Artistic Research]]> Mythology]]> Supernatural]]> Branching out from previous collaborative research on spiritual mapping, Zachary Chan will spend his residency developing maps and diagrams as a way of building an archive of the charismatic evangelical movement in Singapore.

Using ideas of spiritual mapping, where ‘territorial demons’ of a geographical location are identified, the artist intends to chart the history of the charismatic movement in Singapore beginning from the first recorded instance of glossolalia to current Christian eschatologies. In the process of charting such histories through maps and diagrams, conceptualisations of the ‘territorial spirits of the land’, the dichotomy between the demon/demonised, and the understanding of material spaces through such a lens will be dissected. Using self-portraiture alongside map-making, the research grounded in discourses of spiritual warfare will serve as a form of autoethnography. Through image-making, the artist hopes to formalise the research into frameworks that will structure his development within performative expressions, installations, the moving image, and sound.

]]>
Zachary Chan]]> Southeast Asia]]>
Artistic Research]]> Environmental Crisis]]> Sustainability]]> Mythology]]> Residencies OPEN showcases the diversity of contemporary art practices and reveals how the space of the studio constitutes a springboard for artistic research and experimentation. This session of Residencies OPEN as part of Singapore Art Week 2023 offers a unique opportunity for the public to meet Artists-in-Residence Zachary Chan, Min-Wei Ting, and Wang Ruobing (all Singapore)! Come visit the NTU CCA Singapore Residencies Studios for a special insight into their works-in-progress and to explore the processes and research interests developed during their residencies.

The 9th Cycle of the Residencies Programme by NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore is supported by National Arts Council Singapore. This cycle hosts six Singapore Artists-in-Residence: Fazleen Karlan, Hilmi Johandi, Priyageetha Dia, Zachary Chan, Min-Wei Ting and Wang Ruobing.

Zachary Chan

Saturday, 14 January – Sunday, 15 January 2023
1:00 – 7:00pm
Block 37 Malan Road, #01-01

Second Heaven Revelations (working title)
in collaboration with Nai Iyn Huii
installation, mixed materials

During his five-month residency, Zachary Chan has researched Pentecostal Christianity—the religion that defined the artist’s own upbringing—and the practice of spiritual mapping in the context of Singapore. Interweaving personal narratives, historical anecdotes, religious texts, and environmental demonology, Zachary’ s installation explores the heterogenous manifestations of malevolent forces in this religious doctrine.

Configured as a chapel, the colourful installation features a tapestry as altar piece. The tapestry is surrounded by soft sculptures that emanate the joyful naivety of children’s toys. However, these innocent, everyday objects may resonate with different meanings for those who subscribe to specific belief systems. Amidst a jocose iconography loom figures that refer to complex theological concepts such as the trichotomy of body/soul/mind as well as Christological symbols and various embodiments of malevolent entities. Recurring throughout the installation is the motif of the snake, the biblical symbol of temptation and sin while the floor piece consists of a long-tongued turtle resting on the outline of Singapore. In several Asian cosmologies, marine creatures play a significant role and a giant turtle, known as the Cosmic Turtle, is believed to bear the world on its shell. Following the Old Testament, some Christian denominations stigmatise the marine kingdom as the realm of chaos and demons. For some believers, marine demons have to be tamed in order to ensure the “revival” of coastal societies.

Through the playful transfiguration of demonological concepts, Zachary’s work hints to the porous divide between the everyday and the spiritual and it prompts viewers to reflect upon the manifold implications of religious worldviews.

