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Siah Armajani
Spaces for the Public.
Spaces for Democracy.
Exhibition
20 July – 3 November 2019
�Cover and centre image:
Siah Armajani, Sacco and Vanzetti Reading Room
#3, 1988. Installation view of the exhibition Siah
Armajani: Follow This Line, Walker Art Center,
9 September – 30 December 2018. Courtesy Walker
Art Center, Minneapolis. Photo by Bobby Rogers.
�Siah Armajani, Tomb for Heidegger, 2012,
mixed media, 175.2 x 142.2 x 254 cm. Courtesy
the artist and Rossi & Rossi, Hong Kong.
Spaces for the Public.
Spaces for Democracy.
Notes ON THE EXHIBITION
“I am interested in the nobility of usefulness. My intention is to build
open, available, useful, common, public gathering places—gathering places
that are neighbourly.” —Siah Armajani
NTU CCA Singapore is privileged to present the first institutional solo
exhibition of Iranian-American artist Siah Armajani (b. 1939) in Asia.
Considered a leading figure in art in public space, Armajani merges
architecture and conceptual art in his sculptures, drawings, public
installations that range from bridges to gardens, and outdoor structures
such as gazebos for public use. His intrinsically interdisciplinary works
dwell on political, social, economic, philosophical, and metaphysical
considerations, inspired by democratic ideals and values, as well as
American vernacular architecture. The invitation for this exhibition goes
beyond the mere viewing of works of art. The intention is to ally with
Siah Armajani’s advocacy in the understanding that an art institution
should provide Spaces for the Public. Spaces for Democracy. Hence,
we apply Armajani’s guiding principles such as “art on a civic scale”
and its “nobility of usefulness,” for instance, by activating the Reading
Room as such. His entire body of work continuously calls for critical
reflection and communality, driven by a deeply humanistic belief. Of
equal importance and influence to the artist are poetry and mathematics
as systems and counter-systems of logic and order.
Taking centre stage in the exhibition, the large-scale installation Sacco
& Vanzetti Reading Room #3 (1988) unfolds along its several comprising
elements, such as two wooden cabins, various tables and chairs made
of planks, benches, and racks filled with books, magazines, and stacks of
pencils noticeably arranged like spikes. The work’s title refers to the two
Italian-born American anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti,
whose verdict of armed robbery and murder steered global protests.
Armajani has dedicated several works to the two, who were executed in
1927 in Boston. In 1977, 50 years later, the then Governor of Massachusetts,
Michael Dukakis, declared 23 August as a memorial day in their honour.
Several of Armajani’s works explicitly remember the repression embedded in
histories of slavery, class struggles, political uprising, and systemic injustice.
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�The Sacco and Vanzetti Reading Room #3 is designed as a functional and
inviting space to be used by the visiting public, nevertheless provoking
a certain uneasiness that echoes the source of inspiration for this work.
Furthermore, Armajani has referenced the post-revolutionary Russian
avant-garde artist Alexander Rodchenko as an influence for this work,
particularly Rodchenko’s design for a workers’ club at the International
Exhibition, 1925, in Paris. This club, containing racks with magazines and
books, served as a reading space. The purpose of this new kind of public
spaces, built by and for the workers themselves, was to offer a space
for recreation as well as education, with a just and egalitarian society
in view. This speaks to Armajani’s understanding of the artist as a citizen.
However, having experienced a revolution and its aftermath first-hand,
his practice manifests the importance of the act of bridging over dividing,
stimulates conversations and encourages involvement.
Spaces for the Public. Spaces for Democracy. employs the exhibition
format as a civic structure at the threshold of everyday life and artistic
engagement. The presentation at the NTU CCA Singapore includes a
selection of books by or about the poets, philosophers, and political activists
to whom Armajani has dedicated different works over the decades of his
practice. These include Theodor Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin,
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, John Dewey, Emma Goldman, Hafez, Frank O’Hara,
Sylvia Plath, Ahmad Shamlou, Henry David Thoreau, Alfred North Whitehead,
Walt Whitman, and Nima Yooshij, of whom many are part of his Tomb
series. Drawing from the title of the exhibition, the Centre launched an
open call to individuals and groups to engage with the books through
reading aloud, convene reading groups, or propose related activities.
Siah Armajani, Tomb for Richard Rorty, 2016,
ink on mylar, 101.6 x 76.2 cm. Courtesy the
artist and Rossi & Rossi, Hong Kong.
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The Tomb series, to which Armajani returned 30 years later, was
initiated in 1972 with the Tomb for John Berryman, an American poet
and scholar. In the meantime, he has created more than 25 tombs, most
of them comprising drawings, maquettes, and models. Each proposal
acknowledges the influence that each of these historically significant
thinkers and activists had on the artist. In the exhibition, a model and
a drawing are devoted to Arthur Rimbaud, while a larger wooden model
references Heidegger, whose essay “Building Dwelling Thinking” (1954)
inspired Armajani to develop one of his most emblematic concepts —
the bridge. In his writings, Heidegger conceives the bridge not only as
a maker of place, but also as a creator of neighbourhood, as it unites
two separate places with that which divides them. Armajani has used
this typology throughout his career to embody multiplicity and question
difference and distance, understanding the need and difficulty of
connecting between cultures, classes, and generations.
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�The bridges are a paradigmatic example of sculpture as an embodied,
phenomenological experience, and architectural proposition existing in
space and time. Armajani’s bridges usually employ construction methods
or materials used in rural farm houses, created by artisans, carpenters,
and joiners, which the artist calls the “common-sense architecture” that
has taught him his craft. Armajani does not see architecture and sculpture
as a dichotomy, but works within the interstitial space that connects both.
Presented in the exhibition are two large bridge models cast in bronze,
Street Corner No. 1 and No. 2.
For the first time on public view are twelve small metal objects that
Armajani created by transforming generic kitchen utensils. Rarely
exhibited, Armajani’s computer-generated short films are point-andline animations of mathematical computations that create an abstract
relationship between language and mathematics. The ideas advanced
in these already include visual, spatial, and architectural concerns
that the artist continued to inquire.
Resonating Structures, a film programme curated by Dr Marc Glöde,
takes Armajani’s early experimental films from 1970 as points of departure,
extending the artist’s predilection for working in series of typologies. The
diversity of the public programmes attests to Armajani’s curiosity and
lines of enquiry.
I would like to thank the lenders of the works, MMK Museum for Modern
Art, Frankfurt, in particular Susanne Pfeffer, Director, and Mario Kramer,
Head of Collection, as well as Rossi & Rossi, Hong Kong. Fabio Rossi
and Josie Browne, former Deputy Director at NTU CCA Singapore,
strongly supported the idea of a show of Armajani’s works in Asia since
its inception years back. Thanks also to Victoria Sung, Assistant Curator
of Visual Arts, Walker Art Center, for traveling all the way to share her
insights, having worked with the artist on his recent retrospective.
I express my sincere gratitude to Siah Armajani for the gift of his work, which
spans more than six decades and can be read not only as a mark in the history
of art and public space, but also as a commitment to civil disobedience.
Ute Meta Bauer,
Founding Director, NTU CCA Singapore, and
Professor, School of Art, Design and Media, NTU
with Ana Sophie Salazar, Assistant Curator,
Exhibitions, NTU CCA Singapore
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Top: Siah Armajani, Street Corner No. 2, 1994,
bronze, 171.5 x 279.4 x 22.9 cm.
