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Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor, The end of the working day (2015), film still. Courtesy of the artists.
Bring
It
To
LIFE.
16 Jun - 12 Jul 2015
The Lab, Block 43 Malan Road,
Gillman Barracks
Bring it to LIFE is a curatorial project that engages with
NTU CCA Singapore’s Artist Resource Platform, a research
initiative that aims to provide a point of entry to the work
and practice of local artists, independent art spaces and
NTU CCA Singapore's Artists-in-Residence. Temporarily
situated in The Lab, the Artist Resource Platform lives a
quiet existence – visitors stop by, browse through the folders rigorously displayed on the tables, take notes and often
ask questions. Concentrated in its folders are works that
we might want to see, experience, think and discuss. Bring
it to LIFE aims to overcome the mediated experience and
create direct encounters with artistic production, with
contributions from Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor, Kray
Chen, Sufian Samsiyar and Geraldine Kang.
Curated by Shona Findlay, Curatorial Assistant, Residencies,
Syaheedah Iskandar, Curatorial Assistant, Exhibitions,
Samantha Leong, Executive, Conference, Workshops & Archive,
and Kimberly Shen, Manager, Communications.
Open during exhibition hours
Tue - Sun
Fri
Mon
12 - 7pm
12 - 9pm
Closed
�Bring it to LIFE
Structured in four different episodes, Bring it to LIFE responds to the wider narrative of NTU CCA Singapore’s overarching
curatorial framework, PLACE.LABOUR.CAPITAL. – an open-ended research addressing the complexities of a world in flux
and the dynamic relation between the local and global. Bring it to LIFE brings to the fore artworks that directly engage with
the subject matter of PLACE.LABOUR.CAPITAL. through themes of migration and capital transactions. In addition, it uses
spatial interventions to highlight that the production of meaning is also a spatial process. Our movement within a confined
place, impacts the way we experience and make meaning out of it.
The work of Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor produced during their residency at NTU CCA Singapore is conceived as a
visual poem focused on the migrant workers whose individual destinies are influenced by the wider movements of capital
flow. Kray Chen’s contribution is a playful installation highlighting that transactional activities such as cutting queues,
getting out of a train or simply shopping are punctuating our everyday life. Sufian Samsiyar’s collaborative project tests
the thin boundaries between work and life space. Geraldine Kang’s intervention into the spatial arrangement of the
Platform is a proposition for another reading and way of engagement with an archive that eschews linearity and prescribed
movement into the space.
Episode 1: Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor | 16 – 21 June 2015
When I sleep I miss them, when I work I also miss them (2015), 7 min
and The end of the working day (2015), 15:20 min, double channel
video installation.
When I sleep I miss them, when I work I also miss them (2015) is a
quote that surfaced during an interview with Bangladeshi worker and
poet, Zakir Hussain. His words echo the sentiments and situation of
millions of migrant workers, many who have travelled long distances
in order to provide a living for their families back home. The end of
the working day (2015) documents the daily journey of a group of
young men going home after a hard day’s work, a familiar routine for
foreign workers in Singapore who consist of 37.9% of the total workforce in Singapore (source: Ministry of Manpower, Singapore, 2014).
Both films explore how modernity, globalisation, capitalism, colonialism, war and nature intersect with one another, affecting the destinies of various individuals. The work was produced during the artists’
residency at NTU CCA Singapore.
Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor have been working together since
2000. Their artistic practice confronts the traumatic legacy of Communism in their native Romania and Eastern Europe.
Episode 3: Sufian Samsiyar | 30 June – 5 July 2015
Some Project: Sufian Samsiyar and Friends (2015), installation.
Episode 2: Kray Chen | 23 – 28 June 2015
Exercise Now and Fit a Standard Size Coffin Later (2015),
installation.
Kray Chen dissects and plays with the idea of transaction
not only in a monetary sense, but also through referrals,
delegations and misdirection. The new installation of his
Exercise Now and Fit a Standard Size Coffin Later series is
done in collaboration with computer engineer, Chang
Poo Hee and continues Chen’s playful approach to
gestures and repetition, and offers to expand on his
research through participation and dialogue.
Schedule
24 June, 6pm: Conversations between Kray Chen and
Michael Lee on Lottery, Superstitions and Art
27 & 28 June, 6pm: 4D announcement / observing five
minutes of silence
The artist will be based in The Lab throughout the week
and conduct informal Q&A sessions with visitors.
Based in Singapore, Kray Chen is a visual artist whose
work discusses the absurdities and anxieties of modern
society through video and performance.
Responding to the community’s limited access to an artist’s
practice, Some Project: Sufian Samsiyar and Friends depicts itself as
a contrasting / contradicting view of how artists’ working spaces are
commonly perceived. Presented in a form of a tent; a metaphor for
a safe shelter or cover, Sufian has invited artists to contribute
personal objects, which may reflect resemblances of their practice,
and are intimate or indicative of their art making process. The
artwork encourages viewers to interact within this intimate space
and hopes to bridge the gap between the community and Sufian’s
fellow artist friends.
Episode 4: Geraldine Kang | 7 – 12 July 2015
Sufian Samsiyar is a visual artist based in Singapore whose practice
focuses on the urban landscape and responds to the complex issues
surrounding urbanity that present themselves in architecture today.
Geraldine Kang is a visual artist working and living in Singapore whose relationship with photography funnels into two
main threads, firstly using the medium as a private introspective channel, and secondly by exploring the undercurrents and ambivalences of familiar places.
2 Parts 2 (2015), corrugated metal sheets with support.
Geraldine Kang’s installation relooks the current layout of
the Artist Resource Platform where the folders of each
artist’s practice and the tables they rest on form a linear
path of movement within the space. By sawing tables in
two and repositioning folders from the Platform, Kang
removes linearity of its current layout and proposes a more
participatory mode of engagement for the visitors.
�Bring
It
To
LIFE.
16 Jun - 12 Jul 2015
The Lab, Block 43 Malan Road,
Gillman Barracks
Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor, The end of the working day (2015), film still. Courtesy of the artists.
Bring it to LIFE is a curatorial project that engages with
NTU CCA Singapore’s Artist Resource Platform, a research
initiative that aims to provide a point of entry to the work
and practice of local artists, independent art spaces and
NTU CCA Singapore's Artists-in-Residence. Temporarily
situated in The Lab, the Artist Resource Platform lives a
quiet existence – visitors stop by, browse through the folders rigorously displayed on the tables, take notes and often
ask questions. Concentrated in its folders are works that
we might want to see, experience, think and discuss. Bring
it to LIFE aims to overcome the mediated experience and
create direct encounters with artistic production, with
contributions from Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor, Kray
Chen, Sufian Samsiyar and Geraldine Kang.
Curated by Shona Findlay, Curatorial Assistant, Residencies,
Syaheedah Iskandar, Curatorial Assistant, Exhibitions,
Samantha Leong, Executive, Conference, Workshops & Archive,
and Kimberly Shen, Manager, Communications.
Open during exhibition hours
Tue - Sun
Fri
Mon
12 - 7pm
12 - 9pm
Closed
�
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
Bring it to LIFE Exhibition Brochure
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>Bring it to LIFE</i> Exhibition Brochure
Description
An account of the resource
<i>Bring it to LIFE</i> Exhibition Brochure
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-16
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor
Kray Chen
Sufian Samsiyar
Geraldine Kang
Shona Findlay
Syaheedah Iskandar
Samantha Leong
Kimberly Shen
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Brochure
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
-
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f6b5a5077d0a13ad1dd561f2133dd8c3
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
Charles Lim Yi Yong: SEA STATE Exhibition Brochure
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>Charles Lim Yi Yong: SEA STATE</i> Exhibition Brochure
Description
An account of the resource
<i>Charles Lim Yi Yong: SEA STATE</i> Exhibition Brochure
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-04-30
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Charles Lim Yi Yong
Ute Meta Bauer
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Brochure
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
-
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8bdafa44755150d4231772aca2e7b689
PDF Text
Text
PuBLiC aND eDuCatioN
ProGrammes
Saturday, 23 March 2019, 3.30 – 5.30pm
In Conversation Part I: Arus Balik
with Ade Darmawan, Shubigi Rao,
and Melati Suryodarmo,
moderated by Philippe Pirotte
The first session of a two-part conversation,
this panel discussion will focus on the book
Arus Balik (1995) by Indonesian author
Pramoedya Ananta Toer, which is the
starting point for the eponymous exhibition
on view. Three of the participating artists
will be joined by the curator of the exhibition,
Philippe Pirotte, to discuss Pramoedya’s
body of work, its influence and legacy,
as well as notions of censorship and the
forbidden book.
For artists’ and curator’s biographies,
please see overleaf
Unless otherwise stated,
all programmes
are admission free
and take place at
NTU CCA Singapore.
