The Max Planck–NTU Singapore Centre for Biocultural Worlding (CBCW) is seeking to appoint one Research Fellow (Curatorial Research and Practice) for a two-year term (renewable), based at the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore. The fellow will be embedded in an interdisciplinary environment, hybrid in nature, with the Centre jointly operating across Singapore and Germany. As the CBCW functions as a research centre where curatorial and artistic research methods, legal inquiry, and diverse knowledge traditions converge to explore new forms of collaboration and stewardship of biocultural worlds, applications from candidates whose research interests align with CBCW’s concerns are welcomed. The focus is on biological, cultural, and epistemic diversity, with an approach that works relationally with, alongside, and across situated, grounded initiatives of novel research, experimentation in the fields of curatorial and artistic practices, and local and indigenous knowledge traditions.
 
Key Responsibilities: 
The fellow will conduct independent and collaborative curatorial and artistic research on relevant biocultural worlding topics and forge mutual connections with other CBCW projects. From within the CBCW to public platforms, institutional partnerships, and interventions beyond academic boundaries and museological frameworks, the fellow will advance curatorial and artistic research methods of inquiry to expand epistemic (and material) possibilities, developing new protocols and toolkits for conducting research.
 
Job Requirements:
– PhD degree in fields of curatorial, art and cultural studies, museum studies, visual anthropology, or other related humanities fields.
– Knowledge of and practice in curatorial studies, contemporary art, visual culture and cultural anthropology, art history, or other relevant research methods.
– Outstanding publication achievements in relevant artistic journals, publications, exhibitions and proven visibility in creative projects, whether of international scope or locally specific.
– Strong organisational skills and the ability to manage multiple tasks and deadlines. Proven ability to work independently and collaboratively in an international, interdisciplinary team.
– Excellent academic writing skills with high literacy of artistic and scientific vocabularies that extends beyond text-based forms of knowledge.
– Critically attuned to current curatorial and museological discourse and landscape.
– Familiarity with how injustices result from imbalances among biological, cultural, and epistemic diversity.
– Familiarity with, and research experience in Singapore and/or the Asia-Pacific region would be an asset.
 
Please submit your application on Workday, accompanied by the following supporting documents:
– Cover letter (one-page) and curriculum vitae, including list of publications, conference presentations, creative projects and exhibitions curated or participated in (in a single PDF).
– A two-page curatorial research proposal (excluding references and annexes) outlining:
– Proposed topic of the biocultural research.
– Methodology (specifying key collaborators and knowledge-holding communities)
– Description of activities and outcomes of the project.
– Elaboration on how the proposed research will augment the CBCW’s mission and vision.
– Scanned copies of qualifications (in a single PDF).
– Two letters of recommendation.

For any inquiries about the position, contact us at CBCW@ntu.edu.sg.
 
The deadline for the call has been extended to 15 October 2026. 
 
We regret that only shortlisted candidates will be notified.
 
Hiring Institution: NTU

SYN is a live audio-visual work inspired by the sonorous world of insects. The pulses, tones, textures, and rhythms of these often overlooked creatures coalesce to create a generative and ever-changing, visualised soundscape.

In this work-in-progress presentation, sound artist Zai Tang will be doing a short performance, followed by a talk and Q&A session.

SYN, a prefix that means “with” or “together”, is built on notions of being drawn from both Eastern and Western philosophy. During his talk, Zai will elucidate how ideas from Zen and psychoanalysis have nurtured his project’s development, as well as elaborate on how he developed his live audio-visual system.

SYN explores listening as a mode of attunement between the human and more-than-human realms. It aims to hold space for being with, so that we might recover the feeling of being part of the Earth and its myriad vibrations.

—

This project is funded by the National Arts Council (NAC) under the Creation Grant.

PROGRAM OVERVIEW: 

Centering plural, accountable, and historically grounded forms of inquiry is a core commitment of the Max Planck–NTU Singapore Centre for Biocultural Worlding. We invite proposals for collaborative activities that advance this commitment in concrete and innovative ways.

CBCW seeks projects that demonstrate:

– collaborative efforts that bring biocultural worlding into practice; 
– biocultural thought and practice that make itself publicly relevant through interactive, multimodal, and participatory formats; 
– research approaches that integrate ecological, historical, legal, artistic, and ancestral or intergenerational community perspectives; 
– rigorous, plural collaboration across expertise domains that generate substantive and transformative insights into changing social and natural ecosystems; 
– diverse formats exploring interdependence, relationality, ancestral or intergenerational modes of being, knowing, and doing, and plural temporalities to move beyond problem identification and to engage directly with grounded forms of knowledge production and practice. 

Budget: 10,000 € maximum

WHO CAN APPLY:

– Knowledge-holders, curators, artists, legal scholars, scientists, and researchers of age 21 or older by the deadline. 
– Individuals may apply independently or in collaboration; partnerships with organizations are permitted, but organizations cannot apply or serve as the lead applicant. 
– Applicants must not be enrolled in a degree-seeking program of any kind during the grant period (July 2026 to December 2026). 
– Applicants are encouraged to consult with a member of the CBCW Board of Advisors or Leadership Team in advance of submission. 
– Applicants must not be a member of the CBCW Board of Advisors, the MPIWG Board of Advisors, NTU Board of Trustees, and/or an immediate family member of any of the above. 

CRITERIA:

The evaluation process will review proposals that clearly demonstrate: 

– Alignment with CBCW’s mission and vision. 
– Brings together artistic practice, legal inquiry, and/or ecological, historical, and situated forms of knowledge production to conduct integrative collaborative research. 
– Meaningful engagement with knowledge-holding communities, demonstrating co-creative roles rather than consultative inclusion. 
– A clearly defined thematic and conceptual focus in questions of interdependence, relationality, or intergenerational knowledge. 
– Contextual grounding, specifying the empirical, historical, or conceptual contexts of the project. 
– Innovative or experimental multimodal formats that develop and share analytical biocultural thinking beyond academia. 
– Originality, demonstrating that the project described in the application is newly conceived and requires cross-disciplinary and community collaboration. 
– Ethics and data protection protocols, where applicable. 
– Inclusion of at least one collaborator from NTU College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, and one from the MPI for the History of Science or MPI for Innovation and Competition in the team. 

APPLICATION GUIDELINES:

Applications must be submitted in English, using the form provided below. Each application should be compiled as a single file (Word document or PDF) and named according to the following format: 2026_Smith_Sally.doc (e.g., if your family name is Smith and given name is Sally)

What to submit (space provided in form):
– Title (max. 25 words)
– Abstract/Summary (max. 500 words)
– Keywords (4-6)
– Project Location
– Project Timeline
– Lead Applicant Contact Details 
– Artist/Collaborator Information (including roles of core team members)
– Qualifications of project lead and core team members (max. 500 words)
– Budget (max. 10,000 Euros)
– Impact/Target Audience (max. 250 words)
– Additional Forms of Community Support (e.g., in-kind contributions)
– Supplementary Materials (optional): letters of commitment or interest, permits for public spaces.
– Checklist of Criteria (as outlined above)

Click HERE to download the submission form.

Upload submission to this folder: https://wg-cloud.gnz.mpg.de/s/zcTPcbomJRL6nrx

For questions, please contact: msaidul@ntu.edu.sg or lonaga@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de.
 

WHO ARE WE

Co-Directors 
Professor Ute Meta Bauer, Acting Director, NTU CCA Singapore and Professor, NTU College of Humanities Arts & Social Sciences 
Professor Dagmar Schäfer, Director, Department Artifacts, Action, Knowledge, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science 
Co-Deputy Directors 
Dr Md Saidul Islam, Associate Professor, NTU School of Social Sciences 
Dr Lisa Onaga, Senior Research Scholar, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science 

Scientific Coordinators 
Mei Jia Ng 
Suelyn Tarris 

International Advisory Board 
Professor Nabil Ahmed, Trondheim Academy of Fine Art, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway 
Emeritus Professor Chua Beng Huat, School of Social Sciences, Singapore Management University, Singapore 
Professor Susy Frankel, Lead Director, New Zealand Centre of International Economic Law, Te Herenga Waka · Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand 
Han Song Hiltmann, Programme Director, Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss, Germany 
Professor Gabriela Soto-Laveaga, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University, United States 
Marian Pastor Roces, Independent curator, cultural critic, policy analyst, and founder, TAOINC, Philippines 
Professor Daniel Robinson, School of Humanities & Language, University of New South Wales, Australia 
Dr Julia Voss, Art historian, art critic, and curator, Deutsches Historisches Museum, Germany 
  
 
 

The workshop brought together an international group of scholars, artists, curators, and researchers from Nanyang Technological University (NTU), King’s College London (KCL), the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPI), and invited colleagues from the National University of Singapore (NUS). Participants came from a wide range of disciplines and backgrounds, including history and digital humanities, history of science and technology, anthropology, law, Chinese medicine and religion, ecology and environmental studies, Chinese studies, archaeology, museum studies, as well as artists, curators, and film scholars. Together, they explored the intersections of biological and cultural diversity through the evolving framework of Biocultural Worlding. The workshop aimed to foster transdisciplinary collaboration across the arts, humanities, natural sciences, and legal studies, while laying the groundwork for a joint research network and shared inquiry platform. Framed around four thematic sessions: (I) Methods of Synchronous Exchange of Knowledge Creation, (II) Asynchrony and Interdisciplinary Rigidity, (III) Local Stewardship of Knowledge, and (IV) Beyond Documentation, participants presented case studies, artistic practices, and on-going research that collectively questioned how ‘’worlding’’ might serve as a conceptual and practical tool to address biocultural diversity across different disciplines, epistemologies, and regions. These presentations were followed by in-depth group discussions that allowed for reflection, dialogue, and knowledge exchange across fields that might otherwise remain siloed. In addition to the four core sessions, the programme also included film screenings of short movies developed by some of the workshop’s participants. This diversity of perspectives and formats enriched the dialogue, fostering richer and more nuanced understandings of Biocultural Worlding.

Research Outputs

What is ‘Worlding’ in Biocultural Worlding Workshop

Programme
Welcome Address by Professor Ute Meta Bauer

SESSION 1: METHODS OF SYNCHRONOUS EXCHANGE OF KNOWLEDGE CREATION, Chaired by Professor Ute Meta Bauer
Case Study I: Knotting and Unknotting Nature and Culture in Amami Ōshima, Presentation by Lisa Onaga, Senior Research Scholar, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
Case Study II: Boundary Objects, Knowledge Exchange,Trading Zones and Epistemic Humility in Singapore Medicinal Gardens, Presentation by Michael Stanley-Baler, Associate Professor of History, NTU SoH and NTU LKCSM, and President, International Association for the Study of Traditional Asian Medicine
Case Study III: Living Heritage and Rapprochement: In the Village of Poets, Presentation by Michael Walsh, Professor of Cultural Studies and Digital Humanities, NTU SoH
Response by Margarida Mendes, Curator and Affiliated Researcher, NOVA Institute of Communication, University of Lisbon

SESSION 2: ASYNCHRONY AND INTERDISCIPLINARY RIGIDITY, Chaired by Sushma Griffin
Case Study IV: Biology as Cultural History or Culture as Biological History: Anthropology and the Faultlines of Human Population Genetics, Presentation by Kriti Kapila, Senior Lecturer, Anthropology and Law, King’s College of London
Case Study V: Achieving Critical Mass at the Borneo Cultures Museum: Working to Design, Conserve and Collaborate in an Institution in Transition, Presentation by Laura Miotto, Associate Professor (Practice), NTU ADM and Co-Chair, Museum Studies and Cultural Practices and Franca Cole, Lecturer, Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices, NTU ADM and Research Fellow, Climate Transformation Programme
Response by Marc Gloede, Associate Professor, NTU ADM and Co-Chair, Museum Studies and Cultural Practices

SESSION 3: LOCAL STEWARDSHIP OF KNOWLEDGE, Chaired by Associate Professor Laura Miotto
Case Study VI: The Orang Laut as Local Stewards of a Way of Knowing, Presentation by Vivienne Wee, Anthropologist and Co-Founder of Ethnographica Private Limited Singapore
Case Study VII: Spirit Possession and the Generation of Alternative Worlds, Presentation by Kenneth Dean, Professor, Department of Chinese Studies, NUS and Director, Wan Boo Sow Research Cente for Chinese Culture
Response by Firdaus Sani, Founder of Oranglaut.sg and Black Sampan, and fourth-generation Orang Laut/Pulau descendant

SESSION 4: BEYOND DOCUMENTATION, Chaired by Dean Jon Wilson, CoHASS
Case Study VIII: Performing the Earth: A Reassessment of the “Meta Ekologi” project in relation to the contemporary Eco-Art discourse, Presentation by Marc Gloede, Associate Professor, NTU ADM and Co-chair, Museum Studies and Cultural Practices
Case Study IX: Worlding and World-Making from the Area Beyond National Jurisdiction, Presentation by Jonathan Galka, Postdoctoral Fellow, Asia Research Institute, NUS
Response by Ina Conradi Chavez, Filmmaker and Associate Professor, NTU ADM
Response by Zara Arshad, Researcher and Curator

PUBLIC KEYNOTE LECTURES
Welcome Address by Professor Ute Meta Bauer and Dean Jon Wilson
Keynote I: Oceanic Worldings, Keynote presentation by Margarida Mendes, Curator and Affiliated Researcher, NOVA Institute of Communication, University of Lisbon
Keynote II: Turtle Worlds as a Way of Living, Lisa Onaga, Senior Research Scholar, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore presents Propositions for Planetary Attunement, a live event featuring Artists-in-Residence Ng Hui Hsien, The Observatory, and Zarina Muhammad. Spanning polyphonic storytelling, moving image, live music, and performance, it marks the culmination of the inaugural STAR Residencies (Science, Technology, Art & Research), a pioneering collaboration with the NTU Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS). A research institute of Nanyang Technological University, the Earth Observatory of Singapore conducts fundamental research on earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, and climate change to better understand the dynamic forces shaping Southeast Asia and the world.

What happens when artists and scientists find common ground in shared concerns and collective care for ecological complexities? What can they reveal about planetary matters that often exceed us—from the unfathomable scales of geological time and elusive frequencies to the molecular texture of rocks and age-old modes of coexisting with non-human formations? Emerging from a year-long exchange between the artists and EOS researchers, Propositions for Planetary Attunement explores the generative potential of interdisciplinary encounters, experimenting with the composition of scientific data into artistic gestures of ecological witnessing, listening, and becoming. These explorations manifest in three acts that metabolise scientific evidence, ancestral knowledge, and other-than-human perspectives. Drifting between geosciences and creative inquiry, each artist offers a unique proposition that merges measurements and musings, interlacing the empirical with the embodied, science with speculation, facts with signals. 

Complementing the artistic propositions is a selection of research materials from the NTU Earth Observatory of Singapore created for this event. This display foregrounds the core scientific work explored by the artists during the residency, offering a glimpse into the data and phenomena that informed their inquiry. Together, these acts chart a non-linear journey to the threshold of our profound unknowing of the invisible forces that shape the planet, inviting us to cultivate deeper forms of attention and attunement to the Earth.

STAR Residencies is conceived and curated by Dr Anna Lovecchio, Curator, NTU CCA Singapore.

Please note this is a ticketed event with limited capacity. Secure your tickets here. 

This event is suitable for ages 16 and above. NTU CCA Singapore reserves the right to refuse admission if patrons are found to be below the requisite age. There will be no refunds or compensation for non-admission.

ABOUT STAR Residencies 

STAR Residencies (Science, Technology, Art & Research) is a pioneering initiative by the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, designed to foster meaningful cross-pollination between artistic and academic research. By embedding artists within world-class research institutes at Nanyang Technological University, the programme creates a unique site for exchange between creative practitioners and academic researchers.

For more information about STAR Residencies,
please visit LAUNCH OF STAR RESIDENCIES (2025-2026).

Video documentation: Ting Min-Wei
Second Camera: Felix Kenneth Galistan / Earth Observatory of Singapore

View the full video documentation here.

Videography: Felix Kenneth Galistan / Earth Observatory of Singapore

By turning to geological terrains as protagonists—understanding them as earth-building fissures, and in various cultural and spiritual traditions, as guardians—we ask how living in proximity to these terrains is shaped with, by, and at times against Earth’s processes. Beginning with Artist Ng Hui Hsien, she contemplates on photography and art installations as portals to imperceptible landforms, which enact their own agency, sustain their own microclimates, and determine what can or cannot be perceived. These landforms, in turn, animate social lives. Drawing from both previous and recent works, she also looks to the visual medium as a catalyst—a proxy for sensing forces larger than oneself, shaping perceptions, and re-establishing kinship. Professor Simon Redfern examines the crystalline structures that form beneath volcanic terrains. As a mineralogist and crystallographer, he reveals how atomic-scale mineral architectures record volcanic processes and Earth’s deep carbon cycle. Each crystal represents a frozen moment of geological time, encoding the thermal and chemical conditions of its formation. Beyond their extractive value, these minerals serve as archives of dynamic Earth systems, showing how volcanoes participate in climate regulation over deep time through both degassing and the subsequent weathering of volcanic rocks. Moderated by Professor Ute Meta Bauer, this lecture considers: How do these distinct methods offer different understandings of materiality—one grounded in lived, perceptual time, the other in Earth’s deep time—and what emerges when these temporalities are placed in conversation? The title’s allusion to Malcolm Lowry’s novel reminds us that living “under the volcano” is as much about psychological and cultural reckoning as it is about geological reality. 

Tuesday Lecture 
24 February 2026
6:30pm – 8:30pm 
The Hall, NTU CCA Singapore
Free with registration

Venture into the research-in-progress conducted by our current Artists-in-Residence Ng Hui Hsien, The Observatory, and Zarina Muhammad within the inaugural cycle of STAR RESIDENCIES (Science, Technology, Art & Research)—a programme that positions scientific research at the core of artistic inspiration.

These open studio sessions present the ongoing research developed through the artists’ engagement and dialogue with earth scientists from the NTU Earth Observatory of Singapore. By foregrounding experimental research methodologies and the creative interpretation of scientific knowledge, the programme highlights the critical role of interdisciplinary exchange in addressing complex planetary phenomena.

Working across a range of ecological terrains and methodologies, the residents engage with the Earth’s shifting matters through diverse polysensory and multi-disciplinary approaches. Ng Hui Hsien traverses volcanic terrains to contemplate human-environment relations through the dual lenses of scientific evidence and lived experience, while The Observatory explores subterranean pulses through sound-based inquiry and interspecies frameworks, seeking to expand our comprehension of tectonic forces through sonic engagement. In parallel, Zarina Muhammad treads through intertidal zones and coastal sites as living archives of sea-level change, ecological memory, and the deep-time relations between land, sea, and climate.

STAR RESIDENCIES OPEN provides a unique entry point into the artists’ studios to observe the non-linear trajectory of creative research; here, visitors can encounter the evolving processes and interdisciplinary materials central to this residency.

What can be learned through deep sensing of seismic vibrations and elemental disturbances to the interruptions and murmurs of toxic noise embedded in the ambient background, that stem from anthropogenic pressures such as rapid urbanisation, technological acceleration and extractivism? By using sound as an ecological indicator, how might we identify natural ecosystems in states of transformation and modification? Through site-specific field recordings and compositions, The Observatory, STAR Artists-in-Residence at NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, will chart the more-than-human sound worlds, resonating with their rhythms and registering sounds to make visible the acoustic and material properties of specific nature-culture habitats extending into biological and geological realms. Associate Professor Benoit Taisne, NTU Asian School of Environment, will elaborate on infrasound research as a method for detecting volcanic eruptions in the Southeast Asia region through the deployment of infrasound array in Singapore. This setup captures low-frequency atmospheric sounds below the threshold of human hearing, enabling the detection, analysis, and characterisation of infrasound waves caused by natural events with potential to affect Singapore and society in general. This lecture will be moderated by Professor Ute Meta Bauer, with response by Dr Hari Vishnu, Senior Research Fellow at the Acoustic Research Laboratory, NUS. 

Tuesday Lecture 
9 December 2025
6:30pm – 8:30pm 
The Hall, NTU CCA Singapore
Free with registration

Dr Cissie Fu (AB Harvard; MSt, MSc, DPhil Oxford) is a political theorist. Born in Hong Kong, Cissie taught and performed across Asia, Europe, UK, and the Americas. She joined University of the Arts Singapore in 2022 as Associate Professor and Head of the McNally School of Fine Arts at LASALLE College of the Arts, after having served as Dean of the Faculty of Culture + Community at Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver, Canada. Cissie’s research interests in political aesthetics and decolonial action inform her approach to institution-building as a creative, critical, and communal cultural practice.

Liz Liu Yihui is a research assistant supporting the Developing and Evaluating Digital Tools for Participatory Climate Change Mitigation (2025–2026). Liu holds a BSc in Ecological Sciences from the University of Göttingen. She has pursued a master’s degree at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Singapore, using dye-making as a research method to investigate the materiality of a traditional textile dye in Southeast Asia. She is a co-founder at Wild Dot, a botanical ink-making studio working with locally abundant plants.

Join us for a walking and reading session exploring the intersection of art, ecologies, and local knowledge to reimagine relationships within Earth systems.  

Taking inspiration from case studies in the newly published Earth Ethics: Art, Institutions and Regenerative Practices (Monash University Publishing, 2025), co-edited by our current visiting researcher Madeleine Collie, this session explores some of the book’s strategies, offerings and ideas. Through collective reading, walking and discussion we will consider how place-based and relational approaches to art, research, and institution-making can cultivate ways of putting Earth Ethics into practice. 

