Institutional Critique Archives - NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore

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.

María do Mar Castro Varela is Professor of Education and Social Work at the Alice Salomon University of Applied Sciences in Berlin, with a focus on gender studies. She holds a double degree in Psychology and Education and a PhD in Political Science. She was Thomas Mann House Fellow in Los Angeles (2023), Sir Peter Ustinov Visiting Professor at the Institute of Contemporary History at the University of Vienna (2021/2022), and Senior Fellow at the Institute for the Science of Man (IWM) in Vienna (2016). Her current research focuses on issues of ethics, protest, emancipation, and knowledge production. Selected publications (in German) include: Friendship. Triad of a Political Practice (2023), Post/pandemic Life: A New Theory of Fragility (2021), Untimely Utopias. Migrant Women Between Self-Invention and Learned Hope (2007).

Image courtesy the María do Mar Castro Varela.

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

Questioning Museums: Art Institutions in Singapore critically examines the ways in which shifting social, political, and cultural histories are both produced and made visible through the island-state’s institutional structures, collecting strategies, and modes of exhibition making. Working together in teams, the inaugural class of students from Nanyang Technological University’s Masters of Arts in Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices (MSCP), a programme designed to prepare graduates for professional positions in the highly complex and diverse museum landscape of Southeast Asia, anchor their collective exploration through four in-depth interviews with leading figures of Singapore’s ever-evolving museum field: Kwa Chong Guan, Peter Lee, Angelita Teo, and Kennie Ting.

Please join us for a celebratory book launch with honoured guests, a roundtable conversation with recent graduates, and a welcome reception for the incoming class of MSCP students!

7 Aug 2019, Wed 07:00 PM – 09:00 PM

The Single Screen, Block 43 Malan Road

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.

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).

The practice of Buen Calubayan (b. 1980, Philippines) interweaves politics, religion, history, and identity combining the autobiographical with the art historical in a continuous process of re-contextualization. In his works, the historical influence of Western canons on Filipino art and his own personal struggle to find validation as an artist often merge with broader reflections on the greater state of affairs of his country and the problematic writing of its socio-cultural histories. His most recent solo shows include Biowork at Ateneo Art Gallery, Quezon City, Philippines (2015) and Idiot Knows No Country, La Trobe University Visual Arts Center, Bendigo, Australia (2014). He has presented his paintings, performances, sculptures, and conceptual works in international group exhibitions at the Gwangju Museum of Art, South Korea and at Kunstvlaai: Festival of Independents, Amsterdam, Netherlands, amongst others. He received the 2013 Ateneo Art Awards for the project Spoliarium which reinterpreted an iconic painting by Filipino master Juan Luna and was awarded the 13 Artists Award by the Cultural Centre of the Philippines in 2009.

The practice of Wei Leng Tay probes the psychic, systemic, and geopolitical consequences of displacement through personal encounters and intimate conversations captured in photography, videos, and sound recordings. Having lived in Hong Kong for the past 15 years before moving back to Singapore in 2016, Tay plans to devote the time of the residency to re-rooting her artistic practice and transposing Sightlines—a collaborative project initiated with researcher Michelle Wong to explore the relationship of art, aesthetics, society, and politics in Hong Kong in the aftermath of the 2014 Umbrella Movement—in the context of her home country. Furthermore, she will initiate a long-term project which extends her preoccupations with forced movements and migrations by addressing notions of “return” through a series of interviews. The studio space will be used to experiment with materials, techniques, and installations to articulate new ways to present her work.

Responding to the concept of The Making of an Institution, Maria Hlavajova will discuss the notion of “instituting otherwise” using BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, in Utrecht, an institution of which she is the founding director, as an example. Dedicated to thinking about, with, and through art, BAK engages in long-term research trajectories engaging with the urgencies that define our contemporary, including issues of social and environmental justice and the relevance of digital technologies. Hlavajova will draw upon her research within a number of interrelated projects she is involved with, including Former West (2008–2016) and Future Vocabularies (2014–ongoing), all the while exploring the shifts within our existing conceptual lexicon for artistic, intellectual, and activist practices.

Vera Mey is an independent curator and PhD candidate at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She is part of the curatorial team for SEA Project (2017) at the Mori Art Museum, Japan, and National Art Center, Tokyo. She is also co-founder of the scholarly journal Southeast of Now. Between 2014 and 2016, she joined Ambitious Alignments, a research initiative of the Getty Foundation. She was part of the founding team of NTU CCA Singapore as Curator for Residencies from 2014 to 2016.