For updates please visit
ntu.ccasingapore.org
arus BaLik
from below the wind
to above the wind
and back again
22 March – 23 June 2019
Guest Curator:
Philippe Pirotte
Curatorial Team:
Ana Sophie Salazar
Rani Lawson
Public and Education Programmes:
Magdalena Magiera
Ilya Katrinnada Binte Zubaidi
Exhibition Production:
Frankie Fang
Isrudy Shaik
Jonathan Liu
Saturday, 6 April 2019, 3.00 – 5.30pm
Workshop: Reclaiming Nusantara?
by ila, Norah Lea, and Nurshafitri Ya’akob
Tuesday, 16 April 2019, 7.00 – 8.30pm
In Conversation: ila and Khim Ong
The artist will expand on the works
she has developed for the exhibition,
which directly address matters of
provenance and heritage. ila reflects
on what it means to live on an island,
and explores the collective memory
of living in close relationship with
the sea and its manifold stories. She
will also discuss how she uses her
body as a space of confrontation and
negotiation, and how her performance
work explores issues about gender,
identity, and historical narratives.
Workshop fee: $10
Registration required: reclaimingnusantara.peatix.com
Where is the Nusantara? Who is the Nusantara? What do we align ourselves with in the
past and what futures will we create together?
This workshop, a follow-up to a workshop held last year, Siapa Dia Wanita Nusantara
(Who is the Nusantara Woman?), aims to create conversations around the idea of the
“Nusantara,” an arguably dated and oftentimes unclear regional construct that has
resurfaced every now and then with regards to recent waves of conversations around
decolonisation of the Malay archipelago. Centering around themes of intersecting
identities, belonging, and speculative histories, this workshop invites anyone who feels
that they can benefit from sharing their own stories and experiences, and the explorations
of their personal oral histories through spoken word and collectively imagining the past
and future.
Norah Lea (Singapore) is a multidisciplinary artist whose works investigate the performative aspects
of our identities. Her work is rooted in self-portraiture, exploring themes such as gender, sexuality, and
ethnicity through photography, film, performance, and spoken word.
Nurshafitri Ya’akob (Singapore) explores the nuanced psyche that individuals keep hidden in their
subconscious. She expounds on the duality and sometimes hypocrisy of certain ideologies and theories
that have been made palatable for the society.
Tuesday, 14 May 2019, 7.00 – 8.30pm
Screening and Conversation: Kiri Dalena and Lucy Raven,
moderated by Philippe Pirotte
Screenings by Filipino human-right activist, artist, and
filmmaker Kiri Dalena and by American artist Lucy Raven
will be followed by a conversation with both artists. Based on
the true story of the drowning of a young activist, Dalena’s
film From the Dark Depths (2017) opens with a beautiful and
surreal sequence underwater in which a woman dances slowly
brandishing a red flag. Around her, many red flags are planted
in the seabed. This hypnotic and captivating dream is shuttered
by sequences with authentic 16mm, analog, and digital video
footage from the artist’s own archive with documentation of
political unrest spanning two decades, and an ominous longtrack of a police car at night prompting the citizens to respect
the curfew—a gloomy reminder of a lost freedom. Lucy Raven
will screen material from Kongkreto, currently in production.
Shot entirely with miniature models and sets, but referring
to the eruption of Mount Pinutabo (described further in
Notes from the Curator) in the Philippines, it is a study into
unpredictable state changes from liquid to solid and back again,
as a means to explore the larger implications and effects of state
change. A short horror film, the material monster has the ability
to opportunistically, erratically change state (from heavy rain
to liquid flow, to solid cement, and back again), speed (fast rush,
slow creep, explosive, eruptive), and form (pyroclastic ashflow,
military barracks, dams, dikes, cast Brutalist buildings,
civic infrastructure).
Kiri Dalena (Philippines) is an acclaimed visual artist and filmmaker
known for her works which reveal persistent social injustices and
inequalities, particularly in the Philippines. She graduated from the
University of the Philippines-Los Baños with an undergraduate degree
in Human Ecology, and pursued further studies in 16mm documentary
filmmaking at the Mowefund Film Institute. She has been featured in
several international art events such as the Asia Pacific Triennial of
Contemporary Art, Brisbane (2015); Yokohama Triennale (2014); and
the Singapore Biennale (2013). Her works are currently in the permanent
collections of the Singapore Art Museum, Queensland Art Gallery,
Gallery of Modern Art, and the Ateneo Art Gallery.
Saturday, 25 May 2019, 3.30 – 5.30pm
In Conversation Part II: Living with the Sea
with Mirwan Andan, Nirwan Ahmad Arsuka, Zac Langdon-Pole,
Dr Imran bin Tajudeen, and Juria Toramae, moderated by Philippe Pirotte
The second session of a two-part conversation, this panel discussion will focus on the
history of the Straits, historical maps, and the geography of maritime Southeast Asia.
This involves an approach to the region through underlying indigenous patterns,
which will necessarily stretch the limits of ingrained westernised cultural visions
and mental habits. The participants will discuss complexities of heritage, notions
of belonging, and strategies of mapping. Rather than a static given, the Nusantara
Straits will be considered as an environment with an incipient psychology, invoking
a transpiring age-old knowledge of the region, but also as a habitat that continues
to profoundly influence our existence.
Mirwan Andan (Indonesia) was born and raised in Watampone, South Sulawesi. From 1999 to
2004, he enrolled at the Universitas Hasanuddin, Makassar, majoring in French Literature. In early
2005, he moved to Jakarta and in 2012 graduated from Political Science, while working in ruangrupa
as a researcher and developer since 2007. He was invited to speak in several forums, seminars,
and conferences such as Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society Conference, Surabaya (2015); State of
Independence - A Global Forum in Alternative Space, Los Angeles (2011); and Expressing Political
Aspiration Creatively, Jakarta (2011). In 2015, Andan was researcher for the Jakarta Biennale.
Nirwan Ahmad Arsuka (Indonesia) completed his formal education in Nuclear Engineering,
Gadjah Mada State University. He has worked as a guest editor for Kompas Daily, a member of the
Curator Board of Bentara Budaya Jakarta, and as Director of the Freedom Institute. His writings have
appeared in the Inter-Asian Cultural Studies and International Journal of Asian Studies. His publications
include Two Essays (Trilingual edition: Indonesian, English, German. 2016), Percakapan dengan
Semesta (A Conversation with the Universe) (2017), and Semesta Manusia (This Universe of Mankind)
(2018). Since 2014, he has been actively developing Pustaka Bergerak Indonesia (Indonesian Mobile
Library Network), a grassroot literacy movement.
Dr Imran bin Tajudeen (Singapore) is Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture, School of
Design and Environment, National University of Singapore. He researches architectural encounters
in Singapore and Southeast Asia, first in their intersections with colonial practices, modern interventions, and colonial and nationalist heritage representation, and second through historiographical
questions on Southeast Asia’s Indic and Islamic architecture from a vernacular architectural perspective.
He was a postdoctoral fellow at MIT’s AKPIA (2009–10) and the IIAS in Leiden (2010–11). He is coeditor of Southeast Asia’s Modern Architecture: Questions in Translation, Epistemology and Power (2018),
and is currently working on a monograph that extends his doctoral dissertation on the local/regional
and cosmopolitan in the vernacular urban heritage of maritime Southeast Asia.
Saturday, 1 June 2019, 3.00 – 6.00pm
Workshop: Visualising Sense of Place through
Map-Making by Juria Toramae
Workshop fee: $10
Registration required: visualisingsenseofplace.peatix.com
Artist Juria Toramae will discuss map-making as an art
form and will guide the participants through the basics of
creating a map. The workshop will include conceptualising
and drawing a map of one’s own imagined Singapore.
Saturday, 23 March 2019, 10.00am – 12.30pm
Friday, 26 April 2019, 3.00 – 5.30pm
Workshop for Teachers: Turning Tides: Identities in Transit
by Kelly Reedy
Registration required:
23 March 2019: turningtides-23march2019.peatix.com
26 April 2019: turningtides-26april2019.peatix.com
Taking inspiration from the novel Arus Balik (1995) by Indonesian
author Pramoedya Ananta Toer, this workshop will examine how the
turning of historical tides form our personal and collective identities.
The work by the six participating artists will guide and challenge us on
this journey, probing how the social, geopolitical, religious, and cultural
transitions in this region have influenced our concepts of who we are,
where we come from, and where we are going.
Kelly Reedy (United States/Singapore) has worked in Singapore for over 18 years as
an artist and educator. 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.
Juria Toramae (Thailand/Singapore) is a visual artist. Having had an
itinerant childhood, she is interested in place attachment and displacement.
Her practice draws on historical and field research and reflects on human
relationship with nature. Her work has been presented at the Singapore
Art Museum at 8Q; the Singapore International Photography Festival;
the Photobook Exhibition for Athens Photo Festival; the Obscura Festival
of Photography, Penang; the Chiang Mai University Art Center; and
The Substation, Singapore.