The conference Instruct & Being Instructed seeks to explore the multifaceted role of instructions within the domain of art, from historical and contemporary perspectives. Central to this inquiry is the interrogation of how instructions—whether textual, verbal, or performative—mediate the multifaceted relationships between artists, artworks, audiences, collections or institutions in a wider global context. The conference will critically examine instructions as a tool of artistic authority, a frame to manifest crafts for art-making practices, a form of artistic experimentation and resistance, and it will also reflect on the educational dimension of instructions within the historical and contemporary curricula of art academies. By drawing on theories from curatorial practices, art history, pedagogy, cultural studies, and critical theory, the conference will investigate the ways in which instructions operate as a site of tension between prescriptive frameworks and the creative autonomy of the artist. Through a varied lineup of presentations and panel discussions, Instruct & Being Instructed aims to scrutinise the historical evolution of instructional paradigms in art, the impact of instructions on the materiality of artworks, and the socio-political implications of instructional art creating a critical and inclusive platform to rethink the function and implications of instructions in contemporary art practices, institutional frameworks, and broader socio-cultural contexts.

The conference programme is structured around three thematic panels: “Art and Power,” “Art and Technology,” and “Art and Embodiment.” These themes will be explored through a range of formats—including keynote lectures, artistic performances, presentations, and panel discussions—designed to encourage active dialogue, cross-disciplinary insight, and critical reflection among participants.

The conference is convened by Dr Marc Glöde, Associate Professor at the School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), in collaboration with Dr. Agnieszka Chalas, Assistant Professor at the National Institute of Education, NTU, and Dr. Sushma Griffin, Lecturer at the School of Humanities, NTU. Collectively, their diverse expertise across curatorial studies, education, art history, and cultural theory informs a dynamic and interdisciplinary approach to the theme of instruction in art.

The conference Instruct & Being Instructed has a hybrid format. The online presentations will be live-streamed at The Hall, NTU CCA Singapore, to welcome in-person participation.

Free upon registration.

PROGRAMME SCHEDULE

Friday, 5 September 2025, 6:30 – 8.00 pm (SGT)
Register: Online / On-site

6:30 – 7:00 pm 
Opening remarks by organisers

7:00 – 8:00 pm 
[online] Keynote Lecture: Ever Prompt – From “Do It” to Protocol Art
by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine Galleries, London

8:00 – 9:00 pm 
Reception with complimentary refreshments

Saturday, 06 September 2025, 10:00 am – 2:30 pm (SGT)
Register: Online / On-site

Panel 1: ART AND POWER
Moderated by Dr Sushma Griffin, Lecturer in the Department of Art History, School of Humanities, Nanyang Technological University

This panel examines the nuanced operations of instructions in their interplay between authority and negotiation within artistic, curatorial, and pedagogical contexts. It considers how certain overlooked elements of arts programming that might seem unwarranted and redundant actually provide value and access relating to the discursive realms of curatorial, artistic, and design practices. It looks beyond received narratives to speculate on the influence and implications of instructions in art and design pedagogies on the longer histories of contemporary art and art institutions.  

10:00 – 10:15 am
[online] Constellations of the Paracurricular and Paracuratorialby Dr Karin G. Oen-Lee, Assistant Professor, Art History and Museum Studies, University of Maryland Baltimore County

Centring concepts of the curatorial, the paracuratorial, and the constellation, this presentation situates Nanyang Technological University Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (NTU CCA Singapore), a unique research-oriented contemporary art centre, as a “paracurricular” resource for and of the university while also serving as a bridge for non-university publics and collaborators. The Centre’s diverse modes of conducting and sharing research, including but not limited to exhibitions and other curatorial projects, suggest that while exhibition facilities are helpful in convening community around artistic knowledge production, there are multiple and various formats that can contribute to a robust paracurricular environment. Artists’ residencies, publications, and discursive programmes each offer a way to encourage lively transdisciplinary connections to the realm of contemporary art and other fields in ways that tangibly benefit and enrich the experiences of both students and faculty through formal and informal connections. As a brief coda, the Centre’s mode of distributing power and interrogating power structures in higher education through non-curricular and atypical knowledge production can be read differently when compared to another constellation– the student-led extra-curricular explorations of philosophy and theory in mainland Chinese art academies in the 1980s in the context of “high culture fever.”

10:15 – 10:30 am
[online] Framework and Principles of Asian American Critical Pedagogy in Art Education by Dr Ryan Shin, Professor, School of Art, University of Arizona

The Asian American Critical Pedagogy Framework (AACP) addresses and challenges the systemic marginalisation of Asian art and culture within art education curricula and teaching practices. It proposes a new critical approach centered on the lived experiences of Asian American artists and communities. The framework was developed to address the curricular neglect and othering of Asian art and the underrepresentation of Asian artists in art education. The framework consists of four key principles: Asian American critical consciousness, counternarratives and reclamation, heterogeneity and intersectionality, and joy and wellness. The first principle, Asian American critical consciousness, confronts white supremacy and Orientalism by urging educators and students to recognize and critique existing power structures. Counternarratives and reclamation focus on centering Asian American voices, reclaiming their stories, histories, and identities. Heterogeneity and intersectionality recognise the diverse and complex nature of Asian American identities, acknowledging how experiences of oppression and power differ based on factors such as class, gender, age, and ability. Lastly, joy and wellness emphasize the importance of healing and empowerment for Asian American students and educators, fostering psychologically safe spaces for collective mourning, celebration, and exploration. The AACP framework can serve as a foundation for developing culturally relevant curricula that promote equity, inclusivity, and diversity within art education. It challenges the marginalization and cultural erasure of Asian art and culture to dismantle narrow representations that inhibit a full recognition of Asian artistic contributions. Ultimately, this framework aims to disrupt Eurocentric narratives and empower Asian American students and educators to thrive within the field of art education.

10:30 – 10:45 am 
[online] Learning what can’t be taught: reflections on Zhang Peili and artistic ‘genealogy’ in narratives of contemporary (Asian) art by Dr Olivier Krischer, Lecturer, School of Art & Design, University of New South Wales 

“Can artistic attitude be taught or passed down from one generation to another?” This simple question was at the heart of the interesting curatorial project Learning What Can’t Be Taught, organised at Asia Art Archive in 2021. Focusing on six artists from the China Art Academy, the first national art school in China, established in 1928, the project looked beyond the familiar avant-garde narrative of rupture, to consider similarities and influences across three pedagogical ‘generations’ of artists to emerge in contemporary China—in a period marked by radical material transformation. This paper, originally pitched for that project, draws on unpublished research taking the form of a somewhat speculative genealogy for Zhang Peili, in order to highlight early influences or parallels in the formation of his notably conceptual practice, initially through painting. It considers the curiously experimental nature of his peers at CAA’s No.1 Studio, under the tutelage of painter Jin Yide, who had received experimental training under visiting Romanian artists in 1960s Hangzhou, for example. I speculate on Zhang’s early assertion of conceptual, post-studio art practice might be rooted, or ‘seeded’, in the genealogy of his art education and experiences? Since Zhang was invited to establish the first course on new media art in China, at CAA in the early 2000s, these questions have broader implications for how we understand histories of art and institutions, and not just in the Chinese context.

10:45 – 11:15 am Joint discussion and Q&A 

11:15 – 11:30 am Short break

Panel 2: ARTAND TECHNOLOGY
Moderated by Paul Lincoln, Head of the Visual and Performing Arts at National Institute of Education and the Director of the NTU Museum at Nanyang Technological University

Focusing on the entanglement of instructions and technological mediation, this panel explores how tools, codes, and digital systems reconfigure art-making, its reception and teaching. From historical craft practices to contemporary algorithmic and AI-driven approaches, it asks how instructions function as both enabling structures and constraints. The discussion will bridge art, design, and media perspectives with pedagogical concerns about how technology shapes artistic learning and experimentation.

11:30 – 11:45 am 
[online] Aesthetic Illegitimacy in the Corpocene by Dr Katherine Guinness, Assistant Professor, Critical Studies in the Department of Art,  University of Maryland, College Park and Dr Grant Bollmer, Associate Research Professor, University of Maryland, College Park

This talk describes a central contradiction in aesthetic theory today. On one hand there exists a range of seemingly insignificant, temporary trends linked with the political economy of identity and visibility on the internet; “aesthetics” online are a way of distinguishing oneself, linked with the desire to commodify oneself as an object of attention and, therefore, value. On the other hand are academic discussions that often defer to “art” in an institutionally legitimate sense, using the traditional object of aesthetic contemplation as a route to theorize technology, the body, emotion, and beyond. “Art” has become a way for cultural theorists to signify the legitimacy of their arguments, even though “aesthetics” more broadly, today, point to a range of phenomena that are seemingly illegitimate because of their imbrication with, and thus “corruption” by, capital and value. As we will develop in this talk, the foundations of aesthetic theory and philosophy emerge from a crisis of capital. This talk will return to the earliest development of aesthetic theory, the German philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten. In responding to an emerging market for art called into being by a new wealth class, Baumgarten was the writer who transformed the meaning of “aesthetic” from one that merely referred to a kind of sensation or sensibility to its explicit linkage with questions of taste, of good and bad, of value and evaluation. In returning to Baumgarten, we seek to draw out parallels between our present and the context in which aesthetics, taste, and judgment initially appeared as problems for philosophy. If art and aesthetics are ultimately linked with the accumulation of capital and problems of value, then, we ask, what are the possibilities for a “political” art? If it is impossible to escape the link between art and market, then what might it look like to parasite capital today?  

11:45 am – 12:00 pm 
What Happens When AI Joins the Art Room? Insights from Students and Educators by Dr Joo Hong Low, Senior Teaching Fellow, the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University

This presentation explores the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in secondary art education in Singapore, drawing on classroom-based case studies from selected secondary schools. It investigates how AI tools—particularly generative image models—are being used by students to support ideation, enhance creative expression, and bridge the gap between conceptual thinking and visual realisation. Students responded positively to AI’s immediacy and versatility, noting how it helped them explore multiple possibilities, visualise abstract ideas, and personalise their creative process. At the same time, the presentation critically examines the challenges and limitations of AI in art classrooms. Some students voiced concerns about over-reliance on AI, expressing that it could diminish the tactile, imaginative, and experimental aspects of traditional artmaking. Others noted frustrations with inconsistent or inaccurate outputs, and a perceived risk of homogenisation—where artworks began to resemble one another due to similar prompt-based results. Beyond creative concerns, the talk will highlight key ethical considerations, including copyright, authorship, misinformation, and the need to uphold academic integrity. These issues point to the growing importance of AI literacy in the art curriculum—not just in terms of technical skills, but also in fostering critical awareness, aesthetic judgment, and ethical responsibility. Ultimately, this session advocates for a nuanced and transformative pedagogical approach, where AI is positioned as a co-creative partner rather than a replacement for artistic agency. It proposes that when used intentionally, AI can enrich the learning experience and empower students—if balanced with hands-on practice, teacher guidance, and thoughtful curricular design.

12:00 – 12:30 pm Joint discussion and Q&A 

12:30 – 1:00 pm Lunch break 

Panel 3: ART AND EMBODIMENT
Moderated by Dr Marc Glöde, Associate Professor and Co-Director of the MA in Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices at ADM, Nanyang Technological University

This panel turns to the corporeal and experiential dimensions of instructions, asking how bodies—of artists, audiences, and students—become sites of inscription, transmission, and enactment. By considering performance, pedagogy, and material engagement, the panel explores how instructions shape artistic knowledge not only through words and images but also through embodied practices. The emphasis here connects art history and education with lived, sensorial, and affective registers of artistic instruction.

1:00 – 1:15 pm 
Learning through procession: ritual, embodiment, and shared knowledge in Thaipusam by Laura Miotto, Associate Professor and Co-Director of MA in Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices, Nanyang Technological University

This talk examines how knowledge is transmitted through embodied ritual practices, focusing on the Thaipusam procession in Singapore. As an ephemeral event, the procession becomes a site where learning takes place collectively—through bodily and sensory experiences in ritual acts—revealing how Thaipusam generates shared knowledge across religious, cultural, and artistic contexts.

1:15 – 1:30 pm
Memories and other instructional works by Heman Chong, Artist 

In his ongoing project Memories, artist and writer Heman Chong explores the act of publishing through performance. Each work begins with a short story of around 500 words, written with a very specific form of transmission in mind. Participants are invited through an open call to memorise one story word for word with the help of a personal trainer. The performance ends only when the participant can flawlessly recite the entire text back to the trainer. These stories are never published — not in print, nor online. The only way to “receive” them is by memorising them, investing significant time and effort. Yet this gift is ephemeral: without constant rehearsal, the words quickly fade. Chong first devised this method of “publishing as performance” in 2009 during Ong Keng Sen’s Flying Circus Project at T:>Works in Singapore, which also featured Boris Charmatz’s expo zero, a performance exhibition using only the bodies of artists. As curator Anca Rujoiu notes, Chong’s practice is “a quest for writing, an exploration of its desires and disenchantments as well as the conditions that constitute it.” His works interweave writing, publishing, performing, and collaboration, creating a fluid and dynamic space where instructions shape both the artwork and its audience. In this presentation, Chong reflects on the role of instructions in his practice and how they reconfigure the boundaries between art, memory, and participation.

1:30 – 1:45 pm 
Investigating Artistic Authority and Participation through Performative Instruction in Contemporary Southeast Asian Art by Yi Yinzi, PhD candidate at the School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University

This presentation explores how performative instruction in contemporary Southeast Asian art mediates the complex dynamics between artistic authority and audience participation. On the one hand, artistic instruction can shape, enable, and at times restrict audience participation to the point of compromising participatory agency or even causing discomfort. On the other hand, there are moments in performance art when participants retain the choice to engage or not, based on their interest in the project, their informed knowledge of what may unfold, and their assessment of their own capabilities. This presentation considers Vietnamese artist Pham Ha Hai’s performance at the Asiatopia International Performance Art Festival II in Bangkok in 1999, in which he blindfolded participants and instructed them to smear black ink on their faces without disclosing what was in their hands, alongside Singaporean artist Heman Chong’s Memories, where an instructor reads a roughly 500-word story written by Chong to a participant, who is then required to memorize and recite the story word for word. In these examples, artistic and participatory choices both operate within the aesthetic realm and are shaped by the social realities that contextualize the practice. This raises questions about whether the aesthetic realm can serve as an exception to everyday social practices of acceptance and refusal, the different temporal phases of a project in which participants may initiate or revisit their judgment, and the modern notion of a contract based on mutual consent, where each party is assumed to be capable of making rational choices. 

1:45 – 2:15 pm Joint discussion and Q&A 

2:15 – 2:30 pm Final Remarks and Closing of Event

Instruct & Being Instructed is supported by CoHASS Interdisciplinary Conference, Symposium, and Workshop Scheme.

This research is an inquiry into curatorial, artistic, and academic networks of exchange that foster a pluriversal understanding of Southeast Asia. It will highlight the potential of open-ended curatorial, artistic and textual endeavours that formulate their own modus operandi. Analysing motivations, methods, and audiences of three distinct art initiatives by local practitioners will provide valuable insights for the writing of future cultural policies and alternative metrics to evaluate the impact of nonconforming approaches within regional studies. This will reshape and expand policies and programmes that seek to internationalise or regionalise Singapore art scenes. Acknowledging the long-term impact of such critical thinking and the creation of alternative knowledges and transnational networks would advance traditional perspectives in Southeast Asian scholarship and its funding mechanisms.

Research Outputs

Understanding Southeast Asia as a “Geocultural Formation”: Three Case Studies of Artistic Initiatives from the Region Closed-Door Forum

Programme

Welcome by Ahmad Mashadi, Introduction by Ute Meta Bauer and David Teh

ROUND-ROBIN: INTRODUCING THE CASE STUDIES, response by John Tain

The Flying Circus Project, Introduction by SEON, Presentation by Ong Keng Sen

Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary Art and Modern Art in Asia, Introduction by Ho Tzu Nyen, Presentation by Thanavi Chotrapdit, Vera Mey and Roger Nelson

The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia, Introduction by Ong Keng Sen, Presentation by Ho Tzu Nyen

CONVERSATION: PATRICK FLORES & HSU FANG-TZE, moderated by Siddhartha Perez

CONVERSATION: GRIDTHIYA GAWEEWONG & MELATI SURYODARMO, moderated by Ute Meta Bauer

PANEL: HEIDI ARBUCKLE & KATHLEEN DITZIG, moderated by David Teh

Granted by

NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (NTU CCA Singapore) presents the two-part research presentation Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss. First unfolding at TBA21–Academy’s Ocean Space in Venice, Italy, the research inquiry later materialises in another configuration at ADM Gallery, a university gallery under the School of Art, Design, and Media (NTU ADM) at Nanyang Technological University Singapore. 

This twofold exhibition marks the conclusion of the eponymous research project led by Principal Investigator Ute Meta Bauer at NTU ADM. The inquiry started by asking: how has the slow erosion of diverse, multicultural, and more-than-human ways of living over time impacted the environments in which we live, and what are the longer-term consequences on habitats? Can we begin again with culture, to induce a necessary paradigm shift in the way we think about and respond to the climate crisis? Extending connections and conversations seeded during the inaugural cycle of TBA21–Academy’s The Current fellowship programme led by Bauer from 2015 to 2018, Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss continues to build archipelagic networks across the Alliance of Small Island Developing States, deepening existing collaborations with Oceania Centre for Arts, Culture and Pacific Studies in Fiji, and developing new ones further in the South Pacific Ocean, through the art and media non-profit organisation Further Arts in Vanuatu. 

Bridging conversations from the Pacific to Singapore in the Riau Archipelago, former fellows of TBA21–Academy’s The Currentand current research collaborators artist Nabil Ahmed, social anthropologist Guigone Camus, artist Kristy H.A. Kang, legal scholar Hervé Raimana Lallemant-Moe, and artists Armin Linke and Lisa Rave, join Singapore-based researchers Co-Investigator Sang-Ho Yun and Denny Chee of the Earth Observatory of Singapore – Remote Sensing Lab (EOS–RS) and the Asian School of the Environment, NTU ADM research staff Soh Kay Min and Ng Mei Jia, historian Jonathan Galka, and community organiser Firdaus Sani, as they explore the impacts of extreme weather, rising seas, climate displacement, ocean resource extraction, and the disappearance of material cultural traditions, occurring across what the visionary Pacific thinker Epeli Hau’ofa has termed “our sea of islands.” Featuring interviews, data visualisations, documentation, writings, and artisanal crafts made in collaboration with or generously gifted to the research team by knowledge bearers, community leaders, scientists, scholars, and artists, including writer and curator Frances Vaka’uta, masi artist Igatolo Latu,human rights defender Anne Pakoa and anthropologist Cynthia Chou, the exhibitions present the rich, complex, and multi-layered research findings accumulated over three years, since the Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss project first started in 2021. 

At TBA21–Academy’s Ocean Space, the Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss research inquiry sits adjacent to the exhibition Restor(y)ing Oceania, comprising two new site-specific commissions by Latai Taumoepeau and Elisapeta Hinemoa Heta. Curated by Bougainville-born artist Taloi Havini, whose curatorial vision is guided by an ancestral call-and-response method, the exhibition materialises as a search for solidarity and kinship in uncertain times, in order to slow down the clock on extraction and counter it with reverence for the life of the Ocean. 

At ADM Gallery, Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss is presented alongside the companion show Sensing Nature, curated by Gallery Director Michelle Ho. The exhibition showcases artists representing diverse disciplines, each offering their interpretation of the natural world and its intersection with urban life. Through reflection and experimentation, these works invite viewers to reassess our perceptions and behaviors toward the environment and phenomena beyond human influence. They advocate for a renewed understanding of society’s connection to nature and the land. 

Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss is supported by the Ministry of Education, Singapore, under its Academic Research Fund Tier 2 grant. The research presentation at Ocean Space coincides with the 60th International Art Biennale in Venice, Italy, with public programmes taking place through the exhibition durations in both Venice and Singapore. 

Opening Dates
Ocean Space exhibition preview: 
March 22, 6pm 
Ocean Space, Venice, Chiesa di San Lorenzo Castello

Opening hours 
March 23–October 13, 2024: Wednesday to Sunday, 11am–6pm
Ocean Space 
Chiesa di San Lorenzo Castello 5069, Venice

April 12–May 24, 2024: Monday to Friday, 10am–5pm
ADM Gallery 
81 Nanyang Drive, Singapore 637458

The Climate Transformation Programme (CTP)—Cross Cutting Theme 1: Sustainable Societies, under which Professor Ute Meta Bauer serves as Senior Principal Investigator (Advisory Panel), consists of a suite of programmes that form a synergistic relay of interdisciplinary research and external outreach. The initiatives aim to cultivate a critical multiplicity of voices, perspectives, knowledges from both within and outside academic realms in the formation of ‘Sustainable Societies’ that engage with questions of climate change.

The Climate Transformation Programme is led by Professor Adam Switzer (Professor, Asian School of the Environment, Nanyang Technological University). The CTP aims to develop, inspire and accelerate knowledge-based solutions and educate future leaders to establish the stable climate and environment necessary for resilient, just, and sustainable Southeast Asian societies.