Bottom: Siah Armajani, Street Corner No. 1, 1994,
bronze and wood, 134.6 x 280.7 x 33 cm.
Both courtesy the artist and Rossi & Rossi, Hong Kong.
�BIOGRAPHY
Siah Armajani (b. 1939, Tehran, Iran) moved to the United States from
Iran in 1960. He attended Macalester College in Minnesota, where he
studied philosophy. He lives and works in Minneapolis. His sculptures,
drawings, and public works exist between the boundaries of art and
architecture, informed by democratic ideals. He is recognised as a leading
figure in the conceptualisation of the role and function of public art, with
nearly one hundred projects realised internationally since the 1960s.
Armajani’s education in Western thought and philosophy began in Tehran,
where he attended a Presbyterian school for Iranian students, and
continued through his undergraduate years in the United States.
Early theoretical interests influenced his work, taking form in objects
and architectural spaces designed in homage to literary, philosophical,
and political figures like Theodor Adorno, Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Martin Heidegger, Ahmad Shamlou, and Alfred Whitehead.
Armajani’s most celebrated public artworks are bridges, walkways, and
gardens, including the Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge (1988), Minneapolis;
the World Financial Center’s promenade (in collaboration with Scott Burton
and Cesar Pelli), Battery Park City, New York; Gazebo for Two Anarchists
(1992), Storm King Art Center, New York; Floating Poetry Room (2005),
Amsterdam; Bridge for Iowa City (2000), University of Iowa; and numerous
gardens at Villa Arson Museum, Nice. He was commissioned to design
the Cauldron for the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia.
Top: Siah Armajani, Arthur Rimbaud,
2016, ink on mylar, 101.6 x 152.4 cm.
Bottom: Siah Armajani, Arthur Rimbaud,
2016, painted balsa and aluminium,
48.26 x 39.37 x 39.37 cm.
Both courtesy the artist and
Rossi & Rossi, Hong Kong.
Armajani’s career retrospective, Follow This Line, took place at the
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (9 September – 30 December 2018) and
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (20 February – 2 June 2019).
The artist has been the subject of more than fifty solo exhibitions since
1978, including surveys and retrospectives at Parasol unit, London
(2013); the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City (2008); Musée d’art
moderne et contemporain, Geneva (2007, tour); Museo Nacional Centro
de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (1999, tour); Villa Arson, Nice (1994); Lannan
Foundation, Los Angeles (1992); Kunsthalle Basel (1987); Westfälisches
Landesmuseum, Münster (1987, tour); and the Institute of Contemporary
Art, Philadelphia (1985). His work has also been featured in international
group exhibitions, including Skulptur Projekte Münster (1987); Whitney
Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1981); 39th Venice
Biennale, American Pavilion (1980); Information, Museum of Modern Art,
New York (1970); and Documenta 5, 7, and 8, Kassel (1972, 1982, 1987).
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�Armajani’s work is in various public collections, including Art Institute of
Chicago; British Museum, London; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh;
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; M+, Hong
Kong; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Minneapolis Institute of
Art; Musée d’art moderne et contemporain, Geneva; MMK Museum for
Modern Art, Frankfurt; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum
of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, New York;
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and Walker Art
Center, Minneapolis.
Siah Armajani, Tomb for Alfred Whitehead, 2013,
felt pen on graph paper, 61 x 48 cm. Courtesy
the artist and Rossi & Rossi, Hong Kong.
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�SIAH ARMAJANI:
Spaces for the Public.
Spaces for Democracy.
Short Films in the Single Screen
Works in the Exhibition
20 July – 3 November 2019
Event, 1970, 6 min 41 sec
Sacco and Vanzetti Reading Room #3, 1988
Glazed wood, synthetic resin, glass, steel, brick, aluminium,
pencils, dimensions variable.
Courtesy MMK Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt.
Tomb for Heidegger, 2012
Mixed media, 175.2 x 142.2 x 254 cm
Utensils, 1975
Aluminium
Tomb for Arthur Rimbaud, 2016
Painted balsa and aluminium,
48.26 x 39.37 x 39.37 cm
Grease Protector, 47 x 33 cm 1
Pie Plate, 26.7 x 26.7 cm 2
Bread Basket, 30.5 x 30.5 cm 3
Pitcher, 25 x 17 cm 4
Cookie Cutter, 13 x 13 cm 5
Potato Peeler, 17.8 x 7.6 cm 6
Slotted Spoon, 23 x 5 cm 7
Fork, 24 x 6.4 cm 8
Spoon, 23 x 5 cm 9
Sieve, 23 x 10 cm 10
Wire Wisk, 32.4 x 7.6 cm 11
Cooking Spoon, 36.8 x 11.4 cm 12
Tomb for Richard Rorty, 2016
Ink on mylar, 101.6 x 76.2 cm
Tomb for Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
2016
Ink on mylar, 91.44 x 152.4 cm
Tomb for Frank O’Hara, 2016
Ink on mylar, 91.44 x 60.96 cm
(See page 18)
Tomb for Arthur Rimbaud, 2016
Ink on mylar, 101.6 x 152.4 cm
Tomb for Alfred Whitehead, 2013
Felt pen on graph paper, 61 x 48 cm
Street Corner No. 1, 1994
Bronze and wood,
134.6 x 280.7 x 33 cm
Street Corner No. 2, 1994
Bronze, 171.5 x 279.4 x 22.9 cm
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Models, drawings, and utensils:
courtesy the artist, and Rossi & Rossi,
Hong Kong.
18 July – 17 November 2019
Screening on loop during opening hours.
To Perceive 10,000 Different Squares in 6 Minutes and 55 Seconds,
1970, 7 min 37 sec
Before/After, 1970, 1 min 50 sec
Inside/Outside, 1970, 1 min 40 sec
Rotating Line, 1970, 1 min 26 sec
All above: Computer-generated 16mm film transferred to digital file, b&w, silent.
Collection Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Gift of the artist, 2015.
Line, 1970, 1 min 16 sec
Computer-generated 16mm film transferred to digital file, b&w, silent.
Courtesy the artist and Rossi & Rossi, Hong Kong.
Since the 1960s, Siah Armajani has explored the use of technology as
a medium, intersecting art and science. In 1970, he produced a series
of experimental films using a computer capable of printing on 16mm
celluloid at the Hybrid Computer Laboratory, University of Minnesota.
He generated moving lines and shapes using mathematical formulae
and computer programming to create the illusion of three-dimensional
space and time, pointing to the functionalism of space.
Event brings together the notions of architecture’s social space through
texts, equations, and diagrams. To Perceive 10,000 Different Squares in
6 Minutes and 55 Seconds presents ten thousand squares, each in a
single frame in descending order of size, with the illusion of a single
hovering square. Before/After suggests spatial and temporal ambiguity,
depicted by two synchronised animated representations of movements
over time. Inside/Outside explores the function of boundaries and the
concept of closed and open systems in a space. Rotating Line illustrates
the blurring of dimensional states within a space through the transition
of a single point into a line that subsequently appears to rotate in and
out of the screen. Armajani reflects upon the inadequacy of painting and
sculpture to express ideas such as a Line, the most basic aesthetic form.
