolf Spider and the Harimau Jadian
(Were-Tiger) and exploring their
multiple translations and adaptations,
the performance looks at intergenerational and cross-cultural exchange
through storytelling, rituals, gestures,
and embodied movement.
Zarina Muhammad (Singapore) is a
researcher, curator, artist, and educator.
She lectures on art and cultural history
with a focus on critical re-examination of
ethnographic approaches and historiographies
on Southeast Asia. Currently, Muhammad
is working on a multidisciplinary research
project on cultural translations pertaining
to Southeast Asian ritual magic, sacred
sites, and the tracing of mythological roots
and divergences. Her performative and
collaborative works deconstruct and confront
histories, texts, definitions, and (mis)representations associated with these bodies
of knowledge and polycosmologies. She has
presented her work throughout the Asia
Pacific and is a research resident at extantation
in Chiang Mai since July 2017.
Stefania Rossetti (Italy/France/Indonesia)
is a choreographer and researcher focusing
on improvisation and states of trance in
traditional and contemporary dance. After
studying at M.A.S. Milan Conservatory
of Dance, Rossetti performed for several
international companies in Europe and
Asia. In 2014, she received the Teaching
Contemporary Dance diploma from the
National Centre of Dance, Paris. She has been
involved in developing dance pedagogy for
universities, theatres, and national centres
in Africa, Europe, North America, and Asia.
Rossetti founded the International Festival
of Contemporary Dance Corpus in Paris,
and is regularly involved with the city’s
International Center of Research of Fine
Arts.
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Friday, 29 September 2017
7.30 – 9.00pm
Wednesday, 4 October 2017
7.30 – 9.00pm
Friday, 6 October 2017
7.30 – 9.00pm
Screening: orpheus, Jean Cocteau,
France, 1950, 110 min
Exhibition (de)Tour with
sociologist Professor Chua Beng Huat
Considered one of Cocteau’s masterpieces, Orpheus updates the myth of
Orpheus and depicts a famous poet,
scorned by the Left Bank youth, and
his love for both his wife, Eurydice,
and a mysterious princess. Seeking
inspiration, the poet follows the princess
to the land of the dead. Translating this
Greek myth by adapting the story about
love, death, and the underworld into
a modern scenario allows Cocteau to
resonate political questions concerning
more recent historical events like war,
oppression, and Nazism. This film is the
central part of Cocteau’s Orphic Trilogy,
the other two being The Blood of a Poet
(1930) and Testament of Orpheus (1960).
Deconstructing Asian history from the
20th century from a cultural studies
perspective, Professor Chua will trace
parallels to the histories addressed by
the works in the exhibition. Expanding
on political themes such as communism
in Malaya or Thai insurgence, historical
narratives occurring in the featured
works will be further contextualised
and interpreted. The socio-political
backgrounds of the different installations
and films not only gain clarity but are
understood within the larger frame of
Asian modernity.
Screenings: Chia-Wei Hsu
Huai Mo village, Thailand, 2012, 8 min
ruins of the intelligence Bureau,
Thailand, 2015, 13 min
White Building – Sva Pul, kong Nay,
Sisters, rooftop, Cambodia, 2016, 18 min
Jean Cocteau (1889-1963, France) was a
writer, artist, and film director and one of
the most influential creative figures in the
Parisian avant-garde between the two World
Wars, his career spanning over 50 years.
Cocteau designed posters for the Ballets Russe,
and composed several opera libretti, published
collections of poetry and illustrations, as well
as a novel inspired by his experiences during
World War I. He staged a ballet called The Ox
on the Roof and directed modern adaptations
of classic dramas. Cocteau wrote and directed
several influential films, including The Beauty
and the Beast (1946). Regarded as one of the
most versatile and influential creative minds
of his era, he was inducted into the Academie
Française in 1955.