In the Lab
VaPour isLaNDs: to LiVe aND Die WeLL
toGether iN a thiCk PreseNt*
7 March – 7 April 2019
Conceived by sophie Goltz, Deputy Director, Research & Academic
Programmes, NTU CCA Singapore and Assistant Professor NTU ADM
and soh kay min, Executive, Conference, Workshops & Archive
Thinking through the cycle of water, Vapour Islands: to live and die well together in a thick present* moves through
and between loss and regain, release and redistribution, to consider the ways in which thin air can be transformed
into a present thick with possibility. Taking the Earth’s hydrologic cycle—that is, the sequence of processes detailing
the cyclical movement of water on and off the Earth’s surface—as its entry-point, the presentation is an archipelago
of thematic “islands,” in which each island corresponds to each of the four stages of the hydrologic cycle: evaporation,
condensation, precipitation, and percolation. This cycle, like the ecological imminence of the present, begins with
disappearance—of water, of trees, of entire habitats and species. This presentation interacts with books and research
materials from NTU CCA Singapore’s Public Resource Platform, responding to the Centre’s overarching research
topic CLIMATES. HABITATS. ENVIRONMENTS.
Tuesday, 2 April 2019, 7.00 – 8.30pm
Speculative Lecture: Becoming Post-Human
by Professor Ute Meta Bauer, followed by a conversation with Sophie Goltz
Situating the post-humanist position between artificial intelligence and forces of nature, Bauer suggests that the
current debate about future scenarios is not about humanity in itself, but rather the pervasiveness of an anthropocentric
perspective and action that dominates much of human life.
In the Lab
irwan ahmett and tita salina
the riNG of fire (2014–ongoing)
13 April – 11 June 2019
curated by anna Lovecchio, Curator, Residencies
Irwan Ahmett and Tita Salina, A Tumbling Inch (image taken from the closest distance
between Irwan and Singapore border on December 11, 2018), 2018. Courtesy the artists.
Invisible to the human eye, geological kinships flow under the oceans and lay deep into the Earth’s crust.
When they manifest themselves, it is often in apocalyptic forms that disrupt existing ecosystems and the
course of human life. In geography, The Ring of Fire denotes the volcanic belt and the collision zone of
tectonic plates running around the edges of the Pacific Ocean, a deadly area where the majority of the world’s
earthquakes and eruptions occur. For Irwan Ahmett and Tita Salina, this geologically unstable territory
demarcates a field of artistic inquiry.
Saturday, 13 April 2019, 3.00 – 4.00pm
Artist’s Tour
Join Tita Salina for a walk-through of The Ring of Fire. The artist will
discuss the origin and the development of this five-year project, charting out
the ways in which the works weave together natural catastrophes, historical
occurrences, and present-day social and environmental crises.
Tuesday, 11 June 2019, 7.00 – 8.30pm
Performance: A Tumbling Inch
On 28 March 2018, Irwan Ahmett and Tita Salina concluded their residency
at NTU CCA Singapore with the lecture Name Laundering during which
Ahmett made the solemn pledge (sumpah) not to return to Singapore, an oath
that holds true until today. A Tumbling Inch is a performative action broadcasted in livestream from Batam, the Indonesian island closest to Singapore.
Performed from a vantage point rife with strategic and symbolic implications,
the work revolves around a man’s nostalgic longing for the Lion City.
Following the free movement of sea waves across the Straits of Malacca, the
man addresses archipelagic histories, the relations between Indonesia and
Singapore, and the inequalities created by ruthless economic development.
Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director, NTU CCA Singapore
and Professor, School of Art, Design and Media, NTU
Ntu CCa siNGaPore
GoVerNiNG CouNCiL
Ntu CCa siNGaPore
staff
Ade Darmawan, Ferry trip from Merak to Bakauheni, Sunda
Strait, Indonesia, 2018, documentation. Courtesy the artist.
The Tower of Tuban: the first level, 2019
Mixed media on paper, 70 x 100 cm
ENTRANCE TO
GILLMAN BARRACKS
AD
Collaterals:
mono.studio
Since 2014, the Indonesian duo has embarked upon a journey that engages issues of social injustice, political
struggles, colonial histories, and environmental crises encountered along erratic routes that stretch from
Indonesia to New Zealand, from Taiwan and South Korea to Japan. The Ring of Fire (2014–ongoing) brings
together for the first time the most significant works realised by the artists, either together or individually,
since the inception of the project. Fuelled by an activist attitude and a zest for playfulness, Ahmett and Salina
continuously share the imaginative resources to transpose political, environmental, and affective fractures in
performative actions that are poetic and poignant at the same time. This presentation conveys the scope of
their investigation by showcasing video documentation and material traces of their performances as well as
a visual statement on the artists’ working methodology.
An artist duo based in Jakarta, Indonesia, Irwan Ahmett and Tita Salina have been working together since 2010. Their
ephemeral interventions articulate sharp social commentaries on urgent issues concerning urban development, ecological
catastrophes, political repression, colonial legacies, and the exploitation of human and ecological resources. Spanning from the
prankish to the subversive, the duo can mobilise playfulness in the public sphere, irony in radioactive sites, and empathy in relation
to conditions of human and environmental vulnerability. Their work has been exhibited at Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media
(2018); Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw (2017); ST PAUL St Gallery, Auckland (2016); and Biennale
Jogja (2015); amongst others. Ahmett and Salina were Artists-in-Residence at NTU CCA Singapore in March 2018.
Ntu CeNtre for
CoNtemPorarY
art siNGaPore
sPaCes of the
CuratoriaL
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
GiViNG
RO
A leading international art institution,
NTU CCA Singapore is a platform, host,
and partner creating and driven by dynamic
thinking in its three-fold 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.
RA
Rafflesia arnoldii
Habitat: Southeast Asia
Conservation Status: Threatened
ND
Traduttore, traditore, 2019
Mixed media on paper, 50 x 70 cm
L ABRADOR PARK MRT
(CIRCLE LINE)
L I N K WAY
MA
LA
N R
O
B
AD
EXHIBITIONS
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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, designed by artist
and curator Fareed Armaly, respond
to this curatorial framework to unfold
different juxtaposed formats.
XA
AD
CLimates. haBitats.
eNViroNmeNts.
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
RO
Ntu CCa siNGaPore
PuBLiCatioNs
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
Ilya Katrinnada Binte Zubaidi, Curatorial Assistant,
Outreach & Education
Frankie Fang, Assistant Manager, Production
Isrudy Shaik, Senior Executive, Production
Amelia Loh, Young Professional Trainee,
Outreach & Education
Lee Hon Choo, Young Professional Trainee, Residencies
Jonathan Liu, Young Professional Trainee, Production
Rani Shah Lawson, Intern, Exhibitions
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.
RESEARCH & EDUCATION
For enquiries, please contact
ntuccacomms@ntu.edu.sg
K
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.
CHAIR
Professor Nikos Papastergiadis, Director, Research Unit in
Public Cultures, and Professor, School of Culture and Communication,
The University of Melbourne, Australia
C
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.
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
OPERATIONS & STRATEGIC
DEVELOPMENT
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
Okwui Enwezor, curator and writer, Munich, Germany
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
LO
ABOUT NANYANG TECHNOLOGICAL
UNIVERSITY, SINGAPORE
shareD aCaDemiC ProGrammes
With the sChooL of art, DesiGN
aND meDia, Ntu
Master of Arts in Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices
Applications deadline: 31 March 2019
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
Fok Jing Yi, Young Professional Trainee, Communications
Nur Sabreena Binte Haron, Young Professional Trainee,
Communications
CAR
PARK
A
Shubigi Rao
A
CAR PARK C
THE LAB
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RESIDENCIES
STUDIOS
Voyages de Rhodes, Phan Thảo Nguyên, artist’s book
commissioned and published by NTU CCA Singapore, 2018.
PLACE.LABOUR.CAPITAL. Mousse Publishing,
distributed by NUS Press, 2018.
SouthEastAsia: Spaces of the Curatorial. Jahresring 63.
Sternberg Press, 2017.
Becoming Palm, Simryn Gill and Michael Taussig.
Sternberg Press, 2017.
Tomás Saraceno: Arachnid Orchestra. Jam Sessions. 2017.
Theatrical Fields: Critical Strategies in Performance,
Film, and Video, in collaboration with Bildmuseet Umeå.
König Books, 2016.
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.
Learn more: adm.ntu.edu.sg/programmes
ALE
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K
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Lucy Raven
CAR PARK
B
Located at
ntu.ccasingapore.org
facebook.com/ntu.ccasingapore
Instagram: @ntu_ccasingapore
Twitter: @ntuccasingapore
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 is frequently listed among the top 15 most
beautiful university campuses in the world and has 57
Green Mark-certified (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.
© NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore.
Printed in March 2019 by First Printers.
BUS STOP
ENTRANCE TO
GILLMAN BARRACKS
SINGAPORE
TEACHERS’
ACADEMY
FOR THE ARTS
Pulp: A Short Biography of the Banished
Book, 2016–18
5 photographic prints, 60 x 85 cm each
1. Books rescued from the burning National
and University Library, stored and unused
in dilapidated stables for the last 26 years.
Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, 2016.
2. Damaged manuscript salvaged from the
burning of the Oriental Institute in 1992.
Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, 2016.
3. Singular transcribed copy of forgotten oral
stories, from writer Syeda Hamed’s personal
collection. New Delhi, India, 2018.
4. and 5. Library books destroyed by floods
in August 2018. Kochi, India, 2018.