Min-Wei Ting

Saturday, 14 January – Sunday, 15 January 2023
1:00 – 7:00pm
Block 37 Malan Road, #01-02

work-in-progress
double-channel projection, colour, sound, approx. 10 min

As a continuation of his growing interest in the state’s response to climate change and rising sea levels, Min-Wei Ting has spent his residency looking at infrastructural projects that are being developed in Singapore to mitigate climate crisis. Employing the camera as a means to probe, capture, and ponder, the artist is documenting the labour and processes involved in these projects. The presentation for Residencies OPEN conveys the artist’s work-in-progress through a double-channel projection. A close-up scrutiny of an old flood level gauge gives way to rising water in a monsoon drain. A wide-angle meditation encompasses the journey of sand delivered on slow-moving barges from the sea—sand is the material most used to alter the island country’s morphology—while sand mountains loom quietly in the distance. In the flux of these engrossing visual sequences, the lines that connect Singapore’s meticulous management of water, the influx of material and human resources from her neighbouring countries, and the constant restructuring of the landscape become increasingly entangled.

Wang Ruobing

Saturday, 14 January – Sunday, 15 January 2023
1:00 – 7:00pm
Block 37 Malan Road, #01-03

Expanding her enquiry into the symbiotic relationship between environmental knowledge and the visual arts, Wang Ruobing has started a collaboration with the Earth Observatory of Singapore (NTU) to research the themes of sustainability and interconnectivity from a multidisciplinary perspective. For Residencies OPEN, visitors can explore the multiplicity of techniques and materials Ruobing has been experimenting with throughout the artist’s residency. Drawing from Donna J. Haraway’s theories of ‘sympoiesis’ (making-with), Ruobing’s research-in-progress, tentatively titled Living with the Trouble, makes use of found marine debris and suspended mud sediments generously donated from scientists and volunteer deep-sea divers. Honing in on Singapore’s marine coastline ecosystem as a field of enquiry, Ruobing’s research reflects on the waste produced by our lifestyles, the life-cycle of man-made products, and the global impact of ocean pollution. The studio presentation includes the vast array of materials the artist has been sourcing and working with in the past few months as well as the prototype of a kinetic installation wherein marine debris float in a cloud made of mud powder within a globe-shaped dome.

As an extension of her open studio presentation, Ruobing will be in discussion with her collaborator, Dr Kyle Morgan from the NTU’s Earth Observatory of Singapore. In this session of Residencies INSIGHTS, the two will tell the story of how a scientist and an artist are willing to turn trash into treasure and of how mud collected during scientific experiments can be used to make a work of art.

Titled Bridging art and science to raise awareness on environmental issues, the talk will take place on Saturday 14 January, 3.00 -4.30pm, Block 37 Malan Road, #01-04. More information can be found here.

]]>
Zachary Chan]]> Min-Wei Ting]]> Wang Ruobing]]> Southeast Asia]]>
Vampir-Cuadecuc, Pere Portabella, Spain, 1970, 66 min]]> Ways of Seeing]]> Mythology]]> Politics]]> 29 Oct 2017, Sun 05:00 PM - 07:00 PM
The Projector, Golden Mile Tower, #05-00, 6001 Beach Road

Tickets: S$13.50 standard; S$11.50 concession. Purchase at theprojector.sg

Introduction by Professor Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director, NTU CCA Singapore, and Professor, School of Art, Design and Media (ADM), NTU

Vampir-Cuadecuc is arguably one of the key films for understanding the transition in the Spanish film world from the period of the “new cinemas” (permitted by the Franco government) towards the illegal, clandestine, or openly antagonistic practices against the Franco regime. The film consists of shooting the filming of a commercial film El Conde Drácula by Jesús Franco. Portabella practices two types of violence on the standard narrative: he totally eliminates colour and substitutes the soundtrack with a landscape of image-sound collisions by Carles Santos. Filmed provocatively in 16mm with sound negative, Vampire-Cuadecuc stages the tensions between the black and white of the film stock, and reveals the “fantasmatic materialism” that dominant narrative cinema is reliant upon.

This Screening is part of the public programme of Ghosts and Spectres – Shadows of History.