Professor Chua Beng Huat (Singapore)
obtained his PhD from York University,
Toronto. He is Head of Studies, Urban Studies
at Yale-NUS College. Prior, he served as
Provost Chair Professor, Faculty of Arts and
Social Science (2009-17); Research Leader,
Cultural Studies in Asia Research Cluster,
Asia Research Institute (2000-15); Convenor
Cultural Studies Programmes (2008-13); and
Head, Department of Sociology (2009-15),
NUS. His publications include Life is Not
Complete without Shopping (2003); Political
Legitimacy and Housing: Stakeholding in
Singapore (1997); and Communitarian Ideology
and Democracy in Singapore (1995). He was
contributing editor for Communitarian Politics
in Asia (2004), and editor of Consumption in
Asia: Lifestyles and Identities (2000).
The artist will be present.
Chia-Wei Hsu’s 10-year long engagement with the moving image and the
forgotten stories of the Cold War
in Southeast Asia resulted in a complex
body of works which address major
historical events through the lens of
minor narratives, often embedded in
remote locations, that weave together
reality and fiction, myth and history.
Delving into the history of the Huai
Mo Village in northern Thailand, the
artist collaborates with soldiers and
children to trace the story of the exiled
Chinese soldiers who settled at the
Thai-Myanmar border and were never
able to return home. In Cambodia,
the artist looks at the White Building
in Phnom Penh to reference the violent
history of repression during the Khmer
Rouge occupation, where 90 percent
of performance artists were executed.
After liberation, the surviving artists
were assigned accommodation in the
White Building. In the wake of its
upcoming demolition, Hsu invited four
second-generation performing groups
to engage with the White Building,
their former home.
Chia-Wei Hsu (Taiwan) an artist, filmmaker,
and curator whose work merges the language
of contemporary art and film. In his practice,
Hsu unearths histories of the Cold War in
Asia buried in precise geographical locations
and brings them back to life through
narrative and visual sequences that blend
myth and reality, historical documentation
and fictional developments. Hsu’s works
have been presented in numerous exhibitions
and festivals worldwide, including Haus der
Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2017); Cinema
Muzeul Țăranului, Bucharest (2016); 4th
Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition,
Hong-Gah Museum, Taipei (2014); and
55th International Venice Biennale (2013).
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Sunday, 29 October 2017
5.00 – 7.00pm
External Venue: The Projector,
Golden Mile Tower*
Screening: vampir-Cuadecuc,
Pere Portabella, Spain, 1970, 66 min
Introduction by
Professor Ute Meta Bauer
Vampir-Cuadecuc is arguably one of the
key films for understanding the transition
in the Spanish film world from the period
of the “new cinemas” (permitted by the
Franco government) towards the illegal,
clandestine, or openly antagonistic
practices against the Franco regime.
The film consists of shooting the filming
of a commercial film El Conde Drácula
by Jesús Franco. Portabella practices
two types of violence on the standard
narrative: he totally eliminates colour
and substitutes the soundtrack with a
landscape of image-sound collisions by
Carles Santos. Filmed provocatively in
16mm and with sound negative, the
tensions between black and white favour
the strange “fantasmatic materialism” of
this revealing analysis of the construction
mechanism for the magic in dominant
narrative cinema, which at the same time
constitutes a radical intervention in the
Spanish cinematographic institution.
Pere Portabella (Spain) maintained since
1960s a political commitment with the
movement against the Franco dictatorship.
He was elected Senator in the first
democratic elections (1977) and participated
in the writing of the present day Spanish
Constitution. Honoured with the Creu de
Sant Jordi (1999), the highest recognition
possible from the Generalitat de Catalunya,
the award-winning filmmaker has been an
irreplaceable figure in the Spanish film world
for the last 50 years. His acclaimed work has
27
been shown worldwide in major exhibitions
and retrospectives, including the Museum
of Modern Art, New York (2007); Centre
Pompidou, Paris (2003); and Documenta11
(2002). Portabella will be invested Doctor
Honoris Causa by the Universitat Autònoma
de Barcelona.
