Ways of Seeing Archives - NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore

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

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

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

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

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

In 2000, scholars Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer proposed the formal recognition of a new ‘Anthropocene’ epoch, a geological era defined by profound human modification of the global environment. How might we understand this epoch through transformations of the Earth’s surfaces––the erosion of coastlines, the clearing of forests, or the accumulation of plastic along ocean horizons? What are the signatures of the “Anthropocene” and how can they be measured? Through material residues, Artist, Curator and Lecturer Wang Ruobing (Lasalle College) creates physical records of discarded objects that wash ashore along Singapore’s coastlines. Associate Professor Edward Park (National Institute of Education and Asian School of Environment, NTU) examines the impacts of sand mining and natural disasters at a geographical scale, tracing changing riverscapes and landscapes through remote sensing technologies and GIS modelling. Moderated by archaeologist Franca Cole, this lecture explores how surfaces of the earth are being radically altered by climate change and human activity and asks how we document and mediate the processes changing our coastlines forever.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ABOUT STAR Residencies

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

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

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

View the full video documentation here.

Videography: Felix Kenneth Galistan / Earth Observatory of Singapore

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Course Details

Date: 10 September 2022, Saturday
Time: 10:00am – 12:00pm
Venue: NTU CCA Singapore, Block 6 Lock Road, Gillman Barracks, Singapore 108934
Course Fee: $85.60 (incl. GST), per adult/child pair

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

About The Course

Edible Wild is a 2-hour workshop aimed at bringing parents and their children closer to nature. Despite the greenery that surrounds us in our concrete jungle, it is easy to overlook the plants that flank our sidewalks. As the world moves at an ever-increasing pace, we need the occasional reminder to slow down and reconnect with the earth – and one of the best ways to do so is to learn how to care for it.

This workshop is a gentle introduction to the myriad of herbs – both common and uncommon – that can be found growing around our garden city, as well as a chance to understand their history and uses. Participants will learn simple plant identification techniques, understand the structure of a plant, as well as pick up basic gardening skills that they can use at home. The overall goal is to renew a sense of wonder in our green companions, while providing the skills to identify and care for them.

At The End of the Course, You Will…

● Learn how to identify edible local plants from The Farm at NTU CCA Singapore
● Learn general plant identification techniques (leaf shape, flowers, stem structure etc.)
● Pick up basic gardening techniques to grow and care for your own edible greens (proper watering, checking/enriching the soil, checking for pests, pruning & propagation)
● Create simple infusions with ingredients from the garden

Target Audience

Parent/child groups where the children are 7 years old and above.

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.

Through collaboration with EOS for the STAR RESIDENCY, Ng Hui Hsien aims to complement scientific tools and methods of environmental studies with indigenous ecological knowledge shaped by lived experience, oral traditions, and direct observation. On one hand, she will engage with materials such as satellite imagery, seismic monitoring systems, and photomicrographs to understand how Earth scientists observe and evaluate environmental changes and geohazards. On the other hand, drawing on her background in ethnography, she plans to conduct field research and engage with communities and individuals imbued with a deep connection to the environment to understand the rhythms of their lives as they unfold on site, the changes they observe, and their knowledge and cosmologies related to natural processes and phenomena. Ultimately, the artist intends to translate this research across different bodies of knowledge into artistic outcomes that deepen the awareness of ecological interconnectedness and convey a sense of reverence for nature.

Ng Hui Hsien (b. 1982, Singapore) works as an artist, educator, and curator. Through her artworks, she seeks to evoke stillness and wonder, especially towards our inner landscapes and the more-than-human world. Her work is informed by phenomenology, one that sees our bodies as sites of knowledge and one curious about our relations with the living earth. Ng has received solo exhibitions at Objectifs Centre of Photography and Film, Singapore (2023), Grey Projects, Singapore (2020-2021), Comma Space, Singapore (2020), and Reykjavík Museum of Photography, Iceland (2018-2019). Her work has been internationally exhibited at institutions and festivals such as Shanghai Art Book Fair, China (2019), Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol, UK (2018), the PhotoBangkok Festival, Thailand (2018), Obscura Festival of Photography, Penang, Malaysia (2018), Dali International Photography Festival, China (2018), and Athens Photo Festival, Greece (2018) among others. She holds a Master of Arts in Photography from University of the West of England and a Master of Social Sciences from National University of Singapore.

In The Cosmos in Cosmopolitanism (Polity, 2023), Professor Nikos Papastergiadis revisits the intellectual history of the cosmos by looking at how philosophers and visual artists have related with themes associated with the cosmos from antiquity to the present. By engaging a plurality of perspectives and visions produced both in the West and in the Global South, the book argues for the importance of common connections in the face of the existential threats faced by all forms of life on the planet.