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�OPEN CALL
NTU CCA Singapore has selected books by and about the philosophers,
poets, and political activists whom Siah Armajani has dedicated works
to. During the exhibition, these will be part of the installation Sacco and
Vanzetti Reading Room #3. Interested individuals or groups may use
the installation for reading groups or other events that respond to the
displayed books.
The list of authors of the books includes: Theodor Adorno, Hannah Arendt,
Walter Benjamin, John Berryman, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, John Dewey, Ralph
Waldo Emerson, Luigi Galleani, Emma Goldman, Hafez, Martin Heidegger,
Thomas Jefferson, Frank O’Hara, Sylvia Plath, Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Rimbaud,
Richard Rorty, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Ahmad Shamlou, Henry
David Thoreau, Alfred North Whitehead, Walt Whitman, and Nima Yooshij.
Interested individuals or groups are welcome to invite their own audience
or to organise events. However, all inhabitations have to happen within
the parameters of a public exhibition space.
For schedule, updates, and more information, please visit
ntu.ccasingapore.org/events/opencall-siah-armajani
Public ProgrammeS
Saturday, 20 July 2019,
3.00 – 3.30pm
Tuesday, 13 August 2019,
7.00 – 8.30pm
Exhibition Tour by Ute Meta
Bauer, Founding Director, NTU CCA
Singapore, and Professor, NTU ADM
Talk: Resonating Structures –
Siah Armajani’s Film Works
and other Artist Films
by Dr Marc Glöde, Assistant
Professor, NTU ADM
3.30 – 5.00pm
Talk: Siah Armajani: Follow This Line
by Victoria Sung, Assistant Curator
of Visual Arts, Walker Art Center
Following the major retrospective of
Siah Armajani’s six-decade-long career
held at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis,
and the Met Breuer, New York, co-curator
Victoria Sung will expand on Armajani’s
practice and public art commissions.
Sung will focus on the artist’s Reading
Rooms, particularly the one included
in the exhibition, Sacco and Vanzetti
Reading Room #3, and think through
the role of museums as public and
educational spaces.
Victoria Sung (United States) is Assistant
Curator of Visual Arts at Walker Art Center,
Minneapolis, where she co-curated Siah
Armajani: Follow This Line (2018), the
artist’s first major retrospective in the United
States, and co-edited the accompanying
catalogue. The exhibition travelled to the
Met Breuer, New York. Recent projects include
Theaster Gates: Assembly Line (2019); Laure
Prouvost: They Are Waiting for You (2017);
and Katharina Fritsch: Multiples (2017).
She holds a bachelor’s degree in history from
Harvard College, a master’s degree in history
of art and visual culture from the University
of Oxford, and a master’s degree in business
administration from Harvard Business School.
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Siah Armajani’s experimental films
with computer-based graphics in the
early 1970s not only expanded his
practice in relation to public space
and architecture to new territory, but
also paved the way for a new aesthetic
field. Using Armajani’s experiments
on line structures as a point of
departure, Dr Glöde will also cover
films by preeminent artists/filmmakers
presented in the film programme
that accompanies the exhibition, as
well as those beyond, who produced
important films relating to other of
Armajani’s tropes of interest: bridges,
houses, and gardens.
Dr Marc Glöde (Germany/Singapore) is a
curator, critic, and film scholar, and currently
Assistant Professor at the School of Art,
Media and Design, NTU. His work focuses
on the relation of images, technology, space,
and the body, as well as that between fields of
art, architecture, and film. Dr Glöde received
his PhD at the Free University in Berlin
where he also taught. Additionally he has
taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden,
Academy of Fine Arts Berlin, and the ETH
Zürich. He was senior curator of Art Basel’s
film programme (2008–14) and curator/senior
advisor of the abc Berlin (2010–12).
�Thursday, 12 September 2019,
7.00 – 8.30pm
In Conversation: Curating the City:
Golden Walls and Pink Dots
with Sophie Goltz, Deputy Director,
Research & Academic Programmes,
NTU CCA Singapore, and Assistant
Professor, NTU ADM, and Regina
De Rozario (Singapore), artist and
PhD Candidate, NTU ADM
Using best practice examples from
Singapore, Hamburg, and beyond,
artistic and activist strategies, with
which urban spaces have been
appropriated as democratic forums,
will be examined. In addition, the
methodological question will be raised:
how can regionally differently situated
practices of artists and activists be
described more generally as art in the
public sphere? Hence, which cultural
and political implications do arise
for a mutual understanding of urban
and public space in theory and
practice today?
Tuesday, 1 October 2019,
7.00 – 8.30pm
Sophie Goltz (Germany/Singapore) is
Deputy Director, Research & Academic
Programmes at NTU CCA Singapore, and
Assistant Professor at the NTU School
of Art, Design and Media. Goltz was the
Artistic Director of Stadkuratorin Hamburg
(City curator) from 2013 to 2016, and has
worked as Senior Curator and Head of
Communication and Public Programmes at
Neuer Berliner Kunstverein between 2008
and 2013, becoming Associate Curator in
2014. Goltz worked as freelance curator, as
well as art educator for various international
exhibitions, including Documenta11 and
documenta 12 (2002 and 2007), 3rd berlin
biennale for contemporary art (2004),
and Project Migration (2004–06).
Regina De Rozario’s (Singapore) artistic
practice investigates how strategies of
walking, mapping, and image-making
can enable us to recognise and respond to
notions of power and control embedded
in the physical and narrative spaces we
inhabit. She is also one-half of Perception3,
an interdisciplinary art duo established in
2007 working with photography, video, and
site-specific text installations, having been
recently exhibited at iLight Singapore:
Bicentennial Edition (2019); 3rd Biennial of
Montevideo, (2016); Singapore Biennale 2016;
and Urbanness: Contemplating the City,
Dubai (2015). De Rozario received the National
Arts Council Postgraduate Scholarship in
2018, and is currently pursuing her doctoral
studies at NTU ADM.
Thursday, 31 October 2019,
7.00 – 8.30pm
Exhibition (de)Tour: Landscape
Design, Hybridity, and Public Art
by Dr Colin Okashimo, landscape
architect and sculptor
Talk: The Political Agency of Art
by Post-Museum
Over the last two decades, Dr Colin
Okashimo has fused art and landscape
architecture as well as sculpture and
design through a strong research
narrative that highlights the unique
aspects of each location. Okashimo
creates environments that are inspired
by the research of the place’s culture,
history, and society. In this talk, he will
reflect on the potentiality of sculpture
and public art in transforming a space
into a place-specific environment
offering meaning and memory.
Dr Colin Okashimo (Canada/Singapore)
is a sculptor, landscape architect, and
master planner. He graduated in landscape
architecture at the University of Guelph.
He moved to Singapore and established
his own practice in 1996. He has designed
intriguing landscapes for hospitality and
residential projects across Asia. He holds a
PhD from London’s University of Arts, and
has published the book Provoking Calm:
The Artworks of Colin K. Okashimo. He was
awarded the Singapore President’s Designer
of the Year Award in 2015.
Post-Museum has worked alongside a
wide network of social actors, cultural
workers, and institutions to stimulate
public engagement with ideas of
identity, society, and community. Their
projects have bridged art and activism
through a diverse oeuvre of events, art
exhibitions, and public interventions.