*Tickets: S$13.50 standard; S$11.50
concession. Purchase from theprojector.sg
Friday, 3 November 2017
7.30 – 9.00pm
Screenings:
The Mad Masters, Jean Rouch,
France, 1955, 36 min
divine Horsemen: The Living Gods
of Haiti, Maya Deren,
United States, 1985, 52 min
Introduction by film scholar
Dr Marc Glöde, NTU ADM
For Jean Rouch’s landmark film The Mad
Masters, the French filmmaker himself
coined the term “ethnofiction” due to
the blending of both documentary and
fictional aspects. Rouch takes his viewers
to the city of Accra (West Africa) where
he follows the Hauka movement and
their religious and ritual proceedings,
consisting of mimicry and dancing to
become possessed by British Colonial
administrators. The work sparked a
highly political debate since on one hand
it was considered offensive to colonial
authorities because of the Africans’
blatant attempts to mimic and mock the
“white oppressors” and, on the other
hand, African students, teachers, and
directors found the film to perpetrate an
“exotic racism” of the African people. An
outstanding film that until today is one of
the classics to be revisited and discussed.
Between 1947 and 1951 the experimental
filmmaker Maya Deren spent significant
periods of time in Haiti to make a film
about Voodoo rituals and rites. The
material she shot was left unedited until
after her death when it was assembled
into the film Divine Horsemen: The Living
Gods of Haiti. Deren’s work reveals the
ongoing merging of art and ethnography,
one of the legacies of Surrealism, also
standing as an important cultural record
of Haitian Voodoo—a religion based
on West African beliefs and practices,
combined with aspects of Roman
Catholicism. The contrasting of Haitian
dance with “non-Haitian elements” in a
series of dreamlike sequences testifies to
Deren’s Surrealist interest in alternative
realities. Gradually, the focus shifted
from dance to the complex nature of
Haitian ceremonies, while celebrating
Haiti for its hybrid culture as well as for
its symbolic importance as the political
site of a successful slave revolution,
which resulted in Haiti becoming the
first modern black republic.
Jean Rouch (1917-2004, France) was a
legendary documentarian and ethnographer
known for his work focused on West and
Central African communities. He attended
possession ceremonies of the Songhay
religion, documenting them and showing
the films at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris.
Rouch began screening his films in Africa,
and incorporating comments from his films’
subjects into his work, thus developing
the ideas of Robert Flaherty about “shared
anthropology” that became central to his
practice. The series done with Germaine
Dieterlen documenting the seven-year cycle
of Dogon Digui rituals that occur every 60
years is regarded as one of his most significant
contributions. Inventor of “ethnofiction,”
Rouch explored themes of colonialism and
racism in a playful and poetic way.
Maya Deren (1917-61, Ukraine/United
States) was one of the most important
American experimental filmmakers and
entrepreneurial promoters of the avantgarde in the 1940s and 1950s. Deren was
also a choreographer, dancer, film theorist,
poet, lecturer, writer, and photographer.
Her influence, especially in independent film,
has not only endured but also increased in
the decades following her death. She
combined her interests in dance, Haitian
Vodou and subjective psychology in a series
of surreal, perceptual, black-and-white short
films. Using editing, multiple exposures,
jump cutting, superimposition, slow-motion
and other camera techniques to her fullest
advantage, Deren created continued motion
through discontinued space, with the
ability to turn her vision into a stream
of consciousness.
Dr Marc Glöde (Germany/Singapore)
is Assistant Professor, NTU ADM, who
regularly contributes to NTU CCA
Singapore’s programmes. He received his
PhD from the Free University of Berlin, and
has taught at the FU Berlin, Academy of Fine
Arts Berlin, and ETH Zürich. His research
focuses on the intersection of art, architecture,
and film, and his curatorial projects include
STILL/MOVING/STILL – The History of Slide
Projection in the Arts, Belgium; (Re-)locating
the Self, Hamburg; and Filmic Reflections on
the Document, Bonn. He was senior curator
for Art Basel’s film programme (2008-14).
Publications include Farbige Lichträume
(2014), and co-editor of Synästhesie-Effekte
(2011) and Umwidmungen (2005). His writing
has been published in Fantom, Osmos, Texte
zur Kunst, Parkett, and Art in America.