Key Research Outputs

Climate Transformation: Sustainable Societies Lecture Series Cycle 1 and 2
Climate Transformation Tuesday Gatherings Cycle 1 and 2

Climate Transformation: Sustainable Societies Lecture Series Cycle 1 (November 2024–May 2025) and Cycle 2 (August 2025–April 2026)
Climate Transformation Gatherings Cycle 1 (November 2024–May 2025) and Cycle 2 (August 2025–May 2026) 
Repository on Coastal Ecosystems: Bridging Artistic, Scientific and Community-Led Practices in the Riau Archipelago

Research Publications

Jamil, J and Gebert, J. V. (2026, October) Where Nipa Grows, the Mangrove Lives: Orang Suku Laut, Kawal, and the Politics of Three Plants. Madeleine Collie (CTP Visiting Researcher) and Yvonne Billimore (eds.), Follow the Plants. Preorder here

In recent years, climate change has triggered alarming environmental scenarios in the region. Artists and climate activists have reacted to these circumstances by proposing methods to create awareness and navigate the environmental collapse. This research project aimed to identify artistic inquiries focused on addressing environmental challenges in South, Southeast Asia and the Pacific. By establishing a methodology to evaluate the significance and impacts of each inquiry, it will investigate the capacity of these art projects to deepen the understanding of the effect of accelerated climate change in the aforementioned regions. This project aims to foster a dialogue between artistic forms of knowledge production and the scholarly knowledge generated by scientific practitioners engaged in climate change matters. This research project generated the Environmentally-Engaged Artistic Practices in South, Southeast Asia and the Pacific Database, with over 100 datasets of artistic research projects that are engage in environmental challenges spanning over 20 territories, it offered a first touchpoint for researchers to engage with artists that align across similar themes. This open database, was launched at the eponymous ‘Environmentally-Engaged Artistic Practices’ two-day symposium that took place during Singapore Art Week. Hosted at the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, this symposium brought together local and regional artists, scientists, engineers, historians and climate initiatives to discuss the potential and possibilities of transdisciplinary and cross disciplinary collaborations geared towards climate and environmental aware inquiries and solution finding.

Research Outputs

Environmentally-Engaged Artistic Practices in South, Southeast Asia and the Pacific Database

Environmentally-Engaged Artistic Practices in South, Southeast Asia and the Pacific Symposium

Publications

Min, S.K. (2024). Telemetric Feeling in Tita Salina and Irwan Ahmett’s The Ring of Fire (2014–Present). Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia 8(1), 67-89.

This project examines how climate crisis and cultural loss interconnect. The core objective is the co-production of knowledge that can lead to a changed understanding of environmental justice, which, in turn, will suggest changes in existing legal and policy frameworks. The project hypothesises that a fundamental connection between people and their environments has been lost in contemporary urban contexts, resulting in feelings of indifference towards the climate crisis or unexplained feelings of climate anxiety.

It deploys a research team with transdisciplinary methods to build on emerging environmental jurisprudence in the Pacific region and produce narrative visualisations demonstrating the links between cultural loss and climate change. By combining scholarly knowledge with cultural and artistic practices, the project will develop an innovative framework for addressing the impact of accelerated climate change. Using tools from visual studies and forensic architecture, from ethnography and law, to make scientific evidence on climate change socially robust and impactful, it will also create a relay between local perspectives and knowledge generated in different academic fields. Data visualisation and audiovisual presentations of ecological and cultural loss will be instrumental to transform ecological grief and loss into catalysts for climate action. Such narrative visualisations make visible the necessity to re-establish a direct relation between human societies and the environment, especially in the rapidly-changing urban fabric of a metropolis like Singapore.

Research Outputs

Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss Research Presentation, 23 March–13 October 2024, TBA21-Academy Ocean Space, Venice, Italy

Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss Research Presentation, 12 April–24 May 2024, ADM Gallery, 81 Nanyang Drive, Singapore

Special Issue: Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss (Vol. XXVII, 2024), Comparative Law Journal of the Pacific (CLJP), Victoria University of Wellington

Research Publications:

Ahmed, N., Bauer, U. M., & Lallemant-Moe, H. R. (2024, October). Introductions to Cultural loss and climate change. Comparative Law Journal of the Pacific, Special Issue: Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss.

Ahmed, N., Camus, G., Lallemant-Moe, H. R., & Rave, L. (2022, November). Cultural loss and climate change – A new field of research. Comparative Law Journal of the Pacific, 28.

Soh, K. M. (2024, May). Monsoon equinox. Issue 13: Weather. LASALLE College of the Arts.

Shaleh, A. (2024, October). Linking the commons and climate change to collective actions. Comparative Law Journal of the Pacific, Special Issue: Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss.

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Since the 1990s, contemporary art in Thailand has achieved considerable international recognition. While many Thai artists have shed identification with their nation, “Thainess” remains an interpretive crutch for understanding their work. In the first scholarly book on the subject since 1992, Dr David Teh examines the competing claims to contemporaneity staked in Thailand, and on behalf of Thai art elsewhere, against a backdrop of sustained political and economic turmoil.

Part of Symposium: Ghosts and Spectres – Shadows of History

Superlative Futures is a transdisciplinary design and research agency in Singapore co-founded by Wong Zi Hao and Liu Dian Cong. Their research practice centres on creative modes of representation to advocate new ways of seeing landscapes, speculative social imaginaries and futuring urban practices to relate differently with more-than-human worlds. They see their design output as a practice of care. They have exhibited at NUS Museum and were supported by Singapore Art Museum’s inaugural Design Research Fellowship (2024-2025). Wong received his PhD in Architecture at the National University of Singapore in 2023, having completed a design-led research on intertidal practices of care. Alongside his research practice, Wong teaches at the Department of Architecture, National University Singapore (NUS) and at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, University of Arts Singapore. Liu currently practices as an architectural designer. He completed a Master of Architecture at NUS in 2024 working on sedimentation and alternative conceptions of “ground”.

Concepts of Concern – A Lexicology of Ecology

Course Details

Date: Monday, 6 December 2021 
Time: 7 – 10 pm
Delivery Mode: Online
Standard Course Fees: SGD 90.95 (inc. GST)

REGISTER HERE.

For enquiries please email ntuccaeducation@ntu.edu.sg

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About the Course

Concepts of Concern – A Lexicology of Ecology is a survey of terminology in social, cultural and political ecology. Old and new terms such as recycle, sustainable, green, renewable, biomass, climate change, carbon footprint, global warming or anthropocene constitute what can be called concepts of concern. They are used to propose solutions to waste, advance environmental justice and imagine new worlds, but also to justify new forms of resource extraction, industrial production and economic globalisation as necessarily eco-centric.

The 3-hour online course traces the evolution of specific eco-centric terms and their corollary discourses since the global environmental movements of the 1960s, and examines a lexicology of ecology as a springboard to engage the emerging and heterogeneous field of ecocriticism. This course will also discuss several artistic responses that operate outside the bounds of terminological discourses and its trappings.   

This course is divided into three main sections:

Part 1: Overview of dominant terminology in social/cultural/political ecology since the 1960s.

Part 2: Critical examination of selected terms, such as their use in corporate propaganda and political narratives.

Part 3: Survey of non-terminological/artistic responses to the crisis of ecology. 

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Your Course Instructor

Jegan Vincent de Paul is an artistic researcher with an interest in large-scale technopolitical phenomenon with a focus on physical infrastructures. He received his Ph.D in Art, Design and Media from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore in 2021. His doctoral thesis Infrastructure, Narrative, Impact: A Counter-Reading of Belt and Road uses art as a research methodology to show how “the Belt and Road” is a rhizomatic global narrative constructed in the process of interpretation and analysis. He has worked internationally as a researcher and designer and was a visiting scholar and lecturer at the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology (2010–12). He has exhibited at the 4th ZERO1 Biennial in San Jose, California, Space in Kingston, Jamaica and the Centre for Contemporary Art in Singapore. Vincent de Paul holds a Master of Architecture from University of Toronto and a Master of Science in Visual Studies from MIT.

Open College programmes are offered on 2 tracks; Discovery and Immersive Series. Discovery Series programmes are short exploratory courses that allow participants to explore topics outside their usual fields of interest, and acquire basic knowledge and skillsets that may be transferrable to other areas of study and work. By contrast, Immersive Seriesprogrammes are more in-depth and led by professional educators, researchers and critical thinkers in their fields of expertise. Through a blend of practical projects and discussions to stimulate critical thinking and dialogue, participants will deep dive into a subject matter and gain new perspectives.

Inspired by Cosmorama (2018), one of four sections in the exhibition Design Earth: Speculative Fiction for the Climate, this third Drawing Club invites artists, architects, designers, and students to respond to the geostories of asteroid mining, orbital debris, and climate refuge in the age of the “New Space.”

The workshop zooms in on architectural drawing as practice to examine planetary issues such as satellite debris and airspace conflicts, that may seem distant from us. Participants will trace the macrocosmic consequences of extractive economies and of their politics beyond Singapore, and beyond the Earth itself, launching critical conversations into speculative drawings.

The annotated sketches produced during the workshop will be displayed at the NTU ADM Foyer until 13 August 2025, alongside the works produced at the previous Drawing Club.

Participants are encouraged to bring dry drawing media (markers, found images, etc) and reading references (articles, books, etc) to share, annotate, and get inspiration from during the session. No technical drawing experience needed.

This workshop is facilitated by Eunice Lacaste, Programmes Associate, NTU CCA Singapore.

REGISTER

DATE: Thursday, 7 August 2025. 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm

VENUE: ADM Gallery 2, NTU School of Art, Design and Media, 81 Nanyang Dr, Singapore 637458

EXHIBITION DATES: Open by appointment from 14 June to 15 August 2025

GALLERY HOURS: Monday to Friday: 10:00am to 5:00pm. Saturday: By appointment only. Closed on Sunday and Public Holidays

BOOKING EMAIL: ADMgallery@ntu.edu.sg

Decay, decomposition, weathering, rot. Landscapes eroding, architectures disintegrating, bodies breaking down, coming apart, becoming dirt. We hardly have a kinship with decay for, like dirt, decay is—in the words of anthropologist Mary Douglas—matter out-of-place in our perpetually renewing cities. Indeed, the city we are brought to inhabit and desire is built with ever-more weatherproof architectures, with cosmetic treatments that maintain the hardness of the buildings and the smoothness of their surfaces impervious to the traces of Nature’s time. In waterfront cities, which novelist Amitav Ghosh regards as a showcase of architectural mastery over the unruly environment, the cartography of terrestrial edges continues to reinforce the separation of interiorised human-made worlds from exteriorised more-than-human environment. Seen through the lens of the city, the design of the future Earth aspires to be atemporal. And like so many transient and shifting environments stilled in human projections of the Earth (from maps to masterplans), the “unweathered” city must thrive outside of time, devoid of stains and discolouration. But does the city have to be in an anxious race against Nature’s time? 

Created and led by Superlative Futures, Drawing Dialogues: Stories of Decay is a workshop for re-attuning our urban selves to Nature’s time. The programme focuses on rethinking the place of decay in the wellbeing of cities and on re-presenting stories of decay as matters of care. The workshop will start off with a walk in the Berlayer Creek­—a rare remnant of Singapore’s mangrove histories once denigrated as a place of dankness and disease—where participants will be led to uncover stories of decay and gather thoughts and materials of decomposition. The second part of the workshop will take place at NTU CCA Singapore where, drawing and dialoguing with decay, participants will be guided to create their own narratives and landscapes of decay culminating in a collaborative artwork. Expanding on Superlative Futures’ speculative design research on new ecological practices for weathering the future city, this workshop marks the beginning of a propositional archive—A Cartography of Decay—that charts different relationships between decay and the city. 

This event is a public programme created in response to the exhibition Design Earth: Speculative Fiction for the Climate, on view by appointment at NTU ADM Gallery 2 until 15 August 2025. 

This special issue strings together authorial perspectives from across disciplines and geographies that are concerned with topics at the nexus of the climate crisis and the links to cultural loss. This issue points to the needed legal approaches within the wider context of the Pacific. Writers include researcher Jake Atienza, artist Stefano Cagol, art critic and curator Maria Chiara Wang, law scholar Johanna Gussman, researcher Shabana Khan, climate advisor Renard Siew, computer scientist Nova Ahmad, and artist-activist Yoon Sun Woo.

Edited by Professor Nabil Ahmed, Professor Ute Meta Bauer, and Dr Herve Raimana Lallemant-Moe, assisted by Research Fellow Dr Adha Shaleh.

We thank the Editors-in-Chief Sage Yves-Louis and Tony Angelo.

This special issue is supported by the MOE AcRF Tier 2 Award, led by Principal Investigator Professor Ute Meta Bauer, with Research Associate Soh Kay Min, Research Assistant Ng Mei Hia, and Research Fellow Dr Adha Shaleh.

Journal on handwoven pandanus mat gifted by Further Arts, Vanuatu.

Read in full online

During STAR Residencies, The Observatory will deepen their entanglement with subterranean phenomena and geological formations. Drawn to the complexity and non-linear nature of volcanoes as well as to their cultural significance in diverse belief systems, the artists will collaborate with the Volcano Group and other EOS researchers to grow their understanding of these unpredictable and explosive entities, with a focus on the volcanic arcs that shape Southeast Asia. In line with their sound-centred approach to experimentation and research, they are particularly interested in exploring the sonic emanations of volcanic phenomena. Furthermore, they also plan to look at the intricate processes of magma transport dynamics, viscous flow, rock formation/deformation, crystallisation, degassing, and solidification. By reinterpreting the data and knowledge produced by EOS researchers, The Observatory aim to develop new perspectives that, synthesising scientific research and artistic imagination, resonate from deep time to contemporary existence.

The Observatory is a band whose music and cultural ethos responds and speaks back to the contemporary afflictions in Singapore and the global milieu. Its current constellation comprises multi-instrumentalists Cheryl Ong, Dharma and Yuen Chee Wai who tread on improvisation, intermedia, experimentation and noise-adjacent territories. In confronting new forms of disorders, The Observatory restlessly turns upon itself to agitate, to comfort and to resist. Drawing on old and new lexicons, The Observatory seeks to bridge artists and expressions. Two decades on, the band’s polymath practice encompasses music and performance; in-person festivals and online radio shows; touring gigs and interdisciplinary exhibitions.

The Observatory is a band whose music and cultural ethos responds and speaks back to the contemporary afflictions in Singapore and the global milieu. Its current constellation comprises multi-instrumentalists Cheryl Ong, Dharma and Yuen Chee Wai who tread on improvisation, intermedia, experimentation and noise-adjacent territories. In confronting new forms of disorders, The Observatory restlessly turns upon itself to agitate, to comfort and to resist. Drawing on old and new lexicons, The Observatory seeks to bridge artists and expressions. Two decades on, the band’s polymath practice encompasses music and performance; in-person festivals and online radio shows; touring gigs and interdisciplinary exhibitions.

Embracing a constellatory and process-led approach in her collaboration with multiple researchers at EOS, Zarina Muhammad dedicates STAR RESIDENCY to further her engagement with hybrid forms of ecological witnessing and polycosmologies as well as her exploration of the interdependency of environmental knowledge systems. The artist intends to conduct fieldwork on selected sites where geological and ecological significance resonate with underwater cultural heritage and indigenous knowledge systems, seeking points of convergence with EOS’s work in monitoring and addressing the regional impact of climate change. By exploring remote-sensing techniques and data translations through creative and empirical processes, this research hopes to expand the epistemic frameworks of nonhuman witnessing in the context of environmental crisis. The artist plans to expand her collaborative practice through interdisciplinary exchange, convening scientists, artists, storytellers, and ancestral knowledge keepers to develop speculative maps and multi-layered cartographies inspired by the complexity of environmental data, ecological processes, and trans-indigenous cosmologies.

Zarina Muhammad (b. 1982, Singapore) is an artist, educator, and researcher whose practice critically re-examines oral histories, ethnographic literature, and historiographic narratives of Southeast Asia. Working at the intersections of performance, text, installation, ritual, sound, moving image, and participatory practice, her work explores the enmeshed contexts of ecocultural cosmologies, identities and interactions, mythmaking, haunted historiographies, and geo-spirited landscapes. Her long-term interdisciplinary project investigates Southeast Asia’s evolving relationship with spectrality, ritual magic, polysensoriality, and the immaterial, examining these themes against the backdrop of global modernity, the social production of rationality, and transcultural exchanges of knowledge. Her work has been widely presented at international biennales and institutions, including FotoFest Biennial, Houston, USA (2024), the 2nd Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, Saudi Arabia (2024), the 7th Singapore Biennale (2022), and the 3rd Lahore Biennale, Pakistan (2024). She recently had a solo presentation, curated by Shubigi Rao, at the Singapore Pavilion at the 15th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2024). Zarina is the recipient of the 2022 IMPART Art Prize.

NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore is pleased to announce the launch of STAR Residencies (Science, Technology, Art & Research), a new residency programme aimed at fostering the cross-pollination between artistic and scientific research. Through partnerships with select NTU research institutes, STAR Residencies embeds artistic residencies at the core of the University, creating a unique opportunity for exchange between artists and academic researchers. A pioneering programme in the context of Singapore and Southeast Asia, STAR Residencies stems from NTU CCA Singapore’s decade-long expertise in developing innovative platforms for knowledge making, creative experimentation, and transdisciplinary collaborations. 

For its inaugural cycle, STAR Residencies unfolds in partnership with NTU Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS), a research institute of Nanyang Technological University dedicated to the scientific observation of the forces that shape our changing planet. Regarded as a leader on a broad spectrum of geosciences in the Asia-Pacific region, EOS gathers critical data and develops vital knowledge about geohazards, climate change, and their impact on human societies. This collaboration expands Centre’s long-standing research on Climates.Habitats.Environments. and its continued commitment to critical artistic practices that engage with ecological complexities, climate change, and sustainability to advance the collective awareness of planetary interconnectedness in times of environmental distress.

The artists participating in the first iteration STAR Residencies are: Ng Hui Hsien, The Observatory (Dharma, Cheryl Ong, Yuen Chee Wai), and Zarina Muhammad. They were selected from a pool of 19 candidates (nominated by experts in the field) by a Selection Committee composed of: Dr Karin Oen, Director, NTU CCA Singapore, Senior Lecturer and Head of Department, Art History, NTU School of Humanities; Lauriane Chardot, Assistant Director, Community Engagement, Earth Observatory of Singapore, NTU; and Haeju Kim, Senior Curator and Head of Residencies, Singapore Art Museum. 

The first cycle of STAR Residencies takes place from April 2025 to March 2026. Within the programme’s framework, artists are granted unprecedented access to processes and methodologies of fundamental scientific research, state-of-the-art laboratories, data sets, and extensive international networks, being provided with the exceptional opportunity to immerse themselves in EOS’s dynamic scientific community wherein they can expand their intellectual horizon, explore ideas, forge new means of artistic inquiry, and engage creatively with Earth systems and ecological complexities. The programme will conclude with an exhibition in March 2026 that will showcase the research projects developed during the residency. In the words of Karin Oen, “STAR Residencies mark an important new chapter for NTU CCA Singapore in which the intersections of artistic and scientific research can thrive with the support of the broader academic community at NTU.” 

With creative practices that span photography, performance, installation, and sound, the artists will conduct independent research on a variety of Earth systems, interweaving different bodies of knowledge in aesthetic outcomes that foster the awareness of ecological interconnectedness and of the complexity of human relation to nature. Drawing on her background in ethnography, Ng Hui Hsien intends to complement the scientific strategies used to evaluate environmental changes and geohazards with indigenous ecological knowledge shaped by lived experience, oral traditions, and direct observation, creating evocative insights into practices of ecological coexistence. The Observatory will expand their engagement with subterranean phenomena and geological formations. Deepening their understanding of the volcanic arcs that shape Southeast Asia and of the processes of rock formation, they will develop a project that resonates from deep time to contemporary existence. Driven by a process-led and constellatory approach to collaboration, Zarina Muhammad will engage with different scientists to expand epistemic frameworks for ecological witnessing, looking at weather formations, underwater ecologies, polycosmologies and the interdependency of environmental knowledge systems. 

STAR Residencies is developed and curated by Dr Anna Lovecchio, Curator, NTU CCA Singapore.

NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore is pleased to present Nothing has to be the way it is, an exhibition featuring the artistic propositions created by Chok Si Xuan, bani haykal, and Ong Kian Peng as part of their involvement in Communities of Practice. Techno Diversions, a five-month programme curated by Anna Lovecchio that interlaces artistic research, transdisciplinary encounters, and the formation of communities around shared interests to propel transformative understandings of technology.

The uncanny symbiosis between humans and the digital devices, interactive interfaces, online platforms, and global infrastructures that increasingly operate our lives is a defining feature of contemporary society. In these wired times of machine intelligence and computational acceleration, microchip wars and platform powers, the artworks featured in this exhibition cast a sideway look at techno-driven progress. Moving across different conceptual frameworks and a multiplicity of mediums, Chok Si Xuan, bani haykal, and Ong Kian Peng share a common investment in reclaiming agency within the technosphere. They divert, possess, possibly disrupt the streamlined existence of technological artefacts through gestures that question the escalation of technological sovereignty and, ultimately, the role of technology in our lives. Purposefully, these artists do not position themselves at the edge of advanced technologies. Rather, they interfere with existing apparatuses and instil into them worldviews other than those that originally brought them about. The systems they envisioned proceed by appropriations and approximations, frictions and forays, scrambled codes and enigmatic conjectures. In the essay “It Doesn’t Have To Be the Way It Is” which inspired the title of this exhibition, Ursula K. Le Guin remarks that the subversive power of the imagination “gnaw(s) at the very foundation of the belief that things have to be the way they are”.  Nothing has to be the way it is hints at the endless permutations of how things can be.