In this talk, Post-Museum will discuss
how the artistic medium can act as a
galvanising agent to foster positive
social discourse and encourage
collective organisation.
Post-Museum (Singapore) is an independent
social and cultural enterprise founded by
Jennifer Teo and Woon Tien Wei in 2007. It
aims to encourage a thinking and proactive
community while serving as a hub for the
development of local and international cultures. Currently nomadic, it is an
open platform for examining contemporary
life, promoting the arts, and connecting
people. Post-Museum hosts investigative and
experimental projects which respond to their
location and community, such as the Bukit
Brown Index (2014–ongoing) and Really
Really Free Market (2009–ongoing).
All programmes are admission free and
take place at NTU CCA Singapore.
For updates, please visit
ntu.ccasingapore.org
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�OUTREACH & EDUCATION Workshops
Saturday, 24 August 2019,
3.00 – 6.00pm
Workshop: Why intervene at all?
by Lin Shiyun, Creative Director,
3Pumpkins
Fee: $12. Registration required via Peatix:
whyintervene.peatix.com
Developed for all ages.
While neighbourhoods in Singapore
may appear homogenous, each local
community faces a unique set of issues
due to its distinct social demographics.
There is no fixed formula for creative
intervention that conveniently applies
to all. In this workshop, Lin Shiyun
will share her practice in community
engagement and development
projects, carried out in public spaces,
as a constant search for answers to
understand and reorganise social
patterns. Through case studies,
participants will attempt to unravel
the purpose and examine various
methods of creative intervention in
communities, and question if such
intervention is necessary at all.
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Saturday, 14 September 2019,
3.00 – 6.00pm
Lin Shiyun (Singapore) is the Creative
Director of 3Pumpkins, an arts company
rooted in activating and connecting
communities as both creators and audiences
of arts. The company’s flagship social practice
Let’s Go PLay OutSide! is focused on
developing resilience in local communities
through long-term engagement with children
at neighbourhood playgrounds. Since 2012,
Lin has been commissioned by public and
private institutions to produce multidisciplinary participatory programmes. Her
most recent works are Our Time Together,
exploring children’s experiences in grief and
loss, and outdoor giant puppet show The
Rubbish Prince. She is currently working
with Tzu Chi Foundation (Singapore) on
designing a comprehensive arts programme
targeted at youth and community
participation.
Saturday, 26 October 2019,
10.30am – 12.30pm
Workshop: “Bridge” as a
Metaphor for Connectivity
and Dis-connectivity
by artists Chiew Sien Kuan
and Joey.Spl
Workshop: Writing for Change
by writer and educator
Dr Yeo Wei Wei
Fee: $12. Registration required via Peatix:
buildingbridges.peatix.com
Developed for all ages.
In this workshop, you will have handson experience in making simple light
circuits and building small wood
assemblage bridges. Through these
works, you will create a narrative
of bridging a connection and learn
simple lighting mechanisms to
emphasise the idea of connectivity
and dis-connectivity.
Chiew Sien Kuan’s (Singapore) work is
preoccupied with issues of environmentalism,
renewal, loss of urban spaces, economic
progress, and technological development
that have inevitably influenced and changed
people’s sense of reality.
Joey.Spl (Singapore) is an artist who creates
interactive installations about mindful
awareness as an inquiry towards an optimal
sense of self. Her works combine whimsical
ephemerality with sensibility of electronic
mechanisms. She has been preoccupied with
and compassed by the research and development of the Mind-Brain-Body interaction
throughout her practice.
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Fee: $12. Registration required via Peatix:
writingforchange.peatix.com
Developed for ages 17 to 22.
Literature and philosophy have been
guiding lights for artist Siah Armajani
since young. Sharing Armajani’s
conviction in reading and writing for
change to the self and society, this
workshop will focus on creative writing
as self-communing and engagement
with the world.
Dr Yeo Wei Wei (Singapore) is a writer,
translator, and educator. She has 20 years of
experience in teaching, and has worked with
students at primary, secondary, and tertiary
levels. Literature and Creative Writing
were her areas of specialisation at SOTA,
NUS, and NTU. In 2017 she graduated
with Distinction in her MA in Creative
Writing (Prose Fiction) from the University
of East Anglia, for which she was awarded
the National Arts Council Postgraduate
Scholarship in 2016. She holds a PhD in
English from the University of Cambridge.
Her collection of short stories These Foolish
Things & Other Stories was published
by Ethos Books in 2015.
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�Film Programme:
Resonating Structures
Taking Siah Armajani’s film works
from the 1970s that explore structures
and lines using computer graphics as
a point of departure, this film series
presents other filmmakers/artists
working with similar themes such
as “line structures” and three others
of Armajani’s tropes of interests:
bridges, houses, and gardens. Just
as Armajani’s Dictionary for Building
(1974–75) deconstructs the typology
of domestic architecture, these films
explore new meanings of functional,
social, and visual concepts of
architecture and space.
Screening on loop
during opening hours.
20
1. Line Structures
2. Bridges
Tuesday, 23 July –
Sunday, 4 August 2019
Tuesday, 6 – Sunday, 18 August 2019
Stan VanDerBeek, Micro-Cosmos 1–4,
United States, 1983
Colour, sound, 15 min
This is a series of four short computeranimated works, in which the image of
an orb is transformed into a pulsating,
energetic evocation of life forces.
Stan VanDerBeek (United States) was an
American experimental filmmaker at the
forefront of technology. He began making
films in 1955 and working with computers in
1965, when he produced multimedia pieces
and computer animation in collaboration
with Bell Labs. In the 1970s, he constructed
“Movie-Drome,” an immersive audio-visual
laboratory for a new kind of cinema-stage.
His multimedia experiments in “expanded
cinema” included movie murals, projection
systems, planetarium events, and explored
early computer graphics and imageprocessing systems, merging art with
technology and dance with films. He was
a fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual
Studies at MIT (1969–72 and 1976–77).
Shirley Clarke, Bridges-go-round,
United States, 1958
16mm film transferred to digital file, colour,
sound, 7 min 30 sec
This film explores the architectural
idea of metropolitan bridges both
visually and acoustically, highlighting
their monumentality. Detailed images
of abstract patterns and geometrical
curves, elevated to eye-level, move
in a fast-paced rhythm. As they lead
the audience through a suspended,
hypnotic, and seamless journey, they
sometimes superimpose on one another
or against an urban skyline, juxtaposed
with a background that ranges from
sepia tones to cellophane colours. The
film plays twice, first with jazz-like music
by Teo Macero, followed by an electronic
score by Louis and Bebe Barron that
creates an almost eerie atmosphere.
Shirley Clarke (United States) was an
esteemed figure in the American avantgarde cinema of the 1950s and 1960s, and
a pioneer of video in the 1970s, receiving
an Academy Award in 1964. She brought
a distinctive aesthetic of “choreography of
images” to her work as a trained dancer
and manipulated image, time, and space by
applying expressive choreographic editing
and dramatic technical effects. She cofounded Film-Makers Cooperative and FilmMakers Distribution Center in New York,
offering alternative distribution methods for
independent filmmakers.