�28
Wednesday, 15 November 2017
7.30 – 9.00pm
Exhibition (de)Tour with
researcher Kathleen Ditzig
In 1953, Carlos P. Romulo, the then
Ambassador of the Philippines to the
United States, described Southeast
Asia as “the theatre of conflict between
the free world and the Soviet world,”
representing “the margin between victory
and defeat for freedom.” Beginning with
an examination of the exhibition of
the First Southeast Asia Art Conference
and Competition in Manila in 1957, this
talk focuses on pragmatic mediation—
of switching political allegiances and
circumventing power. Responding to the
artworks in the exhibition, it considers
the legacy of the Cold War battle for
“hearts and minds” in Southeast Asia
and cultural production that navigates as
much as it is informed by geopolitics.
Kathleen Ditzig (Singapore) is a curator,
researcher, and writer, currently working as
Assistant Curator at the National Museum of
Singapore. She is interested in the relationship
between art, globalism, and power. Her art
historical research addresses the relationship
of Cold War globalism and the emergence
of Southeast Asia as a cultural region. Her
writing has been published by Art Forum and
Flash Art among other art magazines, and
by journals such as NUS Press and Finance
and Society.
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Saturday and Sunday,
18 and 19 November 2017
12.00 – 7.00pm
Screening Series:
unruly Shadows: Artist Films and videos
on Challenging Spheres
A weekend screening of specially selected
artist films and videos by artists from
Asia that expands from the context of the
exhibition and includes subjects of myths,
history, politics, ghosts, and spectres.
The selection will reflect on conflicts
specific to various localities where
shadows from the past have yet to be laid
to rest and promises of the future yet to
arrive. The screenings are accompanied
by a programme of introductions, talks,
and discussions between a group of
locally-based curators and researchers,
addressing the controversies present in
the screened works.
OUTREACH & EDUCATION
Free admission to all programmes unless
otherwise stated. All programmes take
place at NTU CCA Singapore, Block 43
Malan Road, Gillman Barracks.
For enquiries and registration, email:
NTUCCAeducation@ntu.edu.sg
Saturday, 9 September 2017
10.00am – 1.00pm
Workshop for Teachers and educators
by educator and artist Kelly Reedy
This workshop focuses on the artists and
the works included in the exhibition
Ghosts and Spectres – Shadows of History. It
provides the opportunity for educators to
explore contested historical narratives and
its layered constructions situated between
fiction and reality, while referencing local
myths, ghosts, and traditional figures.
The workshop engages with artistic
practices and prepares educators for visits
with students by providing educational
tools as entry points to the exhibition,
and assisting in identifying aspects of
the exhibition that might be relevant to
their classes. It suggests techniques for
exploring both the visual arts and other
areas of daily encounters.
Kelly Reedy (United States/Singapore) has
worked in Singapore for over 18 years as
an artist and educator. She holds a BFA in
Fine Art, University of Wisconsin (1985),
MA in Education, Hunter College (1991),
and MA in Art Therapy, LASALLE College
of the Arts (2017). She has exhibited her
artworks internationally in Paris, Chicago,
and Berlin, as well as locally at the Jendela
Visual Arts Space, Esplanade, the Singapore
Tyler Print Institute, and Alliance Française.
Reedy has developed educational resources
for the National Gallery Singapore and
trained teachers at the National Institute of
Education, specialising in visual arts education
in museums and galleries.
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Saturday, 21 October 2017
1.30 – 3.45pm
Workshop for Children*:
inner Warriors! by artist anGie seah
Beliefs and superstitious concepts are
often manifested through a rich visual
imagery that attempts to represent
otherworldly presences. Our imagination
and instincts give form to that what is
invisible, which can also be imagined to
exist within ourselves. This artist-run
workshop developed for children aged 7
to 12 explores the invisible force within
us that can be seen as the “fighting
spirit,” the strength that keeps us going.
