Balik Kampung: Stories of Connection and Disconnection by Verena Tay
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=49&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Displacement">Displacement</a>
<span>8 Mar 2014, Sat 3:00pm - 5:00pm</span><br /><br />In collaboration with BooksActually, NTU CCA Singapore will organize a special book presentation focused on the series <i>Balik Kampung 2A: People and Places / Balik Kampung 2B: Contemplations</i>. Edited by Verena Tay, the collection brings together commissioned texts by a series of authors who address their experience of living in different parts of Singapore.The book presentation situates itself as a counterpoint in the context of <i>Paradise Lost</i>. It will produce a shift from reflections of homeland as perceived from afar to engagement with an immediate environment through Balik Kampung stories.<br /><br />A public programme of <em>Paradise Lost</em>.
2014-03-08
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=37&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Verena+Tay">Verena Tay</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=37&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=BooksActually">BooksActually</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=38&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Southeast+Asia">Southeast Asia</a>
Screening programme Phnom Penh: Rescue Archeology The Body and the Lens in the City curated by Erin Gleeson (Artistic Director, Sa Sa Bassac, Phnom Penh, Cambodia)
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=49&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Cultural+Production">Cultural Production</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=49&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Displacement">Displacement</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=49&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Urbanism">Urbanism</a>
5 Apr 2014, Sat 7:30 - 9:30 pm<i><span><br /></span><br />Phnom Penh: Rescue Archaeology, The Body and the Lens in the City</i>, brings together single-channel video works of performance by seven artists born and living in Cambodia. In archaeological practice, a rescue archaeologist is required to react urgently, yet carefully, to a transitional moment in which there is a threat of change and irrevocable loss, aside from the archaeologist’s efforts to document. During a critical time of rapid urban, social, economic and cultural change and continuity in Phnom Penh, artists in Cambodia have been working with a sense of timeliness, inspired by or in response to memory, place, and the fluctuating urban present. Rescue Archaeology presents the selected artists and works within the framework of multiple inquiry: into nascent and overlapping practices in performance and video in Cambodia, and the relationships between these practices and their relation to the city.<br /><br />Khvay Samnang, <em>Untitled </em>(2011), filmed throughout 2010, as the Cambodian government quietly partnered with private companies to in-fill and develop Phnom Penh’s lakes, Khvay Samnang made nine precarious performances in five of the capital’s largest water bodies. He entered the lakes, among refuse, vegetation, or families dismantling their homes, searching for an unknown anchor on which he could balance his body. It is from these landscapes that <em>Untitled</em> begins and ends as Khvay pours one bucket of sand over his head. This quiet and succinct act was for posterity: a marker of change, and a gesture of solidarity for the increasing number of evictees country-wide.<br /><br />Lim Sokchanlina, <em>The Rock (White Building)</em> (2011), was created in response to the private encroachment on the historical Front du Bassac, an area developed in the 1960s as Phnom Penh’s cultural district by Cambodia’s iconic urban planner and architect Vann Molyvann. Atop the bustling and now dilapidated apartment complex known as the White Building which today remains home to many of Cambodia’s artists, Lim Sokchanlina’s performance forecasts the fate of the architecture and its residents. The artist silently asks what forces will determine the future of the White Building in a context in which many residents regard its destruction as inevitable, or even imminent.<br /><br /><span>Anica Yoeu Ali, </span><em>Spiral Cyclo</em><span> (2012), is part of Anida Yoeu Ali’s ongoing </span><em>The Buddhist Bug Project</em><span>, </span><em>Spiral Cyclo</em><span> seeks to map a new spiritual and social landscape through its surreal existence amongst ordinary people and everyday environments</span><em>. The Bug</em><span><span> is fantastical saffron-colored creature conceived as an autobiography exploration of identity, especially spiritual turmoil between Islam and Buddhism. In a typical neighbourhood alley new Phnom Penh’s Central Market, an unlikely visitor dropped off by a cyclo driver provokes questions around belonging and displacement.<br /></span></span><br />Leang Seckon, <em>Goodbye Boeung Kak</em> (2010, 2014). Once a longtime resident at the former lake Boeung Kak, artist Leang Seckon choreographed and recorded a performance shortly before eviction from his home in 2010. <em>Goodbye Boeung Kak</em> documents the artist’s critique of the sand in-filling at the lake by staging a Khmer funerary ritual. As a group of fishermen attempt to rescue a ceremonial flag adorned with symbolic scales, they discover it dead and immediately proceed to dress themselves, the flag and the soon-toperish home in white. After enacting a calling of the souls with ritual objects including the popil and candles, they hold a cremation ceremony at sunset atop another in-filled site.<span><span><br /></span></span>