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OT
DEP D
A
RO
RESEARCH
CENTRE &
OFFICE
LOC
D
ROA
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Enquiries: ntuccaevents@ntu.edu.sg
Free admission to all programmes,
unless otherwise stated
Ade
Darmawan
Residencies Studios
Blocks 37 and 38 Malan Road,
Singapore 109452 and 109441
Research Centre and Office
Block 6 Lock Road, #01-09/10,
Singapore 108934
+65 6460 0300
Exhibition Hours
Tuesday – Sunday, 12.00 – 7.00pm
Closed on Mondays
Open on Public Holidays
(except on Mondays)
C
Melati
Suryodarmo
D
Exhibitions
Block 43 Malan Road,
Singapore 109443
+65 6339 6503
B — Shubigi Rao
THE SINGLE
SCREEN
THE
EXHIBITION
HALL
ila
Zac Langdon-Pole
F
Exhibition
22 March –
23 June 2019
the sons and daughters of hungry ghosts,
2019
6 photographic prints, 29.7 x 42 cm each
again
bekas, 2019
In collaboration with Kin Chui
Video projection, stereo, 12 min
F — ila
back
the
wind
Passport (Argonauta) (viii), 2018
Paper nautilus shell, Campo del Cielo
meteorite (iron; coarse octahedrite,
landsite: Chaco / Santiago del Estero,
Argentina), 9.4 x 3.1 x 5.3 cm
Tuban, 2019
Installation with distillation process,
books, pottery, spices, seawater, leaves,
stones, and soil.
and
the
wind
C — Ade Darmawan
2-26-19: Debris flow erosion, wet cement
on sand-L, 2019
Cement and sand on silk, 228 x 133 cm
2-26-19: Debris flow erosion, wet cement
on sand-R, 2019
Cement and sand on silk, 228 x 133 cm
2-28-19: Debris flow erosion, wet cement
on dry cement and sand-R, 2019
Cement and sand on silk, 223 x 134 cm
3-3-19: Debris flow erosion, wet cement
on dry cement and sand-L, 2019
Cement and sand on silk, 214 x 133 cm
3-3-19: Debris flow erosion, wet cement
on dry cement and sand-R, 2019
Cement and sand on silk, 231 x 132 cm
eXhiBitioN
PLaN
to
above
Paradise Blueprint, 2017
Wallpaper based on a cyanotype
photogram of the removed legs of
a bird of paradise
A — Lucy Raven
E
Ntu CCa siNGaPore
Visitor iNformatioN
E — Zac Langdon-Pole
Dancing Under the Black Sky, 2019
Four-channel video, 5 min
D — Melati Suryodarmo
From
below
arus
BaLik
�Arus
Balik
to
above
the
wind
From
below
and
the
wind
back
22 March
– 23 June 2019
Ade Darmawan
ila
Zac Langdon-Pole
Shubigi Rao
Lucy Raven
Melati Suryodarmo
Notes from the
Curator
NTU CCA Singapore is pleased to present you the exhibition Arus Balik – From below
the wind to above the wind and back again, featuring the six distinguished artists Ade
Darmawan, ila, Zac Langdon-Pole, Shubigi Rao, Lucy Raven, and Melati Suryodarmo,
with works that engage with the maritime history of Southeast Asia, its political
trajectories and struggles, as well as the diversity of its cultural wealth.
again
Arus Balik – From below the wind to above the wind and back again is an exhibition project
that developed from conversations I conducted with Jakarta-based artist Ade Darmawan,
initially about the topography of the early colonial city Batavia (now Jakarta) and its
orientation of buildings and canals, and about the history of Javanese rulers, who, from
the 16th century onwards, moved their attention away from the sea, a tendency they
maintained until very recently (former dictator Suharto was a general of the land forces).
The conversation led to Indonesian author Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s epic book Arus Balik
(1995), which in English means a “turning of the tide.” Darmawan and I chased the book in
Jakarta antiquarian and second-hand book shops, only to realise it was very difficult to find
(certainly its first edition), though we knew that a lot of people own a copy of the book privately.
This exhibition stems from an invitation by the NTU CCA Singapore to the renowned
curator Philippe Pirotte, the Rector of Frankfurt’s Städelschule, and Director of Portikus,
who is this academic year Visiting Professor at NTU’s School of Art, Design and Media,
in the newly established MA in Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices.
With Arus Balik, in reference to Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s epic novel, Philippe conveys
the Centre’s contribution to this year’s bicentennial that commemorates the arrival
of Englishman Sir Stamford Raffles in 1819, the Lieutenant-Governor of the Dutch
East Indies and Bencoolen, considered the founder of modern Singapore. In his novel,
Pramoedya argues that it was a strategic mistake by the coastal kingdoms of 16th-century
Java to focus inland instead of continuing to consider the sea as a connecting body.
Arus Balik unpacks humankind’s perpetual longing to build empires, overwrite cultures,
and produce grand narratives, which inevitably continues today in the form of renewed
nationalism across the world.The project comes from ongoing conversations between
the curator and the artists, some over years, some more recent, bringing together every
artist’s individual attempts to come to terms with the complexities of their own cultural
and political history and identity.
This historical novel by Pramoedya is placed in the early modern period of globalised trade
and geopolitical intrigue around the Straits after the waning of the Majapahit Empire.
Throughout history, trade into and out of the Straits provided strategic power positions to
many early empires like Srivijaya or the sultanates of Aceh and Malacca. For example, Pasai,
which plays an important role in the book, or later Aceh, Indragiri, Singapura, Johore, and
Kedah used the Straits as their lifeline and path to prosperity. The sea passages connect and
divide a region characterised by immense cultural wealth and biodiversity. Arus Balik is in
part a soul-searching about who was to blame for the weakening of the coastal kingdoms
in the Straits—and especially of Java—in the early 16th century, the progressive Islamisation
of the region, and the beginning of Portuguese occupation on parts of the now Malay and
Indonesian peninsula and archipelago.
We are grateful to the curator and the artists, as well as to each contributor of the public
programmes, for lending us their readings and subsequent artistic interpretations, their
journeys into the fictionality of constructed pasts, and allowing us to contextualise and
situate recent historical events within a wider context. We hope that you will enjoy this
exhibition as a point of departure for your own journey and enquiry into history and
its entanglements.
Ute Meta Bauer,
Founding Director NTU CCA Singapore,
and Professor, School of Art, Design and Media, NTU
From the 16th century onwards, Sumatra, Java, the Riau Islands, and the Thai-Malay
Peninsula, once linked by the Straits into one cultural area with many cross-cutting
networks of trade and religion, were carved up by colonial powers. Rivalries and the
increasing penetration of foreign traders led eventually to the Dutch colonisation
of parts of the now Indonesian archipelago. Pramoedya suggests that the final
decline of the Majapahit Empire—in Arus Balik mostly the swan song of the port
city of Tuban, presented as the main successor state to the empire—and the “change
from traditional independence to colonial possession” was caused largely by the
different Javanese kingdoms gradually turning their back to the sea and jealously
Curated by Philippe Pirotte
Left: Shubigi Rao, Singular
transcribed copy of forgotten
oral stories, from writer Syeda
Hamed’s personal collection.
New Delhi, India, 2018.
guarding their sovereignty, rather than attempting to recreate the empire.
Another element was the doubt amongst many of them whether to fight
the Portuguese who appeared with powerful ships in the Indian Ocean,
or to accommodate them. The book recounts the story of the two failed
expeditions that a federation of kingdoms, under the lead of the Demak
Sultanate, undertook to win back the strategically important city of
Malacca from the Portuguese. With the exception of these two expeditions,
Pramoedya locates the end of Majapahit and its cosmopolitanism in the
notion of “Kampung civilisation,” an idea that depicts extreme parochialism
and lack of interest in the outside world that existed among the Javanese
aristocracy, even before colonisation.1 With the fall of Majapahit, the
outside world imposed itself on its own terms, and Pramoedya vividly
portrayed this reversal of the current: “Now fewer and fewer Javanese ships
sailed to the north, to the lands Above the Winds, such as Champa or China.
The stream of ships to the north became reduced to a trickle. The stream to
the south, however, became wider and swifter, carrying new commodities,
new ideas, new religions. One branch of this stream came to Tuban.” 2
The title of the book refers to this reversal of Java’s position in the
world, from actively sailing out to remaining inactive and receiving
others. “Arus balik” is “a current, particularly a current of water, that
turns back and heads in the other direction,” according to Pramoedya
scholar John Roosa.3 Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s reversal of the current
also involves another reversal, a meta-geographical impulse that is
comparable to the notion of the “inverted telescope” that Benedict
Anderson advances in his seminal book The Spectre of Comparisons,
as a non-Eurocentric method of comparison in which, for example,
Portugal is viewed from the standpoint of Southeast Asia.4
Have the multiple colonisations in Southeast Asia alienated the people from the
sea coast? Is it possible to attempt a return? The reversal of the colonial fact,
the promise of reversal of a geopolitical, cultural, and social system, initially
embodied by the Bandung Conference in 1955, caused Afro-American author
Richard Wright to write that “it smacked of tidal waves, of natural forces.” 5
The exhibition Arus Balik – From below the wind to above
the wind and back again aims to imagine the implication
of histories and politics in processes of transition, such as
colonisation and decolonisation, or shifts in maritime power
for people and ports below (the Straits of Malacca, South
China Sea, Java Sea, and further east) and above (the Indian
Ocean and further west) the wind. The exhibition takes
the novel Arus Balik as a starting point to reflect on
perspectival shifts in geopolitical, cultural, social,
religious, and natural spheres.
