Artistic Research]]> Archival Practice]]> Knowledge Production]]> History]]> Other days by appointment.
Residencies Studio #01-03, Block 37 Malan Road

Future Trees and the Pulp of History (2) is a combined presentation by Artist-in-Residence Ho Rui An and artist Tan Biyun that explores the artists’ shared interests in participatory democracies, historical archives and speculative futures. Their works engage various strategies to rearrange existing narrative structures and activate new forms of political imagination.

As a consolidation of the research undertaken during his residency with NTU CCA, Ho presents a selection of material relating to the history of foresight, both globally and within the Singapore public sector. This includes a set of images extracted from a CD-ROM produced on the occasion of an exhibition organised in celebration of Public Service 21 (PS21), an initiative that can be regarded as a precursor to the current Smart Nation programme. Together, these materials variously project forms of millennial optimism or anxiety—the former exemplified by Peter Schwartz and Peter Leyden’s seminal essay “The Long Boom”, the latter by two national scenarios created by the Scenario Planning Office in Singapore describing the city-state in states of crisis.

Against this history of the future presented in Ho’s collection, Tan posits a speculative near-future where the history of Singapore faces the fate of being pulped. Tan conjures a scenario where students, sick of the propaganda purveyed in their textbooks, have abandoned the study of History altogether, prompting the Ministry to recall and destroy all textbooks in circulation. Conceived as a “protest against forgetting” (Eric Hobsbawn), Tan’s The Unforgetting Space seeks a more inclusive understanding of the past and triggers the process of reclaiming the writing of history from the authorities. This participatory project features several textbooks dating from the 1970s and two old typewriters on which audiences are invited to retype historical episodes selected from the books. They are also encouraged to contribute a text based on their own sources should a historical episode be found to be missing or misrepresented.

]]>
Ho Rui An]]> Tan Biyun]]>
Archival Practice]]> Artistic Research]]> Identity]]> Knowledge Production]]> Capitalism]]> 23 Sep 2016, Fri 7:00pm - 11:00pm
24 Sep 2016, Sat 2:00pm - 7:00pm
Residencies studios, Blocks 37 & 38 Malan Road

Residencies: OPEN offers a rare insight into the often introverted sphere of the artists’ studio. Through showcasing discussions, performances, research and works-in-progress, Residencies: OPEN profiles the diversity of contemporary art practice and the divergent ways artists conceive artwork with the studio as a constant space for experimentation and contemplation.

Antariksa, Block 38, Malan Road, Studio #01-05

As part of his residency at the NTU CCA Singapore, Antariksa researches the history of the Japanese Occupation (1942-1945) in Singapore. He is especially interested in collecting historical evidence of the propaganda strategies pursued by the occupiers and compare them with the forms of resistance and alternative visual strategies developed by the artists at the time. This project is part of a wider study on the history of art collectivism in Asia under the Japanese Occupation.

The presentation of archival material and images in his studio has been made possible thanks to the National Archives of Singapore.

Heman Chong, Block 38, Malan Road, Studio #01-07

The Library of Unread Books
Ongoing project

The Library of Unread Books is Heman Chong’s long-term project: a members-only reference library made up of donated books that are unread by their previous owners. The cost of a lifetime membership to the library is the donation of a single unread book. In keeping with the artist’s intimate longing for a space to go to in the dead of the night to encounter books he has never thought of reading, “night passes” will also be issued for visitors and the Library will be open for 24 hours every Friday night from 7.00pm to 7.00pm the next day.

Chong is a Singaporean artist, writer, and curator whose practice develops across a variety of media. He often works as a facilitator of situations in which new narratives and modes of intellectual exchange are enacted to rethink conventional modes of sharing and transmitting knowledge. Since 2003, he has been interested in negotiating public space as a site of speech. For his six-month research at the NTU CCA Residencies Programme, he intends to turn his studio into an artist-run space where other artists can present their works, gather for discussion, and find a quiet space for contemplation.

Ho Rui An, Block 37, Malan Road, Studio #01-03

IN-RESIDENCE
2014
HD video
17 min 30 sec

Produced during a residency on-board a transatlantic vessel, the video interweaves two layers of time experienced by the artist during the month-long journey: that of being “in-residence” and that of being “on expedition”. Two literary characters serve as points of reference for the film’s invisible protagonist: the colonial officer Percival from Virginia Woolf’s The Waves (1931) and from Italo Calvino’s novel Mr Palomar (1983). Exploring the dissonance between the sense of nausea experienced by the artist during the residency and the scientific scope of the expedition, the film muses upon representational technologies that turn the natural world into an image.

