This public programme will start punctually at 4.00pm. Please arrive at least 10min before time to secure a space. Admittance will be on a first-come-first-served basis.
A Passage to Dreamworld is a public programme held in conjunction with Passages, an exhibition of the second cycle of SEA AiR – Studio Residencies for Southeast Asian artists in the European Union. Featuring artists Priyageetha Dia (Singapore), Ngoc Nau (Vietnam) and Saroot Supasuthivech (Thailand) and their artworks Sap Sonic, Virtual Reverie: Echoes of a Forgotten Utopia and Spirit-forward in G Major, the exhibition is a culmination of their residencies in Europe.
As an extension of the exhibition, A Passage to Dreamworld takes audiences through a performative journey into a liminal realm where reality and imagination intertwine. In creating a space where creative impulses take place, fresh perceptions can be formed to give way to new possibilities.
Priyageetha Dia will perform a reading from her work Sonified Vision, which looks into the sonification of visual material, accompanied with a live-mixing of sound samples from Sap Sonic. Ngoc Nau presents a two-channel projection drawn from additional footage alongside Virtual Reverie: Echoes of a Forgotten Utopia, and a sound performance on traditional Vietnamese instruments against a mix of soundtracks by her collaborator Dustin Ngo, a Vietnamese sound producer and instrumentalist. Saroot Supasuthivech’s video The Ritual of Life and Music shows the process of a Thai Buddhist monk making holy water and chanting the prayer Ratana Sutta, a sacred verse addressing the contemplation of the Triple Gem: Buddha, Dharma (the teachings), and Sangha (the monastic Buddhist community); followed by a live performance of Sai Samon, a Thai song featured in Spirit-forward in G Major, on the khlui (a Thai flute), by Thai musician Udom Kiattivikrai.
In view of the public programme that is held within the exhibition spaces, Passages will not be on view while the programme is ongoing.
Singapore Art Week 2024 Late Night programme: SPIRIT WORLD
From 7.00pm till late
Blk 38 Malan Road, #01-05, Singapore 109441
Responding to sounds from artist Priyageetha Dia’s Sap Sonic, DJs DIA.HRD (the artist herself), FATIMAH, C2AC and ALEEZON will perform a live mix evolving into free play as an activation of the exhibition space.
19:00 DIA.HRD
20:00 FATIMAH
21:00 ALEEZON
22:00 C2AC
SPIRIT WORLD is a space for everyone, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, or background. This includes respecting personal space and boundaries. Discriminatory behaviour will not be tolerated.
As part of the SEA AiR programme, Dia had undertaken her residency at Jan van Eyck Academie (Netherlands), Nau at Rupert (Lithuania) and Supasuthivech at Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Germany) through the summer. Bringing back their experiences from diverse contexts in the EU to Singapore for this exhibition, Passages speaks of the artists’ journeys across geographical and cultural boundaries from one continent to another; the cultural exchanges that take place during this time; and the continuous development of ideas as they return to their home countries to create new works for the exhibition.
Employing new media technologies to aid their storytelling, each artist creates speculative narratives that traverse time and space, shifting between the past and present. While distinct in their artistic research and practices, their works evoke memories and explore meanings in liminal spaces, reverberating in their journey from one passage to the next.
Priyageetha Dia’s research interest lies in the plantations of Southeast Asia and their colonial histories, including those of migrant labour and structures of production and power. She explores gaps in historical records that are not only text-based, but also non-textual ones such as photographs, artefacts and oral interviews. Her four-channel sound installation Sap Sonic is a sonification of images from the photo album of the Sumatra Caoutchouc Company, a rubber planting company, from the archives of Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Beyond their visual representations, the images bear witness to the power dynamics between the coloniser and its labourers as well as the hierarchy between nature and machine. Reframing this landscape from a visual to a sonic one, Sap Sonic serves as an aural gateway to the plantations as it delves into the lived yet unspoken lives of those who work on and inhabit the plantations, both human and nonhuman. Accompanying the work, Sap Script is a text installation in white latex paint, referencing rubber sap, on a black, obsidian-like background. Its typeface echoes the slender and linear structure of rubber trees, distorted to resemble the waveform of sound waves. Through the intangible, unseen nature of sound, Sap Sonic probes aspects of the visual world; expanding the agentive possibilities of the uncounted and the underheard.