Participants will be introduced to stencil
techniques, as well as the dripping and
sponging techniques of action painting.
anGie seah (Singapore) is a multidisciplinary
artist traversing drawing, installation,
performance, and sound to respond to
human condition in relation to the social
environment. She received an education
bursary from National Arts Council (NAC),
Singapore, and the culture scholarship
from the Goethe Institute, Berlin. Since
1997, she has participated in art festivals
and residencies, exhibited in Les Halles
de Schaerbeek, Belgium; ZKM Center for Art
and Media Karlsruhe; Nippon International
Performance Art Festival, Japan; Southeast
Asia Art Exchange, Myanmar; Singapore
Biennale 2013; Uppsala Art Museum; and the
Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, and initiated
art projects and participatory workshops in
Singapore, supported by the NAC, Esplanade,
and the People’s Association.
*Admission Fee: S$20. Register at
ntuccasingapore.peatix.com
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School / Group Tours
NTU CCA Singapore’s guided school
tours offer engaging discussions on
art, provide opportunities to hone
observation skills, and develop interpretative thinking for both students and
teachers alike. These specially designed
school tours are led by NTU CCA
Singapore’s curators and will give insight
into the exhibiting artists, their works,
and personal anecdotes, while at the same
time, introduce and elaborate on the
key themes of each exhibition.
For enquiries and registration, email:
NTUCCAEducation@ntu.edu.sg
GHOSTS AND SPECTRES – SHADOWS OF HISTORY
1 SEPTEMBER – 19 NOVEMBER 2017
NTU CCA SINGAPORE
Curators:
Professor Ute Meta Bauer
Khim Ong
Assistant Curator:
Ana Sophie Salazar
Public Programmes:
Magdalena Magiera
Exhibition Design Consultant:
Associate Professor Laura Miotto, NTU ADM
Gillman Barracks Art & History
Tours
Exhibition Construction:
Auxilio Studio
These free docent-led tours by Friends
of the Museum will uncover Gillman
Barracks’ rich history and introduce its
galleries, including a visit to NTU CCA
Singapore.
Technical Installation:
Art Factory
Kim Kyoung-ho, Kim Guen-chae
(for Citizen’s Forest by Park Chan-kyong)
Please register at
www.gillmanbarracks.com/tours
Exhibition collaterals:
mono.studio
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NTU CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART SINGAPORE
NTU CCA SINGAPORE LIMITED EDITIONS BY ARTISTS
Located in Gillman Barracks, the NTU CCA Singapore is a national research centre
of Nanyang Technological University, supported by a grant from the Economic
Development Board. The Centre is unique in its threefold constellation of research &
academic programmes, international exhibitions, and residencies, positioning itself as
a space for critical discourse and diverse forms of knowledge production. The Centre
focuses on Spaces of the Curatorial in Singapore, Southeast Asia, and beyond, as well as
engages in multi-layered research topics.
NTU CCA Singapore launched a line of artist editions designed by the Centre’s
Artists-in-Residence. Ranging from scarves, beach towels, and tote bags to umbrellas,
raincoats, and notebooks, these numbered editions are sometimes witty, always
thoughtful, and beautiful to behold. Proceeds from sales go towards the sustainability
of the Centre’s residencies programme.
Since its inauguration in October 2013, the NTU CCA Singapore has developed into
an influential platform encompassing research-based artistic practices of international
scope, curatorial education, and public programmes to delve into the complexities
of the contemporary art field.
Participating artists include: Hamra Abbas (Kuwait), Julian “Togar” Abraham
(Indonesia), Yason Banal (Philippines), Heman Chong (Singapore), Duto Hardono
(Indonesia), Alex Mawimbi (Kenya/Netherlands), Alex Murray-Leslie (Australia/
Spain), Arjuna Neuman (United States), UuDam Nguyen (Vietnam), Ana Pravčki
(Serbia/United States), anGie seah (Singapore), SHIMURAbros (Japan),
Tamara Weber (United States), and Jason Wee (Singapore).
For more information, please visit ntu.ccasingapore.org
CLIMATES. HABITATS. ENVIRONMENTS.
This topical research cluster for 2017 to 2019 connects the Centre’s research &
academic programmes, exhibitions, and residencies. Climate change has become an
urgent issue around the globe in its impact on urban environments and other habitats.
