Supernatural]]> Ritual]]> Indigenous Knowledge]]>

Kenneth Dean will confront questions like “What happens in the afterlife?” “Do ghosts get bored and lonely?” and “Can we plan what happens to our spirits when we die?” In the course of the (de)Tour, Dean will elaborate on how Chinese religion deals with ghosts through rituals and traditions.

This Exhibition (de)Tour is part of the Education and Public Programme of Joan Jonas: They Come to Us without a Word.]]>
Kenneth Dean ]]> Video]]> Southeast Asia]]>
Ritual]]> Tradition]]> Supernatural]]> 30 Mar 2016, Wed 7:30pm - 9:00pm
The Single Screen, Block 43 Malan Road

Kenneth Dean will confront questions like “What happens in the afterlife?” “Do ghosts get bored and lonely?” and “Can we plan what happens to our spirits when we die?” In the course of the (de)Tour, Dean will elaborate on how Chinese religion deals with ghosts through rituals and traditions.

This Exhibition (de)Tour is part of the Education and Public Programme of Joan Jonas: They Come to Us without a Word.]]>
Kenneth Dean ]]> Asia]]>
Supernatural]]>

Take a journey through Singapore’s paranormal activity with an interactive seminar illustrating the scientific logic and methodology that paranormal investigators use in their research. The night concludes with a spooky tour followed by a live paranormal investigation.

The evening starts at NTU CCA Singapore, Block 43 Malan Road. Please wear comfortable walking shoes and bring insect repellent.

This Exhibition (de)Tour is part of the Education and Public Programme of Joan Jonas: They Come to Us without a Word.
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Yasser Mattar]]> Digital Tour Video]]> Southeast Asia]]>
Supernatural]]> 17 Feb 2016, Wed 7:30pm - 10:00pm
The Single Screen, Block 43 Malan Road and Labrador Nature Reserve

Take a journey through Singapore’s paranormal activity with an interactive seminar illustrating the scientific logic and methodology that paranormal investigators use in their research. The night concludes with a spooky tour followed by a live paranormal investigation.

The evening starts at NTU CCA Singapore, Block 43 Malan Road. Please wear comfortable walking shoes and bring insect repellent.

This Exhibition (de)Tour is part of the Education and Public Programme of Joan Jonas: They Come to Us without a Word.]]>
Yasser Mattar]]> Southeast Asia]]>
Coexistence]]> Supernatural]]> Ritual]]> Fiction]]>

Blk 38 Malan Road, The Single Screen
2020, HD video, colour, sound, 15 min 37 sec

Realised in collaboration with local residents, the first experimental video of the collective Rice Brewing Sisters Club weaves together oral histories, folk tales, poems, and agricultural wisdom harvested in Deokgeo-ri, a small rural community in the north-eastern region of Gangwon (South Korea). The work is structured in seven short chapters, with each chapter featuring enactments where villagers, sacred trees, and ritual objects perform simple choreographies to illustrate stories and practices of coexistence and interrelatedness between humans, the natural environment, and an otherworld teeming with spiritual entities. Imbued with a playful and whimsical sense of the communal, Cheopcheopdamdam Iyagigeuk / Mountain Storytellers, Storytelling Mountains: A Tale Theatre 첩첩담담 疊疊談談 이야기극 offers an insight into alternative worldviews made of sustainable practices and ecological belief systems.

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Rice Brewing Sisters Club]]> Asia]]>
Supernatural]]> Ritual]]> Co-produced by NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore and Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21) for st_age

Single channel HD Video, colour, sound, 16 min, 16:9


Deep in the tropical rainforest of Southeast Asia, a series of incantations invoke the spirits of yore, including those of the nimble, tricksy Kancil (mouse-deer) and the ferocious Buaya (crocodile). The ancient animals enact their folkloric vendetta in a furious dance of dominance, yet long-overdue vengeance is shrouded in smoke. Meanwhile, an effigy of a tree is burning, summoning a whole other host of spectres and ancestors. Conceived during the month of the Hungry Ghost Festival in 2019, while large-scale fires were consuming the forests of Indonesia, Yeo Siew Hua’s An Invocation to the Earth confronts climate collapse through the lens of pre-colonial folktales and animistic rituals. Through spoken spells and bodily entanglements, the video conjures up the fallen environmental defenders of a region ridden with ecological threats in the hope that their spirits will be reborn once again.]]>
Yeo Siew Hua]]> Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21)]]> https://vimeo.com/463724815]]> Southeast Asia]]>
They Come to Us Without a Word]]> Supernatural]]> Ecology]]> Ecosystems]]> Biodiversity]]> Coexistence]]> Environmental Crisis]]> They Come to Us without a Word, video and performance pioneer Joan Jonas’ first large-scale exhibition in Singapore and Southeast Asia. They Come to Us without a Word was organised for the U.S. Pavilion of the 56th Venice Biennale by the MIT List Visual Arts Center and co-curated by Paul C. Ha, Director of the MIT List Visual Arts Center and Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director of the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore. With this exhibition Jonas evokes the fragility of nature, using her own poetic language to address the irreversible impact of human interference on the environmental equilibrium of our planet.

Acknowledgements They Come to Us without a Word was organised for the U.S. Pavilion of the 56th Venice Biennale by the MIT List Visual Arts Center and co-curated by Paul C. Ha, Director of the MIT List Visual Arts Center and Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director of the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore. The exhibition was generously supported by U.S. Department of State, Cynthia and John Reed, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Additional major support was provided by the Council for the Arts at MIT, Toby Devan Lewis, VIA Art Fund, Agnes Gund, Lambent Foundation.

The exhibition in Singapore is organised by the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, Nanyang Technological University with support by the Economic Development Board, Singapore. Additional support has also been provided by the U.S. Embassy Singapore.]]>
Paul C. Ha]]> Ute Meta Bauer]]> Joan Jonas]]> Film]]> Video]]> Multimedia Installation]]> Drawing]]> Mixed Media]]> Object]]> Southeast Asia]]> Europe]]> North America]]>
History]]> Supernatural]]> Identity]]> Joel Tan]]> Southeast Asia]]> Europe]]> History]]> Mythology]]> Regionalism]]> Supernatural]]> Kenneth Dean]]> Asia]]> Southeast Asia]]> Body]]> Supernatural]]> Performance]]>
Dancing with the Ghost of My Child in 33 Steps (2020) HD Video 38 Min 12 Sec

ARTIST STATEMENT

Dancing with the Ghost of My Child in 33 steps is an aging man’s increasing desire and longing for an inspiration, for a life, for a child that he pains to father, and be a father to. In this dance, a man dreams of invoking the ghost of a child, his child, who has not yet been born into the world. This man lays his prayer across time and space. He prays for what love has yet to conceive. He hopes that if the ghost of his child is lost, the child may hear his voice, and find a path back to him. This dance leads the man to a moment in his life where perhaps he might begin to believe again.]]>
Noor Effendy Ibrahim]]> Syimah Sabtu]]> Video]]> Southeast Asia]]>