Right: Shubigi Rao, Books
rescued from the burning
National and University
Library, stored and unused in
dilapidated stables for the last
26 years. Sarajevo, BosniaHerzegovina, 2016.
Both from Pulp:
A Short Biography of the
Banished Book, 2016–18,
5 photographic prints,
60 x 85 cm each.
Courtesy the artist.
Shubigi Rao (b. 1975, India/Singapore) is an artist and writer working with layered installations
of books, etchings, drawings, pseudo-scientific machines, metaphysical puzzles, video works,
ideological board games, and archives. These works demonstrate her diverse interests in subjects such
as archaeology, neuroscience, libraries, archival systems, histories and lies, literature and violence,
ecologies, and natural history. Her current decade-long art project, Pulp: A Short Biography of the
Banished Book, is about the history of book destruction. The first portion of the project, Written in
the Margins, won the Juror’s Choice Award at the triennial APB Foundation Signature Art Prize
2018; and the project’s first book was shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize (non-fiction)
2018. Rao graduated from Delhi University with a BA (Hons) in English Literature, and a BA and
MA in Fine Arts from LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore. She recently completed a residency
at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, and has presented solo exhibitions at Objectifs Centre for
Photography and Film, Singapore; Künstlerhaus Bethanien; National Museum of Singapore; Grey
Projects, Singapore; and the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, LASALLE. Rao’s work has
been featured at Kochi Biennale (2018), Taipei Biennial (2016); Pune Biennale (2017); Singapour en
France–Le Festival (2015); Digital Arts Festival, Copenhagen (2013); and Singapore Biennale (2008).
In a series of drawings and photographs, book-aficionado, artist, and writer
Shubigi Rao connects her research to the difficult conditions, but also extraordinary
examples of solidarity, that Pramoedya Ananta Toer encountered and developed on prison
island Buru. Freed from physical labour after some years of imprisonment, his daily needs,
such as food, medicine, and cigarettes, were provided by fellow inmates, often fellow
intellectuals and artists. He used an old typewriter and adopted a routine organised
around writing. Re-typed copies were distributed inside the camp, and prisoner confrères
would write their comments. Pramoedya’s library and archive had been burnt prior to
his imprisonment and the network of oral memory developed by the prisoners on
Buru Island became, unknown to the camp guards, an editorial and social space.
Rao’s photographs feature burnt manuscripts from the 1990s in Sarajevo and images of books destroyed by floods
in India in August 2018. Selected from her ongoing research into burnt books and destroyed libraries, as well as
communities that form around print, defence of open access, and the endurance of text—particularly handwritten
or transcribed texts—these photographs call to mind the destruction of Pramoedya’s library, and the constant
attempts to silence him. Initially, in prison, Pramoedya was not even allowed to write, but he started telling
stories to other prisoners to raise the general morale. Rao’s Singular transcribed copy of forgotten oral stories,
from writer Syeda Hamed’s personal collection. New Delhi, India (2018) can be read as a response to Pramoedya’s
community of storytellers and their audience which formed in the barracks on Buru Island.
Below: ila, the sons
and daughters of
hungry ghosts, 2019,
photographic print,
29.7 x 42 cm. Courtesy
the artist.
Right: Zac Langdon-Pole, Paradise Blueprint, 2017, wallpaper
based on a cyanotype photogram of the removed legs of a
bird of paradise. Ars Viva (2018), S.M.A.K., Ghent, detail.
Courtesy the artist.
Through memories of ritual dances she witnessed in her childhood,
Melati Suryodarmo returned to a specific performance tradition that
demonstrates physical strength called Reog. A series of memories of trapped
bodies—whipping, dancing accompanied by monotonous music, eating the
broken glass of incandescent lights, dancing on horse braids, and carrying
a giant lion-figure mask named Singa Barong Dadong Sirap—were always
embedded in her mind.
Ade Darmawan (b. 1974, Indonesia) lives and works in
Jakarta as an artist, curator, and director of the artist collective
ruangrupa. He studied at the Graphic Art Department at the
Indonesia Art Institute, and was a resident at the Rijksakademie
Van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam (1998–2000). He works
with installation, objects, drawing, digital print, and video.
Recently he has had solo exhibitions at the Van Abbemuseum,
Eindhoven (2016) and Portikus, Frankfurt (2015). Darmawan
participated in the Gwangju and Singapore Biennales (both
2016), and was a curatorial collaborator in Condition Report
(2017); Media Art Kitchen (2013); and Riverscape in-flux (2012).
ruangrupa, an artist collective co-founded in 2000 with five
other artists in Jakarta, focuses on visual arts and its relation with
the social cultural context, particularly in urban environments.
The collective has exhibited at the São Paulo Biennale (2014);
Asia Pacific Triennial, Brisbane (2012); Istanbul Biennale (2005);
and Gwangju Biennale (2002), among others. They were also
curators of the 2016 Sonsbeek International. Darmawan was a
member of the Jakarta Arts Council (2006–09) and became the
Artistic Director of the Jakarta Biennale in 2009. Since 2013,
he is executive director of the Jakarta Biennale.
Melati Suryodarmo (b. 1969, Indonesia)
graduated in Performance Art from the
Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig,
Germany, under the tutelage of Marina
Abramović and Anzu Furukawa. Her practice,
informed by butoh, dance, and history, is the
result of ongoing research in body movement
and its relationship to the self and the world.
These are enshrined in photography, translated
into choreographed dances, enacted in video, or
executed in live performances. A belief in change
or growth through bodily action belies her early
induction in meditation, which she continues to
practice. Suryodarmo has presented her work
worldwide, including Fukuoka Art Museum;
National Museum of Contemporary Art
Korea, Gwacheon; Kiasma, Helsinki; National
Art Centre Tokyo; National Portrait Gallery,
Canberra; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Para Site,
Hong Kong; Queensland Art Gallery & Gallery of
Modern Art, Brisbane; Seoul Museum of Art; and
Singapore Art Museum. Her work was included
in the 5th Guangzhou Triennale (2015); Incheon
Women Artists’ Biennale (2009); Manchester
International Festival (2009); and Manifesta
7, Bolzano (2008). Since 2007, Suryodarmo
organises the annual Performance Art Laboratory
and Undisclosed Territory, a performance art
festival in Solo, Indonesia, having also founded
the art space Studio Plesungan in 2012. She was
Artistic Director for Jiwa, the 17th Jakarta
Biennale (2017).
In Dancing Under the Black Sky (2019), Suryodarmo traces the history behind
Reog performances informed by Kejawen, a Javanese spiritual tradition that
consists of an amalgam of animistic, Buddhist, Hindu, and Sufi beliefs and
practices. Reog is said to be a satirical art of resistance and criticism of the
Ponorogo people of East Java towards Bhre Kertabhumi, a Majapahit king who
slowly lost his authority in the 15th century. Bhre Kertabhumi was the last king
of Majapahit before Islam became a major force in Demak and controlled the
coastal region of Java. Reog encompasses various kinds of political satire and
elements of violence that are presented through a performance in which bodily
attractions and beauty, and their relation to the spirit of traditional culture,
unfold as various subtle layers of a political body.
Melati Suryodarmo, Dancing Under the Black Sky
(digital film still), 2019, four-channel video, 5 min.
Courtesy the artist.
Suryodarmo’s video-installation is, in part, a critical
reading of Pramoedya’s overlooking of queer
traditions when he refers to, or sometimes idealises,
precolonial Indonesian indigenous culture. Dancing
Under the Black Sky features dancing bodies of
Gemblak boys in a sweaty close-up on four flat
screens rhythmically configured on the wall.
In her video-installation bekas (2019), ila questions what it means to be Boyanese, Buginese,
Minangkabau, or Javanese through encounters with citizens now conflated as Malay Singaporeans,
writing the one-line answer to the question “What does it mean for you to be… (for example,
Javanese/ Boyanese/ Batak/ Bugis)?” on her body. These testimonies slowly wither as they are
exposed to salty water and hot weather on reclaimed areas of Singapore or removed enclaves.
The work, even though it refers to identities outside Singapore’s grand narrative, still uses a
process of “writing over,” taking away multiplicity by using simple answers to a complex question.
bekas means looking at the past, at identities formed within Nusantara, which is old Javanese for
“archipelago,” or the Malayo-Polynesian name of maritime Southeast Asia.
Above: Zac Langdon-Pole, Passport (Argonauta) (viii), 2018,
paper nautilus shell, Campo del Cielo meteorite (iron; coarse
octahedrite, landsite: Chaco / Santiago del Estero, Argentina),
9.4 x 3.1 x 5.3 cm. Courtesy the artist.