21
Tuesday, 20 – Sunday, 25
August 2019
Gordon Matta-Clark, Fire Child,
United States, 1971
Super 8mm film transferred to HD video,
colour, silent, 9 min 47 sec
Fire Child is not only a performative
work of Gordon Matta-Clark, but also
a documentary on derelict sites. It
begins with an old man and a child
rummaging through trash under a
bridge, followed by the artist building
a small wall made of rubbish, waste
paper, and tin cans collected from the
area. A boy makes a fire with sticks,
but the fire is put out after presumed
intervention by the police. The film
then ends with the artist covering
his wall with printed comics. It was
created for Brooklyn Bridge Event,
a four-day festival held in 1971.
Gordon Matta-Clark (United States),
originally trained as an architect, was an
influential post-war artist. He is best known
for subverting architecture and urban
landscape with geometric interventions of
“building cuts,” converting them into gravitydefying and disorientating walk-through
sculptures. His work is seen not only as a
rejection of the architectural profession but
also as new modes of contemporary artistic
expression. “Anarchitecture,” the name of an
artist group of which he was a member, and
the title of a 1974 exhibition from the group’s
discussion around the dematerialisation of
the art object and activation of space and
place, was attributed to him.
�Tuesday, 27 August –
Sunday, 1 September 2019
Video Earth Tokyo, Under a Bridge,
Japan, 1974
B&w, sound, 13 min
In this film, Ko Nakajima and Video
Earth Tokyo interview a homeless man.
Although the man appears hostile and
frustrated initially, he gradually opens
up and shares about his life. The film
was later broadcast on Japanese cable
television.
Video Earth Tokyo (Japan) is a
community-oriented video art collective
serving as a network for people making
video in Japan. It was founded in 1971 by
Ko Nakajima, a pioneer of video art and
computer animation. He recorded local
communities, social activities, interventions,
and performance experiments using a
portable video recorder—a communication
tool employed by the collective to promote
communal awareness. The collective
broadcast their documentaries and
experimental works on cable television and
participated in international exhibitions as
well as computer graphics conferences.
The film begins with the open end of
the railroad acting as a viewfinder,
where the landscape captured within
it changes like a slow-moving film
strip. Scenes of the railroad alternate
with close-ups of the bridge’s steel
structure, emphasising the details of
its components and their materiality.
Richard Serra (United States) is a
preeminent and visionary artist. In the
1960s, he and other Minimalist artists
employed non-traditional, industrial
materials to emphasise the materiality of
their work. He subsequently expanded his
spatial and temporal approach to sculptures
to large-scale, site-specific work, of which
his arcs, spirals, and ellipses are most
renowned. These monumental works engage
their viewers as they are experienced in situ.
In 1968, he produced his first short film
and experimented with video in the 1970s.
Tuesday, 10 – Sunday, 22
September 2019
Joan Jonas, Brooklyn Bridge,
United States, 1988
Colour, sound, 6 min 12 sec
Tuesday, 3 – Sunday, 8
September 2019
Richard Serra, Railroad
Turnbridge, United States, 1976
16mm film transferred to digital file, b&w,
silent, 19 min
Railroad Turnbridge is an avant-garde
investigation of what “bridgeness”
means to Richard Serra. It records
the bridge opening, closing, turning,
locking, and unlocking, coinciding with
movements of the camera.
22
This film investigates the concepts of
identity and place using the Brooklyn
Bridge, a landmark of New York City,
as an object of study. Applying the
transformative power of its medium,
this work fuses photographs, live
video, and superimposed drawings
created on a Quantel Paintbox to
emphasise the cryptic strength and
naturalistic beauty of the bridge.
This is intensified by the artist Joan
Jonas scripting herself as a performer
in the film.
Joan Jonas (United States) is a leading
video and performance artist. She pioneered
the use of the two genres in visual art and
was influential also in other art forms.
Incorporating different media, she presents
multiple viewpoints and layers of material,
texture, and meanings in her work to address
current issues. In 1972, she began producing
video works that were ground-breaking in
emphasising the experience of the medium as
a conceptual device and is known for merging
various genres in her fragmented video
narratives. NTU CCA Singapore presented
the solo exhibition Joan Jonas: They Come
to Us Without a Word in 2016.
Ant Farm (United States) was founded in
1968 in San Francisco by architects Chip
Lord and Doug Michels as a countercultural
collective intersecting between media art and
architecture. Their influential work, which
integrated art into everyday life with an
ironic humour, highlighted environmental
degradation, promoted sustainability, and
challenged the ideologies and pervasiveness
of American mass media, culture, and
consumerism. They disbanded in 1978 after
a fire destroyed their studio.
Tuesday, 8 – Sunday, 20
October 2019
3. Houses
Tuesday, 24 – Sunday, 6
October 2019
Ant Farm, Inflatables Illustrated,
United States, 1971–2003
B&w and colour, sound, 21 min 20 sec
As a critique of consumerism and
reaction to Brutalist architecture, Ant
Farm created an utopian, inflatable
architecture that was participatory
and communal, cheap, and easy to
transport and assemble. It had been
used to host festivals, conferences,
or installed as university campuses.
Without a fixed structure, these
inflatables challenged the notions
of a building as well as the reliance
on expert knowledge of architects.
The film, which brings its audience
through the steps of making a small
inflatable using basic materials
found in a kitchen, is an example of
“open source,” in which concepts
are made accessible to the public.
23
Dan Graham, Pavilions Compilation,
United States, 2014
Colour, sound, 31 min
This film surveys Dan Graham’s series
of sculptures Pavilions, created since
the late 1970s, with documentary
footage of the works in different cities.
Created on a human scale out of glass
or mirror, they serve as instruments of
perception as viewers become both the
object of spectacle as well as the
subject or spectator of themselves
reflected in the glass walls. Representing a hybrid between a quasifunctional space and an installation,
art and architecture, public and
private realms, the sculptures reflect
Graham’s investigation into the social
phenomenology and performativity
of the viewer with the art object.
Dan Graham (United States) is an
influential pioneer of conceptual art and
performance-related video art. His multidisciplinary practice, spanning across
curating, writing, performance, installation,
video, photography, and architecture, aligns
itself with popular culture more than
�contemporary art. His work is informed by a
social awareness, often working with hybrids
that oscillate between quasi-functional
spaces and installations to expose processes
of perception, of which his freestanding,
sculptural structures called Pavilions are an
example. NTU CCA Singapore collaborated
with Mapletree to permanently install
Elliptical Pavillion (2017) at Mapletree
Business City II.
Tuesday, 22 October –
Sunday, 3 November 2019
Carsten Nicolai, Future Past
Perfect Pt. 2 (Cité Radieuse),
Germany, 2007
Digital film, colour, sound, 7 min 43 sec
Shot at Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation
(built in 1952) in Marseille, a classic
example of Brutalist architecture, the
film focuses first on the exterior of the
building followed by its interior before
ending at its rooftop. Twice, the film’s
calm atmosphere is disrupted by a rapid,
flashing sequence, achieving a cinematic
effect while engineering the elements
of time, space, and social relations.
Carsten Nicolai (Germany) is a crossdisciplinary artist whose work intersects
art, music, and science. He introduced the
dimensions of time and temporality and
concepts of ephemerality in his work as
well as experiments with sound and light
frequencies in the mid-1990s. He is interested in the subject of human consciousness
and how the complex phenomena of micro
and macrosystems, and abstract concepts
of physics, influence someone’s behaviour.
For his musical outputs, he uses the
pseudonym Alva Noto.