<p>Sok Chanrado, <em>Memory</em> (2012), reverses footage of his childhood friend Rada who is reciting memories from the site of their former home known as “Small Building”. The building was originally used as a practice venue for traditional folk dance and music in the 1960s before its residents were evicted during the Khmer Rouge era. Resettled by many families following the war, including those of Rado and Rada, Small Building was forcibly emptied again in 2009 during the Dey Krahom evictions.</p>
<span></span><span>Tith Kanitha, </span><em>Heavy Sand</em><span> (2012), is a film of a performance event title </span><em>Reclamation Recreation: An Urban Beach Party</em><span>, where artist Tith Kanitha staged diurnal ritual: a shower as is taken in a humble household, manually, with buckets of water. Her only covering was a bikini and a clinical facemask normally associated with protection from pollution but also more recently used to conceal protestors’ identities. At the time a resident of Boeung Kak lakeside, Tith’s performance brings to bear aspects of life experienced there since 2008, where people risked their lives to protest evictions; women and children at the front lines.</span><br /><br /><span>Svay Sareth, </span><em>Mon Boulet</em><span> (2011), documents a 5-day durational performance in which the artist dragged a cumbersome reflective metal sphere 250 kilometers from the ancient capital of Angkor to the present capital Phnom Penh, carrying with him a few basic amenities known to refugees worldwide. The public aspect of Sisyphean futility was intended to confront conditions of the artist’s and ‘audiences’ pasts as a cathartic move into the future. In the artist’s words, “The heart is marked forever by the atrocities of the war. The mind – the seat of the body’s creative power – is a force of alchemy able to transform the difficulty, the fear, the suffering, the discouragement, into energy and creative freedom. And the body, finally, is used for resistance.”<br /><br />A public programme of <em>The Disappearance</em>.</span>
2014-04-05
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=37&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Erin+Gleeson">Erin Gleeson</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=38&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Southeast+Asia">Southeast Asia</a>
Residencies Insights: Conversations with Anocha Suwichakornpong and Chen-Hsi Wong, The histories of tomorrow: National amnesia through film
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=49&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Displacement">Displacement</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=49&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Identity">Identity</a>
<span>19 Nov 2014, Wed 7:30pm - 9:00pm</span><br /><br />NTU CCA Singapore Artist-in-Residence Anocha Suwichakornpong will be joined in conversation by filmmaker and NTU School of Art, Design and Media faculty, member Chen-Hsi Wong. Their conversation, interspersed with film clips and shorts, will discuss narrative in relation to memory, displacement and imaginings of the nation state.
2014-11-19
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=37&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Anocha+Suwichakornpong">Anocha Suwichakornpong</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=37&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Chen-Hsi+Wong">Chen-Hsi Wong</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=37&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Wong+Chen-Hsi">Wong Chen-Hsi</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=38&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Asia">Asia</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=38&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Southeast+Asia">Southeast Asia</a>
<p class="event_single_title">Conversation between Amar Kanwar (India), artist, <i>The Sovereign Forest</i>; Professor Ute Meta Bauer (Germany/Singapore); and Dr June Yap (Singapore)</p>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=49&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Politics">Politics</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=49&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Inequality">Inequality</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=49&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Displacement">Displacement</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=49&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Ways+of+Seeing">Ways of Seeing</a>
<div class="event_single_dates text__exhibitions">30 Jul 2016, Sat 4:00pm - 5:30pm</div>
<div class="event_single_venue">The Single Screen, Block 43 Malan Road</div>
<br />Accomplished artist and filmmaker Amar Kanwar will speak to curators Professor Ute Meta Bauer, and Dr June Yap about his unique cinematic vocabulary that opens up multiple layers of experience and comprehension. The conversation will revolve around politics of power, violence, and justice, looking at how political struggles are presented and represented as well as issues of development, misappropriation, and displacement. When engaging in various ways of seeing and comprehending, a set of propositions given by Kanwar study the notion of “poetry as evidence”. <br /><br />This conversation is a public programme organised as part of <em>Amar Kanwar:</em> <i>The Sovereign Forest.</i> <i><i><br /><br /><br /></i></i>
2016-07-30