The first manifestation of a growing inclination towards “telling stories grounded in experience”, John Berger and Me (Giramondo Publishing, 2024) is a memoir of the deep relationship between the author and his former mentor, renowned English writer, artist, and art critic John Berger (1926–2017). Part biography, part autobiography, part cultural history essay, the book revolves around the shared interest in art and migration and the biographical entanglements of these two public intellectuals as well as it reveals the generative dynamics of a lifelong friendship.

Nikos Papastergiadis is the Director of the Research Unit in Public Cultures and Professor in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. Furthermore, he is the co-founder (with Scott McQuire) of the Spatial Aesthetics research cluster. He is the Project Leader of the Australian Research Council Linkage Project, “Large Screens and the Transnational Public Sphere,” and Chief Investigator on the ARC Discovery Project “Public Screens and the Transformation of Public Space.” Prior to joining the School of Culture and Communication, he was Deputy Director of the Australia Centre at the University of Melbourne, Head of the Centre for Ideas at the Victorian College of Arts, and lecturer in Sociology and recipient of the Simon Fellowship at the University of Manchester. Throughout his career, Papastergiadis has provided strategic consultancies for government agencies on issues of cultural identity and has worked in collaborative projects with internationally renowned artists and theorists. He was the Chair of NTU CCA Singapore’s International Advisory Board from 2015 to 2024.

For both publications, a limited number of copies will be available for purchase.

NTU CCA Singapore
Block 6 Lock Road, #01-09
Singapore 108934

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Against Singapore’s persistent acceleration towards the future through redevelopment and modernisation, the artist is interested in the way certain memories are kept while others are discarded. From her point of view, “the past is more than objects waiting to be discovered; it is a series of perspectives waiting to be unearthed”. Investigating the present with the tools of archaeology, she plans to explore the physical sediments of contemporary life through a series of participatory sessions aimed at making, archiving, and combining fragments of the present into new scenarios, perspectives, and meanings.

In this episode, curator Samantha Yap digs deep into the practice of Artist-in-Residence Fazleen Karlan. We are happy to bring the two of them back together, after they first collaborated a couple of year ago on an exhibition titled Time Passes (2020-21), to talk about Fazleen’s evolving artistic sensibility and sources of inspiration.

In this circular conversation that revolves around a shared reading, the novel Lighthousekeeping by Jeanette Winterson, Fazleen and Samantha exchange memories, experiences, and thoughts about time, materiality, pop culture, and the vitality of archaeology in Fazleen’s work. And they do so with that special kind of fluid intimacy that interlaces persons of the same age. Just a few words to introduce them.

The practice of Fazleen Karlan weaves together art-making and archaeology to explore matters of time by mapping and reframing physical remains found within the landscape and socio-historical context of Singapore. By engaging the stratifications of a site and by reassessing the chronology of everyday objects through the tools of archaeology, her work generates news records of contemporary life that cast the relation between past, present, and future into a speculative framework.

Shuffling between writing and curation, Samantha Yap nurtures her interests in forms of reciprocity, the ethics of care, love, vulnerability as well as an ongoing exploration of feminist perspectives across literature and visual culture. She has curated a number of exhibitions in Singapore, including Time Passes, National Gallery Singapore (2020) which marked her first collaboration with Fazleen Karlan. Her curatorial texts are featured in several exhibition catalogues and her creative writing is included in My Lot is a Sky (Math Paper Press, 2018), an anthology of poetry by Asian women. She graduated with a BA (Hons) in English Literature and Art History from Nanyang Technological University of Singapore.

Contributors: Fazleen Karlan, Samantha Yap
Editor: Anna Lovecchio
Programme Manager: Nadia Amalina
Sound Engineer: Ashwin Menon
Intro & Outro Music: Yuen Chee Wai
Cover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine Tan

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Luke Willis Thompson’s (b. 1988, New Zealand) objects are typically both curios drawn from historical blind-spots and markers of, or stand-ins for, very particular personal lived experience. Thompson’s recent projects have focused on politics around the circulation and repatriation of artefacts, and the class-bound art world’s mode of distribution.

Thompson holds an MFA (2010) and a BFA (2009) from the ELAM School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland. Selected exhibitions include: Surround Audience, the New Museum Triennial (2015); Foreign Exchange (or the stories you wouldn’t tell a stranger), Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt, Germany (2014); The 5th Auckland Triennial, Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand (2013). Thompson won the acclaimed Auckland Art Gallery’s Walters Prize in 2014.