The exhibition will take place in The Hall, NTU CCA Singapore’s programme space nestled at the heart of the Research Centre and launched in September 2024. This event marks the first time The Hall hosts a group exhibition, bringing home the Centre’s longstanding commitment to dwell upon and experiment with the spaces of the curatorial.

As participants in Communities of Practice. Techno Diversions, Chok Si Xuan, bani haykal, and Ong Kian Peng are conducting a residency at NTU CCA Singapore from October 2024 to February 2025. Revolving around critical engagements with the material, political, and spiritual layers of technology and the complexity of our relation to it, this multidimensional programme is a generative platform that provides artists with time, space, and resources to unravel their aesthetic inquiries and catalyse communities around their interests and creative processes.

Nothing has to be the way it is is couched between two series of public programmes— Empirical Workshops and the Transdisciplinary Lectures—developed in conversation with the artists themselves. Steeped in a do-it-yourself ethos, the Empirical Workshops took place in December 2024. Each workshop germinated by the artist’s own research and was aimed at creating knowledge through skill-sharing and the creative dabbling with raw materials. In Temporal Oscillations, Chok Si Xuan dived into the physics of circuitry and erratic electronics, teaching participants how to assemble common electronic components to modulate the flow of electricity and hijack standard systems of temporality. With METAL MACHINE MISCHIEF (or how to make noise music with bicycles), bani haykal took his workshop participants on an unconventional group ride. Through tinkering and drilling, cranking and whirring, discarded bicycle parts were assembled into unorthodox musical instruments activated in a final jam session that produced a one-of-a-kind audiovisual experience. Different wavelenghts resonated in Ong Kian Peng’s Natural Radio workshop where participants could explore a range of low frequency waves emitted by natural electromagnetic phenomena as a way to tune in to the inaudible voices of the environment.

Coming up in February 2025, the Transdisciplinary Lectures will bring the artists in conversations with philosophers, sociologists, scientists, and other creatives whose work significantly inspired them. Deepening the ramifications of their research in different disciplines, the Transdisciplinary Lectures will feature contributions by: Tiziano Bonini (Associate Professor, Sociology of Culture and Communication, University of Siena, Italy), Eugene Yew Siang Chua (Nanyang Assistant Professor of Philosophy, School of Humanities, NTU, Singapore), Lee Pooi See (Professor, School of Materials Science and Engineering, NTU, Singapore), Emiliano Treré (Beatriz Galindo Distinguished Professor, Language Theory and Communication Sciences, University of Valencia, Spain and Reader, Data Agency and Media Ecologies, Cardiff University, United Kingdom), and Boedi Widjaja (interdisciplinary artist, Singapore).

About Communities of Practice

Conceived as a seedbed for experimentation, Communities of Practice is a shapeshifting research platform that brings forth communities at the intersection of artistic practices. Holding a space where artistic research can develop through interdisciplinary collaborations, exchanges, and processes of co-creation, Communities of Practice advances the role of NTU CCA Singapore as convener, capacity builder, and incubator in the arts sector.

The first iteration of NTU CCA Singapore’s new research platform, Communities of Practice. Techno Diversions convenes three Singaporean artists—Chok Si Xuan, bani haykal, and Ong Kian Peng—whose practice engage with the material, cultural, and emotional layers of technology, its evolving role in contemporary life, and the complexity of our relation to it. As a multidimensional platform that entwines artistic research, experimentation, and the formation of communities across shared interests, Techno Diversions aims to propel a transformative understanding of what technology is through the lens of artistic practices that pursue the renewal of our agency within the technosphere and the re-enchantment with its tools. In an increasingly techno-driven society, these artists embrace the urgency to think critically about the conceptual parameters and material manifestations of technological progress charting new paths of significance by creative acts of repurposing, disrupting, and re-envisioning commonly accepted ideas and existing devices.

As participants in the programme, the artists are offered a five-month residency at the NTU CCA Singapore Research Centre from October 2024 to February 2025 and the agency to shape a research framework in ways that are conducive to the advancement of their practice. The research framework may entail seminars, screenings, peer-oriented sessions, workshops or other programmes engaging interlocutors from various fields. Oriented towards the production and circulation of knowledge, these gatherings will be organised in close collaboration with the participating artists with the goal to unravel their aesthetic inquiries while also catalysing communities and propelling public discourse around the subjects and methodologies of their research.

The programme will culminate with the production of new artworks that will be presented in an exhibition at NTU CCA Singapore during the Singapore Art Week 2025 (17 – 26 January 2025).

Communities of Practice. Techno Diversionsis curated by Dr Anna Lovecchio, Curator, Programmes.

About Communities of Practice

Conceived as seedbed for experimentation, Communities of Practice is a shapeshifting research platform that brings forth communities at the intersection of artistic practices. Holding a communal space where artistic research can develop through interdisciplinary collaborations, exchanges, and processes of co-creation, Communities of Practice situates NTU CCA Singapore within the research-driven core of Nanyang Technological University by configuring the Centre as an interdisciplinary body and advancing its role as convener, capacity builder, and leading-edge incubator in the arts sector.

Nothing has to be the way it is.

Exhibition from 17 to 26 January 2025

NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore is pleased to present Nothing has to be the way it is, an exhibition featuring the artistic propositions created by Chok Si Xuan, bani haykal, and Ong Kian Peng as part of their involvement in Communities of Practice. Techno Diversions, a five-month programme curated by Anna Lovecchio that interlaces artistic research, transdisciplinary encounters, and the formation of communities around shared interests to propel transformative understandings of technology. 

The uncanny symbiosis between humans and the digital devices, interactive interfaces, online platforms, and global infrastructures that increasingly operate our lives is a defining feature of contemporary society. In these wired times of machine intelligence and computational acceleration, microchip wars and platform powers, the artworks featured in this exhibition cast a sideway look at techno-driven progress. Moving across different conceptual frameworks and a multiplicity of mediums, Chok Si Xuan, bani haykal, and Ong Kian Peng share a common investment in reclaiming agency within the technosphere. They divert, possess, possibly disrupt the undisturbed existence of technological artefacts through gestures that question the escalation of technological sovereignty and, ultimately, the role of technology in our lives. Purposefully, these artists do not position themselves at the edge of advanced technologies. Rather, they interfere with existing apparatuses and instil into them worldviews other than those that originally brought them about. The systems they envisioned proceed by appropriations and approximations, frictions and forays, scrambled codes and enigmatic conjectures. In the essay “It Doesn’t Have To Be the Way It Is” which inspired the title of this exhibition, Ursula K. Le Guin remarks that the subversive power of the imagination “gnaw(s) at the very foundation of the belief that things have to be the way they are”.  Nothing has to be the way it is hints at the endless permutations of how things can be.

Nothing has to be the way it is will take place in The Hall, NTU CCA Singapore’s programme space nestled at the heart of the Research Centre and launched in September 2024. This event marks the first time The Hall hosts a group exhibition, bringing home the Centre’s longstanding commitment to dwell upon and experiment with the spaces of the curatorial.

As participants in Communities of Practice. Techno Diversions, Chok Si Xuan, bani haykal, and Ong Kian Peng are conducting a residency at NTU CCA Singapore from October 2024 to February 2025. Revolving around critical engagements with the material, political, and spiritual layers of technology and the complexity of our relation to it, this multidimensional programme is a generative platform that provides artists with time, space, and resources to unravel their aesthetic inquiries and catalyse communities around their interests and creative processes.

The exhibition is couched between two series of public programmes— Empirical Workshops and the Transdisciplinary Lectures—developed in conversation with the artists themselves. Steeped in a do-it-yourself ethos, the Empirical Workshops took place in December 2024. Each workshop germinated by the artist’s own research and was aimed at creating knowledge through skill-sharing and the creative dabbling with raw materials. In Temporal Oscillations, Chok Si Xuan dived into the physics of circuitry and erratic electronics, teaching participants how to assemble common electronic components to modulate the flow of electricity and hijack standard systems of temporality. With METAL MACHINE MISCHIEF (or how to make noise music with bicycles), bani haykal took his workshop participants on an unconventional group ride. Through tinkering and drilling, cranking and whirring, discarded bicycle parts were assembled into unorthodox musical instruments activated in a final jam session that produced a one-of-a-kind audiovisual experience. Different wavelenghts resonated in Ong Kian Peng’s Natural Radio workshop where participants could explore a range of low frequency waves emitted by natural electromagnetic phenomena as a way to tune in to the inaudible voices of the environment. 

Coming up in February 2025, the Transdisciplinary Lectures will bring the artists in conversations with philosophers, sociologists, scientists, and other creatives whose work significantly inspired them. Deepening the ramifications of their research in different disciplines, the Transdisciplinary Lectures will feature contributions by: Tiziano Bonini (Associate Professor, Sociology of Culture and Communication, University of Siena, Italy), Eugene Yew Siang Chua (Nanyang Assistant Professor of Philosophy, School of Humanities, NTU, Singapore), Lee Pooi See (Professor, School of Materials Science and Engineering, NTU, Singapore), Emiliano Treré (Beatriz Galindo Distinguished Professor, Language Theory and Communication Sciences, University of Valencia, Spain and Reader, Data Agency and Media Ecologies, Cardiff University, United Kingdom), and Boedi Widjaja (interdisciplinary artist, Singapore). 

17 to 26 January 2025

Opening hours
Tuesday to Sunday, 12:00 – 7:00pm
Friday 24 and Saturday 25 January, 12:00 – 10:00pm
Closed on Monday

Curator Tours
Saturday 18 January, 3:00pm and 5:00pm

Artists Tour
Saturday 25 January, 3:00 – 4:00pm

The Hall
NTU CCA Singapore
Block 6 Lock Road, #01-09
Gillman Barracks, 108934

Part Of

Artist Talks

by Chok Si Xuan, bani haykal, and Ong Kian Peng

What drives an artist to reconfigure the inner mechanisms of devices we have grown increasingly reliant upon? What acts of mobilisation can an artist perform within existing technological infrastructures to cultivate different types of cultural, social, and emotional agency? Can the artistic imagination interrogate the spiritual dimensions of technology and respond to escalating environmental crises determined by society’s current course of development?

In this joint talk, artists Chok Si Xuan, bani haykal, and Ong Kian Peng reflect upon how these and other similar questions have oriented recent developments in their practices. By addressing structural opacities and power structures, and by fostering an ecological understanding of the relation between humans and technology, their work illuminates some dark corners of fast-paced technological advancement and experiments with alternative forms of being within existing structures. Their research is currently unfolding within the framework of Techno Diversions, the inaugural iteration of NTU CCA Singapore’s research platform Communities of Practice.

Communities of Practice fosters interdisciplinary collaborations and the coming together of communities around shared interests. It situates NTU CCA Singapore as an interdisciplinary body within the research-driven core of Nanyang Technological University, advancing its role as convener, capacity builder, and leading incubator in the arts sector.

Saturday, 9 November 2024, 3.00 – 4.30pm
The Hall, NTU CCA Singapore
Block 6 Lock Road, #01-09
Gillman Barracks, 108934

EMPIRICAL WORKSHOPS

Natural Radio Workshop led by artist Ong Kian Peng

This workshop will introduce participants to natural radio. Natural radio is the emission of Very Low Frequency (VLF) and Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) radio waves due to electromagnetic energy from natural phenomena. These emissions originate terrestrially from lightning and from the Sun’s interactions with the Earth’s magnetosphere, they are among the inaudible voices of the environment. If the low frequencies of these electromagnetic outbursts are transformed into acoustic waves, many of these signals may fall within the range of human hearing. Experiencing electromagnetic waves as acoustic waves will allow listeners to connect with the beauty and complexity of natural radio waves in a unique aural experience.

By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to assemble an analogue handheld radio device that tunes in to natural radio frequencies.

Participants are encouraged to bring their own headphones with a 3.5mm audio jack, along with an optional audio recorder to capture and share their auditory discoveries.

This workshop is part of the Empirical Workshop Series of Communities of Practice. Techno Diversions.

This workshop is suitable for age 18 and above.
No prior knowledge of electronics is required.

Saturday, 21 December 2024, 2 – 5pm
The Hall, NTU CCA Singapore
Block 6 Lock Road, #01-09
Gillman Barracks, Singapore, 108934

METAL MACHINE MISCHIEF (or how to make noise music with bicycles) by bani haykal

“Riding bikes ain’t s#!+ without climate justice, without land back, without liberation of everybody”
Christina Torres, Cyclista Zine

The bicycle is more than just a means of transportation. In our increasingly car-centric and carbon-heavy lifestyle, cycling is a climate action that slows down the rate at which our planet is burning. Inspiring stories from Gaza have shown us how bicycles can be radically repurposed into washing machines, sewing machines, and even power generators.

In the first part of the workshop, participants will be offered a set of unused bicycle components gathered by artist bani haykal and they will be guided to devise and conceptualise new musical or sonic instruments with them. In the second part, these unorthodox instruments will be played in a group jam session!

Participants are encouraged to bring personal items such as mallets, drumsticks, clarinet mouthpieces, and/or any musical bobs and bits they can incorporate into the instruments.

This workshop is part of the Empirical Workshop Series of Communities of Practice. Techno Diversions.

This workshop is suitable for age 18 and above.
No prior knowledge or experience is required.

Saturday, 7 December 2024, 10:30am – 12:30pm
The Hall, NTU CCA Singapore
Block 6 Lock Road, #01-09
Gillman Barracks, Singapore, 108934

Temporal Oscillations. Electronics workshop led by artist Chok Si Xuan

This workshop will explore how to use common electronic components to modulate the flow of electricity, assemble and hijack standard systems of temporality. Participants will learn how a 555 timer integrated circuit (IC) forms an astable multivibrator. The 555 timer IC is a tiny chip found in many everyday devices—blinking LED lights, kitchen timers, alarm systems, sound makers, etc.—that modulates the frequencies of electrical signals. The term ‘astable’ means ‘not stable’ because the circuit never settles into a single state, is a basic electronic circuit that generates a continuous oscillating output, switching between two voltage levels.

Working with pre-assembled circuits created by artist Chok Si Xuan, participants will be able to experiment with various components (small motors, LED lights, and speakers, etc) as outputs. Exploring the transformation of different forms of energy—chemical energy from batteries, mechanical energy , kinetic energy and byproduct thermal energy, the workshop accesses materiality as a manner of understanding the fundamental ways systems unfold.

Through engaging with electronic circuits in a hands-on and accessible way, participants can expect to develop a direct understanding of some visible and less visible aspects that power everyday technology. Participants are encouraged to bring their own components for experimentation. These may include battery-operated toys, LED lights or small light strips, buzzers or small speakers, direct current (DC) motors, small fans, switches or buttons, old electronic parts like sensors or wires, and similar items.

This workshop is part of the Empirical Workshop Series of Communities of Practice. Techno Diversions.

This workshop is suitable for age 18 and above.
No prior knowledge of electronics is required.

Saturday, 7 December 2024, 10:30am – 12:30pm
The Hall, NTU CCA Singapore
Block 6 Lock Road, #01-09
Gillman Barracks, Singapore, 108934

Transdisciplinary Lectures

Entangled Uncertainties

Presentations by Dr Eugene Chua (Singapore) and Boedi Widjaja (Indonesia/Singapore) followed by a conversation with ong kian peng (Singapore)

What is reality? The models we use to conceptualise the world are increasingly under scrutiny, reshaped by the ecological crises of our time and the revelations of quantum theories. Classical distinctions between humans, non-humans, and objects are dissolving as we zoom in at the quantum level, revealing a world of entanglements and uncertainties. This event brings together artist Boedi Widjaja, whose practice explores the intangible and ephemeral, and philosopher of physics Eugene Chua, whose work delves into the complexities of quantum mechanics. Their presentations will be followed by a dialogue moderated by artist ong kian peng. The panel will unfold some intersections of art, science, and philosophy, offering new perspectives on how we perceive, construct, and engage with reality. Through this exchange, the audience will be offered new lenses for understanding the world and reimagine their place within a dynamic, interconnected cosmos.

Wednesday, 12 February 2025
7 – 8:30pm
The Hall, NTU CCA Singapore
Block 6 Lock Road, #01-09
Gillman Barracks, Singapore, 108934

Tactile Transmutations

Lecture by Professor Pooi See Lee (Singapore), followed by a conversation with artist Chok Si Xuan (Singapore)

Will electronics become flexible and soft? As technological advances shrink systems and transition from hard robots to soft machines, how will this affect the way we understand and relate to the devices we interact with?

Professor Lee Pooi See, whose research delves into  human-machine interface, hybrid materials for soft robotics, and nanostructures, will share about the influences and current trajectories of material sciences and human-machine interfaces articulating her insights into the future of a softer and smaller world of technology. In conversation with Chok Si Xuan, the scientist and the artist will discuss the implications of a world driven by mechanisms that escape human vision and they will exchange ideas about the relational qualities of interfaces and the rise of biomimicry in the realm of technological innovation.  

This event is generated by Chok Si Xuan within Communities of Practice. Techno Diversions, a research programme that aims to propel a transformative understanding of technology through artistic practices and transdisciplinary encounters.

Wednesday, 19 February 2025
7 – 8:30pm
The Hall, NTU CCA Singapore
Block 6 Lock Road, #01-09
Gillman Barracks, Singapore, 108934

Algorithms of Resistance. Tracing tactics of agency and solidarity within platform society

Online lecture by Tiziano Bonini (Italy) and Emiliano Treré (Italy/United Kingdom) followed by a conversation with bani haykal (Singapore)

oday, a growing number of social interactions, economic transactions, political engagements, and affective relations are enabled and regulated by a global network of online platforms operated through algorithms. As algorithmic infrastructures become enmeshed in the fabric of society, more and more aspects of everyday life are being captured and released in data streams that feed digital entities unilaterally coded and controlled by profit-driven tech companies. Through extensive online and offline fieldwork conducted across the Global North and the Global South, Tiziano Bonini and Emiliano Treré—co-authors of Algorithms of Resistance. The Everyday Fight Against Platform Power (The MIT Press, 2024)—ventured into uncharted alghoritmic territories. They encountered forms of agency, practices of resistance, and bonds of solidarity enacted by users who negotiate their own terms of existence within the platform regime. In this lecture, the speakers will reflect on how grassroots practices can spark emancipatory frictions that reinvent and disrupt the uneven power relation between users and platforms.

This event is generated by bani haykal within Communities of Practice. Techno Diversions, a research programme that aims to propel a transformative understanding of technology through artistic practices and transdisciplinary synergies. 

Wednesday, 26 February 2025
7 – 8:30pm
The Hall, NTU CCA Singapore
Block 6 Lock Road, #01-09
Gillman Barracks, Singapore, 108934

The Han Nefkens Foundation was established in 2009 with the aim of connecting people through art. In 2016, Han Nefkens decided to focus exclusively on supporting emerging and mid-career international video artists through Awards, Production Grants, and Mentorship Grants. The Foundation is not only involved in producing new works with the artists, but also finding international residencies, producing publications, purchasing working tools, finding technical support, and bringing artists into contact with art institutions and peers. With an extensive network in countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea, Ecuador, Peru, Spain, and the Netherlands, the Foundation is able to present artists to a diverse and global audience.

Angela Ricasio Hoten is a research assistant at the School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University supporting the research projects Climate Transformation Programme (2024–2030), Developing and Evaluating Digital Tools for Participatory Climate Change Mitigation (2025–2026) and previously the Environmentally-Engaged Artistic Practices in South, Southeast Asia and the Pacific (2023–2024). Angela holds a BA (Hons) in Environmental Studies and minor in Anthropology from Yale-NUS College, Singapore. She was also the undergraduate research assistant for ‘Lala Land: Singapore’s Seafood Heritage’ edited by Anthony Medrano, published by Epigram Books.

Ng Mei Jia is currently Research Associate at the School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University, managing the research projects Climate Transformation Programme (2024–2030), Developing and Evaluating Digital Tools for Participatory Climate Change Mitigation (2025–2026) and a research assistant on Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss (2021–2024), Environmentally-Engaged Artistic Practices in South, Southeast Asia and the Pacific (2021–2023), and Understanding Southeast Asia as a ‘Geocultural’ Formation (2021–2023). She was previously a Project Officer (Intangible Cultural Heritage) at the National Heritage Board, Singapore. Mei Jia holds an MA in Southeast Asian Studies from the National University of Singapore.

After a very successful first iteration of Climate Futures #1: Cultures, Climate Crisis and Disappearing Ecologies its second convening wants to build on its discussions and expand its understanding of the decline in cultural and ecological diversity in the region. It became very clear that such conversations require space and time to process complex issues, if we do not want to simplify and allow more than one way to process how people feel about their situations and want to be heard. Our futures require us to go beyond the status quo of current modes of operating. To not lose cultural knowledge and biodiversity Climate Futures #2: Belonging & Shared Responsibilities will share various narratives and practices that are already in place. It wants to further provide access to communities outside state and institutional structures to further nurture understanding of change in responsibilities and accountability.

The summit intents to further map how the climate crisis informs our contemporary world, and how diverse cultures can adjust or adapt without losing a sense of purpose. It comprises of discussions into alternative approaches to regional studies focusing on urgencies such as rising sea-levels and temperatures and the impact on natural resources of the region. A particular focus will be on areas such as the Mekong River and Delta (Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam) and its water street to Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines including the Straits that plays an essential role in the regions shared history.

The holistic approach of Climate Futures #1: Cultures, Climate Crisis and Disappearing Ecologies showed already how it can successfully stimulate a debate between artists, designers, and architects, scientists, environmentalists, as well as local voices and policy makers. We seek to reach out to an even wider public including younger scholars and practitioners, as well as community leaders and policy makers from the ASEAN region.