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=37&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Amar+Kanwar">Amar Kanwar</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=37&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Ute+Meta+Bauer">Ute Meta Bauer</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=37&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=June+Yap+">June Yap </a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=38&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Asia">Asia</a>
<p class="event_single_title">In Conversation with artist Ang Song Nian (Singapore), artist Chua Chye Teck (Singapore), and artist and filmmaker Sherman Ong (Singapore/Malaysia). Moderated by Silke Schmickl (Germany/Singapore), Curator, National Gallery Singapore</p>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=49&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Fiction">Fiction</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=49&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Identity">Identity</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=49&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Displacement">Displacement</a>
<div class="event_single_dates text__exhibitions">19 Jul 2017, Wed 07:30 PM - 09:00 PM</div>
<div class="event_single_venue">The Single Screen, Block 43 Malan Road</div>
<br />Fiction or reality, images produce their own narratives and temporal connections and are open to many interpretations infused with the personal experiences of individual viewers. Working with photography sound, and video, different practices consider and question everyday life, and intersect with memory and notions of displacement and self. Join the panel of artists for an open conversation about image and meaning making in contemporary art practice.<br /><br />A public programme of <em>Ulrike Ottinger: China. The Arts –The People, Photographs and Films from the 1980s and 1990s.</em>
2017-07-19
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=37&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Ang+Song+Nian">Ang Song Nian</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=37&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Chua+Chye+Teck">Chua Chye Teck</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=37&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Sherman+Ong">Sherman Ong</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=37&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Silke+Schmickl">Silke Schmickl</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=38&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Asia">Asia</a>
Aboriginal Tent Embassy, Presentation by Richard Bell
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=49&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Identity">Identity</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=49&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Race">Race</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=49&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Displacement">Displacement</a>
<p class="event_single_title">Richard Bell established the Aborignal Tent Embassy outside the Australian National parliament in 1972. It was founded to challenge the status and rights of Aboriginal people in Australia. Until today, the Tent Embassy remains in place as one of the longest ongoing (artistic) struggles in the world. Bell will introduce the Embassy (2013 -) as a public space for imagining and articulating futures beyond oppression and displacement, while referring to the history of black power politics, political theatre and performance art. Bell will further draw the idea of his Embassy as a satellite of the original Tent Embassy, utlizing his agency within the infrastructure of ast as a means of furthering its reach: the work shall be understood as coalition building, seeking solutions towards fairness through solidarity.<br /><br />Part of the <em>Art, Urban Change, and the Public Sphere: Public Art Education Summit</em>, 17 - 19 October 2019</p>
2019-10-19
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=37&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Richard+Bell">Richard Bell</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=38&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Southeast+Asia">Southeast Asia</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=38&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Asia">Asia</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=38&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=North+America">North America</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=38&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Europe">Europe</a>
Residencies Insights – Two Worlds, Four Spirits, Artist talk by Sung Tieu, Artist-in-Residence
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=49&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Displacement">Displacement</a>
<div class="event_single_dates text__residencies">3 Dec 2019, Tue 07:00 PM - 08:30 PM</div>
<div class="event_single_venue">The Single Screen, Block 43 Malan Road</div>
<br />Central to the artistic practice of Sung Tieu is a personal experience of migration from Vietnam to Germany which impels her to address Post-Cold War histories and the multiple negotiations that underpin a diasporic identity made of unfixed temporalities and spatial uncertainties. In this talk, the artist will discuss recent projects—<i>Loveless (2019), Remote Viewing (2017) and Coral Sea As Rolling Thunder</i> (2017)—which variously employ text, performance, installation, moving image, and sound to convey a sense of dislocation while deliberately eluding legible narratives. She will also expand upon her way to design the exhibition space as a complex environment for sensorial engagement.