As weather patterns change causing droughts, large storms, and severe flooding,
humans and animals are forced to migrate on a critical scale, requiring communication
across disciplines and beyond national borders. Reflecting its geo-political, cultural,
and ecological conditions and interrelations, the Centre intends to discuss these
precarious realities through art and culture, in dialogue with other fields of knowledge.
CLIMATES. HABITATS. ENVIRONMENTS. follows the overarching topic of
PLACE. LABOUR. CAPITAL. (2015-2017), continuing to address the complexities
and the dynamics that entangle the local with the global and vice-versa.
GIVING TO NTU CCA SINGAPORE
Your contribution regardless of amount will go a long way in supporting us
to maintain a significant role within the art ecosystem of Singapore and the region.
Taxpayers to Singapore enjoy a 250% tax deduction in 2017. For more information
on how to donate to NTU CCA Singapore, visit ntu.ccasingapore.org/support.
NTU CCA SINGAPORE PUBLICATIONS
The publishing activity emphasises the holistic approach of the Centre by expanding
the connections across the various departments to capture and deepen the knowledge
on contemporary art linked to the Centre’s ongoing research projects. The mobility
and lasting nature of publications allow the Centre to disseminate its contributions
to discourse beyond its physical parameters.
Publications include:
Theatrical Fields: Critical Strategies in Performance, Film, and video (NTU CCA
Singapore, König Books, and Bildmuseet Umeå, 2016)
Tomás Saraceno: Arachnid orchestra. Jam Sessions (NTU CCA Singapore, 2017)
Becoming Palm, Simryn Gill and Michael Taussig (NTU CCA Singapore and
Sternberg Press, 2017)
SoutheastAsia: Spaces of the Curatorial. Jahresring 63, edited on behalf of the
Association of Arts and Culture of the German Economy at the Federation of
German Industries (Sternberg Press, 2017)
Place.Labour.Capital. (NTU CCA Singapore, to be released in October 2017)
For more information, please visit ntu.ccasingapore.org/publications
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35
NTU CCA SINGAPORE STAFF
NTU CCA SINGAPORE GOVERNING COUNCIL
Professor Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director, NTU CCA Singapore and Professor,
School of Art, Design and Media, NTU
Co-Chairs
Professor Alan Chan Kam-Leung, Dean, College of Humanities,
Arts and Social Sciences, NTU
Paul Tan, Deputy Chief Executive Officer, National Arts Council (NAC)
EXHIBITIONS & RESIDENCIES
Khim Ong, Deputy Director, Curatorial Programmes
Dr Anna Lovecchio, Curator, Residencies
Magdalena Magiera, Curator, Outreach & Education
Ana Sophie Salazar, Assistant Curator, Exhibitions
Lynda Tay, Curatorial Assistant, Residencies
Syaheedah Iskandar, Curatorial Assistant, Outreach & Education
Ng Soon Kiat, Assistant Manager, Production
Isrudy Shaik, Executive, Production
Jamie Koh, Young Professional Trainee, Exhibitions
Drusilla Tay Hui Min, Young Professional Trainee, Residencies
Jevon Chandra, Young Professional Trainee, Outreach & Education
Yom Bo Sung, Intern, Exhibitions
RESEARCH & EDUCATION
Sophie Goltz, Deputy Director, Research & Academic Programmes, and Assistant
Professor, School of Art, Design and Media, NTU
Cheong Kah Kit, Manager, Research
Anca Rujoiu, Manager, Publications
Samantha Leong, Executive, Conference, Workshops & Archive
OPERATIONS & STRATEGIC DEVELOPMENT
Philip Francis, Deputy Director, Operations & Strategic Development
Jasmaine Cheong, Assistant Director, Operations & HR
Sylvia Tsai, Manager, Communications
Yao Jing Wei, Manager, Finance
Vijayalakshmi Balankrishnan, Special Projects Assistant
Lee Yan Yun, Executive, Administration & Finance
Louis Tan, Executive, Operations
Justin Lai, Young Professional Trainee, Communications & Development
Professor Kwok Kian Woon, Associate Provost (Student Life), President’s Office, NTU
Mike Samson, Managing Director/ Regional Head ASEAN,
Leveraged and Structured Solutions, Standard Chartered Bank