Darmawan’s laboratory setting is a reminder that the scramble for the control of the archipelago and the sea passages was
about the extraction of ore and goods in a tightly knit network of trade relations. He draws connections between the colonial
cultuurstelsel, a Dutch government policy for its colonies in the mid-19th century that required a portion of agricultural
production to be devoted to export crops—referred to by Indonesian historians as Tanam Paksa (enforcement planting)—to
Suharto’s New Order regime (1965–98) in Indonesia, by placing his distilling laboratory on books about the regime’s policy
on land and resources. Moreover, Darmawan links the local trade, which has been carried out through the centuries, to
contemporary improved traffic conditions such as ferries and airlines, promoted by the Indonesian government and
answering to a rapid, dynamic development, with sometimes contentious nationalistic overtones.
Reog Ponorogo dancers traditionally perform in a trance-like state. The dancers are expected to
follow strict rules, rituals, and exercises, both physical and spiritual. In Reog, a Warok dancer leads
the show, where he presents his pride, the Gemblak, a young feminine man, who dances on a kuda
kepang, a horse made of bamboo. The boy lover, called Gemblak, is usually kept by the Warok in
their household under the agreement and compensation to the boy’s family. Many Warok and
Gemblak were massacred by Islamic groups during the anti-communist massacre of 1965–66, their
heads placed on pikes for public display. Today, the Warok-Gemblakan practice is discouraged
by local religious authorities and is being shunned through public moral opposition.
In the sons and daughters of hungry ghosts (2019), Singaporean artist ila reflects on the idea
of Singapore as an island and brings forth memories of living near the sea. ila photographed
seascapes in the Singapore Straits: Ubin, East Coast, Sentosa, Sisters’ Islands, Batam,
and Bintan. When put in saltwater taken from these areas, the films corroded, partially
disintegrating like the collective memories of the sea. ila directly addresses matters of
provenance and heritage, reminding Singapore Island of its intricate and historic relation
to the ocean.
Zac Langdon-Pole’s (b. 1988, Aotearoa New
Zealand/Germany) work is underpinned by questions
of belonging, translation, and identification. He has
worked in a variety of media, including sculpture,
performance, photography, film, textiles, poetry,
installation, and using the work of other artists, to
explore processes of montage, transposition,
travelling, reinterpretation, collaboration, and
appropriation. He is the latest recipient of the BMW
Art Journey Prize (2018), was awarded the Ars Viva
Prize for Visual Arts in Germany (2017), and received
the Charlotte Prinz Stipendium in Darmstadt (2016).
Langdon-Pole completed a BFA (Hons) at Elam School
of Fine Arts, Auckland (2010) and at the Städelschule,
Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Frankfurt
(2016). Recent exhibitions include scions, Kunsthalle
Darmstadt (2018); Ars Viva, S.M.A.K., Ghent (2018),
and Kunstverein Munich (2017–18); Discoveries,
Art Basel Hong Kong 2018 (presented by Michael Lett
Gallery); emic etic, Between Bridges, Berlin (2018);
Trappings, Station Gallery, Melbourne (2017);
La Biennale de Montréal (2016–17); and Oratory
Index, Michael Lett Gallery, Auckland (2016).
Ade Darmawan, Ferry trip from Merak to Bakauheni, Sunda
Strait, Indonesia, 2018, documentation. Courtesy the artist.
For the exhibition, Darmawan created an installation with laboratory equipment, and gathered different materials such as soil,
spices, and plants to transform them through distillation processes using alkaline water from the Java Sea and Singapore Straits,
for example, pala (nutmeg), fundamental for its preservation qualities during long sea travel; cendana (sandalwood); kayu manis
(cinnamon); lada (pepper); kemiri (candlenut); daun cengkeh (clover leaf); daun sirih (betel leaf); daun nipah (attap palm); daun
kelapa (coconut leaf); or the healing daun tapak liman (Elephantopus Scaber Linn. in Latin). Tapak liman was used in traditional
medicine for cancer treatment or as an aphrodisiac.
Though published only in 1995 (the 50th anniversary of
Indonesian independence), Arus Balik was the first novel
Pramoedya wrote while imprisoned on Buru Island in 1974. Arus
Balik and Arok Dedes were the two major historical novels he
wrote there, next to the famous Buru tetralogy.6 Considering all of
them together provides a glimpse of a broader project Pramoedya
once described as the effort to write to “the roots” of Indonesian
nationalism. Arus Balik is the only one of those novels that was
never translated into English, with the exception of the first
chapter, and the translation of its title in English is debated. The
literal translation from Bahasa Indonesia would be the “reversal
of the tide.” The Dutch title, however, De Stroom Uit het Noorden,
translates to “The Flow from the North,” which is already more
an interpretation of the novel.
Left: ila, bekas
(film still), 2019, in
collaboration with Kin
Chui, video projection,
stereo, 10 min.
Courtesy the artist.
ila (b. 1985, Singapore) is a visual and performance artist
who works with found objects, moving images, and live
performance. She seeks to create alternative nodes of
experience and entry points into the peripheries of the
unspoken, the tacit, and the silenced. With light as her medium
of choice, and invisible communities as her point of interest,
ila weaves imagined narratives into existing realities. Using her
body as a space of tension, negotiation, and confrontation, she
creates work that generates discussions about gender, history,
and identity in relation to pressing contemporary issues. ila
has performed at National Design Centre (2019), Performance
Archives Resource Orchestrator, Singapore (2018); and
ArtScience Late, Singapore (2018); had a solo presentation at
Coda Culture, Singapore (2018); and exhibited at OH! Open
House, Singapore (2019); Objectifs - Centre for Photography &
Film, Singapore (2016), Ketemu Project Space, Bali (2016), and
Unifiedfield, Granada (2015); among others.
As a starting point for his installation, Ade Darmawan
re-read Arus Balik with a special focus on how different
characters in the book use natural resources. He undertook a field trip to the city of Tuban, that plays a central
role in the book, and to the nearby town of Bojonegoro, a
major producer of teakwood and tobacco, where recently
the biggest oil reserve in Indonesia was found. Both cities
are not far from Blora, the birthplace of Pramoedya.
Zac Langdon-Pole’s Paradise Blueprint (2017), a wallpaper
based on a cyanotype photogram of the removed legs of a bird
of paradise, covers the walls of the exhibition space entirely.
This project centres upon the history of cultural exchange and
mythology surrounding the so-called birds of paradise native
to Papua New Guinea. These birds became the first form of
currency between Papuans and European explorers in the 16th
century when they were traded for tools, nails, and blankets.
They first reached Europe as trade skins that had—as part of a
local Papuan preservation tradition—been prepared with their
feet removed. Devoid of their original context, this triggered
many exaggerated speculations by European naturalists as to
why exactly these birds had no feet. One such projection was
that the birds lived in an imagined “world of paradise” and that
they had never touched the ground, perpetually held aloft by
their elaborate plumes, until they fell from the heavens.
Langdon-Pole’s Passport (Argonauta) (viii) (2018) is part of a series of works that proposes
a metaphysical reimagining of the notion of a passport. Each piece in this series combines
a delicate paper nautilus shell with a unique meteorite fragment handcrafted to fill its
aperture. Paper nautiluses are paper-thin, fragile egg-case shells made by deep sea creatures
known as Argonauts, of the genus of Octopedes. The Argonauts are often cited as being
one of the original inspirations for building sailing boats in ancient Greece since they were
observed floating upon their shell, using their webbed tentacles to catch the wind. The
meteorites used for each shell come from different geographical land sites and are entirely
unique in their chemical composition. Formed in outer space before the earth existed and
having travelled across unfathomable distances and time-scales, meteorites are unlike any
matter found on this planet. This particular piece uses a meteorite from Argentina, from a
place which gives it its name, Campo del Cielo, which translates as “Field of the Heavens.”
Lucy Raven (b. 1977, United States) received a BFA in studio art and a BA in
art history from the University of Arizona, Tucson, and an MFA from Bard
College’s Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, New York. Primarily
grounded in animation and the moving image, Raven’s multidisciplinary practice
also incorporates still photography, installation, sound, and performative lecture.
Throughout her oeuvre, Raven explores how images can convey networks of
labour. The artist has received numerous awards, including the San Francisco Bay
Area component of the Artadia Award (2013), and residencies at the Hammer
Museum, Los Angeles (2011–12) and Oakland Museum of California (2012). Her
work has been exhibited in numerous international solo presentations, including
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2014); Portikus, Frankfurt
(2014); Hammer Museum (2012–13); and Nevada Museum of Art, Reno (2010).
She participated in group exhibitions at the Whitney Museum, New York (2013);
Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Oregon (2013); MoMA PS1, New York
(2013 and 2010); and Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus (2010), among
others. Her work was included in the 2012 Whitney Biennial, and can be found
in permanent collections such as Tate Modern, the Museum of Modern Art, the
Whitney Museum, and the Guggenheim.
Lucy Raven, 3-3-19:
Debris flow erosion,
wet cement on dry
cement and sand-L,
2019, cement and
sand on silk, 214
x 133 cm, process
documentation.
Courtesy the artist.
Lucy Raven creates silk paintings or monoprints, made by imprint of sedimentation in
erosion boxes, as scrim backdrops she uses for a forthcoming film production called Kongkreto,
the Tagalog word for concrete. The film is inspired by the 1991 volcanic eruption of Mount
Pinatubo in the Philippine state of Pampanga and the subsequent evacuation of nearby Clark
Air Force Base.