2019-12-03
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=37&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Sung+Tieu">Sung Tieu</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=38&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Southeast+Asia">Southeast Asia</a>
Residencies Insights: Wandering Ghosts, Screening and Q&A with Prapat Jiwarangsan (Thailand), Artist-in-Residence
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=49&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Labour">Labour</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=49&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Displacement">Displacement</a>
Screened all together for the first time in Singapore, Prapat Jiwarangsan’s film trilogy follows the meandering paths that lead migrant workers across Asia. Framing conditions of psychological and material uncertainty, the films eschew a documentarist approach and touch poetically on the workers’ precarious living conditions, slippery legal status, and experience of displacement while they also convey strategies of resilience, resistance, and adaptation. <br /><br />The screening will be preceded by an introduction by the artist. <br /><br />The Asylum (Dok Rak), 2015, 9 min 40 sec <br /><br />DJ Dok Rak used to work for a radio station in Chiangmai. After the shut-down of anti-military radio stations that followed the 2014 coup d’état in Thailand, she lost her job. “Ah Tay” is a boy of Karen ethnicity who secretly works in a village and fears being sent back to Myanmar due to the lack of identification documents. Dream-like sequences unfold around a pond, a symbolic sanctuary where the two characters face the reality of their submerged existence and quietly yearn for a far-fetched freedom. <br /><br /><div class="event_single_dates text__residencies">17 Mar 2020, Tue 07:00 PM - 08:30 PM</div>
<div class="event_single_venue">The Single Screen, Block 43 Malan Road</div>
<br />The Wandering Ghosts, 2017, 20 min (Singapore Premiere) <br /><br />Until today, thousands of Thai migrant workers live in a state of uncertainty in South Korea. Stringing together interviews, footage from the workers’ everyday lives, and recordings of job-hunting phone calls, the work flits between generations of migrants including an 80-year old Thai veteran who fought in the South Korean Army during the Korean War of 1950. Alternating sharp and saturated images with visual blackouts, Jiwarangsan captures the elusive quality of the workers’ existence. <br /><br />Destination Nowhere, 2018, 7 min 19 sec <br /><br />Drawn by the economic boom of the late 1980s and early 1990s, a large number of migrant workers relocated to Japan without a proper legal status. Destination Nowhere tells the story of a Japan-born Thai teenager whose mother, a Thai migrant worker who “illegally” lived in Japan for many years, was deported back to Thailand. The artist’s scraping of the boy’s silhouette, together with photographs and objects inspired by his life, alludes to the young man’s unrecognised status and his fight to stay in the only country he calls home.
2020-03-17
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=37&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Prapat+Jiwarangsan">Prapat Jiwarangsan</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=38&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Southeast+Asia">Southeast Asia</a>
Assembly: Chronicles of Displacement
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=49&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Displacement">Displacement</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=49&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Migration">Migration</a>
The Assembly<i> Chronicles of Displacement</i> is an online gathering to address urgent issues of our time, explore alternative futures, and discuss and share knowledges and practices, facilitating international and transdisciplinary conversations on displacement and forced migration. Through a series of public talks and conversations alongside screenings, the Assembly will reflect on the outcomes of prior workshops (led by Jonas Staal and Bread and Puppet Theater) and further the discussion on the intersection of art discourses and socio-political activism. <br /><br />Although entirely online, the Assembly’s base is in Singapore and Southeast Asia where many of the participants are from, and will focus on border politics, ethics of documentation in conflict zones and refugee camps, as well as the euphemisms and government rhetoric used around forced migration, which in the ASEAN region is referred to as “irregular migration.”<br /><br /><p>With contributions by:</p>
<p><strong>Shahidul Alam</strong> (Bangladesh), <strong>Bodies of Power / Power for Bodies</strong> (<strong>Sanne Oorthuizen</strong> and <strong>Alec Steadman</strong>) with <strong>Mumtaz Khan Chopan</strong> (Indonesia), <strong>Bread and Puppet Theater</strong> (United States), <strong>Center for Political Beauty</strong> (Germany), <strong>Kin Chui</strong> (Singapore), <strong>Kirsten Han</strong> (Singapore), <strong>Nursyazwani Jamaludin</strong> (Singapore/United States), <strong>Stefan Kruse Jørgensen</strong> (Denmark), <strong>Raeesah Khan</strong> (Singapore), <strong>Dima Mabsout</strong> (Lebanon), <strong>Ayman Nahle</strong> (Lebanon), <strong>Erkan Özgen</strong> (Turkey), <strong>Alfian Sa’at</strong> (Singapore), and <strong>Jonas Staal</strong> (Netherlands).</p>
<p>Mf D’s inaugural Assembly is hosted and supported by NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore.</p>
<p><strong>Programme</strong></p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Saturday, 28 November 2020 </strong></p>
<p>7.00pm<br />Lecture: <i></i><b><i>Aggressive Humanism </i></b>by <b>Thilda Rosenfeld</b>, Center for Political Beauty<br />The Center for Political Beauty (ZPS), active since 2009, is an art collective based in Germany that combines performance and human rights activism. In this presentation, ZPS member Thilda Rosenfeld will convey the main ideas behind the Center’s initiatives and introduce three projects in detail. Their interventions focus mainly on genocides, migrant rights, and political apathy. Founder Philipp Ruch understands why some consider their work controversial: where people are expecting fiction, they encounter reality. </p>
