The Mad Masters, Jean Rouch, France, and Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti, Maya Deren, Ukraine/United States]]> Ritual]]> Race]]> Supernatural]]> 3 Nov 2017, Fri 07:30 PM - 09:00 PM
The Single Screen, Block 43 Malan Road

Introduction by Dr Marc Glöde, film scholar and Assistant Professor, School of Art, Design and Media (ADM), NTU

The Mad Masters, Jean Rouch, France, 1955, 36 min

For Jean Rouch’s landmark film The Mad Masters, the French filmmaker himself coined the term “ethnofiction” due to the blending of both documentary and fictional aspects. Rouch takes his viewers to the city of Accra (West Africa) where he follows the Hauka movement and their religious and ritual proceedings, consisting of mimicry and dancing to become possessed by British Colonial administrators. The work caused a highly political debate since on one hand it was considered offensive to colonial authorities because of the Africans’ blatant attempts to mimic and mock the “white oppressors” and, on the other hand, African students, teachers, and directors found the film to perpetrate an “exotic racism” of the African people. An outstanding film that until today is one of the classics to be revisited and discussed.

Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti, Maya Deren, United States, 1985, 52 min

Between 1947 and 1951 the experimental filmmaker Maya Deren spent significant periods of time in Haiti to make a film about Voodoo rituals and rites. The material she shot was left unedited until after her death when it was assembled into the film Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti. Deren’s work reveals the ongoing merging of art and ethnography, one of the legacies of Surrealism, also standing as an important cultural record of Haitian Voodoo—a religion based on West African beliefs and practices, combined with aspects of Roman Catholicism. The contrasting of Haitian dance with ‘non-Haitian elements’ in a series of dream-like sequences testifies to Deren’s Surrealist interest in alternative realities. Gradually, the focus shifted from dance to the complex nature of Haitian ceremonies, while celebrating Haiti for its hybrid culture as well as for its symbolic importance as the political site of a successful slave revolution, which resulted in Haiti becoming the first modern black republic.

These Screenings are part of the public programme of Ghosts and Spectres – Shadows of History.
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Jean Rouch]]> Maya Deren]]> Marc Glöde]]> Marc Glode]]> Africa]]> North America]]>
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?

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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]]>
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]]> Yasser Mattar]]> Southeast Asia]]> Indigenous Knowledge]]> Supernatural]]>

Night Fishing, 2011, 33 min, Korean with English subtitles In Night Fishing a man casually sets up for a fishing trip at the water’s edge. Evening comes and a tug on his line presents him with the body of a woman. While he tries to disentangle himself from the fishing lines, she comes alive. The scene changes and the woman is now a shaman priestess in a funeral ritual for a man who drowned in a river. He speaks through her to his relatives, asking for forgiveness.

Manshin: Ten Thousand Spirits, 2013, 104 min, Korean with English subtitles Manshin: Ten Thousand Spirits is a documentary telling the story of a woman who — shunned for being possessed by spirits as a girl and oppressed for following superstitions as an adult — grew up to be Korea’s greatest shaman, and is now honoured as a national treasure.

This screening is part of the Education and Public Programme of Joan Jonas: They Come to Us without a Word.]]>
Park Chan-kyong]]> Park Chan-wook]]> Video]]> Korean]]> Asia]]>
Indigenous Knowledge]]> Supernatural]]>

Selected works are chosen and discussed by artist and filmmaker Park Chan-kyong which engage with topics of the spiritual aspects of nature.

This workshop and screening is part of the Education and Public Programme of Joan Jonas: They Come to Us without a Word.

Park Chan-kyong is an artist and filmmaker based in Seoul, South Korea. His subjects have extended from the Cold War to traditional Korean religious culture, from “media-oriented memory” to “regional utopian imaginations.” He has produced media based works such as Manshin (2013), Night Fishing (2011, co-directed with Park Chan-wook), Anyang Paradise City (2011), Radiance (2010), Sindoan (2008), Flying (2005), Power Passage (2004), and Sets (2000). He has won various prizes including Hermès Korea Misulsang (2004), Golden Bear Prize for short films at the Berlin International Film Festival (2011) and Best Korean Film of the Jeonju International Film Festival (2011).]]>
Park Chan-kyong]]> Video]]> Korean]]>
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]]> 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]]>
Supernatural]]> Theatre]]>
Speaker: Timothy Murray

This talk addresses the fascination of artworks in our previous exhibition Theatrical Fields in 2014, which introduces theatricality as a critical strategy in performance, film and video. In providing a brief theoretical overview of “the politics of theatricality,” Murray will reflect on the exhibition’s screenic re-possession of cinematic characters, buried stories, and influential texts in ways that challenge the historical groundings of theatricality in the ethnocentric certainty of culture and law. ]]>
Timothy Murray]]> Europe]]> North America]]>
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]]>