The future of our shared prosperity relies on our collective ability to create an inclusive and sustainable foundation for growth.

Read the programme brochure here.

Thursday, 26 October – Saturday 28 October 2023

Sokhalay Angkor Villa Resort, Siem Reap, Cambodia

Thursday, 26 October
Join the livestream here with the passcode 668981.

9:30am Registration & Coffee

10:00am Opening Addresses

Dr Piti Srisangnam, Executive Director, ASEAN Foundation

H.E. Min Chandynavuth, Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, Cambodia

Prof. Tim White, Vice President (International Engagement); President’s Chair in Materials Science and Engineering; Professor, School of Materials Science & Engineering.

Welcome and Introduction by co-curators Prof. Ute Meta Bauer (Germany/Singapore), Founding Director NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, and Professor School of Art, Design, and Media, NTU Singapore and Magdalena Magiera (Germany/Singapore), Curator Residencies and Programms, NTU Centre of Contemporary Art, Singapore

10:30am The Art of Living Lightly, Keynote Lecture by Rachaporn Choochuey (Thailand), Architect, Co-founder, Design Director, all(zone) ltd

11:40am Between Bots and the Biosphere: Machine Philosophy, Media Ecologies, and Digital Hieroglyphs for Climate Adaptation, Case Study by Nashin Mahtani (Indonesia), Director, PetaBencana.id

12:00pm An Uncommon History of The Common Fence: A Prologue (To the Coast), Case Study by Jason Wee (Singapore), Artist, Writer, Curator

12:20pm Sharing Climate Futures: Developing tools for climate care and action, Case Study by Prof. Ute Meta Bauer (Germany/Singapore), Founding Director NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, and Professor School of Art, Design, and Media, NTU Singapore

1:00pm Discussion with Rachaporn Choochuey (Thailand), Nashin Mahtani (Indonesia), and Jason Wee (Singapore). Moderated by Prof. Ute Meta Bauer (Germany/Singapore)

3:30pm Belonging & Sharing Responsibilities, Closed Workshop by Claudia Lasimbang a.k.a Yoggie, Technical Coordinator Watersheds and Communities, Forever Sabah, Philip Chin a.k.a. Linggit, Technical Coordinator Certified Sustainable Palm Oil, Forever Sabah, and Yee I-Lan (all Malaysia), artist

Friday, 27 October
Join the livestream here with the passcode 400242.

8:45am Registration & Coffee

9:00am Welcome & Introduction

9:10am Creative Digital Lab: how artists, cultural and creative professionals and technologists work together to explore the potentials of XR technology in protecting heritage, safeguarding intangible cultural heritage and contributing to climate action. Lecture by Kamonrat Mali Chayamarit (Thailand), Culture Programme Officer, Lao PDR alternate Focal Point, UNESCO Culture related Conventions Advocate

9:40am Ecology for Non-Futures, Case Study by Binna Choi (South-Korea), Artists, part of Unmake Lab

10:20am Climate impact on social process and social structure, Case study by Daovone Phonemanichane (Laos), Strengthening Climate Resilience Project Manager, Oxfam Mekong Regional Water Governance Program

10:40am When Nature has Economic Value, Case Study by Som Supaprinya (Thailand), Artist

11:20am Discussion with Kamonrat Mali Chayamarit (Thailand), Binna Choi (South-Korea), Daovone Phonemanichane (Laos), and Som Supaprinya (Thailand). Moderated by Bejamin Hampe (Australia), Project Director, KONNECT ASEAN

1:00pm Glimpse of Life on the Water, Closed Workshop Sessions by Sovann Ke (Cambodia), Project Manager, OSMOSE

Saturday, 28 October
Join the livestream here with the passcode 353177.

8:45am Registration & Coffee

9:00am Introduction & Welcome

9:15am Every (de)Force Evolves into A (de)Form, Lecture by Gahee Park (South-Korea), Curator, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul

10:00am Pedagogy, Community, Art: Bottom-up Urbanism at Phnom Penh’s Wat Chen Dam Daek, Case Study by Lyno Vuth (Cambodia), Artist, and Eva Lloyd (Australia), Lecturer, University of New South Wales (UNSW)

10:20am Luang Prabang: From Cultural Landscape into Practice, Case Study by Phonepaseth Keosomsak (Laos), Architect, Artist

11:00am Snare for Birds: Rebelling Against an Order of Things, Case Study by Kiri Dalena (Philipines), Artist

11:20am Travelling through time, Case Study by Malin Yim (Cambodia), Artist

11:40am The New Word for World is Archipelago, Case Study by Nice Buenaventura (Philippines), Artist

12:00pm Discussion with Nice Buenaventura (Philippines), Kiri Dalena (Philipines), Phonepaseth Keosomsak (Laos), Gahee Park (South-Korea), Lyno Vuth (Cambodia), and Malin Yim (Cambodia). Moderated by Magdalena Magiera (Germany/Singapore)

2:30pm Visit of Blue Art Centre. Welcome by Sareth Svay (Cambodia), Artists, Director, Blue Art Centre

3:00pm Closing workshop by Cynthia Ong (Malaysia), Chief Executive Facilitator Forever Sabah Institute, LEAP

Curated by NTU CCA Singapore

Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director and Magdalena Magiera, Curator, Residencies and Programmes

Supported by

ASEAN Secretariat

ASEAN-Korea Cooperation Fund

Mission of the Republic of Korea to ASEAN

ASEAN Senior Officials Meeting for Culture and Arts

Programme support by Ministry of Culture and Fine Art, Cambodia

PROJECT PARTNERS

ASEAN FOUNDATION

Since the formation of ASEAN in 1967, ASEAN has embarked on a journey to accelerate economic growth, social progress, and cultural development in the region. After three decades, ASEAN leaders recognised there remained inadequate shared prosperity, ASEAN awareness, and contact amongst the people of ASEAN. As a result, ASEAN leaders established the ASEAN Foundation during the ASEAN 30th Anniversary Commemorative Summit in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia on 15 December 1997.

KONNECT ASEAN

As the post-Cold War reality of a new world has taken shape and formed new directions and conversations, ASEAN has re-entered the contemporary art space via collaborative efforts between various ASEAN bodies. The Republic of Korea celebrated 30 years of diplomatic relations with ASEAN in 2019 and in the same year established KONNECT ASEAN, an ASEAN-Korea arts programme. Supported by the ASEAN-Korea Cooperation Fund and administered by the ASEAN Foundation, KONNECT ASEAN signals both an eagerness by ASEAN to revitalise its once integral role in contemporary visual arts and Korea’s sincerity in establishing closer ties with ASEAN.

The programme celebrates Southeast Asian and Korean arts using different platforms (exhibitions, education and conferences, public programmes, residencies, and publications and archives) to explore and discuss social, political, economic, and environmental issues in the region. The artists’ works and activities engages and strengthen the public’s understanding of ASEAN’s role in facilitating cultural diplomacy. Furthermore, the programme intends to connect with the three major stakeholder groups of government, business, and civil society to achieve the vision of an ASEAN Community. Outcomes provide permanent resources recording why ASEAN matters and its ongoing contribution to the region’s growth, prosperity, and stability.

NANYANG TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY

A research-intensive public university, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has 33,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students in the Engineering, Business, Science, Medicine, Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences, and Graduate colleges. NTU is also home to world-renowned autonomous institutes—the National Institute of Education, S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Earth Observatory of Singapore, and Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering—and various leading research centres such as the Nanyang Environment & Water Research Institute (NEWRI) and Energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERI@N).

Under the NTU Smart Campus vision, the University harnesses the power of digital technology and tech-enabled solutions to support better learning and living experiences, the discovery of new knowledge, and the sustainability of resources. Ranked amongst the world’s top universities, the University’s main campus is also frequently listed among the world’s most beautiful. Known for its sustainability, over 95% of its building projects are certified Green Mark Platinum. Apart from its main campus, NTU also has a medical campus in Novena, Singapore’s healthcare district. For more information, visit ntu.edu.sg.

NTU CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART SINGAPORE

Situated within Singapore’s premier art precinct Gillman Barracks, NTU CCA Singapore is a pioneering institution that has been instrumental in shaping the contemporary art landscape in Singapore and beyond. With a focus on fostering creativity, innovation, and critical thinking, the Centre’s programmes have consistently challenged the status quo, encouraging artists to explore new realms of artistic expression. For more information, visit ntu.ccasingapore.org.

Image: Climate Futures #1, Jakarta (Indonesia), 2022. Courtesy NTU CCA Singapore, Konnect ASEAN & ASEAN Foundation.

Expanding his ongoing enquiry into the historical narratives of power structures and their geopolitical reverberations onto the present, Anthony Chin will dedicate his residency to research the ramifications of Singapore’s colonial past. Prompted by the history of Gillman Barracks—where the Residencies Studios are located—as the site of the last battle before Singapore was surrendered to the Japanese. Soon after the Fall of Singapore (1942), the Imperial Japanese Army established OKA 9420, a research centre where experiments on Bubonic plague pathogens were conducted. Addressing lesser-known histories as well as the growing awareness of pathogens due to global events such as the recent pandemic, Anthony seeks to develop a deeper understanding of pathogens while unpacking the ethical concerns surrounding the rapid advancements in science and technology. The research process will encompass both primary and secondary sources and it aims to grow through connections and collaborations with historians, researchers, and scientists so as to lay the foundations for a long-term artistic project that addresses the impact of biochemical weapons on society.

The research-driven conceptual practice of Anthony Chin (b. 1969, Singapore) grows out of site-specific engagements with the historical, social, and architectural stratifications of a place. Through the articulation of ordinary materials into poetic installations, his work unravel the latent power structures and complex geopolitical narratives that undergird the colonial past and the post-colonial present. He has regularly presented his work in Singapore and abroad. His recent solo exhibitions include S$1,996/- S$831.06/-, Comma Space, Singapore (2021); TROPHY, Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Philippines (2020); and Western Pacific, Mo Shang Experiment, Beijing, China (2016). Among the group exhibitions are SAM Contemporaries: Residues & Remixes, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore (2023); For the House; Against the House, Gillman Barracks, Singapore (2022); Concept 88, Comma Space, Singapore (2022); three editions of OH! Open House, amongst others. Anthony has previously taken part in other residency programmes such as National NAC-MET international Artist Residency, Manila, Philippines (2020) and Taipei International Artists Residency season 4, Taiwan (2018).

Pursuing her ongoing research into intergenerational conflicts and trauma, Yanyun Chen will spend her residency examining methods of discipline within the family context. With a focus on Singaporean personal and communal childhood histories of discipline and punishment, the artist will explore how the indelible traces of disciplinary behaviour linger on in people’s bodies and minds and bleed into the everyday. Observing the irony and self-deprecating humour that come into play as a self-soothing practice in the retelling of such memories, she will also seek to unpack the heterogeneous ways in which pain and violence are remembered by conducting fieldwork, literary investigations, and interviews. The research weaves through histories of punishment and discipline in Singapore. Ultimately the artist intends to create large scale drawings that address these intergenerational wounds through the lens of medical, ethnographic, historical, and material studies.

Dr. Yanyun Chen (b. 1986, Singapore) is a visual artist who works across drawings, new media, and installation. Her artistic practice unravels fictional and philosophical notions of embodiment exploring how heritage and legacies are grounded in the physicality of human and botanical forms. Her solo exhibitions include Stories of a Woman and Her Dowry, Grey Projects, Singapore (2019) and Scars that write us, part of the President’s Young Talents 2018, Singapore Art Museum (2018). She has participated in group exhibitions such as While She Quivers, Objectifs – Centre for Photography and Film, Singapore (2021); Thailand Biennale, Korat 2021 (2021); Clouds: The 6th International Exhibition on New Media Art 2020, CICA Museum, South Korea (2020); Fiction Non Fiction, Cultural Affairs Bureau, Macau (2019); 2291: Futures Imagined, Art Science Museum, Singapore (2019) among others. Yanyun has received the Young Artist Award in 2020 and the IMPART Art Prize in 2019. Her works were also awarded the Prague International Indie Film Festival Q3 Best Animation Award (2020), National Youth Film Awards Best Art Direction Award (2019), Singapore Art Museum President’s Young Talents People’s Choice Award (2018), and the Lee Kuan Yew Gold Medal Award (2009). 

Propelled by an interest in the conceptual frictions between art and craftsmanship, artistic and industrial labour, the artist intends to develop this research into a comparative study of masonry and ceramics, two techniques that have significant affinities in terms of materials but carry different class connotations. Focusing on existing sites such as local brick factories and heritage buildings made of bricks, he will also codify the schemas of bricklaying in an attempt to delineate different morphologies of brick architecture. This research will potentially culminate in a series of material experimentations and pictorial mappings of brick trade, bringing to the forefront the overlooked history of this material in the context of Singapore.

Working at the intersection of painting and sculpture, Ben Loong (b. 1988, Singapore) explores themes and questions of utility within traditional craftsmanship. Through the manipulation of industrial and mass-produced materials and the observation of textures and patterns in the everyday, his practice attempts to challenge the value systems embedded in our material culture. Ben has regularly presented in Singapore, in both solo and group exhibitions. His solo exhibitions include Squaring the Circle, Mizuma Gallery, Singapore (2021); MONO, S.E.A. Focus, Singapore (2020); and Aggregate, I_S_L_A_N_D_S, Singapore (2018). His group exhibitions include Ancient Future Myths, AC43 Gallery, Singapore (2021); FrictionaL and Lingering Manifestations, Pearl Lam Galleries, Singapore and River Stories, LASALLE’s Institute of Contemporary Art Singapore (both 2018); Untapped Emerging, Visual Arts Development Association, Chan + Hori Contemporary, Singapore (2017); Ends, Hart Lane Studios and Joyless Unity, Mori + Stein, both London, United Kingdom (2014 and 2013). He received the Highly Commended mention in the Established Artist Category at the UOB Painting of the Year Competition in 2018.

The multimedia practice of Ngoc Nau encompasses photography, holograms, and Augmented Reality (AR) and she is currently working with 3D software and other open source technologies to create new possibilities for video installation. In Nau’s work, different materials and techniques attempt to capture the subtle ways in which new media shape and dictate our views of reality. Blending traditional culture and spiritual beliefs with modern technologies and lifestyles, her work often responds to Vietnam’s accelerated urban development. She has participated in several exhibitions across Asia, including the Thailand Biennale, Korat (2021) and the Singapore Biennale (2019) among others. She also participated in documenta 15, Kassel, Germany (2022) with Sa Sa Art Projects.

During the residency, Ngoc Nau intends to research the impact of urbanisation and modernisation on contemporary living conditions, collective memories, traditional practices, and the natural landscape. Situating herself within the creative community of Rupert will allow her to explore Lithuanian cultural landscape and to access a new trove of materials, including oral traditions, historical archives, and ritual ceremonies. Through encounters will the local community, she intends to unearth the traditional values and ancient practices that have been lost to industrial and technological advancements in order to come to a better understanding of how different communities configure their values and identities within the fast-changing landscape of today. Nau is particularly interested in the gaps created by modern development in the intergenerational transmission of knowledge and she plans to experiment with new media technologies to imagine modes of being that reconcile the past and the future.

Tekla Aslanishvili (b. 1988, Georgia) is an artist, filmmaker and essayist based between Berlin and Tbilisi. Her works emerge at the intersection of infrastructural design, history and geopolitics. 

Tekla graduated from the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts in 2009 and she holds a MFA from the Berlin University of the Arts – the department of Experimental Film and New Media Art. Aslanishvili’s films have been screened and exhibited internationally at PACT Zollverein, Neue Berliner Kunstverein, Baltic Triennial, Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Kasseler Dokfest, Kunsthalle Münster, EMAF – European Media Art Festival, Videonale 18, Tbilisi Architecture Biennial. She is a 2018–2019 Digital Earth fellow, the nominee for Ars-Viva Art prize 2021 and the recipient of the Han Nefkens Foundation – Fundació Antoni Tàpies Video Art Production Award 2020.

Course Details

In this 2-hour workshop led by NTU CCA Singapore Artist-in-Residence Fazleen Karlan, children will act as both artists in the present, and archaeologists from the future. Participants, together with their guardian, will create their own artefact using an object of their choosing. Reversing the process where archaeologists dig and reconstruct fragmented pieces, participants will instead use clay, sand sediments, and paints, to mimic the rock layers that form around objects over time, thereby turning an object from the present, into a relic for the future! In the process, participants will put themselves in the shoes of archaeologists and learn how meanings and histories can be inferred from different items. The workshop will encourage participants to stretch the meaning of everyday objects across different temporalities and reflect on what we leave behind for future generations.

Date: 18 June 2022, Saturday
Time: 10:00am – 12:00pm
Venue: NTU CCA Singapore, Residencies Studios, Block 37 Malan Road, #01-01, Singapore 109452

Free Admission (conditions below)

Register here.

Notes
·       This programme is ideal for adult-child pairs. Each child must be accompanied by an adult for the entire programme.
·       This programme is most suitable for children aged 7 and above
·       This programme is free admission, but will require a $10 deposit to secure a spot. The deposit will be refunded upon attendance.

What To Bring
·       comfortable attire
·       a small object
·       water

Cancellation Policy
·       All cancellations/substitutions must be in writing, email us at NTUCCAResidencies@ntu.edu.sg 
·       All cancellation requests must be received by Wednesday, 15 June, 23:59pm.
·       If, after booking, you are unable to attend, you are welcome to nominate someone else to attend in your place. All substitution requests must be received by Friday, 17 June, 13:00pm. 
·       The deposit will not be refunded due to failure to attend or failure to provide the 3 days notice.

Informed by art historical and philosophical discourses on the subject/object dichotomy and propelled by a growing interest in stage design, theatricality, and the phenomenology of perception, the artist intends to expand his own image-making process beyond painting, questioning his intuitive relation to the medium at the same time. This experimentation will potentially result into multimedia installations wherein formal and contextual aspects are merged and narratives unfold in space through a combination of visual layers and material components that elicit different modes of spectatorship in the viewer.

This episode features a conversation between two artists who work primarily with painting: our Artist-in-Residence Hilmi Johandi and Singaporean artist and educator Ian Woo. In this peer-to-peer exchange between thoughtful image-makers, Hilmi and Ian ponder over the significance of the studio in Hilmi’s practice revealing how walls, and spaces, can shape artistic mindsets and generate different patterns of thought. Throughout the conversation, they address the potential of a local residency to shift the perception of the familiar, open up new ways of seeing and refresh routines and rituals. They also touch upon the artist-audience relation and other core aspects in Hilmi’s practice such as the role of emptiness in the painted surface, the process of reframing, and the inspiration that comes from old films and photographs. 

Drawing on archival footage, old films, and other imagery produced for mass consumption, the artistic practice of Hilmi Johandi refigures the iconography of Singapore and our relation with images. His body of work is deeply rooted in painting but it also harnesses other mediums to mobilise symbols and sites where memory and nostalgia, leisure and desire become deeply entangled.

 Ian Woo is an artist influenced by modernist abstractions, the phenomenology of perception, and the sound structures of music improvisation. His paintings, painted objects, and drawings are traversed by a sense of gravitational change that makes the image function as a diagram of states of consciousness. The distinct use of frames, axis, and invisible grids is expressive of his “compartments and systems” approach, a methodology the artist has developed in his exploration of the painted space as activated time.

Contributors: Hilmi Johandi, Ian Woo
Editor: Anna Lovecchio
Programme Manager: Nadia Amalina
Sound Engineer: Ashwin Menon
Intro & Outro Music: Yuen Chee Wai
Cover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine Tan

[See Full Transcript]

Spanning moving image, sculpture, as well as performative installations, Priyageetha Dia (b. 1992, Singapore) addresses identity politics by questioning dominant narratives and socio-spatial relations. In the past few years, her practice has been consistently experimenting with a variety of world-making gestures that envision alternative futures. Her works have been part of several group exhibitions including, Attention Seeker, La Trobe Art Institute, Bendigo, Australia (2022); An Exercise of Meaning in a Glitch Season, National Gallery Singapore (2020); 2219: Futures Imagined, ArtScience Museum Singapore (2019). She was a recipient of the IMPART Art Award in 2019.

During the residency, Lyno will explore the entangled histories of colonialism, modernisation, and urbanisation focusing on the Garden of Tropical Agronomy, located in the Bois de Vincennes, one of the largest public parks in Paris which hosted the International Colonial Exposition in 1931. The exposition featured several architectural representations of the colonies, including Cambodia and Indochina, the remnants of which are still extant today surrounded by modern facilities. The artist is interested in excavating the politics of the built environment to understand the historical role architecture has played in the construction of imperialist agendas and the lingering implications of colonial symbolism and power structures in the present.

Find out more about SEA AiR.

Vuth Lyno is an artist, curator, and educator who is interested in space, cultural history, and the production of knowledge through social relations. Drawing on a wide range of materials such as interviews, artifacts, and newly made objects, he creates spatial configurations that weave together personal stories and collective bodies of knowledge. Participatory and experimental in nature, his artistic and curatorial approach is rooted in communal learning and aims to engage a multiplicity of voices in the production of meaning. He is a member of Stiev Selapak, a collective which founded and co-runs Sa Sa Art Projects in Phnom Penh, a long-term initiative committed to the development of the contemporary visual arts landscape in Cambodia. His work has been presented at several group exhibitions and institutions such as the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, Thailand (2020) and the 9^th Asia Pacific Triennial, Brisbane, Australia (2019), amongst others.