Clark was the largest United States air base outside the country for most of the 20th century—
the backstage for America’s involvement in all of the wars of the Pacific, the site of Reagan’s
evacuation of Ferdinand Marcos, and a city in itself with a resident population of 15,000.
Despite growing Filipino opposition to the base beginning in the 1980s, the United States
military showed no signs of leaving—until Mount Pinatubo’s unexpected eruption (which
began on Filipino Independence Day) forced its evacuation and the abandonment of ongoing
lease renegotiations.
Due to its massive energetic detonation, Mount Pinatubo ejected not lava but a molten, ashy,
pyroclastic flow, called lahars, which, combined with a typhoon, distributed the material in
a devastating spiral of ashy downpour throughout the region. Lahars, known as wet concrete,
solidifies as it cools, first burying, then immobilising anything in its path. It also has a seemingly
endless afterlife: each new significant rainstorm remobilises inert lahar deposits upstream,
causing a cascade of destruction and uncertainty.
See Hilmar Farid Setiadi, “Rewriting the Nation, Pramoedya Ananta Toer and the Politics of Decolonization,” unpublished
PhD dissertation, Cultural Studies in Asia Programme (Singapore: National University of Singapore, 2014), 246.
Pramoedya Ananta Toer, “The Port of Tuban,” first chapter of Arus Balik, Pramoedya’s Novel of Java’s Lost Maritime
Empire, trans. John Roosa, Emergences 10, no. 2 (2000): 288.
3
Ibid., 282.
4
Benedict Anderson, The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia, and the World (London: Verso, 2011).
5
Richard Wright, The Colour Curtain (London: Dobson, 1956), 238.
6
Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Arok Dedes (Jakarta: Lentera Dipantara, 2015 [2006]).
1
2
Special thanks to Professor
Alan Chan, Vice President
(Alumni and Advancement),
President’s Office, and Professor
Dorrit Vibeke Sorensen, Chair,
NTU ADM, for their support
of Philippe Pirotte’s presence
this academic year at NTU CCA
Singapore and NTU School of
Art, Design and Media.
The exhibited scrims in the end are some sort of monotype made
by stretching silk on a sheet of plywood inside a box with a
“landscape model.” The scrims hang in the exhibition space on
horizontal rods suspended from C-stands, typically used to hang,
suspend, or position flags, backdrops, lights, and other equipment
during film production. Forming planes of one landscape, the scrims’
imprint comes from the modelling or “terraforming”—here solid
form breached by liquid in the erosion boxes—re-enacting
the solid becoming liquefied through eruption and indexing the
barrier between solid and liquid or between the land and the sea.
Like chapters in a novel, a new narrative is created through the juxtaposition
of all these works that engage with interwoven historical trajectories. From
Rao’s dusty book archives to Darmawan’s analytical distillations, from ila’s
questioning of the collective memory to Langdon-Pole’s reimagining of travel
and navigation, and from Raven’s heroic lava to Suryodarmo’s decontextualised
dancing bodies, the viewer is, not unlike Pramoedya in his own personal
experience, caught in between the tides of history, identity, and belonging.
Philippe Pirotte, Curator
Philippe Pirotte (Belgium/Germany) is an art historian and curator. He
is the Dean of the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste – Städelschule,
and Director of Portikus, both in Frankfurt am Main. Next to that he serves
as Adjunct Senior Curator at the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film
Archive. In 1999, he co-founded the Antwerp contemporary art centre
Objectif Exhibitions, and from 2005 to 2011 he was Director at Kunsthalle
Bern. From 2004 to 2013, Pirotte held the position of Senior Advisor at
the Rijksakademie for Visual Arts in Amsterdam. He was curator of the 2016
edition of La Biennale de Montréal, entitled Le Grand Balcon, and in 2017
was a member of the curatorial team of the Jakarta Biennale.
�
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
Arus Balik: From below the wind to above the wind and back again Exhibition Brochure
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
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<i>Arus Balik: From below the wind to above the wind and back again</i> Exhibition Brochure
Description
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<i>Arus Balik: From below the wind to above the wind and back again</i> Exhibition Brochure
Date
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2019-03-22
Contributor
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Ade Darmawan
ila
Zac Langdon-Pole
Lucy Raven
Shubigi Rao
Melati Surydarmo
Philippe Pirotte
Format
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Brochure
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
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/57163/archive/files/73be6f827107eff1fbf5e8711cab2a8b.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=FDyJTiI6WkL2BxfCYn5otBp3eTmh71wuI3qzwPkN9xik0Q%7EFS-DyMK2bzX2zifEGk7S7J3FIHvyxDWTlnrq%7E7akjq0vPL2CnRFz7nXz6wiFzguLHX6nwO3rpvZGVTSKqHWiih1RD%7EIHtxOlT7fOUgxI81EIjFQAwSzLrE79QaJ57-PgGs7euPJeh5dsIKvqadaTRcJsUDkY%7EzLU-xNaaE1oi5mNpYuQ5mWfbbnz8W7fyBkYX2fFo84vWYYQqDOq1eU5uFJdXwoYQ7xYOE9NRS6ewOK%7EcBlbAYpeBGy-74TIjocxCMj7zdp1gbLFTghQe4MGxBWXUnvDYSg6ZAx5xFA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
68ed0310f55d8936590c58aba7d9fc80
PDF Text
Text
THE LAB
14 FEBRUARY – 14 JUNE 2020
MARY OTIS STEVENS.
THE i PRESS SERIES
�MARY OTIS STEVENS.
THE i PRESS SERIES�
Mary Otis Stevens is a pioneering American architect based in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. Both in partnership with Thomas F. McNulty and later with Design
Guild, Stevens linked architectural projects to her civic involvements and to a radical
re-envisioning of spatial/social relationships in various media. This presentation
showcases her sketches, drawings, and designs that provide insight into concepts and
visualisations around people, space, cities, and society. In the context of the Cold War
and American political activism of the 1960s, Stevens’ work reflects her background
in philosophy and her commitment to de-centralise hierarchies. The themes of active
citizen participation in government, integrated planning, and genuine risk-taking
to make substantial change in people’s lives remain relevant and a crucial means of
incorporating a social context into the practice of architecture and other activities
affecting human wellbeing for each and for all.
This research presentation links to her role as a co-founder of i Press, an influential
publisher of books on architecture and urban theory. It also connects to NTU CCA
Singapore’s ongoing inquiry into urbanism after the Bandung Conference of 1955,
including the work of Singaporean Architects William S.W. Lim (b. 1932) and
Datuk Seri Lim Chong Keat (b. 1930), a contemporary of Mary Otis Stevens at MIT.
Lim’s books Cities for People: Reflections of a Southeast Asian Architect (1990) and
Incomplete Urbanism: A Critical Urban Strategy for Emerging Economies (2012) have
been explored at NTU CCA Singapore in multiple ways, including the exhibition
Incomplete Urbanism: Attempts of Critical Spatial Practice (2016), CITIES FOR PEOPLE
NTU CCA Ideas Fest 2016/2017, and the recently published book The Impossibility
of Mapping (Urban Asia) (2020).
Thomas F. McNulty and Mary Otis Stevens at
the Lincoln House, Massachusetts, 1965.
Stevens and McNulty founded i Press in 1968 in association with the New York
Publisher George Braziller. Between 1969 and 1974 they published five books in the
i Press series on the human environment (see page 2) Each book used architecture
and urban design as tools to explore alternatives to dysfunctional social and cultural
practices—and their underlying assumptions in societies then dominant—as well as
applying these concepts to those emerging. Writing about i Press in 1974, Stevens
reflected that, “Although the authors and i Press itself have tended toward a planning
and architectural orientation, this background has not necessarily narrowed the
contents or perspectives of either. It has, however, provided a point of departure
for visualising how urban and industrial processes affect and indeed radically shape
and alter the lives of most people in most societies today.” 1
Acknowledgements:
We would like to thank Mary Otis Stevens and the
MIT Museum Architecture and Design Collections
for their kind collaboration and support.
All images (except pages 4 and 5):
Courtesy of the artist and MIT Museum Architecture
and Design Collections.
1
�THE i PRESS SERIES ON
THE HUMAN ENVIRONMENT
NTU CCA Singapore’s
presentation in The
Lab presents a deep
dive into two of the
i Press titles: World
of Variation and The
Ideal Communist City.
Thinking about how
these books and their
content can best be
presented to new
audiences, they are
offered in multiple
formats—original, enlarged, and digital. The Ideal Communist City offers a way of
thinking about mobility, access and equity, and social interaction in neighbourhood
planning, in direct response to suburban development and its focus on private spaces
for family life. World of Variation explores the concept of variation as a fundamental
component of life and design. In Stevens’ words, “Only by variation can there be
change. Only through contrast can one measure, appraise, and relate.” 2
1969
The Ideal Communist City
English language translation of Idee per la Citta Communista (il Saggiatore,
Milano 1968) of urban concepts by architects and planners at the University of
Moscow proposing that “the new city is a world belonging to all and to each”
and “how life in the future might be in an industrial society anywhere on earth“,
Preface by Giancarlo De Carlo.