Mona Vătămanu and Florin Tudor are artists who have worked together since 2000. Their artistic practice involves bringing history into the present tense. Between July and September 2014, Vătămanu and Tudor were Artists-in-Residence at NTU CCA Singapore where they focused on the prevalent presence of migrant labour in Singapore. During their residency, the artists also produced Le Monde et les Choses, a map based on statistical studies by the Central Intelligence Agency that shows the dominant industries in each world country. The map exposes the contradictions of global neoliberalism, revealing the large domination over industries by a small number of countries.

Stagings. Soundings. Readings. Free Jazz II reviews the performative format that marked NTU CCA Singapore’s inauguration in 2013. Free Jazz 2013 was a series of talks and performances where participants of various disciplines were invited to imagine and envision a new institution and its potential. On its five-year anniversary, the Centre continues advocating for free spaces, celebrating the practice of improvisation, as well as of collective and performative approaches. Discussing ethical values with an expanded sense of community, territorial, and environmental concerns, Stagings. Soundings. Readings. employs an open, multidisciplinary structure that challenges traditional modes of presentation and re-presentation through a range of artistic practices and formats.

Situated within a complex and contemporary understanding of the Centre’s current overarching research topic CLIMATES. HABITATS. ENVIRONMENTS., the featured works link theory and practice, emphasising collectiveness. Today, the planet is witnessing a moment of unprecedented loss of biodiversity, habitat destruction, and cultural transformations. In the face of such agitated times juxtaposed with advanced communicative tools, contemporary social and environmental issues require responses from a collective body, through establishing processes of instigation, negotiation, and collaboration.

Can we learn from what we see as opposed to being merely seduced by images, becoming active participants instead of only passive observers? Stagings. Soundings. Readings. is an enactment between the artists and the audience. The invited artists engage with a less prescribed environment, reflecting on history, collective action, and human interaction.

Located outside the Centre, Maria Loboda‘s sculptural installation is grounded in historical narratives as a reminder that things can change and be taken down overnight, especially by the invisible mechanisms of power. In the Centre’s foyer, Tyler Coburn addresses forms of labour and examines the notion of writing in the 21st century by engaging with complexities of our legal, technological, and geopolitical networks, while Heman Chong analyses motifs of exchange and its boundaries, embracing the space of inter-human connections.

Unfolding in the exhibition space, Cally Spooner brings to Singapore an exercise in building new vocabulary and knowledge through bodily means. Using the space as a laboratory, the work investigates new ways of organising and working together. Alexandra Pirici’s choreography explores the possibility of collectively assembling memories of human and non-human presence on the planet. Carlos Casas presents his long-term multi-format ethnographic research based on the human ecology and richness of one of the world’s highest inhabited villages, Hichigh, located in the Pamir mountain range in Tajikistan. Together with composer Phill Niblock, they will create an audio-visual experience, traversing landscape, soundscape, and contemporary music that changes with every iteration.

In response to the five-year anniversary and by taking the topic of its celebration Free Jazz literally, Ming Wong will stage an improvisational performance. Similarly, Boris Nieslony (Germany), Co-founder of the artist collective Black Market International, will engage with pioneering Singaporean artist Lee Wen with a discussion and performance.

Further probing conventional formats, the accompanying programmes include readings by curator Anca Rujoiu (Romania/Singapore) and poets Peter Sipeli and 1angrynative (both Fiji), as well as Behind the Scenes conversations with contributing artists. In The Single Screen, works by Anton Ginzburg (Russia/United States), Mariana Silva (Portugal/United States), Luke Fowler (United Kingdom), Justin Shoulder and Bhenji Ra (both Philippines/Australia), and others, will add a filmic perspective to the dialogue.

This multitude of celebratory events instigates an active engagement with the now, following a conscious desire to become truly present.

Curated by Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director, NTU CCA Singapore, and Professor, School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University, and Magdalena Magiera, Curator, Outreach and Education, NTU CCA Singapore.

