Cultural Production Archives - NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore

The Max Planck–NTU Singapore Centre for Biocultural Worlding (CBCW) is a joint initiative between the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) in Berlin, Germany, and the Nanyang Technological University Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (NTU CCA). Established in April 2026, the Centre is supported by the Max Planck Society and Nanyang Technological University, with staff and leadership based in Berlin and Singapore.

The CBCW envisions a future in which biological and cultural diversity are no longer treated as separate domains, but as mutually dependent conditions for sustaining life on this planet. In this future, insights from diverse histories and knowledge traditions inform more fair, responsible, and locally grounded responses to planetary challenges. We believe in the capacity of people, culture, and nature to generate many worlds—through relationships, practices, and meaning-making—a capacity that depends on the health and integrity of both biological and cultural diversity. This vision calls for empowering people as knowledge holders and for rethinking standards for doing research across legal, scientific, artistic, and local and Indigenous knowledge systems. By inviting people to actively rethink ownership and responsibility in decision-making processes that produce consequences for who thrives, the Centre contributes to building more robust and equitable biocultural futures.

The CBCW functions as a space where artistic practice, legal inquiry, and diverse knowledge traditions converge to explore new forms of collaboration and stewardship of biocultural worlds. The CBCW is driven by a commitment to empowering knowledge holders and communities to shape more just and sustainable planetary futures. The CBCW brings together communities from cultural practices, knowledge-holding traditions, the arts, law, sciences, and the humanities that share inclusive ways of defining shared futures. The Centre prioritizes collective and tangible field-based initiatives to understand and negotiate different worlds that are structured by the separation or integration of culture and nature. The CBCW uses methods of history of science, curatorial practice, storytelling, among others, to advance biocultural matters to public platforms, institutional partnerships, and interventions beyond academic boundaries.

What is Biocultural Worlding?

Biocultural worlding describes the active, plural, and ongoing processes through which human and non-human beings draw on entangled biological and cultural knowledges to collectively shape planetary futures with care, equity, and epistemic humility. At CBCW, biocultural worlding is simultaneously the object of inquiry and the aspiration for how the Centre itself operates: producing knowledge about the world through genuinely pluralized, accountable, and relational practices, across all the disciplines, traditions, and communities it brings together.

For more information:
About Max Planck Centres
Max Planck Institute for History of Science

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.

This two-part programme activates the Geology Gallery as an interdisciplinary space where artistic and scientific research converge to illuminate Singapore’s ecological timescales. Science and story-telling, data and divination are engaged as complementary frameworks of knowledge to deepen our understanding of geological and ecological processes.

PART 1

Zarina Muhammad, STAR Artist-in-Residence at NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, and Aron Meltzner, Assistant Professor at NTU Asian School of the Environment and NTU Earth Observatory of Singapore, will present their research on microatolls, circular coral colonies that serve as a natural record of sea-level change. Drawing from their intersecting fieldwork at Tanjong Rimau—one of Singapore’s last remaining coastal cliffs where microatolls were recently discovered—their presentations will weave together quantitative data and ancestral narratives, and entangle scientific interpretations with memories and myths. Their combined perspectives will compose a broader reflection on how rocks, corals, and cultural stories bear witness to the dynamic relationship between land, sea, and climate across the vast expanse of deep time.

PART 2

Amuletic Diagrams for Climate Futures

Participatory workshop by Zarina Muhammad

This hands-on activity reenvisions the Geology Gallery as a living laboratory for dialogue and creative making. Participants will co-create a compass of warnings, memories, futures, and actions, drawing on EOS research into coral microatolls as records of sea-level change and Zarina Muhammad’s investigations into omens, divination, and ecological witnessing. The resulting collective compass will be an amuletic diagram—a tool for orientation across science and stories, deep time, and present urgencies. This temporary installation will serve as a map that guides us to relate differently to the sea, honour memory, and act collectively with care in the face of shifting climates.

Date: Saturday, 8 November 2025, 2:30 – 5pm

Location: Geology Gallery, Sentosa Nature Discovery
51 Imbiah Road Singapore, 099702
Located next to the Skyline Luge Singapore at Imbiah Lookout

Ecological Witnessing: Geology as Archive, Microatolls as Record is organised in collaboration with Sentosa Development Corporation.

The public programme is part of STAR Residencies – Cycle 1, a programme developed by NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore in collaboration with NTU Earth Observatory of Singapore.