From its first iteration in 2013, Free Jazz has pushed boundaries and expanded upon pressing concerns of our times. Free Jazz IV. Geomancers continues this approach, featuring artworks ranging from virtual reality to video, performance, and sound as an exercise in planetary awareness. The exhibition presents significant artistic practices from across the globe that are deeply invested in creating an environmental consciousness and that share an understanding of the world as a vulnerable, yet resilient, mesh of coexistences, correlations, and co-creations. As with geomancy, these artworks can help us to read the signs that our planet is trying to send us and that they can inspire a stronger commitment to create a sustainable future for life on Earth.

Alongside scientists, environmental activists, enlightened policy makers and civil society members, contemporary artists are increasingly concerned with future prospects of ecological collapse and planetary survival. They address these issues through the language of art, creating images, sounds, narratives, and experiences that allow us to establish affective and cognitive connections with the environment and partake in the planetary intelligence of the Earth. Stemming from NTU CCA Singapore’s ongoing engagement with the overarching subject of Climates.Habitats. Environments., Free Jazz IV. Geomancers brings together a selection of creative practitioners who are distinctly alert to these urgencies.

Conceived for Singapore Art Week 2022, this programme consists of a film screening series, a virtual reality installation, a performance and a sound installation. Some of the featured artworks zero in on signs of earthly demise, others indicate pathways of resilience and strategies for regeneration. All the works result from long-term research and extensive fieldwork and, when presented together, they engender a kaleidoscopic overview of the multitudinous forms of ecological entanglements.

Artists: Martha Atienza (Philippines), Ursula Biemann (Switzerland), Carolina Caycedo & David de Rozas (United Kingdom; Spain/United States), Chu Hao Pei (Singapore), Liu Chuang (China), Pedro Neves Marques (Portugal), Katie Paterson (Scotland), Rice Brewing Sisters Club (South Korea), Daniel Steegmann Mangrané (Spain/Brazil), Jana Winderen (Norway), Zarina Muhammad & Zachary Chan (Singapore), and Robert Zhao Renhui (Singapore).

Free Jazz IV. Geomancers is supported by National Arts Council Singapore and Nicoletta Fiorucci Russo De Li Galli. NTU CCA Singapore also wishes to thank our collaborators Appetite, IHME Helsinki, and PUB Singapore’s National Water Agency at Marina Barrage.

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The evocative and subtly layered works of Chua Chye Teck (b. 1974, Singapore) result from prolonged visual and experiential quests. His body of work draws attention to the discarded and the overlooked articulating a reflection on the multiple processes of disappearing that result from the impact of progress and development on the natural environment. His works have been exhibited in venues such as at Singapore Art Museum (2021), Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2020), Jendela Esplanade, Singapore (2018, 2015), Institute of Contemporary Arts, Singapore (2017), Chiang Mai University Art Centre, Thailand (2015), and Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany (2010).

Committed to socially engaged practices, multi-disciplinary theatre practitioner Han Xuemei (b. 1987, Singapore) employs art as a tool for bringing communities together and engaging the audience in visceral and personal ways. In her practice, she creates spaces and experiences that incite participants to think outside the box of existing paradigms and articulate forms of hope and resistance. Since 2012, she is Resident Artist at the Singapore-based theatre company Drama Box. Her recent projects include the experiential installation FLOWERS (2019), the community project The Gift (2018), and the participatory experience Missing: The City of Lost Things (2018).

Musician, artist, designer, and curator Yuen Chee Wai (b. 1975, Singapore) is known for his commitment to improvised music and experimental projects that explore memory and loss, indeterminacy and invisibility. Ranging from the obsolescent and the newfangled, his eclectic toolbox comprises noise, field recordings, found sounds as well as guitars and various electronic instruments which reverberate with critical perspectives inspired by philosophy, literature, film, and politics. Together with FEN (Far East Network), an improvised music quartet he co-formed in 2008, Yuen is active in triggering multifaceted collaborations across Asia. Since 2014, he is Project Director of Asian Music Network for which he co-curates Asian Meeting Festival. Yuen is also a member of the experimental band The Observatory with whom he plays guitar, efx and objects, and organises a range of projects such Playfreely and BlackKaji.

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.

The filmic and performative practice of Russell Morton (b.1982, Singapore) explores folkloric myths, esoteric rituals, and the conventions of cinema itself. His film Saudade (2020) was commissioned for State of Motion: Rushes of Time, Asian Film Archives, Singapore, and presented at the 31st Singapore International Film Festival (2020); The Forest of Copper Columns (2015) won the Cinematic Achievement Award at the 57th Thessaloniki Film Festival, Greece (2016) and was selected for several festivals including the Short Shorts Film Festival, Tokyo, Japan (2017), the Thai Short Film and Video Festival, Bangkok, Thailand, and Jogja-NETPAC Asian Film Festival, Indonesia (both 2016).

Admission is free but registration is required. Please register here.

This event is part of Residencies OPEN, 18 September 2021 (1.00 – 7.00pm), for more info click here.

Image: Russell Morton, expired Super 8mm footage of life on a kelong in Singapore’s waters, 2021, film stills. Courtesy of the artist.

Come by the studios of our Artists-in-Residence: Tini Aliman and Russell Morton (both Singapore) for a special insight into their artistic process. This session of Residencies OPEN will allow you to encounter works-in-progress, watch a film screening, browse archival materials, and talk to the artists in person!

TINI ALIMAN
Open Studio

Saturday, 18 September, 1:00 ­– 7:00 pm
Block 37 Malan Road, #01-03
no registration required

As a new development of her long-term research on plant consciousness and biodata sonification, Tini Aliman has come to regard ‘dead’ trees as potential archives of environmental soundscapes, witnesses of urban development and extractive capitalism, ecological events and climate change. Breathing new life into tree stumps, fragments of felled trees, and repurposed wood from previous artworks, the artist is reconfiguring these materials into kinetic and sound sculpture prototypes and she is experimenting with a range of sensory and mechanical modes of activation. Conjunctly, inspired by the structural and functional similarities between Printed Circuit Board (PCB) etching designs and forest underground network ecosystems, Tini is also speculatively imagining a functioning network of closed electronic circuits that mimics how these trees would have communicated while they were still alive. This project is realised in collaboration with Trying.sg.

Working at the intersection of film, sound, theatre, and installation, often through collaborative projects, the sonic and spatial experiments of Tini Aliman (b. 1980, Singapore) focus on forest networks, plant consciousness, bioacoustics, and data translations via biodata sonification. Her recent projects and collaborations have been presented at Free Jazz III: Sound. Walks. NTU CCA Singapore (2021); An Exercise of Meaning in a Glitch Season, National Gallery Singapore (2020); Sound Kite Orchestra, Biennale Urbana, Venice, Italy and Stories We Tell to Scare Ourselves With, Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei, Taiwan (both 2019).

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RUSSELL MORTON
Open Studio

Saturday, 18 September, 1:00 ­– 7:00 pm
Block 37 Malan Road, #01­-02 & Block 38 Malan Road, #01-06
no registration required

For the past six months, Russell Morton has dived deep into gathering research materials and audiovisual references for the script of his first feature film. Inspired by a not well-known historical event—a prison riot which took place in Pulau Senang before Singapore’s independence—, the film interweaves the horrific events of the bloody riot with regional folklore. This open studio session presents a generous selection of archival materials, oral histories, and sound recordings relevant to the development of the script as well as the documentation (shot on Super 8mm film) of the artist’ site visits to a kelong, a type of vernacular architecture on the verge of disappearing that will feature prominently in the film.
Furthermore, there will be the opportunity to watch Morton’s most recent short film Mystic and Momok (2021), see below for more details.  

The filmic and performative practice of Russell Morton (b. 1982, Singapore) explores folkloric myths, esoteric rituals, and the conventions of cinema itself. His film Saudade (2020) was commissioned for State of Motion: Rushes of Time, Asian Film Archives, Singapore, and presented at the 31st Singapore International Film Festival (2020); The Forest of Copper Columns (2015) won the Cinematic Achievement Award at the 57th Thessaloniki Film Festival, Greece (2016) and was selected for several festivals including the Short Shorts Film Festival, Tokyo, Japan (2017), the Thai Short Film and Video Festival, Bangkok, Thailand, and Jogja-NETPAC Asian Film Festival, Indonesia (both 2016).

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RESIDENCIES INSIGHTS

RUSSELL MORTON: ARTIST-LED STUDIO TOUR

Saturday, 18 September, 3:00 – 3:45pm
Block 37 Malan Road, #01-02

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. 

Due to safe-distancing measures, this event has limited capacity and is by registration only. Please register here.

TINI ALIMAN: OF UNDERGROUND SCHEMATICS & THE FALLEN TREE
Artist Talk and Performance

Saturday, 18 September, 4:30 – 5:30pm
Block 37 Malan Road, #01-03

In a two-part event consisting of a talk and a performance, Tini Aliman will share her findings and reflections on plant consciousness and on the parallels between the human and the vegetable sensorium, interweaving them with explorations in acoustic memory and sonic symbolism related to her personal musical journey. In the performance, she will engage with her long-standing collaborator, a ficus microcarpa (Malayan banyan tree) named Ara. 

Due to safe-distancing measures, this event has limited capacity and is by registration only. Please register here.

MYSTIC & MOMOK BY RUSSELL MORTON
Film Screening (on loop)
HD video (16:9), stereo, 18min 10sec, 2021
Rating: PG

Saturday, 18 September, 1:00 – 7:00pm
The Screening Room
Block 38 Malan Road, #01-06
No registration required. Please expect waiting time if room capacity is reached.

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 & 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.
 
This event marks the opening of The Screening Room, NTU CCA Singapore’s cosy new space dedicated to film screenings and talks.

In a two-part event consisting of a talk and a performance, Tini Aliman will share her findings and reflections on plant consciousness and on the parallels between the human and the vegetable sensoriums, interweaving them with explorations in acoustic memory and sonic symbolism related to her personal musical journey. In the performance, she will engage with her long-standing collaborator, a ficus microcarpa (Malayan banyan tree) named Ara.

Working at the intersection of film, sound, theatre, and installation, often through collaborative projects, the sonic and spatial experiments of Tini Aliman (b.1980, Singapore) focus on forest networks, plant consciousness, bioacoustics, and data translations via biodata sonification. Her recent projects and collaborations have been presented at Free Jazz III: Sound. Walks. NTU CCA Singapore (2021); An Exercise of Meaning in a Glitch Season, National Gallery Singapore (2020); Sound Kite Orchestra, Biennale Urbana, Venice, Italy and Stories We Tell to Scare Ourselves With, Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei, Taiwan (both 2019).

Admission is free but registration is required. Please register here.

This event is part of Residencies OPEN, 18 September 2021 (1.00 – 7.00pm), for more info click here.

Image: Tini Aliman, untitled, 2021 photography and digital composition (detail). Courtesy of the artist.

NTU CCA Singapore launched its Digital Archive in April 2021 to provide access and discovery to unique digital assets, documenting its exhibitions and programmes from 2013 to March 2021.

The Centre positions itself as a space for critical discourse and encourages new ways of thinking about Spaces of the Curatorial in Southeast Asia and beyond. With the Digital Archive, we aim to provide local and international researchers, artists and curators a comprehensive database to study contemporary art ecosystems in Singapore and the region.  

The Digital Archive forms part of the broader Public Resource Platform which includes a specialised print collection, Artist Resource Platform (ARP), and a video archive. The ARP looks to provide an entry point to contemporary artistic practice in Southeast Asia, containing visual material and audio recordings of talks from over 90 local artists and NTU CCA Singapore’s Artists-in-Residence. The video archive also gives insight into past public events of the Centre, offering an expanded understanding of the complexity and diversity of contemporary art research and production, and how it intersects with current developments in culture, society, and politics.

The Digital Archive is currently a work in progress with content being digitised and added progressively over time. 

Click here to go directly to The Digital Archive, and please contact us for an appointment to access the Artist Resource Platform.

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) and the European Union Delegation to Singapore today launched the Studio Residencies in the EU for Southeast Asian Artists (SEA AiR), a new programme that aims to create a peer-to-peer cultural and artistic exchange between Southeast Asia and Europe, with Singapore as its hub.

This public diplomacy project is funded by EU’s Foreign Policy Instruments. 

SEA AiR will offer selected artists from Southeast Asia an engaging immersion in the European art scene that allows a deeper understanding of the various cultural strands and values shaping the continent. Through this experience, participating artists can create links with other art projects in Singapore, their home countries and the wider region. At the end of the residency, the artists will have an exhibition in Singapore which will enable them to present and showcase their artwork to a wider audience.

As a new residency programme, SEA AiR will promote a creative exchange enhancing the EU-Singapore–ASEAN dialogue through contemporary art and provide a meaningful opportunity for artists who have previously not lived or studied in the EU. Likewise, host institutions will benefit from expanding their networks in Southeast Asia, a region that has been historically under-represented in most artist-in-residence programmes in Europe.

Leading NTU’s efforts in this partnership with the European Union is the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (NTU CCA Singapore).

The first host institution will be the WIELS Contemporary Art Centre in Brussels, Belgium. As a space dedicated to the exhibition and support of emerging artists since 2007, WIELS occupies a central stage in the art scene. A highly renowned institution dedicated to contemporary art, its residency is supporting emerging artists towards professional practices, presenting original artistic visions and facilitating critical exchange, and establishing connections between local and international artists and curators. 

Barbara Plinkert, European Union Ambassador to Singapore said: “We have in the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore an excellent partner to present this project that will foster rich artistic exchanges inspired by travel and cultural exposure to Europe. SEA AiR offers a deeper, more extensive engagement and immersion in the vibrant European cultural landscape and arts scene to experience first-hand the various cultural strands and values shaping our world today.”

This initiative involves emerging artists in Singapore and Southeast Asia to further develop their practice, careers, networks and exposure where opportunities may not likely have existed. It also offers a means for European cultural institutions and communities to establish international cooperation and exchange with Singapore and the diverse Southeast Asian region.

Professor Joseph Liow, Dean of College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University said: “NTU, through the Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore is proud to be partnering with the EU Delegation in Singapore on this initiative that will be of great impact to the development of contemporary art and artists in Singapore and Southeast Asia. This partnership is a demonstration of the recognition of the Centre’s track record and further strengthens ties between the university and the EU. The SEA AiRprogramme is a significant opportunity for emerging Singaporean and ASEAN artists and we are pleased to support them in this way.”

How SEA AiR works

Residency candidates will be nominated by a pool of curators and arts professionals in Singapore and the region. These artists will subsequently submit a proposal for review to the Selection Committee, consisting of a panel of experts including the EU Delegation.

Selected artists will be offered a residency at selected European host institutions for up to three months, which will include studio access, accommodation and regional research trip opportunities. The artists are expected to present a new work from their residency upon their return reflecting on their experience in the residency, cultural exchange, creative dialogues, community and professional connections and more.

NTU CCA Singapore will serve as a connector and positive catalyst between all stakeholders and will provide mentorship and guidance to the selected artists in developing and realising their work and projects. At the end of their residency, NTU CCA Singapore and the EU host institution will continue to provide the artists with feedback and support. NTU CCA Singapore’s curatorial team will also work closely with them on an exhibition or presentation in Singapore to showcase the body of work pursued whilst in Europe. Furthermore, they will share their process of artistic enquiry with the public via a range of public programmes.

See Annex A for more information about SEA AiR—Studio Residencies for Southeast Asian Artists in the EU.

Since its inception in October 2013, NTU CCA Singapore has successfully conceptualised and administered an extensive residencies programme, supporting artists, curators, and scholars alike by offering them time and space to pursue their research without the pressure of deadlines and production commitments.

The Centre’s residencies programme is dedicated to working with established and emerging artists and is recognised as a platform for critical exchange in Southeast Asia. Its studio-based programme values the open-ended nature of artistic research and embraces multiform expressions of creative enquiry. This approach is of particular importance, allowing for free expression and giving artists latitude to question society in its plurality.

NTU CCA Singapore’s expertise in the selection of artists, its network of international host organisations, and experience in the administering of artists’ residencies makes it the ideal organising institution to launch SEA AiR. 

Media Contact:

Feisal Abdul Rahman
Senior Assistant Director
Corporate Communications Office
Nanyang Technological University
feisalar@ntu.edu.sg

Deepika Shetty
Press Officer
European Union Delegation to Singapore
deepika.shetty@eeas.europa.eu

ANNEX A – SEA AiR Fact Sheet

SEA AiR aims to bring six emerging Singaporean or Southeast Asian artists over three years from 2021-2023 to Europe.

In the first year, candidates put forward by nominators selected by NTU CCA Singapore from arts, educational, and cultural institutions throughout Southeast Asia would provide a research proposal as an application for a three-month residency in the European Union.

The host institutions in Europe will provide access to a furnished studio, accommodation, per diems, regional research field trip and logistical and day-to-day assistance in a community of creative practitioners.

The artists will have ample opportunities for building networks as well as personal and professional development. Formal convenings of artists-in-residence with their peers drawn from a local or international cohort can take the form of sharing sessions, studio critique sessions, and organised study trips.

Curatorial and artistic mentorship would take the form of regular studio visits or other sessions with assigned mentors and less formal studio visits with visiting curators and artists. These sessions will centre around discussions on their research and studio projects as well as their practice as a whole. 

During their time in the EU, artists will attend public programmes, exhibitions, and other events at the host institution. They will also have the opportunity to present their work publicly, in the form of a lecture, performance, screening, installation, or open studio event. Artists-in-Residence will also participate in group excursions and sessions alongside other residency artists.

Akiko Fukai (September 10, 1943) is a Japanese curator of fashion and textile arts. She received a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in fashion history from National University of Ochanomizu and studied at Paris-Sorbonne University. Currently, Fukai is the Director and Chief Curator of the Kyoto Costume Institute.

Gary Ross Pastrana will collect “Fifty Shared Words” as a response to the overlaps in histories and languages in the various parts of Southeast Asia. With these words he will write short descriptions, musings, meditations or anecdotes about each word, comparable in format with Primo Levi’s Periodic Table. Research will be kept to informal conversations with artists and other everyday people encountered during the residency to keep the whole experience direct, unmediated, and current. The aim is not to come up with an academic linguistic study but to encounter words in actual usage by real people and in the process learn through communication. Short stays in other neighboring countries like Malaysia and Indonesia, (to meet artists and visit artists communities) is also worked into the plan to expose to varying settings and the more subtle differences in context and usage of the words.

Erika Tan (b. 1967, Singapore) is an artist and Lecturer at Central Saint Martins, London. Her research-led practice develops from an interest in received narratives, contested heritage, subjugated voices, and the transnational movement of ideas, people, and objects. Between July and August 2015, Tan was Artist-in-Residence at NTU CCA Singapore where she continued her research into the minor historical figure of the Malay weaver Halimah and the conditions surrounding the 1924 British Empire Exhibiton, an inquiry that has since developed into the video installations APA JIKA, The Mis-Placed Comma and The ‘Forgotten’ Weaver (both in 2017).

During the residency, Krist Gruijthuijsen will connect with local artists and institutions in Singapore. He will present a talk titled The Ouroboros Effect featuring a selection of projects initiated over the past decade that reflect upon the importance in his curatorial practice of the artist’s voice and of the material and social conditions of artistic production.

During his residency, Phoumivong will continue to experiment with stop-motion animation, working on a project entitled The Emotion. The 10-minute video installation, produced using locally sourced clay, is an experiment in time and texture. The work is part of the artist’s ongoing investigation into alternative forms of artistic creation, which inform his practice as an artist and educator and are especially significant in Laos, a country where visual art is focused mostly on painting.

During the residency, Lacey will develop One divides into two, a project which derives its title from a Maoist slogan from the 1960s. The project expands the artist’s investigations into non-western print histories and is backgrounded by her ongoing interest in the differing physical forms of public communication across various broadcasting platforms. Lacey aims to research current approaches to publishing and copyright in the Southeast Asian region with a specific focus on the printing history of Cambodia, looking in particular at bootlegged publications, the flouting of copyright laws, and the histories of digital piracy.

During the residency, John Torres plans to experiment with “parasitical filmmaking strategies” as the starting point of a series of works he intends to realise throughout Southeast Asia. By positioning himself at the periphery of ongoing film productions, Torres will collect their multiple “excesses:” spillages in light, sound, props, furniture, scenic design, and everything that may linger outside the perimeter of the main set. Tapping onto other directors’ scraps and making use of resources that have already been paid for to create his own separate narrative, the artist aims to test out a playful method for bypassing the financial limitations of independent film productions. In light of his recent role as father, this work will be developed within the framework of Remote Daddy Project: a way of structuring the artist’s work schedule around his daughter’s sleep and feeding schedule so as to strike a balance between making art and raising a family.

During his residency Jeremy Sharma will focus on the idea of ‘Vertical Progression’ , observing the logic of production, the production of ideas and the idea of the use of the studio space through different strategies of art making. The research will be based on three phases , Longitudes, Endgames and Screensavers, White Heron and Vertical Progression. Longitudes, Endgames and Screensavers is a distractive stage that starts off with several elements going at once. White Heron will takethe form of a studio installation developed from the different phases and will conclude the project. Sharma’s current research investigates abstract ideas of time, capital and economy in our present society.

Throughout the residency, John Low is pursuing an interdisciplinary investigation on the expanding field of contemporary Chinese ink practices in the context of Singapore and Southeast Asia. Extending beyond the technical specificity of the medium, his interests encompass the relationship between place and identity, the patterns of knowledge transmission, and the processes through which a shared diasporic culture becomes localised. Fuelled by conversations with local scholars, practioners, and other relevant interlocutors, this research also tackles the literature on the subject as the artist scrutinises how language, specifically English and Mandarin, affects the production of knowledge and the circulation of discourse. The studio also provides Low with a space to experiment with different spatial configurations of his own works with Chinese ink. During the second part of the residency, he plans to focus on the production of a new floor piece.