24
4. Gardens
Tuesday, 5 – Sunday, 17
November 2019
Marie Menken, Glimpse of the
Garden, United States 1957
16mm film transferred to digital file, colour,
sound, 5 min
Siah Armajani
Spaces for the Public.
Spaces for Democracy.
20 July – 3 November 2019
NTU CCA Singapore
Curator:
Ute Meta Bauer
Transporting its audiences to a garden,
with the chirping of birds forming its
soundtrack, this film gives a glimpse
of a vast landscape that includes a
lake, while also showing pure visuals
of flowers and plants filmed through
a powerful magnifying glass. At most
times, the pace is fast, with shots
appearing to be taken randomly or
from a flying insect’s perspective.
In 1958, the film won an award at the
Exposition Universelle et Internationale
at Brussels. In 2007, it was nominated
for the National Film Registry by the
Library of Congress in Washington.
Curatorial Team:
Khim Ong
Ana Sophie Salazar
Sng Yi Xian Issa
Ze-Tian Lim
Film Programme:
Dr Marc Glöde,
Assistant Professor, NTU ADM
Acknowledgements:
Marie Menken (United States) was an
underground experimental filmmaker known
as “the mother of the avant-garde,” having
influenced and worked with internationally
renowned artists such as Andy Warhol. She
progressed from painting to filmmaking
in 1945, when she made her first avantgarde film using a handheld Bolex camera.
Since then, she has been celebrated for her
intuitive, free-form cinematic style and
for taking filmmaking to a new direction
with the way she created poetic patterns
of light, colour, and texture. Her films
are fragmentary encounters with friends,
landscapes, and her urban surroundings.
Exhibition Production:
Frankie Fang
Isrudy Shaik
Jack Kenneth Tan
The exhibition is made possible
by generous loans from the MMK
Museum for Modern Art, Frankfurt,
and Rossi & Rossi, Hong Kong.
Logistics:
Agility Fairs & Events Pte Ltd
Global Specialised Services Pte Ltd
Special thank you to Susanne
Pfeffer, Director, and Mario Kramer,
Head of Collection, MMK, as well
as Fabio Rossi and Josie Browne,
project liaison.
Public and Education Programmes:
Magdalena Magiera
Ilya Katrinnada Binte Zubaidi
Amelia Loh
Conservation:
Ulrich Lang, Senior Conservator,
MMK Museum of Modern Art,
Frankfurt
Global Specialised Services Pte Ltd
Collaterals:
mono.studio
25
Thanks to Walker Art Center,
Minneapolis, and Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York.
With gratitude to Siah Armajani and
Barbara Armajani.
�Culture City.
Culture Scape.
Art, Urban Change, and the
Public Sphere
This collaboration between NTU CCA Singapore and Mapletree is a first
of its kind in Singapore. The underlying intention is to bring the arts closer
to the work space, neighbouring communities, and beyond, through
a Public Art Trail, a series of permanent installations and art education
programmes at Mapletree Business City II.
Research Presentation
24 August – 2 November 2019
The Lab
Curated by Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director, NTU CCA Singapore, and
Professor, NTU ADM, and Khim Ong, Deputy Director, Curatorial Programmes,
NTU CCA Singapore
Tours of Public Art Trail at Mapletree Business City II
Wednesdays, 31 July, 14 and 28 August, 11 and 25 September,
9 and 23 October 2019
12.30 – 1.00pm
Led by Clifford Loh and Leon Tan, Project Managers, External Collaborations
Themed Culture City. Culture Scape., this public art project,
commissioned by Mapletree and curated by NTU CCA Singapore,
comprises works by internationally renowned artists Dan Graham (United
States), Zulkifle Mahmod (Singapore), Tomás Saraceno (Argentina/
Germany), and Yinka Shonibare (Nigeria/United Kingdom). Inspired by
the idea of expanded sculptural environments, the artworks explore the
interplay between landscape, architecture, and the broader social and
economic environments they are placed in. More than being monumental
or site-specific, each work alters or permeates its local context to invite
visitors to a broader, richer engagement.
This presentation explores the potential of corporate engagement in
presenting and integrating art in publicly accessible space in Singapore.
Public Art Education Summit
17 – 19 October 2019
This 3-day public art education summit will run alongside closed-door
capability workshops for practitioners in public space. The conference
component features keynote presentations by renowned scholars,
artists, and curators, stimulating debate and reflecting upon global
and regional discourses of art in public space. With a focus on art-led
urbanism, place-making, community building, and social practice, its goal
is developmental and educational: to advance discourse about quality in
public space among artists and allied professionals, as well as decisionmakers in urban planning and design.
Convened by Sophie Goltz, Deputy Director, Research & Academic Programmes,
NTU CCA Singapore, and Assistant Professor, NTU ADM
In association with the Institute for Public Art and College of Fine Arts
Shanghai University
Supported by Mapletree Investments Pte Ltd and Public Art Trust (PAT),
an initiative by the National Arts Council.
Free signup on Eventbrite: bit.ly/31Ipwil
For more information, please visit www.mapletreearts.sg
Right: Yinka Shonibare, Wind Sculpture I, 2013,
steel armature with hand-painted fiberglass resin cast,
340 x 80 x 610 cm.
Far right: Dan Graham, Elliptical Pavillion, 2017,
two-way-mirror glass, stainless steel, 573 x 665 x 240 cm.
26
Both installation view at Mapletree Business City II.
27
�in the Lab
PHYOE KYI: THE MUSEUM PROJECT
22 June – 18 August 2019
Developed in ebbs and flows during the last five years of Phyoe Kyi’s life,
The Museum Project stands out as one of the artist’s most ambitious
undertakings—the design of a museum for the display of his works—albeit
it remained unfinished at the time of his sudden death in 2018. Phyoe Kyi:
The Museum Project traces the three main stages of development of this
project by featuring several mediums the artist experimented with: an
interactive installation (2013), renderings and sketches of artworks and
installations (2014–15), and an architectural model based on the artist’s
last design (2018), which was specifically produced for this occasion in
light of Phyoe Kyi’s growing interest in scale models. This presentation
in The Lab seeks to highlight the generative feedback between art and
architecture, with the artist conceiving new works and environmental
installations as the architecture of the museum evolved. It also includes
a timeline designed by artists Tun Win Aung and Wah Nu, Phyoe Kyi’s
close friends and creative peers, to illustrate the collaboration which
originally sparked The Museum Project.
Phyoe Kyi (b. 1977 – d. 2018, Myanmar) was a painter, graphic designer, and
performance artist based in Taunggyi, Shan State, Myanmar. Working with a variety
of mediums, his conceptual and experience-based practice explores existential issues
and the complexities of human relationships and existing social systems. His works
have been exhibited widely across Myanmar and were included in international shows
such as the 3rd Fukuoka Asian Art Triennial, Japan (2005) and the 11th Asian Art
Biennale, Bangladesh (2004). His latest solo show, titled The White Clothes, took
place at Myanm/art Gallery, Yangon, Myanmar (2016). In 2015, he initiated and
curated the 1st Mingun Biennale in Myanmar. Phyoe Kyi was Artist-in-Residence
at NTU CCA Singapore from April to June 2018.
Curated by Anna Lovecchio, Curator, Residencies
NTU CCA Singapore wishes to thank Tun Win Aung and Wah Nu, Min Thein
Sung, and Po Po for their generosity and support in the realisation of this project.