The programme is free for all participants. Please note that if you wish to attend both Part 1 and Part 2, a refundable deposit of $10 is required to reserve a slot (attendance to Part 1 is required to participate in Part 2).

The deposit will be returned upon attendance of both the presentation and the workshop. To qualify for a cancellation refund, reservation must be cancelled by 5 November, 12pm.

ABOUT THE GEOLOGY GALLERY

Part of Sentosa Nature Discovery, the Geology Gallery features a display curated by NTU Earth Observatory of Singapore. Through rock samples, fossils, interactive displays, the exhibition showcases the forces that shaped Singapore’s land and coast formations demonstrating the influence of geology onto our life.

In collaboration with

The public keynote lectures are part of an academic workshop titled “What is ‘Worlding’ in Biocultural Worlding?” The workshop probes what “worlding” means within the context of biological and cultural diversity across different disciplines, regions, and epistemologies. The keynote lectures will further explore the processes that shape our understanding of the world through the deep interconnections between cultural and biological life. Presenting these keynotes are Dr Lisa Onaga, Senior Research Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin and curator and researcher Dr Margarida Mendes. Together, their lectures will illuminate how biocultural worlding unfolds across land and sea, and how attending to these entanglements opens new ways of imagining collective futures in times of environmental and epistemic loss.

22 September 2025
6:30pm – 8:00pm
The Hall, NTU CCA Singapore

Register here

Keynote Lectures

Oceanic Worldings, Margarida Mendes

Exploring the concept of worlding from the ocean point of view, this presentation foregrounds ecosystemic, political and ontological relations across aquatic realms. It introduces ongoing research and activism on ecoacoustics, deep sea mining, and remote sensing, proposing how different modes of ocean monitoring may contribute to plural oceanic worldings and alliances in the making.

Turtle Worlds As A Way of Living, Lisa Onaga

From the adage “slow and steady wins the race,” symbols of longevity, to imagery of carrying a home upon one’s back, references to turtles appear in many languages and cultures around the world. Such “turtle metaphors” in language and material culture join a range of ways in which humans have regularly expressed themselves in relation to things of nature Diverse living things have long inspired human thought and action. However, propensities to regard nature as a resource can deepen a divide that casts humans apart from the natural world. Another perspective views humans as a part of a world where nature and culture are inseparable, encouraging a different way of knowing and talking about – and with – living things. From the earth known to Indigenous North Americans as Turtle Island, a directional guardian in Chinese cosmology, to ancestral gifts in the Torres Strait Islands, the reptiles we know as turtles, with their domed shells, have played a foundational role in holding together entire worlds, grounded in unique knowledge systems and protocols for correctly living a good life. In this presentation, I will reflect upon research efforts that initiated in 2016 to document the history of the Singapore Live Turtle and Tortoise Museum (LTTM), as the museum faced closure associated with state and city planning. At that time, the private museum held over 2000 objects turtle-themed objects (in the form of, but not made from, turtles), and approximately 600 individual turtles and tortoises – many of them former pets surrendered by members of the public in anticipation of the stricter regulations under the 2002 Singapore Animal and Birds Act, aligned with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna (CITES) treaty. The case of the LTTM and its persistence since 2001 to this day illustrates that both complementing and countering the separation of nature and culture enables the dynamic forming, maintaining, and caring of a “turtle world.” This example invites reflection on how biological and cultural practices grow entwined and embody forms of knowledge – in this case, “turtle knowledge” – and how that knowledge evolves, is practiced, shared, and passed down to the next generations.

What is ‘Worlding’ in Biocultural Worlding? is supported by CLASS JOINT NTU-ANU NTU-KCL CONFERENCE, SYMPOSIUM, AND WORKSHOP SCHEME.

The public keynote lectures are convened by Professor Ute Meta Bauer, Acting Director, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore and Professor, School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University.

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

Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss Logo Bar

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.

10 Nov 2020, Tue 05:30 PM – 07:00 PM
24 Nov 2020, Tue 05:30 PM – 07:00 PM
8 Dec 2020, Tue 05:30 PM – 07:00 PM
22 Dec 2020, Tue 05:30 PM – 07:00 PM
2 Feb 2021, Tue 05:30 PM – 07:00 PM
16 Feb 2021, Tue 05:30 PM – 07:00 PM
Online

This reading group will be held over three modules with each consisting of two sessions discussing a selection of texts on related topics. Participants are highly encouraged to attend both sessions for each module to ensure continuity and quality of discourse.