]]>
Pere Portabella]]> Ute Meta Bauer]]> Europe]]>
Orpheus, Jean Cocteau, France, 1950, 110 min]]> Mythology]]> Fiction]]> 29 Sep 2017, Fri 07:30 PM - 09:00 PM
The Single Screen, Block 43 Malan Road

Considered one of Cocteau’s masterpieces, Orpheus updates the myth of Orpheus and depicts a famous poet, scorned by the Left Bank youth, and his love for both his wife, Eurydice, and a mysterious princess. Seeking inspiration, the poet follows the princess to the land of the dead, through Cocteau’s famous mirrored portal. Translating this Greek myth by adapting the story about love, death, and the underworld into a modern scenario allows Cocteau to resonate political questions concerning some younger historical events like war, oppression, and Nazism. This film is the central part of Cocteau’s Orphic Trilogy, the other two being The Blood of a Poet (1930) and Testament of Orpheus (1960).

This Screening is part of the public programme of Ghosts and Spectres – Shadows of History.

]]>
Jean Cocteau]]> Europe]]>
Anyang, Paradise City, Park Chan-kyong, South Korea, 2010, 101 min]]> Mythology]]> History]]> Fiction]]> 8 Sep 2017, Fri 07:30 PM - 09:00 PM
The Single Screen, Block 43 Malan Road

Park’s first full-length feature film, Anyang, Paradise City is a mix between documentary and fiction, inspired by a seldom-remembered incident during the Olympic Games in 1988, where 22 female workers were killed in a fire in Anyang. The glorious past of Anyang (a Buddhist term for “paradise”) allegedly includes the existence of a huge temple surrounded by the beautiful mountains and streams around 1000 years ago. Researching into Buddhism and the history of Anyang, Park follows the temple excavations and searches for the 500-year-old “grandma tree”. The film traces this
 past through the natural landscape
and alludes to the future through the city’s mayoral election. As if travelling between paradise and hell, the camera hunts, rests, and plays as if dancing with the cityscape, while layering narrative, history, contemporary life, landscape/ architecture, and politics.

This Screening is part of the public programme of Ghosts and Spectres – Shadows of History.

]]>
Park Chan-kyong]]> Asia]]>
Theatre]]> Fiction]]> Mythology]]> Ways of Seeing]]> 72-13 Mohamed Sultan Road, Singapore 239007

This talk will reflect on the fascination of artworks in Theatrical Fields with the phantasmatic past. In providing a brief theoretical overview of "the politics of theatricality," Murray will reflect on the exhibition's screenic re-possesion of cinematic characters, buried stories, and influential texts in a way that challenges the historical groundings of theatricality in the ethnocentric certainty of culture and law. "What happens to the relation of mnemonic past and theatrical present when the screen functions as the field of phantasms that are liberated by artistic intervention from the certainties of their mythological, historical, and cinematic pasts?" This emphasis on artistic retellings in the present of weighty phantasms from the historical past will then lead to further reflection on their bearing on the future. "What might it mean that prior utopian aspirations might now be recast as the unsettlings of uncertain futurity? Might the contemporary re-theatricalization of the screen provide a historically distinct approach to futurity? Or might futurity already be in our grasp either through digital orientations of 'future cinemas' or through the sudden arrival of futurity via the vexing uncertainties of the anthroprocene and global collapse?"

A public programme of Theatical Fields: Critical strategies in performance, film and video.]]>
Timothy Murray]]> North America]]> Europe]]>
Mythology]]> Supernatural]]> 28 Oct 2017, Sat 09:30 AM - 08:00 PM
The Single Screen, Block 43 Malan Road

On the occasion of the exhibition Ghost and Spectres – Shadows of History curated by Professor Ute Meta Bauer and Khim Ong, and the 4th anniversary of NTU CCA Singapore.

Taking the works in the current show as points of departure, the symposium brings together the artists of the exhibition, as well as curators and scholars researching on the subject matter, to generate a discussion on muted histories and legacies, as they cast light upon past events that still impact society today, particularly in terms of power structures and restriction of social freedom. The role of the moving image—the medium used by the four exhibiting artists—will be analysed to demonstrate how it reveals, as much as it conceals, past traumas that evade representation.