Stagings. Soundings. Readings. Free Jazz II public programmes

Peter Daniel Sipeli is passionate about storytelling because he believes that stories humanise people by showing that we all face the same choices, struggles, and triumphs. A well-known spoken word artist, he was instrumental in the revitalisation of the Fiji SLAM in Suva. He founded the Poetryshop Fiji to fill a development gap for new and emerging local writers, as well as the only online Pacific islands arts magazine ARTalk. Having worked for 10 years with NGOs as a human rights and LGBTQ activist, he has also worked in the Fiji Arts Council and in the Dean’s Office at the Fiji School of Medicine. Additionally, he managed the popularised ROC Sunday street market.

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

Dr June Yap is a curator, art historian, and Director of Curatorial, Programmes and Publications at the Singapore Art Museum. She is the author of Retrospective: A Historiographical Aesthetic in Contemporary Singapore and Malaysia (2016) and curator of the Singapore Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011). In April 2012, Yap was selected as Guggenheim UBS MAP Curator, South and Southeast Asia. This led to the exhibition No Country: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast Asia that was also presented at NTU CCA Singapore between May and July 2014.

Amar Kanwar is an artist and filmmaker. Kanwar has distinguished himself through films and multimedia works, which explore the politics of power, violence, and justice. His multilayered installations originate in narratives often drawn from zones of conflict and are characterised by a unique poetic approach to the social and political. Kanwar’s long-term research project, The Sovereign Forest (2012–ongoing) was presented at NTU CCA Singapore in 2016.

The title of the book refers to the framework employed at NTU CCA Singapore in its first cycle of activities, from 2013 to March 2017, which took Singapore, the world’s second-largest trading port and the economic epicentre of Southeast Asia, as a point of departure to investigate the notion of place, the intersection between locality and the global, labour, and flows of capital.

Unfolding across four broad sections of “The Making of an Institution,” “The Geopolitical and the Biophysical,” “Incidental Scripts,” and “Incomplete Urbanism,” this publication reads as an exhibition. Drawing connections across disciplines and merging theory with practice, Place.Labour.Capital. weaves together a constellation of different bodies of materials from essays, poetry, and fiction to artworks and documentation of the Centre’s past exhibitions

Richly illustrated, the publication brings together the voices of more than 80 contributors, from former Research Fellows such as Tony Godfrey (Philippines), Regina (Maria) Möller (Germany), T. K. Sabapathy (Singapore), Yvonne Spielmann (Germany), to former Artists-in-Residence including Tiffany Chung (Vietnam/United States), Amanda Heng (Singapore), Shooshie Sulaiman (Malaysia), Lee Wen (Singapore), and Yee I-Lann (Malaysia). Other contributions include those from the Centre’s exhibitions and public programmes such as artists, academics, and curators including Amar Kanwar (India), Lee Weng Choy (Malaysia), David Teh (Australia/Singapore), and June Yap (Singapore).

This extensive publication “reminds us that institution building remains enormously significant as a means of opening up new spaces, claims, communities, dialogues, publics, and trajectories for critical artistic practice.” (Felicity D. Scott, Associate Professor Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University, New York)

“Drawing together stories, voices, and thinking by leading artists and academics, Place.Labour.Capital. traces the invention of a remarkable model of an institution. The publication is an inspiration and a valuable tool to anyone trying to find ways of building releveant arts institutions for the future.” (Sally Tallant, Director, Liverpool Biennial)

Place.Labour.Capital. takes a reflective look the art institution, and serves as a means to review the parameters of its own position in the present globalised art world and knowledge-production economies.

The visual concept of the book was conceived by renowned Singapore design firm H55.

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

Alex Mawimbi is a visual artist. Her multimedia practice investigates the hybrid nature of African identity, contesting notions of authenticity as well as gender and female sexuality. Since 2012, she has been working on a series of drawings of half-human, half-animal creatures caught up in intimate situations and pensive poses. Mawimbi was Artist-in-Residence at NTU CCA Singapore between August and October 2016. During her residency, she produced a new series of self-portraits, Out of Africa, Out of Reach, and several portraits of one of Singapore’s most famous drag queens. *formerly Ato Malinda

Alexandra Pirici is an artist with a background in choreography that works undisciplined across different mediums, both in galleries and in public space. Her work has been exhibited within the decennial art exhibition Skulptur Projekte Munster 2017; the Romanian Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale; Tate Modern, London; New Museum, New York; 9th Berlin Biennale; Manifesta 10; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the Museum Ludwig Cologne; among others.