Led by visual artist and writer Nurul Huda Rashid and film scholar Phoebe Pua, both PhD candidates, National University of Singapore.

This reading group takes ideas central to Trinh T. Minh-Ha’s writing as points of access to raise questions about the imagined histories, geographies, and communities of Southeast Asia. Over six sessions, the group will discuss themes of storytelling, feminism, and identities, and explore terms such as “third world,” “nusantara,” “woman,” and “native” with an eye towards interpreting them as acts and articulations of counter-narrative.

BIOGRAPHY

Phoebe Pua (Singapore) is a PhD candidate with the Department of English Language and Literature at NUS. Her dissertation is concerned with the controversial figure of the third world woman, as seen particularly in contemporary films from Southeast Asia.

Nurul Huda Rashid (Singapore) is a PhD candidate in Cultural Studies at NUS. Her research interests focus on images, narratives, visual and sentient bodies, feminisms, and the intersections between them.

Course Details

Date: 18 – 20 May 2022
Time: 9am – 5pm
Location:NTU CCA Singapore, The Seminar Room, Block 37 Malan Road, Singapore 109452
Standard Course Fees: $2247 (full fee), $674.10 (Cat-A SSG Funded Courses), $254.10 (ETSS and MCES)

Register here.
For enquiries, please email ntuccaeducation@ntu.edu.sg

About this course

Developing projects in the cultural sector comes with distinctive considerations unique to challenges in the field. Some examples of cultural sector projects include exhibitions, performances, festivals and other public presentations.

In this 3-day programme designed for cultural practitioners and arts administrators, participants will develop the competencies and skills for planning and controlling art projects from ideation to completion. The course will examine the project management life cycle and address issues that drive or derail successful project outcomes. Participants will learn to define project parameters, identify and enrol stakeholders and use effective project management tools to plan, organise and track progress.

Cultural sector projects often involve multiple, complex sources of funding. The processes involved in receiving the funds may not follow a regular schedule and subsidies sometimes are received after an event is over. These issues can create uncertainty in the financial management of cultural sector projects. Project managers need to be agile in the both areas of budgeting and financial management in order to enhance project outcomes.

This programme will also cover grant writing, an important aspect of project development and management. With the understanding that every grant application is evaluated at various stages, participants will learn how to tackle the different aspects of a grant application. Through hands-on writing practice, participants will navigate grant procedures, regulations and evaluation criteria and most importantly, favourably position their projects and increase their chances of receiving funding.

Who Should Sign Up

Arts Managers, Artists, Art Administrators, Curators, Researchers, Arts Educators, Production Managers, Cultural Workers, Arts Enthusiasts

Learning Outcomes

1. Identify key issues in project development life cycles specific to the arts.
2. Write a basic project proposal, timeline, and budget.
3. Identify potential funding sources including grants
4. Present and discuss proposals in a clear and persuasive manner.
5. Understand the current landscape of project development in the Arts in Singapore.
6. Navigate project development in times of crisis and force majeure.

NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore is proud to present Open College, a new educational initiative for everyone who is passionate about personal and professional growth and development in the arts sector.

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 Series programmes 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.

Making it Happen!
Developing Projects for the Cultural Sector

Course Details

Date: 27-29 September 2021
Time: 9am-5:30pm
Location:NTU CCA Singapore, The Seminar Room, Block 37 Malan Road, Singapore 109452
Standard Course Fees: $2247 (full fee) $674.10 (Cat-A SSG Funded Courses) $254.10 (ETSS and MCES)
Registration for this course has closed.

For enquiries please email ntuccaeducation@ntu.edu.sg

About this course

If you are a…

Arts Manager
Administrator
Artist
Curator
Researcher
Arts Educator
Production Manager
Cultural Worker
Arts enthusiast

Interested in…

Project development life cycles specific to the arts

Available project management tools and communication.

Identifying and enrolling stakeholders.

Identifying potential funding sources including grants.

Project development in times of crisis and force majeure.

You will learn how to…

Identify key issues in project development in the arts.

Write a basic project proposal, timeline, and budget.

Present and discuss proposals in a clear and persuasive manner.

Understand the current landscape of project development in the Arts in Singapore.

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.