Tuesday, 30 July 2019, 7.00 – 8.30pm
Talk: On Museums Made by Artists
by Tun Win Aung
Phyoe Kyi, Museum Project #7
(extended), digital rendering, 2018.
Courtesy the artist’s estate.
Tun Win Aung will talk about his long-lasting friendship and multiple
collaborations with Phyoe Kyi. Since the artists first met in Yangon’s art
school, they established a profound connection which unfolded through
continuous conversations, intellectual exchanges, and repeated artistic
partnerships. Tun Win Aung will present the collaborative projects
developed in Mingun from 2003 and 2013 and The Art & Museum Project,
the platform he runs together with artist Wah Nu, which originally
triggered Phyoe Kyi’s The Museum Project. While conveying the
visionary thrust of Phyoe Kyi’s work, Tun Win Aung will also highlight
the challenges related to envisioning a contemporary art institution
in the context of Myanmar.
Tun Win Aung (b. 1975, Myanmar) is an artist based in Yangon, who employs a wide
range of mediums including photography, video, and installation. His practice focuses on
local histories and environments and he often collaborates with artist Wah Nu on largescale art projects and activities. Their works as a duo have been exhibited in institutional
venues such as the Guggenheim Museum, New York (2013); 21st Century Museum of
Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (2011); and biennials including Singapore Biennale (2016);
4th Guangzhou Triennial (2011); and the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial, Brisbane (2009).
28
29
�NTU CCA SINGAPORE STAFF
NTU CCA SINGAPORE GOVERNING COUNCIL
Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director, NTU CCA Singapore and
Professor, School of Art, Design and Media, NTU
CO-CHAIRS
Professor Joseph Liow, Dean, College of Humanities, Arts,
and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University (NTU)
Paul Tan, Deputy Chief Executive Officer, National Arts Council (NAC)
EXHIBITIONS & RESIDENCIES
Khim Ong, Deputy Director, Curatorial Programmes (until July 2019)
Dr Anna Lovecchio, Curator, Residencies
Magdalena Magiera, Curator, Outreach & Education
Ana Sophie Salazar, Assistant Curator, Exhibitions
Seet Yun Teng, Curatorial Assistant, Residencies
Ilya Katrinnada Binte Zubaidi, Curatorial Assistant, Outreach & Education
Frankie Fang, Assistant Manager, Production
Isrudy Shaik, Senior Executive, Production
Megan Lam, Young Professional Trainee, Residencies
Amelia Loh, Young Professional Trainee, Outreach & Education
Sng Yi Xian Issa, Young Professional Trainee, Exhibitions
Ze Tian Lim, NTU MA MSCP Intern, Exhibitions
Jack Kenneth Tan, Intern, Production
MEMBERS
Linda de Mello, Director, Sector Development, NAC
Professor Kwok Kian Woon, Associate Provost (Student Life),
President’s Office, NTU
Cindy Koh, Director, Consumer, Economic Development Board
Mike Samson, Managing Director and Regional Head ASEAN Leveraged
and Structured Solutions, Standard Chartered Bank
Professor Dorrit Vibeke Sorensen, Chair, School of Art, Design
and Media, NTU
Michael Tay, Group Managing Director, The Hour Glass Limited
Dr June Yap, Director, Curatorial, Programmes and Publications,
Singapore Art Museum
NTU CCA SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL ADVISORY BOARD
RESEARCH & EDUCATION
Sophie Goltz, Deputy Director, Research & Academic Programmes,
and Assistant Professor, School of Art, Design and Media, NTU
Dr Pallavi Narayan, Manager, Research Publications & Public
Resource Platform
Soh Kay Min, Executive, Conference, Workshops & Archive
Guineviere Low, Young Professional Trainee, Research &
Academic Programmes
OPERATIONS & STRATEGIC DEVELOPMENT
Peter Lin, Deputy Director, Operations & Strategic Development
Jasmaine Cheong, Assistant Director, Operations & HR
Joyce Lee, Manager, Finance
Perla Espiel, Special Project Assistant
Iris Tan, Senior Executive, Administration & Finance
Louis Tan, Executive, Operations
Zhou Yi Jing, Young Professional Trainee, Communications
30
CHAIR
Professor Nikos Papastergiadis, Director, Research Unit in
Public Cultures, and Professor, School of Culture and Communication,
The University of Melbourne, Australia
MEMBERS
Doryun Chong, Deputy Director and Chief Curator, M+, Hong Kong
Catherine David, Deputy Director in charge of Research and
Globalisation, MNAM/CCI, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
Professor Patrick Flores, Department of Art Studies, University of the
Philippines and Curator Jorge B. Vargas Museum, Manila, Philippines
Ranjit Hoskote, cultural theorist and independent curator, Mumbai, India
Professor Ashley Thompson, Hiram W. Woodward Chair of Southeast
Asian Art, SOAS University of London, United Kingdom
Philip Tinari, Director, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA),
Beijing, China
31
�NTU CCA Singapore Publications
Culture City. Culture Scape. (Upcoming)
Edited by Ute Meta Bauer, Sophie Goltz, and Khim Ong.
The Impossibility of Mapping (Urban Asia).
NTU CCA Singapore and World Scientific Publishing, 2019.
Edited by Ute Meta Bauer, Khim Ong, and Roger Nelson.
Voyages de Rhodes, artist’s book by Phan Thảo Nguyên.
Commissioned and published by NTU CCA Singapore, 2018.
Place.Labour.Capital. NTU CCA Singapore and Mousse Publishing, 2018.
Edited by Ute Meta Bauer and Anca Rujoiu.
Tomás Saraceno: Arachnid Orchestra. Jam Sessions,
NTU CCA Singapore, 2017. Edited by Ute Meta Bauer and Anca Rujoiu.
Shared Academic Programmes with
the School of Art, Design and Media, NTU
Master of Arts in Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices
In August 2018, NTU welcomed the first intake of MA students for Museum
Studies and Curatorial Practices. The programme prepares graduates for
professional positions in the highly complex and diverse museum landscape
in Southeast Asia and the ever-expanding field of contemporary curating.
Application period: 1 September 2019 – 1 March 2020
Master of Arts (Research) and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
These research-oriented MA and PhD are designed for students who wish
to pursue cutting-edge research in specific areas of Art, Design and Media
with a focus in Spaces of the Curatorial and Curating the City, both key
academic research areas of NTU CCA Singapore.
Learn more: adm.ntu.edu.sg/programmes
Becoming Palm, Simryn Gill and Michael Taussig. NTU CCA Singapore
and Sternberg Press, 2017. Edited by Ute Meta Bauer and Anca Rujoiu.
About THE School of Art, Design and Media, NTU
Theatrical Fields, Critical Strategies in Performance, Film, and Video.
NTU CCA Singapore, König Books, London, and Bildmuseet, Umeå, 2016.
Edited by Ute Meta Bauer and Anca Rujoiu.
SouthEastAsia – Spaces of the Curatorial. Jahresring 63.
Sternberg Press, 2016. Edited by Ute Meta Bauer and Brigitte Oetker.