Dr Andrew Johnston is a musician, interaction/software designer, and Associate Professor, School of Software, Faculty of Engineering and IT, the University of Technology Sydney. His work focuses on the design of systems that support experimental approaches to live performance. Johnston is also co-director of the Creativity and Cognition Studios, an interdisciplinary research group working at the intersection of creativity and technology.

Anton Ginzburg is known for his films, sculptures, paintings, and text-based printed work that investigates historical narratives and poetic studies of place, representation, and post-Soviet identity. He earned a BFA from The New School for Social Research and an MFA from Bard College, Milton Avery Graduate School of Arts. His work has been shown at the 54th Venice Biennale; the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston; Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Canada; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; White Columns, New York; Lille 3000, Euralille, France; and the first and second Moscow Biennales. His films have been screened at the Whitechapel Gallery, London; Rotterdam International Film Festival; Dallas Symphony Orchestra; Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas; Les Rencontres Internationales, Paris; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; and New York Film Festival/Projections; among others.

Bhenji Ra is an interdisciplinary artist who reframes performance through a combination of dance, choreography, video, and installation. Her work is often concerned with the dissection of cultural theory and identity. She uses spectacle and her own personal histories to explore themes of race, sexuality, and gender, giving voice to hidden and marginalised communities, and suggesting alternative modules of community. He is part of Sydney-based collective Club Ate.

Boris Nieslony has worked intensively as a performance artist, curator, archivist, and independent scholar, staging various installations, interventions, and artist projects since the 1970s. He is the Co-founder of Black Market International, a performance group that meets regularly in various configurations to realise group performance projects. And also the instigator of the ASA Foundation, a platform for a self-organising rhizomatic network of performance artists and theorists. Nieslony is recognised as one of the most prolific and significant contributors to performance art. He creates unpredictable and unrepeatable improvisational performance works that manifest “an encounter and its effects.”

Cally Spooner is an artist based in Athens. Her installations unfold in evolutionary phases, in conjunction with the delivery of a project or an exhibition. Recent solo shows include Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève; Whitechapel Gallery, London; The New Museum, New York; and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Her book Scripts was published by Slimvolume in 2016 and her novel Collapsing In Parts by Mousse in 2012.

Carlos Casas is a filmmaker and artist whose practice encompasses film, sound, and the visual arts. His films have been screened and awarded in festivals around the world such as the Venice Film Festival; International Film Festival Rotterdam; Buenos Aires International Film Festival; and Mexico International Film Festival; among others. His work has been exhibited and performed in international art institutions and galleries, including Tate Modern, London; Fondation Cartier, Palais de Tokyo, and Centre Pompidou, Paris; and Hangar Bicocca, Milan. He was an NTU CCA Singapore Artist-in-Residence from December 2017 to February 2018.

Fareed Armaly is an artist and curator. He was the Artistic Director for Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (1999–2002) and as an artist he has collaborated with several institutions including more recently Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva, and SALT Galata, Istanbul. Armaly considers the open definition of artistic practice as the medium by which to render a contemporary syntax implicit to a politics of representation, culture, and identity. In 2015, Armaly translated spatially the curatorial framework Place. Labour.Capital. through a new interior architecture of the NTU CCA Singapore’s exhibition area.

Dr Helena Varkkey is Senior Lecturer at the Department of International and Strategic Studies, University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She specialises in environmental politics of the Southeast Asian region, specifically transboundary haze pollution and its links to the palm oil industry. The findings of her PhD research have been published as a book under the Routledge Malaysian Studies Series, entitled The Haze Problem in Southeast Asia: Palm Oil and Patronage (2016). In 2016, Varkkey contributed to NTU CCA Singapore’s public programming by conducting an Exhibition (de)Tour as part of Amar Kanwar’s exhibition, The Sovereign Forest (2016).

Jesko Fezer is an architect, designer, and Professor for Experimental Design, University of Fine Arts of Hamburg, co-manager of the thematic bookshop Pro qm, Berlin, and co-editor of the political architecture magazine An Architektur. Fezer has authored several publications including Design in and Against the Neoliberal City (2013). He was Visiting Research Fellow at NTU CCA Singapore in 2014, when he worked on the design for the Centre’s Research and Office space.