Progressive Disintegrations is a collaborative group that began out of the need to create a format and a space for creative exchange between the artistic practices of Chua Chye Teck, Marc Gloede, Hilmi Johandi and Wei Leng Tay. The project aimed to open up the normally individual artistic and curatorial pursuits of each participant, creating situations that allow them to explore and expand the notions that underlie their respective practices.

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

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.

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.

In the Singaporean-Malay slang, “world” is used to signal boastful aspirations towards a social status higher than one’s own, often conveyed through self-aggrandising story-telling. Utilising this as an alternative framework to the postcolonial notion of “worlding”, whereby one’s conceptualisation of the world is devised through colonial attachments, the artist will spend his residency investigating the multitude of meanings behind the word’s usages as a way of unravelling sociolinguistic constructs and processes of identity formation. This research will ultimately result in lens-based explorations that engage with “world” through conceptual propositions and visual arrangements comprising archival photos and sociohistorical accounts.

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.

With a body of work spanning across film, installation, and photography, the artistic practice of Zulkhairi Zulkiflee (b. 1991, Singapore) is committed to exploring Malay identity and its social ontology. His lens-based artworks investigate themes of Malayness in relation to local and global contexts, social agency, knowledge production, and notions of taste. Zulkhairi recently concluded his first solo exhibition, Proximities at Objectifs – Centre for Photography and Film, Singapore (2022). His work has also been presented in group exhibitions such as Kenduri Seni Nusantara, Patani, Thailand, Singapore Shorts ‘22, Asian Film Archive, Singapore, Mini Film Festival, S-Express Singapore, Kuching, Malaysia, and The Singapore Pavilion, Expo 2020, Dubai, United Arab Emirates (all 2022); The Body as a Dream, Art Agenda SEA, Singapore (2021) and How to Desire Differently, Lim Hak Tai Gallery, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, Singapore (2020) among others. Zulkhairi is also an educator, independent curator, and founder of Sikap, a project group that engages with the creative value of ‘let do’ in the form of organizational experiments. He was the Curatorial Winner of the IMPART Awards in 2020.

Modeling the curatorial as a method for uniting cultural production and science, Climates. Habitats. Environments. weaves together image and text to address the global climate crisis. Through exhibitions, artworks, and essays, artists and writers transcend disciplinary boundaries and linear histories to bring their knowledge and experience to bear on the fight for environmental justice. In doing so, they draw on the rich cultural heritage of the Asia-Pacific, in conversation with international discourse, to demonstrate transdisciplinary solution-seeking.

Climates.Habitats.Environments.
Published by NTU CCA Singapore and The MIT Press, 2022
Edited by Ute Meta Bauer
Design by mono.studio
© 2022 by NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore and The MIT Press, ISBN: 978-0-262-04681-7
Distributed by The MIT Press
Copies are available for sale at NTU CCA Singapore and through MIT Press

To purchase your copy, please contact ntuccapublications@ntu.edu.sg

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.

The purpose of the award is to encourage recent graduates of NTU ADM’s research-oriented MA and PhD programmes and the MA in Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices (MSCP, co-chaired by NTU CCA Singapore) to engage in practical projects utilising the SGD$5000 award to investigate the topic of Spaces of the Curatorial as an extension of their research and coursework. Now in its third year, the 2022 award goes to Thomas Ragnar, a 2021 graduate of the MA in Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices, for Endless Return Pack v.1, a compilation album featuring artists working within expanded and experimental dance music genres from Singapore and Southeast Asia. The project is co-curated with Sher Chew (aka XUE), founder of the series Endless Return.

The selection committee included Prof Ute Meta Bauer and two invited jurors: Ms Siddharta Perez, Curator at NUS Museum, and Dr Adele Tan, Senior Curator at National Gallery Singapore.

The album will be released in 2022. Ragnar describes Endless Return as “a regenerative rave experiment.” Upon the announcement of the award, he commented: “Since August 2020, Endless Return have hosted several online events programmed with music, dance, and video projects by artists across Southeast Asia who work with rave culture, energy, history and aesthetics. The Platform Projects Curatorial Award will support the migration offline of Endless Return in 2022 through publishing initiatives, music and video releases, and live events developed by XUE and myself together with Endless Return‘s larger artistic community.”

“The Platform Projects Curatorial Award is a rare opportunity for emerging curators to realise a project and is a necessary initiative especially during a time when arts funding is contracting globally” says Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director, NTU CCA Singapore, and Professor, NTU School of Art, Design and Media.