Artists’ Limited Edition Everyday Items
NTU CCA Singapore’s line of commissioned Artists’ Limited Editions Everyday
Items—ranging from scarves, umbrellas, and raincoats, to notebooks, tote bags,
and beach towels—is created in collaboration with the Centre’s local and
international Artists-in-Residence. 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/United Kingdom), UuDam Nguyen (Vietnam), Ana Pravcki
(Serbia/United States), anGie seah (Singapore), SHIMURAbros (Japan),
Tamara Weber (United States), and Jason Wee (Singapore).
With Singapore being a cosmopolitan nation with Asian sensibilities,
the School of Art, Design and Media (ADM) seeks to play a weighty
role in transforming the island state into a global media city. The interdisciplinary courses are designed to mould creative individuals into
outstanding artists, designers, animators, new media performers, and
business leaders. The school is equipped with exceptional hands-on studios,
digital creation laboratories, media studios, and open spaces. ADM’s longterm plan is to focus on nurturing local talents and providing opportunities
for international study and education at a world-class standard.
About Nanyang Technological University
For enquiries, please contact ntuccaevents@ntu.edu.sg
A research-intensive public university, NTU has 33,000 undergraduate and
postgraduate students in the colleges of Engineering, Business, Science,
and Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, and its Graduate College.
NTU’s campus, near Jurong West, is frequently listed among the top 15
most beautiful university campuses in the world and has 57 Green Markcertified (equivalent to LEED-certified) buildings. Besides its 200-ha lush
green, residential campus in western Singapore, NTU has a second campus
in the heart of Novena, Singapore’s medical district.
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33
�NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore
A leading international art institution, NTU CCA Singapore is a platform,
host, and partner creating and driven by dynamic thinking in its threefold constellation: Exhibitions; Residencies Programme; Research and
Academic Education. A national research centre for contemporary art of
Nanyang Technological University, the Centre focuses on Spaces of
the Curatorial. It brings forth innovative and experimental forms
of emergent artistic and curatorial practices that intersect the present
and histories of contemporary art embedded in social-political spheres
with other fields of knowledge.
CLIMATES.
Spaces of the Curatorial
HABITATS.
CLIMATES. HABITATS.
ENVIRONMENTS. is NTU CCA
Singapore’s overarching research
topic which informs and connects
the Centre’s various activities over
a period of several years. Changes in
the environment influence weather
patterns and these climatic shifts
impact habitats, and vice
versa. Precarious conditions
of habitats are forcing the
migration of humans and other
species at a critical level. The consequences of human intervention
are felt on a global scale, affecting
geopolitical, social, and cultural
systems. The Centre intends to discuss
and understand these realities through
art and culture in dialogue with
other fields of knowledge.
34
The Centre seeks to engage the potential of “curating,” and its expanded
field. What are the infrastructures and modes of presenting and discussing
artistic and cultural production in diverse cultural settings and in
particular throughout Southeast Asia’s vastly changing societies?
NTU CCA Singapore’s exhibition spaces, The Exhibition Hall, The Lab,
The Single Screen, and The Vitrine, designed by artist and curator
Fareed Armaly, respond to this curatorial framework to unfold different
juxtaposed formats.
Giving
ENVIRONMENTS.
NTU CCA Singapore is a non-profit institution that takes great pride
in presenting internationally-acclaimed, research-driven exhibitions,
residencies, and extensive educational programmes. Your contribution,
regardless of amount, goes a long way in enabling us to play an active role
within the local arts scene. Your generous support will also contribute to
the development of regional and international arts infrastructures.
If you are a taxpayer in Singapore, your contributions are eligible for
a 250% tax deduction in 2019!
For enquiries, please contact ntuccacomms@ntu.edu.sg
Birdwing butterfly
Habitat: South Pacific
Conservation Status:
Threatened
35
�Manifesto:
Public Sculpture
in the Context of
American Democracy
I embrace the common. I explore the familiar, the low…. Give me
insight into today, you may have the antique and the future.
—Emerson
1. Public sculpture is a logical continuation of the modern
movement and the enlightenment which was tempered
and conditioned by the American Revolution.
2. Public sculpture attempts to demystify art.
3. Public sculpture is less about self-expression and the myth
of its maker and more about its civicness. Public sculpture is not
based upon a philosophy which seeks to separate itself from
the everydayness of everyday life.
9. Public sculpture has some kind of social function. It has moved
from large scale, outdoor, site specific sculpture into sculpture with
social content. In the process it has annexed a new territory for
sculpture that extends the field for social experience.
19. The use of the adjectives architectural in sculpture and
sculptural in architecture, for the purpose of establishing analogy,
simile, metaphor, contrast or similarity between public sculpture
and architecture is no longer descriptive or valid.
10. Public sculpture believes that culture should be detectable
geographically. The idea of region must be understood as a term
of value. It is in politics. Why not in culture?
20. Public sculpture puts aside the allusion, the illusion and the
metaphysical supposition that the human being is only a spiritual
being who was misplaced here on earth. We are here because
home is here and no other place.
11. Public sculpture is not artistic creation alone but rather social
and cultural productions based upon concrete needs.
12. Public sculpture is a cooperative production. There are others
besides the artist who are responsible for the work. To give all
the credit to the individual artist is misleading and untrue.
21. The public environment is a notion of reference to the field in
which activity takes place. The public environment is a necessary
implication of being in the community.
22. Public sculpture depends upon some interplay with the public
based upon some shared assumptions.
13. The art in public art is not a genteel art but a missionary art.
4. In public sculpture the artist offers his/her expertise, therefore
the artist as a maker has a place in the society. The social and
cultural need support the artistic practice.
14. The ethical dimensions of the arts are mostly gone and only in
a newly formed relationship with a non-art audience may the ethical
dimensions come back to the arts.
5. Public sculpture is a search for a cultural history which calls for
structural unity between the object and its social and spatial setting.
It should be open, available, useful and common.
15. We enter public sculpture not as a thing between four walls
in a spatial sense but as a tool for activity.
6. Public sculpture opens up a perspective through which we may
comprehend the social construction of art.
16. There is a value in site in itself but we should keep our
preoccupation with site to a minimum.
7. Public sculpture attempts to fill the gap that comes about between
art and public to make art public and artists citizens again.
23. There is a limit to public sculpture. There are also limits
in science and in philosophy.
24. Public sculpture should not intimidate, assault or control
the public. It should enhance a given place.
17. Public sculpture is not here to enhance architecture in or out,
nor is architecture here to house public sculpture in or out.
They are to be neighborly.
25. By emphasizing usefulness public sculpture becomes a tool
for activity. Therefore we reject Kantian metaphysics and the idea
that art is useless.
26. Public sculpture rejects the idea of the universality of art.
8. Generally speaking, public sculpture is not of a particular style
or ideology. It is through action in concrete situations that public
sculpture will become of a certain character.
36
—Written and compiled by Siah Armajani (1968–78; revised 1993)
18. Art and architecture have different histories, different
methodologies and two different languages.
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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
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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
Siah Armajani. Spaces for the Public Spaces for Democracy 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>Siah Armajani. Spaces for the Public Spaces for Democracy</i> Exhibition Guide
Description
An account of the resource
<i>Siah Armajani. Spaces for the Public Spaces for Democracy</i> Exhibition Guide
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-07-20
Contributor
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Siah Armajani
Susanne Pfeffer
Mario Kramer
Fabio Rossi
Josie Browne
Barbara Armajani
Format
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Guide
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
North America