Research Focus

Urban subjects, politics, pop, economic criticism, architecture, design, art and theory

Jesper List Thomsen is an artist and writer. Recent exhibitions and performances include Hollis and Money, ICA, London and Künstlerhaus, Stuttgart; Speak Through You, Hot Wheels Projects, Athens; A Social Body Event, Serpentine Gallery, London; Micro-Composition, Rozenstraat, Amsterdam; The body, the body, the tongue, Reading International; Hand and Mind, Grand Union, Birmingham; The boys the girls and the political, Lisson Gallery, London; and One Hour Exhibition, South London Gallery, London. A book-length collection of his texts will be published in Autumn 2018 by Juan de la Cosa (John of the Thing). He is also a part of the artist collective Am Nuden Da.

Justin Shoulder works in performance, sculpture, and video. His main body of work, Fantastic Creatures, comprises invented beings and alter-personas based on interpretations of mythology, folktale, and fantasy. These creatures are embodied through movement and elaborate, hand-crafted costumes and prostheses, forging connections between queer, migrant, spiritual, and intercultural experiences. He is part of Sydney-based collective Club Ate.

Khim Ong is Head & Curator, Biennale and Residencies at Singapore Art Museum. Previously, she was Deputy Director, Curatorial Programmes at NTU CCA Singapore (2016–19) where she co-curated solo exhibitions of internationally acclaimed artists Tarek Atoui, Amar Kanwar, and Yang Fudong, and research exhibitions Trees of Life — Knowledge in Material (2018), Ghosts and Spectres — Shadows of History (2017), and Incomplete Urbanism: Attempts of Critical Spatial Practice (2016). She is co-editor of the publication The Impossibility of Mapping (Urban Asia) (NTU CCA Singapore and World Scientific Publishing 2020). Previously, Ong held curatorial positions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, LASALLE and Osage Gallery, Hong Kong. Ong was curator of the Southeast Asia Platform at Art Stage Singapore in 2015 and was part of the curatorial team of Escape Routes, Bangkok Art Biennale 2020.

Luke Fowler is an artist, filmmaker and musician based in Glasgow. His work explores the limits and conventions of biographical and documentary filmmaking, and has often been compared to the British Free Cinema of the 1950s. Working with archival footage, photography and sound, Fowler’s filmic montages create portraits of intriguing, counter cultural figures, including Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing and English composer Cornelius Cardew.

Maggie Segale is a dancer, artist, and teacher with a focus on performing and interdisciplinary, collaborative work. She graduated from the Juilliard School, where she received multiple awards and fellowships including the 2014 Entrepreneurship Fellowship for her writing on self-image and dance. Segale works with Helen Simoneau Danse, Bryan Arias, and artist Cally Spooner, having collaborated with A24 Films, Center for Innovation in the Arts, Roya Carreras in the upcoming Pussy Riot music video, composer Zubin Hensler, and Matilda Sakamoto. Segale choreographed the opera Role of Reason at the Interarts Festival 2018, and was an Artist-in-Residence at the New Jersey Dance Theatre Ensemble (2016).

Maria Loboda is a Berlin-based artist who creates enigmatic spaces that dive deep into rich historical narratives and the current state of affairs. She has exhibited at dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel; Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid; Kunstverein Braunschweig; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; among others. She will have solo exhibitions at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, in November 2018, and at Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City, in 2019.

Mariana Silva has exhibited and screened her work at Anthology Film Archives, New York (2018); Gwangju Biennale (2016); Moscow Biennale (2016); and EDP Foundation, Lisbon (2015); among others. Solo shows include For more Information, fluent, Santander (2018); Camera Traps, Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon (2018); Audience Response Systems, Parkour, Lisbon (2014); P/p, Mews Project Space, London (2013); Environments, e-flux exhibition space, New York (2013); and The Organization of Forms, Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon (2011). She was a resident at Gasworks (2016), Zentrum Paul Klee Sommerakademie, Bern (2010), and at ISCP, New York (2009–10). Together with artist Pedro Neves Marques, she runs Inhabitants, an online channel for exploratory video and documentary reporting (inhabitants-tv.org).

Ming Wong builds layers of cinematic language, social structure, identity, and introspection through re-telling world cinema and popular culture in videos, installations, and performances. He often “mis-casts” himself in multiple roles in a foreign language, interconnecting concepts of gender, representation, culture, and identity. Wong represented Singapore at the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009). He has had solo exhibitions at leading institutions worldwide and has participated in international biennials, including Performa, New York; Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane; and Sydney Biennale, among others.