Research Interests:

– Experimental/independent publishing
– Natural and produced environments
– Intertextuality and visual culture
– Transdisciplinary discourse

One part of Isabel Carvalho’s artistic practice manifests itself in the form of editorial work through LEONORANA, an annual bi-lingual (Portuguese/English) cross-disciplinary research publication she established in 2017. LEONORANA’s main goal is to study the relation of conflict and complicity between verbal and visual languages, presenting essays (in text or in visual forms) as the preferred genre for the development of speculative thinking around chosen themes. For the next issue of the publication, the artist intends to tackle the subject of “environments” focusing on the differences between “natural” and “produced” environments (i.e. indoor atmospheres produced by air conditioning; architectural and urban planning strategies to manage pollution, etc.). With a transdisciplinary approach, the issue will prompt curious narratives based on the observation of existing situations, their economic, social, and political aspects, as well as their cultural representations across different media.

The residency of Isabel Carvalho was scheduled for January – March 2021, but the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak rendered international travel impossible. In order to continue to support artistic research and foster collaborations beyond borders, the NTU CCA Residencies Programme initiated Residencies Rewired, a project that trailblazes new pathways to collaboration.


Research Liaison: Ang Kia Yee

Ang Kia Yee is a poet and artist interested in speculation, fiction, and alternative futures in which community economies, new language(s), and solarpunk proposals are possible.

In the last few years, many of Oliver Husain’s projects have spawned from hearsay, rumour, or chance encounters. During the residency, Husain will research and explore the history of the hair animation industry in commercial film and photography which, as the rumour goes, used to be highly developed in Singapore until the rise of digital animation in the 2000s. Fascinated by the abstract and poetic qualities of the purposeless movement of hair freed from narrative constraints and product placement needs, the artist plans to delve into unofficial and queer forms of knowledge by conducting fieldwork in hair salons and interviewing senior hair stylists. At the same time, he will research and collect fashion editorials, photographs, films, and other extant materials of the time in preparation for an experimental hair animation to be possibly realized in collaboration with Computer-generated imagery (CGI) experts in Singapore.

While in residence, Ho Rui An will continue his research into the aesthetics of “futurecraft” across the various futures and “horizon scanning” programmes run by state and private entities in Singapore and beyond. Of special interest is the practice of “critical futures” and the normative forces that come to bear upon it within institutional frames. Ho will further use his studio space to explore different exhibitionary forms by which his discursive projects can be manifested.

Having noticed a tendency in writings on Thai contemporary art in quoting and referring to a restricted set of sociocultural texts, Narawan Pathomvat will conduct a research-based project focusing on mapping and analyzing bibliographical data in Southeast Asian contemporary art writings. Through collections of Southeast Asian writings in various institutions in Singapore and interviews and discussions with experts in the field she hopes to identify art historical, theoretical, philosophical influences in contemporary art writings in the region.

Hendrik Folkerts will explore the Singapore art scene and do research on performance practices in Singapore and the larger region of Southeast Asia. In addition, Folkerts will make studio visits and meet with local representatives of museums and art institutions as part of his research for documenta 14.

Hamra Abbas has a versatile artistic practice that straddles a wide range of media, from paper collage and painting to ephemeral soft plasticine sculpture and video. Her works often take a humorous look towards widely accepted traditions, appropriating culturally loaded imagery and religious iconography and transforming them into new works that are experienced in space and time.

Abbas takes various cultural references and recontextualises them using appropriated artistic techniques. For her residency she is learning the courtly Chinese painting style of Gongbi and conducting portrait studies of her various interactions of people in the lively inner city suburb of Little India in Singapore.

Márton Orosz (b. 1979, Hungary) is Curator of the Collection of Photography and Media Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts and the Acting Director of the Vasarely Museum both in in Budapest, Hungary. He has recently curated Hungarian Artists and the Computer (2016), Time Landscape. Alan Sonfist and the Birth of Land Art (2014), and Film Experiments Brought to Light (2014).

He earned his PhD in Art History at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. He has been Terra Fellow at Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C., United States, and György Kepes Fellow for Advanced Studies and Transdisciplinary Research at MIT, Cambridge, United States. His publications range across the history of photography, film, and collecting. His essay on Gyorgy Kepes’ Polaroid experiments appeared in AR – Artistic Research (Walther König, 2013). His study on the 1930s European abstract animated film industry was published in Regarding the Popular. Modernism, the Avant-Garde and High and Low Culture (De Gruyter, 2011).

While in residence Márton Orosz will further his research on György Kepes, the Hungarian-born artist, designer, educator and theorist who founded the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1967 as a “brainstorming laboratory” for artists and scientists to bridge the gap between art and science and address the social responsibility of design. He will explore the trans-regional connections of Kepes’ theories in Southeast Asia to shed light on the values shared by painters, designers, and architects who came into contact with Kepes and maintained a similar interest in the ecological consciousness and art’s capacity to trigger social transformations. Orosz plans to interview Choy Weng Yang, a seminal figure in the Singaporean art scene who visited Kepes in 1973, and to conduct archival research at the National Library and at the National Gallery Singapore.

Whilst in residence, Hardono will draw from personal experiences, to inquire into the impact that societal changes, such as the affect of censorship, have had on popular culture, local music and literature. His research methodology will be based on observations of human behaviour, field records, filming and the gathering of daily objects and images in Singapore and the context of Southeast Asia. In line with his current practice, Hardono will also further explore various approaches towards collaborative performances.

Whilst in residence, Hardono will draw from personal experiences, to inquire into the impact that societal changes, such as the affect of censorship, have had on popular culture, local music and literature. His research methodology will be based on observations of human behaviour, field records, filming and the gathering of daily objects and images in Singapore and the context of Southeast Asia. In line with his current practice, Hardono will also further explore various approaches towards collaborative performances.

In the past four years, de Boer has been questioning her practice and the impact that critical recognition and the professionalization of her work as a practicing artist has made upon her creative process. At this self-reflective juncture, the artist is interested in the conditions for thinking and inspiration, investigating notions of open-ended time and of personal and societal rhythms. In her view, to place aimless, untroubled” time in relation to creativity, research, and production offers a political counterpoint to the outcome-driven model that rules the art world and our contemporary life, opening up a space for creation that allows for experimentation, boredom, and failure. During the residency, de Boer plans to further develop this research engaging in conversation with a variety of experts that can help her reframe the question of time.

In recent years, Claudia Losi’s artistic research has journeyed around the perception of places creating erratic configurations of language, memory, and imagination that unfold multiple layers of our subjective relationship to the world. For the artist, “being there” denotes a state of being located in the mind of the subject, in the memories and imagination related to a physical environment. These series of investigations coalesced into the publication How do I imagine being there?, realized in 2016 alongside an eponymous exhibition. Following the same train of thought, the research project for the residency is titled Being There or Life is a State of Mind, after the 1979 film by American director Hal Ashby. Losi intends to conduct a series of interviews with people from diverse disciplines, generations, and socioeconomic backgrounds asking them to describe a certain typology of place. Texts, drawings, and possibly a video will be created on the basis of the gathered materials.

Antariksa’s research interests lie in the complexities of the Indonesian art environment. In particular, art collectivism during Japanese occupation (1942–1945) and its impacts and influences on Indonesian art history. While in Residence, he will investigate art collectivism in Singapore during Japanese occupation, and collaboration and camaraderie between Chinese-Indonesian and Nanyang style artists in Singapore.

Anne Szefer Karlsen will connect to and explore the Singapore art scene, investigating parallels between the Singaporean and Norwegian art environment. She will give a public presentation discussing the Scandinavian art book series Dublett (2012 – 2016). Each edition of Dublett consists of a new artist’s book and an anthology of commissioned texts on the artist or project at hand, written by contributors from a variety of disciplines that aim to cultivate art mediation within a book format. While in residence, Szefer Karlsen also aims to connect with artists, curators, writers and designers in Singapore, focusing on the intersections between editorial and curatorial practices.

Artist Resource Platform: activate! is an ongoing project that engages with and expands upon the Artist Resource Platform, a growing collection of visual and audio materials from over 90 artists and independent art spaces. The series will negotiate with the limitations of an archive by initiating conversations and experimentations, offering the audience multiple access points to the resource materials and the artists’ practices.

This edition of Artist Resource Platform: activate! will feature three curators based in Singapore, providing a conceptual framework to understand their practices and how they are situated within the local and international contemporary art scene.

Public Programme

Artist Resource Platform: activate! I with Sidd Perez (The Philippines/Singapore), Assistant Curator, NUS Museum Wednesday, 18 May, 7.30 – 9.00pm

Artist Resource Platform: activate! II with Selene Yap (Singapore), Programme Manager (Visual Arts), The Substation Friday, 27 May, 7.30 – 9.00pm

Artist Resource Platform: activate! III with Melanie Pocock (United Kingdom/Singapore), Assistant Curator, Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, LASALLE College of the Arts Friday, 10 June, 7.30 – 9.00pm

We Are Open! brings the artists’ files of NTU CCA Singapore’s Public Resource Platform into the spotlight by reinterpreting The Lab, the Centre’s space for introducing research in process, as an open studio for activation. Each artist’s file contains materials ranging from books, collaterals, photographs, and videos to grey literature, donated to the Centre by the Artists-in-Residence, as well as Singaporean artists outside our Residency Programme.

Spanning eight weeks, this presentation by NTU CCA Singapore’s Young Professional Trainees takes the form of an ongoing experiment to explore the potential of these files as a tool for research and education, inviting the public to engage with materials for research, creation, and commentary about subjects such as culture, identity, and alternate realities. We Are Open! will also include collaborations with local artists who have been invited to utilise the diverse resource materials in the context of education workshops.

Curated by Young Professional Trainees:

Qamarul Asyraf, Productions
Ho Mun Yee, Research
Sara Ng, Residencies
Joey Sim, Residencies
Priscilla Toh, Communications
Olivia Wong, Exhibitions
Zhang Jing Chao, Outreach and Education

The Public Studio

The Public Studio consists of two workshops in which the public will be able to work first-hand with invited local artists who are also educators in the arts field. Through these workshops, the public and artists will have the opportunity to generate tangible interpretations of the resources in the Public Resource Platform.

These collaborative discussions on contemporary subjects found in the artists’ files, aim to provide a better understanding of how the Public Resource Platform can be utilised beyond the intended context of curatorial research. Insights derived from these workshops will be exhibited on the walls throughout the course of the show as demonstrations of the experimental processes.

Marie Shannon is an New Zealand-based artist. Her work has always been concerned with her immediate surroundings, and has at times addressed the work of other artists. Following the death of her partner, the artist Julian Dashper, in 2009, she has been cataloguing his art works and archive in their shared Auckland studio. It is from this process that she has gathered the material for her text-based videos.

With a focus on the moving image and film, Andrea Lissoni seeks to discover alternative modes of presentation for these media in large-scale exhibitions and festivals. During his residency, he will meet and connect with local artists, curators, and institutions in Singapore, and will also present a lecture titled Ambitious Lovers. Artists’ Films and Moving Images are Modern Classics, Still. discussing strategies for displaying time-based media in contemporary art.

Unfolding over four weeks, the NTU CCA Singapore presents Four Practices, a display of resource material of current Artists-in-Residence. Showcasing publications, audio and visual documentation, Four Practices provides an entry point in understanding the artists’ diverse body of works and the complexity of their practices.

Four Practices complements and expands on NTU CCA Singapore’s Artist Resource Platform, a growing collection of resource materials from more than 80 local and international artists, independent art spaces and NTU CCA Singapore’s Artists-in-Residence.

Unfolding over two months, Artists-in-Residence Li Ran and Gary Ross Pastrana will develop projects for The Lab, NTU CCA Singapore’s space for experimentation, which are speculations on how an image is created and deconstructed.

Gary Ross Pastrana’s An ASEAN Exhibition 1 creates an artistic gesture around the idea of Southeast Asia as a reference with no visual referent. The artist engaged DSM Solutions, a young Singaporean creative collective, to stage a “Contemporary Southeast Asia Art Exhibition-Themed Event” and prototype props that could stand in for Southeast Asian artworks. In this manner, the artist has effectively outsourced the sometimes-problematic task of representing Southeast Asia, an implied obligation of artists invited to regionally themed group exhibitions within the region.

Li Ran presents a new project Waiting for the Fog to Drift Away, a collaboration with Singapore Management University (SMU), Assistant Professor Rowan Wang, a specialist in overall planning science. Li Ran will conduct interviews to gain planning advice from Wang in an attempt to define the most successful trajectory for the life of an artist as a business enterprise, estimating production levels and peaks and troughs in key life moments.

Guo-Liang Tan’s practice revolves around how the space of painting and writing can be charged with affect and otherness. Tan is interested in how this sense of absence, pointing towards an imagined past and/or future, frames our present-ness and of our subjectivities. Tension between the phenomenological and the psychological are played out in the process of painting and writing, staging congruencies and slippages that occurs within material and language.

Tan’s current research is the notion of touch as an indexical and invocative gesture. Inherent in the materiality of the fabric as a substrate to receive and retain traces is a certain resistance, which provides a counter- movement that simultaneously works along and against gestures of painterly touch. The final compositions are an interplay between design and chance which re(as)sembles traces and modes of Modernist abstraction while hinting at folds of the corporeal. Parallel to the paintings is a series of text-based videos that investigate the possibility of language to suspend the imaginary space between touching and not touching, speech and non-speech. Staging scenes between the haptic and the haunted, these works play with the conventions of reading and listening where voices register tones of intimacy and ambivalence in equal measures.

On the occasion of the launch of the Digital Resource Platform, NTU CCA Singapore is presenting a selection of materials from Singapore’s Independent Archive (IA), a research and resource platform dedicated to time-based media, established by internationally-renowned artist Lee Wen (Singapore) in 2012. For the past six years, the IA captured the zeitgeist of performance art in Singapore and larger (South-)East Asia through artistic collaborations.

This presentation in The Lab is organised into five chapters —“Condition,” “Body,” “Formation / Gestalt,” “Absence,” and “Memory”—that look at the development of performance art as a new medium as well as its political conditions. Journey of a Yellow Man. takes visitors through the archive with photographs, videos, writings, sketchbooks, while simultaneously, introducing the digital archive. As of today, the Centre has digitalised 20,000 files from the IA.

The practice of Lee Wen is motivated by social investigations that use art to interrogate stereotypical perceptions of culture and society. He became famous for his performance series Journey of a Yellow Man (1992—), where he embodied his Chinese descent and its relationship to oppressive systems.

The presentation provides insight into a continuously expanding resource platform that highlights ephemeral moments in the history of performance art in Singapore. The project addresses the importance of providing historically significant source material for researchers and the wider public. The digitalised files will be integrated into NTU CCA Singapore’s Public Resource Platform and will be accessible at the Centre, the Independent Archive, and the Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong, a collaborative partner of this project.

With IA, a series of public programmes will take place in both The Lab at the NTU CCA Singapore and in the IA. The programme highlights IA as a “living archive” that not only serves as a reference library and archive focusing on time-based and event-specific art, but is also a gathering space that offers dynamic programmes in a vibrant network of artists, musicians, and the public.

Journey of a Yellow Man is curated by Sophie Goltz, Deputy Director, Research and Academic Programmes, NTU CCA Singapore, in collaboration with Lee Wen, artist and Founder, Independent Archive, Singapore, Bruce Quek, Research, Independent Archive, and Kamiliah Bahdar, Public Programmes, Independent Archive. Project Assistant: Ho See Wah, Young Professional Trainee, NTU CCA Singapore. Assistant to Lee Wen: Liu Wen Chao, Library, Independent Archive.

The NTU CCA Digital Resource Platform was initiated in 2016 by Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director, NTU CCA Singapore, and Professor, NTU ADM Singapore and Lee Wen, in collaboration with Chương-Đài Võ, Researcher, Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong. Assistant to the project: Bruce Quek with the support of Samantha Leong Min Yu, Executive, Conferences, Workshops & Archive, NTU CCA Singapore (till May 2018), Corine Chan Li Ling, Executive Archive, NTU CCA Singapore (May to July 2018), and Pooja Paras Mehta (2017), Ho See Wah (2018), Young Professional Trainees, NTU CCA Singapore.

How are aspects of Southeast Asian modern art imaginatively engaged in contemporary practices—by artists, by archivists, and by others? This presentation pairs two ongoing research projects, which draw on histories of modern art in Southeast Asia with radically unlike methodologies: one is archival, yet innovative and unconventional in nature; the other is artistic, yet includes work from archives and involves other kinds of looking. The experimental curatorial juxtaposition of the two projects explores unlikely resonances between them, suggesting unexpected connections across the region, and across times. Among these synergies are the presences of spirituality and the Cold War, and the refiguring of forms and images within differing developments of the modern.

The Buddhist Archive of Photography in Luang Prabang, Laos, has gathered over 35,000 photographs either taken or collected by monks since 1890. The photographs have recently been digitised and catalogued, using innovative methodologies attentive to climatic, cultural, and religious circumstances. This Archive is, therefore, a fascinating instance of specifically 21st-century contemporary practice, as much as it is a unique collection of 19th and 20th-century modern photographs. This is the first time images from the Buddhist Archive of Photography are publicly presented in Asia, outside of Luang Prabang. The Archive has also published a series of bilingual English and Lao research volumes, which are made available in this presentation.

When considering this vast repository of images, several tropes and questions recur. What is photography’s relationship to anicca (impermanence), dukkha (suffering), and anatta (non-self), the three marks of existence in Buddhist thought? What role did Buddhists and photographers play in the Southeast Asian theatre of the global Cold War? And what are the limits of architectural modernity? These questions are explored in three distinct collections of photographs selected for this presentation. The first is a series of portraits of the late Most Venerable Pha Khamchan Virachitta Maha Thera (1920–2007), co-founder of the Buddhist Archive, taken every year from the age of seven until his death. The second selection comprises photographs collected by photographer-monk Pha Khamfan Silasangvaro (1901–1987), which protest the effects of civil war in Laos from 1959 to 1975, as well as photographs taken by another photographer-monk Pha Oun Heuane Hasapanya Maha Thela (1928–1982), who chronicled rarely seen aspects of Buddhist life, such as women’s vipassana meditation retreats. The third selection of images depicts the 1950s modernising renovations of Wat Saen Soukharam temple, under the direction of the late Most Venerable Pha Khamchan. These photographs, and the publications which accompany them, reward historical, spiritual, aesthetic, and other modes of attention and analysis.

And in the Chapel and in the Temples: research in progress by Buddhist Archive of Photography and Amy Lien and Enzo Camacho is conceived and organised by Dr Roger Nelson, an art historian and curator specialising in modern and contemporary art in Southeast Asia, and currently Postdoctoral Fellow at NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore and the School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. The presentation draws on Nelson’s ongoing art historical archival research in the Buddhist Archive, and his ongoing curatorial dialogue with Lien and Camacho.

Presented as a Fringe Programme of the 6th Singapore International Photography Festival.

Roger Nelson thanks Dr Khamvone Boulyaphonh, Hans Georg Berger, the Acuña family, Lynda Tay, the caretakers of Gillman Barracks, Drusilla Tay, Marc Glöde, Guo-Liang Tan, Patrick D. Flores, Simon Soon, and others who assisted in the development and realisation of this presentation.

Campur, Tolak, Kali, Bahagi, Sama Dengan (Add, Subtract, Multiply, Divide, Equals) is a solo project by late and cherished artist Roslisham Ismail aka Ise. In 2016 during a short trip in Germany, Ise jotted down in his notebook the title of a much-contemplated solo project: Campur, Tolak, Kali, Bahagi, Sama Dengan (Add, Subtract, Multiply, Divide, Equals), to which he returned two years later when eventually, such an exhibition became possible in Kuala Lumpur. Ise saw in basic arithmetic operations and their specific properties, a reflection of his artistic process Actions are performed differently; the results could be the same. “Painters 100 years ago—” explains Ise in an interview “—also went to the market to buy vegetables and put them in a still life painting. For me it was the same. I went to the market and put the food on display. It’s just another way of working.”

An exhibition that takes place a little more than one year since the artist’s passing rightfully carries deeper significance and responsibility. While this exhibition was not conceived as a survey of Ise’s broad practice, it is defined, as the title suggests, by a reflexive scope. Although produced four years apart, the two bodies of work that shape this project intimately interconnect. Seamlessly they capture Ise’s art-making process, his distinctive ways of navigating the world and embedding the serendipity of life and social encounters in artistic practice.

Aimed to foster connections between artists and a new context, to provide much-needed time and space for reflection and encounters, artist-in-residence programmes represented an important catalyst in the development of Ise’s artistic practice. Their nature suit Ise’s method of working, social flair, endless curiosity and conceivably offered a means to take distance from a familiar environment and reflect on it from afar. A ramification of his residency project at Bangkok University Gallery, Operation Bangkok (2014) maps Ise’s encounters with the city and its inhabitants. From the abandoned New World Mall, Thieves’ Market, Crocodile Temple (Wat Chakrawat) to anti-government protests in Lumpini Park, to name a few, Ise guides us to places and events meaningful to those for whom Bangkok is home. We discover through Ise’s eyes and interactions, Bangkok as a living city rather than a tourist destination on the global market.