Ho Rui An is an artist and writer who works at the intersection of contemporary art, cinema, performance, and theory. He writes, talks, and thinks around images investigating their sites of emergence, transmission, and disappearance within the contexts of cultural production. Recently he has focused on the aesthetic form of the “lecture performance” to explore the relationship between art, research, and the circulation of knowledge. During his residency at NTU CCA Singapore, Ho intends to study the aesthetics of “futurecraft” and of “horizon scanning” programmes run both by the state and private entities.

Ato Malinda, Block 37, Malan Road, Studio #01-04

Drawings
2016
Mixed media
Dimensions variable

Since 2012, Ato Malinda has been working on a series of drawings that relate to her innermost feelings and fantasies about gender-related issues. Often inspired by events in her life and in the life of her friends, the drawings outline half-human, half-animal creatures caught up in intimate situations and pensive poses.

On fait ensemble
2010
HD video
10 min

Mami Wata was a water spirit worshipped in Africa long before the arrival of the Europeans. In the 1880s a German hunter married a Southeast Asian woman and brought her to Hamburg where she performed in Völkerschau (human zoo) as a snake charmer. A lithograph of hers was reprinted in Bombay in 1955 and eventually came to West Africa where it was recognised as a portrait of Mami Wata. Re-enacting the arrival of the image in Africa, the artist reflects on the complex patterns of exchange and contamination that determine cultural identities.

The work of Malinda encompasses performance, drawing, painting, installation, video, and ceramic sculpture and investigates the nature of African identity, contesting notions of authenticity as well as fixed assumptions about gender and sexuality. During her residency at the NTU CCA Singapore, she is conducting archival research on the Tang shipwreck — occurred 380 miles off the Singapore Strait around 830 CE — to explore concepts of hybridity and globalisation in relation to Singapore’s history of sea trading and porcelain manufacturing.

Bo Wang, Block 37, Malan Road, Studio #01-02

Spectrum, or the Singapore Dan Flavin
2016
Seven fluorescent tubes

With a formalistic reference to Dan Flavin, seven fluorescent tubes are arranged in a grid structure that propagates different shades of white in the space. The spectrum of white lights are in different colour temperatures, which were sampled from various social spaces in Singapore, from polished restaurant, luxury hotel, to industrial buildings and dormitory of migrant workers.

As a visual artist and a film maker, Bo Wang observes contemporary urban landscapes that are undergoing intensified processes of transformation and excavates the power structures and cultural anxieties related to these accelerated forms of transitions. His work depicts provocative portraits of China examining the ways in which the State retains its authoritarian way of rule while pursuing capitalism. For his residency at NTU CCA Singapore, Wang is researching the politics of space, issues of territorial expansion, and the social implications surrounding the pursuit of sand in Singapore where 22% of her land mass has been reclaimed from the sea through sand acquired from neighbouring countries.

]]>
Antariksa]]> Heman Chong]]> Ho Rui An]]> Ato Malinda]]> Bo Wang]]> Southeast Asia]]> Asia]]>
Artistic Research]]> Archival Practice]]> 12 Nov 2016, Sat 02:00 PM - 07:00 PM
Residencies Studios

Residencies OPEN offers a rare insight into the often introverted sphere of the artists’ studio. Through showcasing discussions, performances, research and works-in-progress, Residencies:OPEN profiles the diversity of contemporary art practice and the divergent ways artists conceive artwork with the studio as a constant space for experimentation and research.

This edition of Residencies OPEN features video installations and several book-related projects. Participants include Artists-in-Residence Heman Chong (Singapore), Ho Rui An (Singapore), Arin Rungjang (Thailand), SHIMURAbros (Japan/Germany), and Tamara Weber (United States).

Heman Chong Block 38 Malan Road, Studio #01-07
Ho Rui An Block 37 Malan Road, Studio#01-03
Arin Rungjang Block 38 Malan Road, Studio #01-05
SHIMURAbros Block 37 Malan Road, Studio #01-04
Tamara Weber Block 38 Malan Road, Studio #01-06

Residencies OPEN offers a rare insight into the often introverted sphere of the artists’ studio. Through showcasing discussions, performances, research and works-in-progress, Residencies:OPEN profiles the diversity of contemporary art practice and the divergent ways artists conceive artwork with the studio as a constant space for experimentation and research.

This edition of Residencies OPEN features video installations and several book-related projects. Participants include Artists-in-Residence Heman Chong (Singapore), Ho Rui An (Singapore), Arin Rungjang (Thailand), SHIMURAbros (Japan/Germany), and Tamara Weber (United States).