Ragnar adds that: “The MA programme offered jointly by ADM and NTU CCA Singapore boldly champions curatorial approaches and positions that make a conscious effort to take risks and depart from the often delimiting contexts of contemporary art, and of its hyper-specialised conditions. I am honoured to realise these positions and approaches with my collaborator XUE with the support of the Platform Projects grant. Both XUE and I are grateful to be enabled to support and advance the forward-thinking underground and regenerative spirit of Endless Return‘s artistic communities.”

The Award’s Pilot Programme supported <!DOCTYPE work>, a collaborative curatorial effort conceived by 2019 MA MSCP graduates Tian Lim, Shireen Marican, and Leon Tan, presented in The Lab at NTU CCA Singapore from 22 August – 18 October 2020. The next edition of the award went to Of Limits Collective, a group of five 2020 MA MSCP alumni comprising: Sneha Chaudhury, Weiqin Chay, Ace Lê, Jason Leung, and Beatrice Morel. They realized their exhibition Of Limits in March 2021 at the Stamford Arts Centre, featuring work by six artists from Southeast Asia, with most artworks having been produced during the COVID-19 pandemic.

On the occasion of the Pilot Programme, launched in 2020, Savita Apte from Platform Projects commented on behalf of her former co-directors Shareen Khattar and Christine Pilsbury: “We are all of one mind and delighted that Platform Projects can still be significant for a younger generation of curators.”

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).

Dr Felicia Low (Singapore) is a graduate of Goldsmiths College and has been a practising visual artist since 1999. Her projects have mostly been site-specific, performative and community-specific as she works collaboratively with different sectors of society. A Lee Kong Chien scholar of the National University of Singapore, Low obtained a PhD in Cultural Studies in Asia in 2015. Her research focused on the politics of participatory visual art practices with subaltern communities in Singapore.

Low is also the Founding Director of a not-for-profit organisation, Community Cultural Development (Singapore), which aims to provide a critical discursive platform for artistic practices that engage with communities in the region. Low is also an associate lecturer with the Singapore University of Social Sciences (BA in Art Education & Psychology/Arts Management) and teaches Anthropology at the School of the Arts, Singapore.

Since 2008, Emily Pethick (b. 1975, United Kingdom) has been Director of The Showroom, London, United Kingdom, a contemporary art space committed to collaborative and process-driven approaches to cultural production within its locality and beyond. She was previously Director of Casco, Office for Art, Design and Theory, in Utrecht, the Netherlands (2005-2008) and curator at Cubitt, London, United Kingdom (2003-2004). Pethick is currently teaching the course Curating Positions at the Dutch Art Institute, Arnhem, the Netherlands. She is also working on a research project for a new institution in Amsterdam led by Stedelijk Museum and Ammodo, both in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Pethick has contributed to numerous catalogues and magazines, including Artforum, Frieze, Afterall, and The Exhibitionist, and edited numerous publications including Wendelien van Oldenborgh’s monograph Amateur (2016), and Cluster: Dialectionary (with Binna Choi, Maria Lind and Natasa Petresin-Bachelez, 2014). Pethick is also a jury member for the 2017 Turner Prize.

Tara McDowell’s research interests include exhibition histories, contemporary curating, art institutions, feminist and queer spaces of sociability and production, alternative archives and forms of documentation, and historical and contemporary models.

While in residency at NTU CCA Singapore, McDowell aims to connect with local artists, curators, and educators to gain an awareness of the Singaporean arts communities. She is especially keen to understand how curatorial education is being developed by institutions in Singapore, what the particular needs and desires are of participants in these conversations and how connections might be made with the Curatorial PhD programme she founded in Melbourne, Australia. She will conduct research on experimental education and artistic labour, two areas of her research interests and present a public lecture in progress on the latter topic, titled Is the Post-Occupational Condition the New Post-Medium Condition?

Krist Gruijthuijsen (Netherlands/Germany) is Director of KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin and Course Director of the Master of Fine Arts Department at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. From 2012 to 2016, he was Artistic Director of the Grazer Kunstverein, Graz, Austria. He is one of the co-founding directors of Kunstverein in Amsterdam and has organised numerous projects and exhibitions for institutions such as Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City, United States (2013); Artists Space, New York, United States (2009); Manifesta 7, Trentino – South Tyrol, Italy (2008); Swiss Institute, New York, United States (2007); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam and Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands (both 2006) amongst many others.