Fictional characters have been recurrent in Ise’s drawings informed by the visual vernacular of comics. In 2018, he started a collaboration with the comic book artist Ibrahim Hamid (Pak Him), whose work Ise knew since primary school. In the vicissitudes of life, they first met at the hospital in Kota Bharu, where both were undergoing dialysis treatment. Ise commissioned Pak Him to execute, following his instructions and study drawings, a series of graphic novel illustrations. These comics, displayed in mobile lightboxes, employ strategies of self-narration situating Ise inside the story as protagonist. Checked for hours at Christchurch’s customs under the odd suspicion of being a “drug designer”; mugged in Barcelona at knifepoint; stopped by the police in Jakarta after Malaysia won a regional cup in a football match against Indonesia but backed by his peers, and so on, Ise revived his micro-narratives through a fictionalised persona and Pak Him’s craftsmanship. Portraying himself within a world with many others, friends and strangers alike, Ise affirmed his continuous interest in the virtues and intricacies of the social.

The publication of this exhibition takes the format of a special issue of SentAp!, the magazine founded by curator Nur Hanim Khairuddin and Ise in 2005. Dedicated to Ise, this issue is designed by Yan; and it includes a welcome note by Ute Meta Bauer, a series of interviews by writer Tan Zi Hao with the curators Ark Fongsmut, Nur Hanim Khairuddin, and Russell Storer; an essay and a conversation with ruangrupa by curator Anca Rujoiu.

Roslisham Ismail aka Ise’s solo project is realised in collaboration with Ise parkingproject Foundation with the support of A+ Works of Art and NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore. The exhibition is presented in The Lab at NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore between 16 January – 28 February 2021.

The Making of an Institution captures different moments in the development of the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (NTU CCA Singapore) connecting artistic projects, discursive manifestations, and the institutional apparatus in a seamless display. It looks back into its young past in order to shape its future. Challenging the format of an exhibition, The Making of an Institution creates a communal space where projects and research explorations by the Centre’s Artists-, Curators-in- Residence, and Research Fellows coexist with ongoing series of talks, screenings, performances, and workshops. The project engages the Centre’s main pillars–Exhibitions, Residencies, Research and Academic Education – bringing to a close the overarching curatorial narrative Place.Labour.Capital. that served as a framework for its activities since 2013.

Established in 2013, the Centre embodies the complexity of a contemporary art institution in times of knowledge economy and global art. The role of a contemporary art institution should not be limited to the presentation of art. It feeds off and nurtures the cultural ecosystem it belongs to through a complex series of actions that often reside in the realm of the immaterial. The Centre’s inaugural programme Free Jazz addressed the foundational question “What can this institution be?” highlighting the skill of improvisation and free play. Three years later, different questions are to be raised: What could the role of the NTU CCA Singapore be for the years to come within a fast changing local, regional, and global cultural landscape? What are the criteria to evaluate its achievements and impact?

In revisiting its own process of institutional building, NTU CCA Singapore appropriates the format and language of a “public report”. While a public report is conventionally employed to deliver an official written narrative, the Centre’s report unfolds in the exhibition space through the languages of the performative, the discursive, and the archival.

“It’s amazing how far we were able to come in just three years,” said Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director, NTU CCA Singapore. “The Making of an Institution is a celebration of the international community we have built, including scholars, artists, and the public. Now it is time for us to reflect and analyse our achievements before the exciting next steps ahead.”

The Making of an Institution is divided into four sections borrowed from the structure of a public report: Reason to Exist: The Director’s Review; Ownership, Development, and Aspirations; Artistic Research; and Communication and Mediation. The first section, Reason to Exist: The Director’s Review maps out a network of institutions, like NTU CCA Singapore, that place research at the core of their identity. Each guest director will closely examine the vision, mission, and operative model of her respective organisation in a series of talks aimed at deepening our understanding of the changing role of contemporary cultural institutions. Ownership, Development, and Aspirations is a public panel with several members of the NTU CCA Singapore’s International Advisory Board and its stakeholders representatives that stresses the importance of feedback and exchange among peers especially in the development phase of an institution. The section dedicated to Artistic Research frames the material and immaterial aspects that constitute contemporary art practices. It takes over the Centre’s physical Spaces of the Curatorial—The Exhibition Hall, The Single Screen, The Lab, and The Vitrine—juxtaposing artworks and research projects by NTU CCA Singapore’s Artists-, Curators-in- Residence, and Research Fellows alongside various formats of public programming. Finally, Communication and Mediation explores the production of an institution’s identity through visual communication and spatial practices. Through workshops and presentations, artists, architects, and designers will discuss how they create diverse visual and spatial identities for art institutions.

The public report will culminate into a book planned for publication in mid-2017, gathering the voices of all the artists, curators, researchers, and academics who have contributed to this first phase of the Centre. The Making of an Institution is curated by Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director, Anna Lovecchio, Curator, Residencies, and Anca Rujoiu, Manager, Publications.

Confounding ordinary notions of legibility, the work of Sonya Lacey addresses the politics of communication by tampering with the concrete textures of language. Specifically conceived for The Vitrine, Speed Reading combines two bodies of work that put the sheer physicality of language to a test. Headlines from The Straits Times and Solar Print Tests (both 2017) result from a series of experiments, undertaken by the artist during her residency at NTU CCA Singapore, where she exposed newsprint paper to both sunlight and artificial light, while Dilutions, an earlier work from 2016, is a sculptural piece involving a movable metal typeface and the process of corrosion determined by lead oxide. Slowly warping over time, the material components entailed in the production and circulation of the written word, Speed Reading alters the boundaries of legibility and shakes the physical foundations of the transmission of knowledge.

Arin Dwihartano Sunaryo is dedicated to painting, pushing its boundaries with innovative techniques, and distilling his passion for comic books, science fi ction, and Japanese manga into abstract compositions. His paintings capture shifts between solid and liquid, static and animated, synthetic and natural, and are rooted in the embrace of chance. Acquired for the Guggenheim’s collection, Sunaryo’s Volcanic Ash Series #4 (2012) was made using a combination of resin and, as pigment, volcanic ash from the 2010 eruption of Gunung Merapi, the most active volcano in Indonesia. Sunaryo has participated in numerous group exhibitions including the Asian International Art Exhibition, Ayala Museum, Manila (2005); and Marcel Duchamp in Southeast Asia, Equator Art Projects, Gillman Barracks, Singapore (2012). Sunaryo lives and works in Bandung.

Pokong Anading began as a painter, but has expanded his practice to video, photography, and process-oriented sculpture and installation. In 2006, he received the Ateneo Studio Residency Grant in Australia, and a Cultural Center of the Philippines 13 Artists Award. The Guggenheim acquired Anading’s Counter Acts (2004), a group portrait photograph in which the subjects hold mirrors up to the camera, reflecting a blinding constellation of light toward the viewer. Anading’s works were presented in the two-person exhibition Between Signs at Silverlens Gallery in Makati City (2011). Anading organized and participated in Room 307: Inkling, Gutfeel and Hunch at the National Art Gallery in Manila (2008). He has been included in notable group exhibitions including the Gwangju Biennial, South Korea (2002 and 2012). Anading lives and works in Manila.

Shilpa Gupta’s mediums range from manipulated found objects to video, interactive computer-based installation, and performance. Acquired for the Guggenheim’s collection, 1:14.9 (2011–12), features a hand-wound ball of thread accompanied by a small plaque reading “1188.5 MILES OF FENCED BORDER – WEST, NORTH-WEST / DATA UPDATE: DEC 31, 2007,” poetically representing the geopolitical division of India and Pakistan. In 2011, Gupta was the recipient of the Bienal Award, Bienal De Cuenca, Ecuador; in 2004 she was the recipient of the Transmediale Award, Berlin, and the Sanskriti Prathisthan Award, New Delhi. Canada’s South Asian Visual Artists Collective also named her International Artist of the Year. A 10-year survey of her work, Half A Sky, was presented at the OK Center for Contemporary Art, Linz, Austria (2010). Gupta lives and works in Mumbai.

Eran Schaerf’s multidisciplinary work focuses on the architecture of narration. He has exhibited in group-exhibitions such as Venice Bienniale (2011), Fake or Feint (2008), Territories (2003), Manifesta (1998), Listener’s Voice, Brussels (2001), DOCUMENTA IX (1992). Among his publications are: fm-scenario – where palms stand – mask –delay, London (2012), Blue Key, Cologne (2002), Listener’s Voice, Brussels (2001), Re-enactment, New- York (1996).

Okkyung Lee is a sound artist. After studying music in Korea, she moved to the USA and currently lives in New York while still working intensively around the world. Lee plays cello, and explores unprecedented ways of playing through her improvisation and composition. She employs sound and music from various genres such as traditional Korean music, jazz and noise to open up a new sphere of sound. Lee often collaborates not only with other musicians but also with visual artists.

Åbäke is a transdisciplinary graphic design collective, founded in 2000 by Patrick Lacey, Benjamin Reichen, Kajsa Ståhl and Maki Suzuki in London, England, after meeting at the Royal College of Art.

Alec Steadman is a curator and researcher. He is currently Co-Chief Curator at Cemeti — Institute for Art and Society, Yogyakarta. Previously he occupied various roles including: Curator, Arts Catalyst, London, United Kingdom (2015—2016); Exhibition Studies Research Fellow, Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong (2015); Artistic Director, Contemporary Image Collective, Cairo, Egypt (2013—2014); Curator in Residence, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy (2013), and Head of Exhibitions, Zoo Art Enterprises, London, United Kingdom (2005—2010).

Ann Demeester is the Director of Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, Netherlands. She was appointed Manager of Art and Urban Development for Amsterdam City Council, co-curated the 10th Baltic Triennial, Vilnius, Lithuania (2009) and was previously the Director of De Appel Arts Centre and W139, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Demeester was part of the editorial team of the literary journals, Yang, A Prior Magazine and F.R. David, and wrote catalogue texts on the work of Luc Tuymans, Michael Borremans, Jennifer Tee, Richard Hawkins, Mika Rottenberg and Bjarne Melgaard, amongst others.

Bahbak Hashemi-Nezhad is a designer based in London. His studio practice spans from the domestic to the public realm, from neighbourhood plans to products and recipes. He is interested in the changing role of the designer within complex urban conditions and draws from the permissive nature of play and processes of defamiliarisation to develop methodologies that actively engage publics within design processes. He collaborated with various art institutions in London, United Kingdom including The Showroom, The Serpentine Gallery, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Hashemi-Nezhad is currently a lecturer at the Royal College of Art, London, United Kingdom.

Banu Cennetoglu is an artist who lives and works in Istanbul. Her work challenges the stereotyped ideas of categorization and information in terms of sharing, access and manipulation, sometimes using photography and the book format as its platform. She initiated the project space BAS, using archives of artists’ publishing. She also co-founded the imprint Bent, a publishing project focusing on the production and distribution of artists’ books and printed matte

Bastian von Lehsten is the co-founder of Novamondo Design together with Christian Schlimok. The design agency works in the fields of brand strategy, corporate design, and digital communications for several international art organizations including the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Austria, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, United States , the Staatsoper and the Leibniz Association in Berlin, Germany. He is teaching branding and corporate design at the Design Academy Berlin, Germany. His work has received numerous rewards, including the Red Dot Award and the iF Design Award. Since 2015, Novamondo collaborates closely with NTU CCA Singapore on communication collaterals for exhibitions, research, and residencies.

Christoph Knoth is a graphic designer, teacher, web developer and researcher who focuses on digital typography and the Internet as a platform for experimenting with visual language. In 2012 he was a design researcher at the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, Netherlands, with the project Computed Type which explores the historic and future possibilities of parametric typeface generation. Since 2011 he works together with Konrad Renner and he is currently a guest researcher at the Bauhaus University Weimar, Germany. He collaborated with various artists and art institutions and worked on the websites of Casco — Office for Art, Design and Theory Utrecht, Netherlands, Schauspiel Stuttgart, Germany, and the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2015 amongst others.

David Peace is a writer who lives in Tokyo. Peace is known as a chronicler of the 20th century; the Red Riding Quartet dealing with the Yorkshire Ripper, GB84 on the 1984-85 miners’ strike, The Damned Utd and Red or Dead on football, and the Tokyo Trilogy (he is now writing the last novel) on the American occupation period of post-war Japan. He develops his novels from the historical facts of war, politics, crime and sport to construct an image of societies of extremes.

Jeroen de Rijke and Willem de Rooij were a collaborative artist duo creating video installations, performances, TV programmes and 16mm film shorts. They met while attending the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and worked together from 1994 until de Rijke’s passing in 2006. They chose film as a medium to engage their audience for a longer period and with greater intensity. An efficient use of the inherent time and light qualities of the film medium in their static camera work gives their subjects an almost meditational quality. Their work has been shown worldwide, most notably at the 2005 Venice Biennale. They were also nominated for the 2005 Hugo Boss Prize.

Dinu Bodiciu is a fashion and accessories designer currently teaching Fashion Design in Singapore at LASALLE College of the Arts. His designs are conceptualised as extensions of the human body, tackling aspects situated at the border between dress and skin. His projects include collaborations with Lady Gaga, Hunger Games ep3&4, KCPK, while his designs have been featured in various fashion and design magazines and specialist books published around the world.

Ella Raidel, Ph.D., is a filmmaker, artist and researcher. Since April 2019 she is Assistant Professor at NTU Singapore at ADM School of Art, Design and Media and WKWSCI School of Communication and Information.

Farah Wardani is currently Assistant Director of the Resource Centre at the National Gallery Singapore. She was previously Director of the Indonesian Visual Art Archive (IVAA), Yogyakarta, Indonesia, a centre for digital archive and documentation of Indonesian art, as well as a platform for research. Wardani has also been active as a teacher, writer, and curator. Her curatorial work encompasses collaborations with art spaces such as Cemeti Art House, Yogyakarta and ruangrupa, Jakarta, Indonesia. She also served as artistic director of Biennale Jogja XII Equator #2, Indonesia (2013).

John Tirman is the Executive Director and a Principal Research Scientist at MIT’s Center for International Studies. Tirman is author, or coauthor and editor, of 14 books including, most recently, Dream Chasers: Immigration and the American Backlash (2015) and The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians in America’s Wars (2011). Earlier published work includes The Fallacy of Star Wars (1984), the first important critique of strategic defense, and Spoils of War: The Human Cost of America’s Arms Trade (1997). In addition, he has published more than 100 articles in periodicals such as the The Nation, Boston Globe, New York Times, Washington Post, Esquire, Wall Street Journal, and Boston Review. Past apppointments include Programme Director, Social Science Research Council, New York. He is also a trustee of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, which has offices worldwide.

Julian ‘Togar’ Abraham is an artist and musician. His practice develops at the junction between art, environment, science, technology, and culture. Between April and June 2016, Togar was Artist-in-Residence at NTU CCA Singapore where he researched on the possibilities of converting diabetic urine into a renewable source of energy. Drawing on his research and his interest in DIY production, Togar led several workshops during his residency, spreading knowledge and first-hand experience about processes of fermentation and distillation.

Dr Marc Glöde is a curator, critic and film scholar. He is currently an Assistant Professor, School of Art, Design and Media, NTU, Singapore and Co-Director of the Master of Arts in Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices. He received his PhD at The Free University Berlin (FU Berlin). He taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden, FU Berlin, Academy of Fine Arts Berlin, and as Assistant Professor at the ETH Zürich. He curated the exhibition “STILL/MOVING/STILL – The History of Slide Projection in the Arts” at Knokke, Belgium. He was a senior curator of Art Film, Art Basel’s film program from 2008 – 2014. He was co-editor of Umwidmungen (2005), Synästhesie-Effekte (2011) and his writings are widely published. He was previously a Visting Research Fellow at NTU CCA Singapore from 25 February to 26 May 2016. Dr Glöde is a regular contributor to NTU CCA Singapore’s programmes.

Research Focus

Residency period: 25 February – 26 May 2016

Dr Marc Glöde’s work is informed by his interest in questions concerning images and image politics, as well as the correspondences between different artistic disciplines or cultural positions. For his research at NTU CCA Singapore he will specifically address the dynamics of the relation between images and the development of urban ideas and architecture – on the impact of images on a critical reflection of urbanism.By re-visiting the landmark project “Cities on the Move” almost 20 years after its occurrence, one of the key questions will be how this exhibition/debate has left its imprint on the discussion in Asia and how the situation has developed since then. From there Dr Glöde’s research will dig deeper into the impact of artists, filmmakers, and curators on the discussion. Dr Glöde’s research will be accompanied by a combination of workshops, film screenings, and discussions with artists and architects from the region.

Renée Staal is the chief librarian of The Library of Unread Books, a project managed in collaboration with artist Heman Chong.

The cross-media practice of Rossella Biscotti (b. 1978, Italy/Belgium/Netherlands) cuts across sculpture, performance,sound works, and filmmaking. Stemming from extended research processes, conceptual excavations,personal encounters, interdisciplinary collaborations, and the subtle interrogation of sites and stories,her works encapsulate meticulous stratifications of materials and meanings. She has taken part in majorinternational exhibitions such as Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh (2020); 55th Venice Biennale, Italy (2013); 13th Istanbul Biennale, Turkey(2013); dOCUMENTA 13, Kassel, Germany (2012), and Manifesta 9, Belgium (2012). Recent soloexhibitions were held at Witte de With, Rotterdam, Netherlands (2019); Kunsthaus Baselland, Muttenz,Switzerland (2018), and V‚A‚C Foundation, Moscow, Russia (2016). Biscotti received several awards including ACACIA Prize for Contemporary Art (2017) and Mies van der Rohe Stipendium (2013).

Sanne Oorthuizen is a curator, editor, translator, feminist, daughter, educator and partner. She is Co-Chief Curator at Cemeti — Institute for Art and Society, Yogyakarta, Indonesia where she is currently working with Alec Steadman on Maintenance Works, a year-long project in which they envision alternative futures for Cemeti. Previously she was Curator at Casco-Office for Art, Design and Theory in Utrecht, Netherlands (2012—2016), curatorial team member for the SONSBEEK Triennial, Arnhem, Netherlands (2015—2016, with ruangrupa).

Ulrich Lang is Senior Conservator, MMK Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt Global Specialised Services Pte Ltd.

Ute Meta Bauer is a Professor at the School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University Singapore (NTU). She is currently the Acting Director and Principal Research Fellow at the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (NTU CCA Singapore); and is the Chair of the Masters in Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices (MA MSCP) programme. Having served as the Founding Director of NTU CCA Singapore for over a decade, her work as educator and curator over the past years has focused on Climates. Habitats. Environments. At the Centre, she curated and co-curated The Oceanic (2017/2018), Trees of Life. Knowledge in Material (2018), and The Posthuman City (2020). In 2022, she served as curator for the Singapore Pavilion at the 59th Biennale di Venezia, featuring artist Shubigi Rao. Her recent large scale projects include the 17th Istanbul Biennial (2022), co-curated alongside David Teh and Amar Kanwar, and the artistic direction of the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2024. She is a Trustee of the Art Foundation TBA21 and a member of the Governing Council of n.b.k. Berlin. Bauer was recently conferred an Honorary Doctorate of Art and Design by Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Helsinki, Finland.

Wilfried Kuehn is the co-founder of the architectural office Kuehn Malvezzi established in 2001 together with Simona Malvezzi and Johannes Kuehn. Past projects include the architectural design for Documenta11, the Flick Collection in the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany, the Julia Stoschek Collection in Düsseldorf, Germany, which was nominated for the international Mies van der Rohe award. The firm has designed the reconfiguration of a number of contemporary and historical art collections, and dealt with sensitive preservation issues for listed buildings such as the Belvedere Museum, Vienna, Austria. Their projects have been shown in international solo and group exhibitions, including the 10th, 13th and 14th Architecture Biennial in Venice and Manifesta 7 in Trento, Italy. Kuehn Malvezzi participated in the 1st Chicago Architecture Biennial in 2015.

Yuko Hasegawa is s Chief Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOT), Tokyo and Professor at the Tama Art University in Tokyo, Japan. Since 2008, Yuko has been a member of the Asian Art Council at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, United States. She is also currently Artistic Director of Inujima Art House Project, Okayama, Japan. Past appointments include curator of Encounters for Art Basel in Hong Kong (2012 –2014), Founding Artistic Director, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan; Curator of 11th Sharjah Biennial, United Arab Emirates (2013); co-curator of 29th São Paulo Biennial, Brazil (2010); co-curator of the 4th Shanghai Biennale, China (2002), and Artistic Director of the 7th International Istanbul Biennial, Turkey (2001).

Dr Yvonne Spielmann is a researcher and academic writer. Previously she was Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts at LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore. She is the author of Hybrid Culture (2012) and Video: The Reflexive Medium (2007), both published in English by MIT Press. Between January and March 2016, Spielmann was Visiting Research Fellow at NTU CCA Singapore. During her fellowship, she continued to work on her survey Contemporary Indonesian Art: Artists, Art Spaces, and Collectors (2017) published by NUS Press.

Research Focus

Residency period: 1 January – 31 March 2016

Yvonne Spielmann’s research aims to explore contemporary arts in Southeast Asia comparatively, discussing the contexts of contemporary arts practices with a focus on infrastructure, social and political framework, aesthetic and cultural tradition, colonial/postcolonial history, religious and ethnic diversity, and the point of departure of the development of modern and contemporary arts practices in each country. Spielmann’s comparative study will give an overview on the Southeast Asian region, focusing on the countries Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Zak Kyes is a graphic designer, and runs his own design office Zak Group in London. Kyes is also co-founder of the Bedford Press, an imprint of AA Publications, which pursues new forms and content in publishing. His work includes not only design, but also organizing art projects, often with his collaborators including artists, architects, curators and writers.