Heman Chong Block 38 Malan Road, Studio #01-07
Ho Rui An Block 37 Malan Road, Studio#01-03
Arin Rungjang Block 38 Malan Road, Studio #01-05
SHIMURAbros Block 37 Malan Road, Studio #01-04
Tamara Weber Block 38 Malan Road, Studio #01-06

BIOGRAPHY

Heman Chong (Singapore)

The first iteration of a ten-year-long project, Heman Chong's The Library of Unread Books develops from the artist's deep-seated longing for books. It is a members-only reference library made up of donated books that are unread by their previous owners. The cost of a lifetime member- ship to the library is the donation of one unread book. By receiving and revealing that which people choose not to read, the Library is the result of acollectivegestureandtracestheperimetersofunwantedknowledge. Managed in collaboration with chief librarian Renée Staal, the library is open every Friday from 12.00pm to 12.00am until the end of February.

Ho Rui An (Singapore)

A combined presentation by Artist-in-Residence Ho Rui An and artist Tan Biyun, Future Trees and the Pulp of History explores their shared interests in participatory democracies, historical archives, and speculative futures. Both artists engage various strategies to rearrange existing narrative structures and activate new forms of political imagination.

For the first time in Singapore, Ho exhibits the documentation of Screen Green (2015-16), a lecture perfomance that probes the politics of screening and greening in the city-state. Conceived as a “protest against forgetting” (Eric Hobsbawn), Tan's The Unforgetting Space seeks a more inclusive understanding of the past and triggers the process of reclaiming the writing of history from the authorities. This participatory project features several textbooks dating from the 1970s and two old typewriters inviting the audiences to retype historical episodes selected from the books.

The works will be on view from 12 November to 10 December 2016, every Saturday and Sunday, from 12.00pm to 7.00pm.

Arin Rungjang (Thailand)

Investigating the phenomenon of historical rumours in Thailand and Singapore Arin Rungjang’s research aims to unearth unofficial stories that circulate by word of mouth to explore the ways in which they subtly infiltrate dominant notions of historical truth and shape our collective imagery.

Produced during the residency, the video interview with Johnston Anderson Cheong captures an intimate and poignant dialogue. This heart-warming exchange delves not only into Cheong’s personal history, memories, family relationships, and struggles growing up as an albino in Singapore, but it also prompts a broader reflection on common perceptions and prescribed social norms.

SHIMURAbros (Japan/Germany)

During their residency, SHIMURAbros will expand their previous research on Singapore’s archaeology and film history to explore the reverse trajectories and movements of various archaeological items from Southeast Asia to Singapore. Their research materials include books, photographs, documents, films, and archival footage.

In 24!= the artists rearranged the 24 frames composing one second in the first feature-length motion picture with synchronized sound, The Jazz Singer (1927), when the sentence “You ain't heard nothing yet" is spoken, according to all the possible permutations of the 24 frames. The time needed to screen the whole film exceeds the life-span of a star.

Tamara Weber (United States)

In the last year, Tamara Weber has been working closely with New York-based curator Annie Seaton on Close Readings, a collaborative project of visual investigation that casts an anthropomorphising look on architecture and other bodies. Centred around the logic of the book, Close Readings features a series of interactive textual images that reference 1960s advertising, botanical imagery, pulps, abstraction, and Eugenic vignettes. These works are created via repetition, textual insertions, and implantation (“re-rooting”) into other media and they are meant to be continuously deconstructed, disassembled, and re-constructed through an open-ended editorial process that unfolds multiple meanings.

]]>
Heman Chong]]> Ho Rui An]]> Arin Rungjang]]> SHIMURAbros ]]> Tamara Weber]]> Southeast Asia]]>
Artistic Research]]> Archival Practice]]> 7 Nov 2015, Sat 2:00pm - 7:30pm
Blocks 37, 38 & 43 Malan Road

Residencies: OPEN
Studios at Blocks 37 & 38 Malan Road, 2.00 – 7.30pm

This edition of Residencies: OPEN concentrates on the intertwined relationship between art making and text. Projects range from Artists-in-Residence Weixin Chong’s investigation into the domestic tropicality through a dictation exercise with visitors, contributions by Narawan Pathomvat’s collaborator of key texts and their online circulation, Shubigi Rao’s research on the history of banished books and Otty Widasari’s archival research into films from the colonial period.

Langkasuka, book launch
Foyer of Block 43 Malan Road, 2.00 – 7.00pm

Former Artist-in-Residence Ise (Roslisham Bin Ismail) (Malaysia) will launch the new and second edition of his cookbook Langkasuka published by ITBN Malaysia, based on old royal recipes excavated through oral histories in Kelantan, an area in Malaysia with historical links to Thailand. The artist will also serve one of the featured recipes!

Residencies: In The LabExhibit 101: Li Ran and Gary Ross Pastrana (Artists’ Workshop)
The Lab, Block 43 Malan Road, 2.30 – 4.00pm

Artists-in-Residence Li Ran and Gary Ross Pastrana will conduct a workshop as part of their project Exhibit 101 at The Lab. Li Ran will talk through the process of creating a new work in Singapore while Gary Ross Pastrana will work with participants to conceive a new artwork for his project An ASEAN Exhibition 1.