Professor Dorrit Vibeke Sorensen, Chair, School of Art, Design and Media, NTU
Dr Eugene Tan, Director, National Gallery Singapore
Michael Tay, Group Managing Director, The Hour Glass Limited
Low Eng Teong, Assistant Chief Executive, Sector Development, NAC
Ng Wen Xu, Director, Lifestyle & HR Organisation Development,
Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB)
NTU CCA SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL ADVISORY BOARD
Chair
Professor Nikos Papastergiadis, Director, Research Unit in Public Cultures,
and Professor, School of Culture and Communication,
The University of Melbourne, Australia
Ann DeMeester, Director, Frans Hals Museum, The Netherlands
Chris Dercon, Director, Volksbühne, Berlin, Germany
Hou Hanru, Artistic Director, MAXXI National Museum of 21st-Century Arts,
Rome, Italy
Professor Yuko Hasegawa, Artistic Director, Museum of Contemporary Art
Tokyo (MOT), and Professor, Department of Arts Studies & Curatorial Practice,
Graduate School of Global Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts, Japan
Professor Sarat Maharaj, Head Supervisor of Doctoral Candidates and Professor of
Visual Art and Knowledge Systems, Malmö Art Academy, Lund University, Sweden
Philip Tinari, Director, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA), Beijing, China
Dr John Tirman, Executive Director and Principal Research Scientist,
Center for International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT),
Cambridge, United States
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EXHIBITION PLAN
C
D
The Single Screen
B
A
E/F
A
The Lab
The Exhibition Hall
In The Exhibition Hall
A Ho Tzu Nyen, The Nameless, 2015,
synchronised double-channel HD projection,
sound, 21 min 51 sec
D Park Chan-kyong, Citizen’s Forest,
2016, three-channel video installation,
ambisonic sound, 26 min 6 sec
In The Single Screen
B Apichatpong Weerasethakul,
Fireworks (Archives), 2014, single-channel
HD video installation, sound, 6 min 40 sec
E Nguyen Trinh Thi,
Love Man Love Woman, 2007,
documentary film, sound, 52 min
C Ho Tzu Nyen, The Name, 2015,
single-channel HD projection, sound,
16 min 51 sec. Installed with 16 books
by the author Gene Z. Hanrahan
F Nguyen Trinh Thi,
Letters from Panduranga, 2015,
single-channel video, sound, 35 min
�VISITOR INFO
Exhibition Hours
Tuesday – Sunday, 12.00 – 7.00pm
Friday, 12.00 – 9.00pm
Closed on Mondays
Open on Public Holidays
(except on Mondays)
Exhibitions
Block 43 Malan Road,
Gillman Barracks,
Singapore 109443
+65 6339 6503
Residencies Studios
Blocks 37 and 38 Malan Road,
Singapore 109452 and 109441
Public Programmes
Wednesday and Friday evenings
Free admission to all programmes,
unless otherwise stated
Research Centre and Office
Block 6 Lock Road, #01-09/10,
Singapore 108934
+65 6460 0300
ntu.ccasingapore.org
facebook.com/ntu.ccasingapore
Instagram: @ntu_ccasingapore
Twitter: @ntuccasingapore
Email: ntuccaevents@ntu.edu.sg
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Printed in August 2017 by First Printers
© 2017 NTU Centre for Contemporary Art
Singapore
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Resources
Exhibition Resource
Collateral and other print or digital materials pertaining to exhibitions held at the Centre. Examples include exhibition guides, banners, postcards, digital tour videos, etc.
Short Description
Ghosts and Spectres – Shadows of History Exhibition Guide
Theme
Place.Labour.Capital.
Climates. Habitats. Environments.
None
Place.Labour.Capital.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
<i>Ghosts and Spectres – Shadows of History</i> Exhibition Guide
Description
An account of the resource
<i>Ghosts and Spectres – Shadows of History</i> Exhibition Guide
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-01
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Ho Tzu Nyen
Nguyen Trinh Thi
Park Chan-kyong
siren eun young jung
Choy Ka Fai
Ute Meta Bauer
Khim Ong
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Asia