Upon her arrival in Vilnius, Lithuania, for her residency, Ngoc Nau was drawn to Soviet-era architectural elements in the city, such as the Soviet brutalist architecture of the Vilnius Palace of Concerts and Sports. She also became intrigued with the iconic image of a Lenin statue being removed, with its legs severed, from the city centre square in 1991. This imagery became a point of departure for her exploration into multifaceted aspects of post-Soviet realities in her own country. Portraying contemporary life amidst the remnants of socialist architecture and monuments using 3D animation and visual effects, Nau’s video installation, Virtual Reverie: Echoes of a Forgotten Utopia, demonstrates the transformative power of technology in reshaping our perceptions of reality. Central to the work is a constructed representation of the Vietnam-Soviet Friendship Palace of Culture and Labour in Hanoi, Vietnam, that serves as a stage for five hip-hop dancers embarking on a symbolic journey. As they interact with elements drawn from historical references in Vietnam and Lithuania, the dancers bridge the gap between historical artifacts and contemporary experiences. Echoing the ebb and flow of ideologies, their passage brings about new meanings when past memories evolve in the face of shifting landscapes.
Saroot Supasuthivech’s multimedia installation, Spirit-forward in G Major, charts the transformative journey experienced by Thai expatriates in Germany, told through a metaphoric cycle of life, death and rebirth. The work’s narrative unfolds in four parts. “New Beginnings” uses therapeutic dialogues to depict the initial migrant experience. “A Surreal Interlude”, based on interviews conducted with Thai monks and nuns in Berlin, transports viewers into a realm of magic and mortality inspired by Grimm’s fairy tales. The third segment focuses on a Thai music score Sai Samon, the oldest documented. Finally, “A Glimpse Beyond” dives into a poetic meditation on death and the afterlife, told from the viewpoint of the deceased. This poignant culmination is an exploration into a liminal reality between the familiar and the surreal, encapsulating the interplay of tradition, adaptation and preservation within an evolving cultural landscape.
Passages will be held through Singapore Art Week 2024, with a public programme taking place on 20 January 2024. Details of the public programme can be found here.
SEA AiR – Studio Residencies for Southeast Asian Artists in the European Union is made possible thanks to a generous grant of the European Union.
Dates
Opening reception:
28 November 2023, 5–8pm
Refreshments will be served
Public programme:
20 January 2023, 4-5.30pm
Opening Hours:
1 December 2023 – 14 January 2024: Friday – Sunday, 1–7pm
Closed on 24, 25, 31 December 2023 and 1 January 2024
Singapore Art Week
19 – 28 January 2024: Monday – Sunday, 1–7pm
Late nights on 20 and 27 January 2024: Saturday, 1–9pm
Location:
NTU CCA Singapore Residencies Studios
Block 38 Malan Road
Gillman Barracks
Singapore 109441
Drawing from oral histories and unwritten memories, the works of Saroot Supasuthivech unearth the multiplicity of narratives embedded in specific locations. His installations often combine moving image and sound to conjure the affective aura of a site and bring forth its intangible socio-historical stratifications. Using photogrammetry techniques, he turns 2D images into 3D models as a way of to blur the lines between the real and the mythical. His latest video installation, River Kwai: This Memorial Service Was Held in the Memory of the Deceased (2022), was featured in the Discoveries Section at Art Basel Hong Kong 2022.
For his residency at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Saroot Supasuthivech will research the encounters of cultures, faiths and rituals among immigrant communities and local inhabitants. He is especially interested in the spiritual beliefs and ceremonial traditions by which humans ritualise the moment of death. With a focus on the historical impact of immigration on funerary practices across different regional and religious contexts, the artist will survey specific burial sites and rituals in Germany and Thailand looking at how foreign communities enact their funerary traditions abroad.
Major sites of interest for his research are the Protestant Cemetery in Bangkok and the Kurpark (Spa Park) in Bad Homburg, the only town outside of Thailand that features two Sala Thai (open pavilions). The Sala were gifted to the city of Bad Homburg by King Chulalongkorn of Siam (1853 to 1910) as a token of gratitude after the monarch’s illness was healed in the spa town in 1907. From the materials gathered through field trips, interviews and archival research, the artist plans to develop a video installation that will convey the mystical structures of those sites as well as the spiritual intersections engendered by global migrations.
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