Residencies: Insights – Dictation with Artist-in-Residence Weixin Chong
Studio #01-07, Block 38 Malan Road, 6.00 – 7.30pm

Weixin Chong will host ”read –in’s” in her studio where visitors can take part in a dictation exercise around a text related to the tropical environment which will later be translated into artworks.

]]>
Weixin Chong]]> Narawan Pathomvat]]> Shubigi Rao]]> Roslisham Bin Ismail]]> Li Ran]]> Gary Ross Pastrana]]> Otty Widasari]]> Southeast Asia]]> Asia]]>
Archival Practice]]>
As an expanded version of his NTU CCA Residencies project, Singapore Art Archive Project @ Centre for Contemporary Art, Koh Nguang How presents the temporary exhibition Shui Tit Sing – 100 Years of an Artist through his Archives. Following this idea of a responsive archive, Koh has chosen to profile one of the lesser known early artists from Singapore’s art history, Shui Tit Sing (1914 – 1997), who commenced his artistic training in 1935, the same year the Gillman Barracks were erected. Shui trained at the Hangzhou National Fine Art College in Western painting and developed a practice that crosses fluidly between this Western style, as seen through fauvist devices in early self portraits, through to his Chinese ink painting. He is known for his wood carving sculptures largely influenced by bas relief from temples around Southeast Asia. An avid photographer, painter and sculptor Shui remained active within exhibitions including at the National Museum Art Gallery from 1946 to early 1990s. Shui also spent the 1960s and 1970s travelling through Southeast Asia gaining influences from the various art forms encountered in Cambodia, Thailand, Borneo and Sumatra. Curated by Koh, material in this exhibition demonstrates an artist re-constructing the activities of another artist through ephemera, sketches, reproductions and original artworks, reflecting the complexities of Shui’s artistic and intellectual “vita active” as an artist, journalist and educator. Koh was granted guardianship of this unique collection by the family of Shui Tit Sing.]]>
Koh Nguang How]]> Southeast Asia]]>
Archival Practice]]> Performance]]> Theatre]]> 4 October 2021 - 31 March 2022
NTU CCA Singapore]]>
Han Xuemei]]> Southeast Asia]]>
Archival Practice]]> History]]> Identity]]> Topography]]> Ways of Seeing]]> 4 April - 31 August 2022
NTU CCA Singapore]]>
Fazleen Karlan]]> Southeast Asia]]>
Archival Practice]]> History]]> Identity]]> Knowledge Production]]> Topography]]> Ways of Seeing]]> In this episode, curator Samantha Yap digs deep into the practice of Artist-in-Residence Fazleen Karlan. We are happy to bring the two of them back together, after they first collaborated a couple of year ago on an exhibition titled Time Passes (2020-21), to talk about Fazleen’s evolving artistic sensibility and sources of inspiration.

In this circular conversation that revolves around a shared reading, the novel Lighthousekeeping by Jeanette Winterson, Fazleen and Samantha exchange memories, experiences, and thoughts about time, materiality, pop culture, and the vitality of archaeology in Fazleen’s work. And they do so with that special kind of fluid intimacy that interlaces persons of the same age. Just a few words to introduce them.

Contributors: Fazleen Karlan, Samantha Yap
Editor: Anna Lovecchio
Programme Manager: Nadia Amalina
Sound Engineer: Ashwin Menon
Intro & Outro Music: Yuen Chee Wai
Cover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine Tan

]]>
Fazleen Karlan]]> Samantha Yap]]> Anna Lovecchio]]> Nadia Amalina]]> Ashwin Menon]]> Yuen Chee Wai]]> Podcast]]> https://www.buzzsprout.com/1845756/11089842-aircast-8-fazleen-karlan]]> Southeast Asia]]>
Archival Practice]]> History]]> Identity]]> Topography]]> Ways of Seeing]]> Knowledge Production]]>
Against Singapore’s persistent acceleration towards the future through redevelopment and modernisation, the artist is interested in the way certain memories are kept while others are discarded. From her point of view, “the past is more than objects waiting to be discovered; it is a series of perspectives waiting to be unearthed”.​ Investigating the present with the tools of archaeology, she plans to explore the physical sediments of contemporary life through a series of participatory sessions aimed at making, archiving, and combining fragments of the present into new scenarios, perspectives, and meanings.]]>
Fazleen Karlan]]> Southeast Asia]]>
Archival Practice]]> History]]> Identity]]> Topography]]> Ways of Seeing]]> Knowledge Production]]> Fazleen Karlan]]> Southeast Asia]]>