Joselina Cruz (b. 1970, PhilippineS) is the Director and Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD), De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde, Manila. She studied art history at the University of the Philippines, and received an M.A. in curating contemporary art from the Royal College of Art, London. Cruz has worked as a curator for the Lopez Memorial Museum in Manila (2001-04) and the Singapore Art Museum (2004–07). She was a curator for the 2nd Singapore Biennale in 2008 and one of the networking curators for the 13th Jakarta Biennale in 2009. Cruz was curator-in-charge of the Tàpies retrospective at the Singapore Art Museum (2005), co-curated All the Best: The Deutsche Bank Collection and Zaha Hadid, Singapore Art Museum (2006), and curated You Are Not a Tourist for Curating Lab, Singapore (part of the Singapore Art Show 2007) and Creative Index: An Exhibition in Manila, Philippines (2010) for the 10th Regional Anniversary of the Nippon Foundation’s Asian Public Intellectuals Fellowship program. She also writes essays, reviews, criticism, and art commentary.

Cyprien Gaillard lives and works in Berlin. In his work, he reflects upon meanings and memories of monuments and landscapes that have been erased and replaced by the effects of time and social and cultural transformation. He had numerous solo exhibitions, including MOMA P.S.1, New York (2013); Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2011, 2008); the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2011). In 2011 he was awarded the Preis der Nationalgalerie für junge Kunst and the Prix Marcel Duchamp.

Brooklyn Jumbies Inc. (United States), founded by Ali Sylvester and Najja Codrington, is an organisation with the purpose of heightening cultural awareness of African and African-Caribbean culture. Performing stilt dancing, one of the numerous cultural elements of the African and Caribbean diaspora, their goal is to help revive knowledge, respect, and pride in these traditions. Since 2007, the Brooklyn Jumbies have worked closely with Laura Anderson Barbata, presenting outreach projects in Mexico and the United States, also collaborating with los Zancudos de Zaachila, traditional stilt dancers from Oaxaca. With Barbata they have performed in various museums. Among their most significant performances are Intervention: Wall Street, in the Financial District of New York (2011); and Intervention: Indigo, Brooklyn, New York, and The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (2015). Publications include Transcommunality. Interventions And Collaborations With Stilt Dancing Communities (2013).

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.

The Making of an Institution public programmes

Koh Nguang How is an artist and independent researcher on Singaporean contemporary art. Between July 2014 and January 2015, Koh was Artist-in-Residence at NTU CCA Singapore. As part of his residency, he presented to the public his long-term artistic endeavour, Singapore Art Archive Project (SAAP). For more than 30 years, Koh has been documenting the local art scene, gathering an impressive collection of printed matters ranging from exhibition flyers, catalogues, newspapers, as well as photographs and audio recordings produced by the artist himself.

Rodolfo Andaur (b. 1979, Chile) has been coordinator of various contemporary art projects in northern Chile, promoting local artistic practices in relation to Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and Peru. He has undertaken several international curatorial residencies in Poland, Mexico, Brazil, and Germany. Andaur has also contributed to various magazines and publications such as Artishock, Atlas Magazine, and Rotunda Magazine and is currently part of the academic staff of the Diploma in Critical and Curatorial Studies at Adolfo Ibáñez University, Santiago, Chile.

Ise’s work includes installations, publications, animations, collages, participatory events, and the artist space Parking Project (run out of his apartment in Kuala Lumpur). This practice is informed by expressions of popular culture such as comics and graffiti and the manner in which they serve to represent alternative histories of place and culture. Whatever final form it takes, Ise‚ work is always participatory, embedded in conversation, friendship and the experiences of simply living life amongst a multitude of communities internationally. Iseis a graduate of Mara University of Technology in Selangor, Malaysia. Selected exhibitions and Biennials and Residencies include: Singapore Biennale (2011); Asia Triennial Manchester, United Kingdom (2011); Jakarta Biennale with Indonesian collaborative Ruangrupa (2009) Artist-in-Residence at Artspace Visual Arts Centre, Sydney (2006) and the 9th Istanbul Biennial (2005); He is the co-founder of Sentap, a quarterly art publication in Malaysia.

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Making it Happen! Developing Projects for the Cultural Sector

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Making it Happen!
Developing Projects for the Cultural Sector