1970
World of Variation
Conceptual concepts for sustainable humanistic environments by Mary Otis Stevens
AIA and Thomas F. McNulty. “The authors of World of Variation explore this
problem of growth and order using an architectural imagery that reflects the new
social and social and visual scales of peoples’ involvement with society.”
1972
Towards a Non-Oppressive Environment
By Alexander Tzonis, it “interweaves several movements of our time:
the anthropological, linguistic, urban planning, and radical dissent…” The essay
is devoted to the description of the impact of the concepts of oppression on the
formation of theories of architecture and the emergence of a new approach
to the creation of the man-made environment.”
In order to help introduce the i Press series on the human environment to a wide
audience, NTU CCA Singapore, with series editors Ute Meta Bauer (Founding
Director, NTU CCA Singapore and Professor, NTU ADM), James D. Graham
(Director of Publications, Columbia University GSAPP), and Pelin Tan (2019-2020
Keith Haring Fellow in Art and Activism, Bard College), is currently working with
i Press and Mary Otis Stevens to republish several original i Press books with
revisions and commentary by contemporary theorists and practitioners.
1972
Playing Urban Games
A critique by Martin Kuenzlan, an “architect-urbanist from Berlin investigates
planning in highly developed capitalist societies, especially the United States, whose
cities have become scenes of physical chaos, class and race struggles, in short urban
massacres…” The book concludes with the social changes that must occur in the
planning profession as well as in society at large before either can be truly rational
and human.”
The past half century has demonstrated that the knowledges of ecologically based
societies are invaluable amidst the climate crisis and the global struggle for survival.
Many of the themes and proposals in the five published books—and those on the
original list of the i Press series on the human environment—are even more pertinent
today. Revisiting i Press fifty years later is therefore not just a project to examine
the rare out-of-print books, but a chance to re-examine the issues, architectural
concepts, and urban arguments presented by the authors and introduce them into
the discussion and contemporary debates on planning sustainable architecture
and urban development on local, national, and global scales.
1973
From Tipi to Skyscraper: A History of Women in Architecture
By Doris Cole, a critical review of the role of women in architecture, “Even the
heritage that pioneer women passed down to their female descendants was forsaken
as women were slowly cut off fromtheir men and from the public life of their
communities. The American women’s gain in comforts and leisure must be
measured against their loss of status as well as by the dulling of their pioneer spirit.”
1
2
3
2
Mary Otis Stevens, Unpublished manuscript, 12 September 1974, typescript,
MIT Museum Architecture and Design Collections.
Mary Otis Stevens, “Notes on the Theme of Variation” (unpublished manuscript,
24 November 1969), typescript, MIT Museum Architecture and Design Collections.
�Mary Otis Stevens, The i Press Series, 14 February – 26 April 2020,
NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, The Lab, installation view.
4
�With the collapse circa 1970 of the
Modern Movement, which had never
rooted in the American society, Stevens
began her search for vernacular origins
of American architecture. She was
fortunate to receive two successive
Fellowships from the National
Endowment for the Arts (1975-1978)
to continue her pursuit. That led
to Stevens teaching part time at the
Boston Architectural Center founded
in 1899 with the mission to provide
professional instruction for students
and others interested in the practice
of architecture or the allied arts,
“especially those whose employment
might interfere with such education
in day schools and universities.” As
a faculty and Board member Stevens
helped the BAC obtain accreditation.
It is now the degree granting Boston
Architectural College.
MIT Museum calls Mary Otis Stevens “one of the most important female
architects in the Northeast during the 1960s and 1970s.” Stevens graduated
from Smith College in 1949 with a degree in philosophy. Beginning in her
undergraduate years she was active in the civil rights movement, presaging
a lifelong commitment to social, political, and civic activism. Stevens entered
the architecture programme at MIT in 1953, graduating with an SBArch in
1956. Influences at MIT included Alvar Aalto, Eero Saarinen, Kevin Lynch,
and Buckminster Fuller, who was also a family friend. Stevens worked
for The Architects’ Collaborative (TAC) before launching a practice with
MIT faculty member Thomas F. McNulty (1919-1984) in 1957.
Stevens and McNulty practiced together until
1974 and were most known for the Lincoln
House—the communal concrete and glass
curvilinear house they designed for their own
family in Lincoln, Massachusetts, a rural suburb
of Boston. It won international attention.
Above: Aerial view of the
Lincoln House, Massachusetts.
Right: Mary Otis Stevens,
The internal structure of things,
drawing, 10 February 1961.
Right above: Mary Otis Stevens,
The Enclave, mixed media.
Mary Otis Stevens, together
with colleagues and students
in the Boston area, established
Design Guild (1973-1992), a
multi-disciplinary collaborative
committed to sustainable and
socially responsible developments.
Its mission statement—“to
preserve the past while building
new, and to build new what
will be worth preserving in the
future”—guided its professional
teams and daily operations
selecting projects, most in the
public domain, that were process
as opposed to product oriented.
�NTU CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART
SINGAPORE�
NTU CCA SINGAPORE STAFF
Professor Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director, NTU CCA Singapore
and Professor, School of Art, Design and Media, NTU
EXHIBITIONS & RESIDENCIES
A member of the Boston Society of Architects since 1973, Stevens served on its Board,
co-founding Architects for Social Responsibility (ASR) to promote sustainable architecture
and planning. In association with other professional societies, ASR sponsored public
educational programmes on environmental issues, organised design charrettes dealing
with the adaptive re-use of demobilised military bases like Fort Devens, and similar
public facilities. ASR published handbooks on sustainable architectural practice and urban
planning for professionals that were widely distributed by the BSA to other AIA chapters
and the interested public.
This research presentation in The Lab is organised by NTU CCA Singapore and curated by Karin
Oen, Deputy Director, Curatorial Programmes, in collaboration with Ute Meta Bauer, Founding
Director, NTU CCA Singapore, and Professor, NTU ADM; Mary Otis Stevens; Gary Van Zante
and Jennifer Tran, MIT Museum Architecture and Design Collections. All images courtesy Mary
Otis Stevens and MIT Museum.
Above:
Mary Otis Stevens,
Cultural Collage,
mixed media.
Right:
Mary Otis Stevens,
Establishing a new
nucleus, drawing.
Dr Karin Oen, Deputy Director, Curatorial Programmes
Dr Anna Lovecchio, Curator, Residencies
Magdalena Magiera, Curator, Outreach & Education
Ana Sophie Salazar, Assistant Curator, Exhibitions
Frankie Fang, Assistant Manager, Production
Isrudy Shaik, Senior Executive, Production
Ilya Katrinnada Binte Zubaidi, Curatorial Assistant, Outreach & Education
Seet Yun Teng, Curatorial Assistant, Residencies
Susan Htoo, Young Professional Trainee, Residencies
Nurshafiqah Zainudin, Young Professional Trainee, Exhibitions
Arabelle Zhuang, Young Professional Trainee, Exhibitions
Jolene Lau, Intern, Production
RESEARCH & EDUCATION
Soh Kay Min, Executive, Conference, Workshops & Archive
Kong Yin Ying, Young Professional Trainee, Research
OPERATIONS & STRATEGIC DEVELOPMENT
Peter Lin, Deputy Director, Operations & Strategic Development
Jasmaine Cheong, Assistant Director, Operations & Human Resource
Jillian Kwan, Assistant Director, Development
Joyce Lee, Manager, Finance
Cheryl Ho, Manager, Communications
Perla Espiel, Special Project Assistant
Iris Tan, Senior Executive, Administration & Finance
Louis Tan, Executive, Operations
Ong Xue Min, Young Professional Trainee, Communications
Annette DeSouza, Young Professional Trainee, Communications & Development
�ABOUT 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 three-fold 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.
NTU CCA SINGAPORE
VISITOR INFORMATION �
EXHIBITION HOURS
EXHIBITIONS
Tuesday – Sunday, 12.00 – 7.00pm
Closed on Mondays
Open on Public Holidays
(except Mondays)
Block 43 Malan Road, Singapore 109443
Tel +65 6339 6503
ntu.ccasingapore.org
ntu.ccasingapore
NTUCCASingapore
Blocks 37 and 38 Malan Road,
Singapore 109452 and 109441
RESEARCH CENTRE AND OFFICE
Block 6 Lock Road, #01-09/10,
Singapore 108934 | Tel +65 6460 0300
Enquiries:
ntuccaevents@ntu.edu.sg
School/ Group Tours:
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A RESEARCH CENTRE OF
LOCATED AT
© NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore
Printed April 2020 by First Printers
Cover: Mary Otis Stevens, Hesitations, model.
FREE ADMISSION
RESIDENCIES STUDIOS
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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
Mary Otis Stevens. The i Press Series Exhibition Brochure
Theme
Place.Labour.Capital.
Climates. Habitats. Environments.
None
Climates. Habitats. Environments.
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>Mary Otis Stevens. The i Press Series</i> Exhibition Brochure
Description
An account of the resource
<i>Mary Otis Stevens. The i Press Series</i> Exhibition Brochure
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2020-02-14
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mary Otis Stevens
Karin Oen
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Brochure
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
North America