Divided into two sessions, the symposium explores the artists’ working processes and methodological approaches through structured conversations consisting of lectures, presentations, and moderated discussions. The focus will lie on the sources of inspiration as well as on the motivations of the artists’ practices, and on the construction and contestation of official narratives. Ho Tzu NyenNguyen Trinh Thi, and Park Chan-kyong will expand on the historical events and socio-political contexts that feed into their work, and on the different strategies employed to revive collective memory. Scholar Dr Clare Veal will highlight the medium specificity in the works of Apichatpong Weerasethakul to address conflicted histories, whereas the lectures by curators Dr June Yap and Hyunjin Kim, as well as the keynote lectures by Dr May Adadol Ingawanij and Professor Kenneth Dean, aim to articulate the complicated geopolitical relations in contemporary Asia.

11.00am – 1.10pm
Session I: Shadows of History

Chaired by Dr Roger Nelson, curator and art historian, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, School of Art Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), and NTU CCA Singapore

Dedicated to the uncovering of neglected histories, this session will look at the construction of historical narratives and their role in reflecting social, political, and cultural conditions. Occluded by the propagation of progress and nation building, what has been left out and rendered unspeakable in the region’s bid to establish national identities and political autonomy? Referencing the works of Ho Tzu Nyen and Nguyen Trinh Thi, this session traces post-war and Cold War legacies in Asia and investigates their lingering spectres.

2.30 – 5.30pm
Session II: Ghosts and Spectres

Chaired by Dr David Teh, researcher and curator, Assistant Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore (NUS)

Referencing the works of Park Chan-kyong and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, this session deals with notions of ghosts and spectres as allegories of historical moments and dreamlike realities. Embedded in myths and folklore, what roles do they play in constructing an understanding of the past and in reflecting socio-political circumstances? How do cinematic works engage their medium-specificity in a play of historical phantoms and repressed collective memories, to create a language for portraying trauma, loss, dreams, and nightmares?

]]>
Ute Meta Bauer]]> May Adadol Ingawanij]]> June Yap]]> Nguyen Trinh Thi]]> Ho Tzu Nyen]]> Khim Ong]]> Hyunjin Kim]]> Park Chan-kyong]]> Clare Veal]]> Roger Nelson]]> David Teh]]> Kenneth Dean]]> Southeast Asia]]> Asia]]>
Ways of Seeing]]> Mythology]]> Marcel Dzama]]> North America]]> Mystic and Momok by Russell Morton]]> History]]> Diaspora]]> Mythology]]> Mystic and Momok by Russell Morton. Film Screening (on loop) HD video (16:9), stereo, 18min 10sec, 2021 Rating: PG
Saturday, 18 September 2021, 1:00 – 7:00pm The Screening Room Block 38 Malan Road, #01-06

Completed during the residency, Russell Morton’s latest short film revolves around the eclectic and versatile figure of Mohammad Din Mohammad (1955 – 2007). Artist and mystic, traditional healer and idiosyncratic collector of Southeast Asian cultural items, Mohammad Din Mohammad was also an actor and a silat master. Playfully disclosing the production limitations imposed by the pandemic, the film evokes Mohammad’s multifaceted personality through the faces, voices, and memories of the artist’s family members and an experimental process where affects and sounds are mediated by technology. As it unfolds, the film grows into an upbeat stream of visuals and sounds mixed by Momok, a computer algorithm created by artist bani haykal.

Mystic and Momok was commissioned by National Gallery Singapore for the exhibition Something New Must Turn Up: Six Singaporean Artists After 1965 (7 May – 22 August 2021) which featured Mohammad Din Mohammad’s works.]]>
Russell Morton]]> Bani Haykal]]> Southeast Asia]]>
History]]> Mythology]]> Diaspora]]>
In this artist-led studio tour, Russell Morton will talk about his references and unpack some of the research materials that will be woven into the structure of his first feature film: a dark narrative of drifting away from crime and floating in punishment inspired by a grim historical episode which happened in Singapore in the early 1960s.]]>
Russell Morton]]> Southeast Asia]]>