<p>8.00pm<br />Screening and Q&A: <strong><em>Wonderland</em>, Erkan Özgen</strong>, 2016, 3 min 54 sec<br />A deaf-mute boy called Muhammed uses gestures and sounds to describe the experiences his family went through when escaping the war. Muhammed’s home city Kobanî in the Kurdish area of Syria at the border of Turkey became famous in 2015 when it was besieged by jihadist organisation Isis. After long battles, Kobanî managed to become liberated, but thousands of Kurds were forced to leave their homes. The wordless story by the 13-year-old Muhammed is a powerful statement against war, captured on video.</p>
<p>8.20pm<br />Lecture: <strong><i>Insurrection, Resurrection, Lamentation—the role of the arts in confronting our failed normality </i></strong>by <strong>Peter Schumann</strong>, Founder, Bread and Puppet Theatre</p>
<p>9.20pm<br />Roundtable: <strong>Kirsten Han, Nursyazwani Jamaludin, Dima Mabsout, </strong>moderated by <strong>Mohammad Golabi</strong></p>
<p>10.00pm<br />Screening and Q&A: <strong><em>Now: End of the Season</em>, Ayman Nahle</strong>, 2015, 20 min<br />Documentary détournement on the state of the Syrian crisis. The film pictures the everyday entanglement of refugees, tourists, and passersby in the Turkish seaport town of Izmir, where a sense of limbo and standstill looms as illegalised migrants await departure to the unknown. The soundtrack to the film is from a phone call by Hafez al-Assad to Ronald Reagan made some thirty years earlier. A caller on hold, an impatient translator… In Nahle’s words, “more confused than ever, the world is on the edge, showing the disoriented face of a smiling disaster.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Sunday, 29 November 2020</p>
<p>7.00pm<br />Lecture: <em><strong>Stateless Assembly</strong></em> by <strong>Jonas Staal</strong><br />Artist Jonas Staal founded his artistic and political organisation New World Summit in 2012. Ever since, he has developed alternative parliaments for stateless and blacklisted organisations, amongst others in collaboration with the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation UNPO (Brussels, 2014) and the Autonomous Administration of North and West Syria (Dêrik/Eindhoven, 2015-18). Can we understand statelessness not only a term that signifies a condition of exclusion, but also as a precondition for liberating democratic practices from the state? Building on the theories of revolutionary Abdullah Öcalan, Staal will discuss his own projects as well as that of artists that are part of stateless movements, in order to explore unstated practices of art and culture. He will expand this exploration also in the field of ecologies of non-human comradeship, through his recent Interplanetary Species Society (2019).</p>
<p>8.00pm<br />Roundtable: <strong>Bodies of Power/ Power for Bodies, Mumtaz Khan Chopan, Kin Chui</strong>, moderated by <strong>Ana Sophie Salazar</strong></p>
<p>8.40pm<br />Screening and Q&A: <strong><em>The Migrating Image</em>, Stefan Kruse Jørgensen</strong>, 2018, 28 min <br />By following a fictional group of refugees across Europe, the film questions the production of images surrounding real-life tragedies. Each segment of the film takes its cue from the destination of the refugees, from FRONTEX depicting the refugees on the Mediterranean Sea, to a photojournalistic reportage from a warehouse in Belgrade. Where do all these images about refugees come from? How do they reshape the geography of Europe?</p>
<p>9.20pm<br />Roundtable: <strong>Shahidul Alam, Raeesah Khan, Alfian Sa’at,</strong> moderated by <strong>Canan Batur</strong></p>
28 - 29 November 2020
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=37&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Shahidul+Alam">Shahidul Alam</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=37&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Bodies+of+Power%2FPower+for+Bodies">Bodies of Power/Power for Bodies</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=37&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Mumtaz+Khan+Chopan">Mumtaz Khan Chopan</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=37&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Bread+and+Puppet+Theater">Bread and Puppet Theater</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=37&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Center+for+Political+Beauty+">Center for Political Beauty </a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=37&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Kin+Chui+">Kin Chui </a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=37&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Kirsten+Han+">Kirsten Han </a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=37&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Nursyazwani+Jamaludin+">Nursyazwani Jamaludin </a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=37&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Stefan+Kruse+J%C3%B8rgensen">Stefan Kruse Jørgensen</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=37&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Raeesah+Khan">Raeesah Khan</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=37&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Dima+Mabsout">Dima Mabsout</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=37&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Ayman+Nahle">Ayman Nahle</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=37&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=+Erkan+%C3%96zgen"> Erkan Özgen</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=37&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Alfian+Sa%E2%80%99at">Alfian Sa’at</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=37&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Jonas+Staal+">Jonas Staal </a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=38&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Asia">Asia</a>
Sudhir Pattnaik
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=49&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Activism">Activism</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=49&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Ecology">Ecology</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=49&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Displacement">Displacement</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=49&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Politics">Politics</a>
<a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=37&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Sudhir+Pattnaik">Sudhir Pattnaik</a>
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