Paul Tan is Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the National Arts Council (NAC) Singapore. Previously, Tan was Director of Sector Development (Literary Arts) at NAC and helmed the Singapore Writers Festival. He has also published four volumes of poetry. Tan is the Co-Chair of NTU CCA Singapore’s Governing Council.

Phill Niblock is a New York-based minimalist composer and multi-media musician, and director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation born in the flames of 1968’s barricade-hopping. He has been a maverick presence on the fringes of the avant-garde ever since.

Stefano Harney is Professor of Strategic Management Education at Singapore Management University and co-founder of the collective Ground Provisions. He is a regular speaker on the subject of business ethics, manage- ment, sociology, anthropology, and postcolonial studies. Recent publications include The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study (2013) co-authored with Fred Moten. Harney has contributed to NTU CCA Singapore’s public programming in 2014, presenting the lecture “Post-colonial critique today,” and an Exhibition (de)Tour together with Tonika Sealy Thompson, as part of the exhibition Theatrical Fields.

T. K. Sabapathy is an art historian and curator. Sabapathy has published extensively on the art histories of Southeast Asia. His publications include: Vision and Idea: Re-Looking Modern Malaysian Art (1994), Modernity and Beyond: Themes in Southeast Asian Art (1996), Road to Nowhere: The Quick Rise and the Long Fall of Art History in Singapore (2010), and recently Intersecting Histories: Contemporary Turns in Southeast Asian Art (2014), the catalogue for the eponymous exhibition he curated at NTU ADM Gallery. He is Adjunct Associate Professor at NUS since 1981; and he has lectured at NTU since 2006. Sabapathy was the first Research Fellow at NTU CCA Singapore.

Tyler Coburn is an artist, writer, and professor based in New York. He received a 2024 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, and his writing has appeared in ArtReview, BOMB, C Magazine, Dis, e-flux journal, frieze, LEAP, Metropolis M, Mousse, and Rhizome. Coburn is the author of four books: I’m that angel (self-published, 2012), Robots Building Robots (CCA Glasgow, 2013), Richard Roe (Sternberg, 2019), and Solitary (Sternberg and Art Sonje Center, 2022). He has presented artwork at such venues as Centre Pompidou, Paris; Bergen Kunsthall; Hayward Gallery, London; Para Site, Hong Kong; and Kunstverein, Munich. He was Artist-in-Residence at NTU CCA Singapore in 2017 and his work has been featured in the Centre’s Free Jazz II. Stagings. Soundings. Readings (2018).

Vladimir Erofeev was a pioneer of expedition cinema in the Soviet Union, advocating for increased attention and investment in edifying non-fiction films made to win the interest of broad audiences. In summer 1927, a trek to the mountainous Pamir region, known as the “Roof of the World,” in present-day Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, was organised by the Sovkino studio in co-operation with the Geological Committee. Erofeev worked with prominent geologist Dmitrii Nalivkin and ethnographer Mikhail Andreyev, who had both extensively researched the area and contributed to the planning for the crew’s journey. The film starts off in Moscow, the symbolic centre of the new empire, leading through Samara and Orenburg, to Tashkent and Osh, and further on to the Pamir Mountains of Central Asia. The film features the expedition’s progress through crossing mountain rivers, traversing snowy passes and descending into valleys in bloom, while at the same time recording the daily practices of the Krygz nomads, the religious customs of a Tajik village community, finally entering Dushanbe, observing the city life in the capital of Soviet Tajikistan. The final result demonstrates a portrait of a rich and vibrant region in which the interaction of various cultures have not yet fully streamlined to the requirements of the uniformed all-Soviet world.

Informed by close interactions with people, the artistic projects of Wei Leng Tay (b. 1978, Singapore) address the significance of personal relationships, family histories, societal structures, national narratives, and patterns of migration questioning ingrained modes of perception and representation. Often using a mediated documentary approach to image-making, Tay‚ intimate works explore intergenerational dialogues as well as the affective and political impact of displacement upon one‚ cultural identity. Crossings, her most recent solo exhibition articulated in four parts, took place at NUS Museum, Singapore (2018-19). She has participated in numerous international group exhibitions.