During her residency, Weixin Chong will explore perspectives and portrayals of Tropicality in a Singaporean context, from projections of exoticism and escape to the post- colonial self-conscious gaze of the tropical being and how the natural growth of tropical wildlife represents ‘undevelopment’.

Pursuing his sustained interest in natural bodies and biological mechanisms, Trevor Yeung intends to explore Singapore’s culture and politics of nature preservation and gardening. More specifically, he will investigate the history of Singapore Botanic Gardens, their role as a laboratory for exploiting natural resources, and the effect of the introduction of foreign plants on local ecosystems. Furthermore, having spent some time working in Singapore in 2011, the artist aims to track down and reconnect with his former colleagues and supervisors, whom he has since lost touch with, in order to gather stories of personal growth and professional development and reflect on the fleeting boundaries that define interpersonal relationships. Ultimately, the artist aims to produce a new series of works that muse on his own relationship with people, plants, and society in Singapore.

Thao-Nguyen Phan will expand her research on the introduction of the Latin alphabet as a writing system in Vietnam, exploring how the same transition occurred in other Southeast Asian countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. In Vietnam, the Romanised script was first introduced in the 17th century by catholic missionaries to spread Christianity, playing a significant role in the process of colonization of the country. While official accounts celebrate the adoption of the Latin alphabet as a symbol of modernity, the implications of this historical process are far more complex and tell stories of cultural loss and gain, national amnesia, and violence.

The practice of Lêna Bùi (b. 1985, Vietnam) is deeply drawn to the intangible aspects of life, such as faith, death, and dreams and the ways in which they influence our behaviours and perceptions. Through the incorporation of anecdotes and personal stories, her works articulate intimate reflections upon the impact of rapid development and the relationship between humans and nature. Bùi’s works have been included in group exhibitions and presentations at Sharjah Art Foundation, United Arab Emirates (2018); Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies, Wesleyan University, Middle Town, United States (2018); Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany (2017); The Factory Contemporary Arts Centre, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (2016); and Carré d’Art, Nîmes, France (2014) amongst other venues.

In the last decade, the artistic practice of Susie Wong unfurled as a prolonged reflection on the nature of memory and the symbolic layers embedded in different modes of representation. During her six-month residency, she is intent on examining the iconic status of certain typologies of images in order to understand how their meaning is affected by the circulation on the web and other modes of consumption. The artist engages with the tropes of romance through the lens of pop culture, from the cult film The World of Suzie Wong (1960) to contemporary East Asian dramas. The fabrication of feelings and the normalization of romance in the mass media is the subject of a series of works which, through subtle gestures of over-layering, inscription, and re-imagining, reflect on the universal currency of romantic clichés, the subtle traps of translation, and the entanglement of desire and exoticism in the representation of the “East.”

Personal narration and/or musical interpretation define both the method and the subject of Manon de Boer’s practice. Working primarily with the moving image, over twenty years she has composed a series of “portrait films” that explore the intimate relationship between language, memory, sound, and time while continuously interrogating truth claims, biographical narratives, and the medium of film itself.

Manon de Boer (b. 1966) is a Dutch artist based in Brussels. She completed her artistic education at the Akademie Van Beeldende Kunsten, Rotterdam, and at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Her work has received wide international recognition. Her most recent solo shows include presentations at Secession, Vienna, Austria (2016), Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands (2013), Philadelphia Museum of Art, United States (2012); Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, United States (2011).

The rich visual language of Dana Awartani’s (b. 1987, Saudi Arabia) paintings, sculptures, and textile installations incorporate traditional Islamic art forms into contemporary aesthetics. Engaging with the relationship between geometry and nature, she harnesses the timeless and enduring relevance of forms in order to deconstruct contemporary issues such as gender, faith, loss, and cultural destruction. Past solo exhibitions include The Silence Between Us, Maraya Art Centre, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (2018) and Detroit Affinities: Dana Awartani, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, United States (2017). She has participated in numerous group shows and biennales such as Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2016, Kochi, India and the 1st Yinchuan Biennale, Museum of Contemporary Art, Yinchuan, China (both 2016), among others.

The artist was scheduled to be in-residence from July – Sept 2020. Due to the COVID-19 virus outbreak and international travel restrictions, the artist was unable to participate in the residency programme physically.

Illustrating a new way of seeing, Buen Calubayan’s Instructions on Viewing the Landscape is an long-term exercise in seeing the bigger picture, literally and figuratively, which subtly challenges notions of national identity and colonialism. Articulated through a complex set of rules, this conceptual work is an investigative device aimed to unpack the history of late 19th century Filipino art – a period of significant political changes propelled by the revolutions against the Spanish rule. In re-examining and reviewing the landscapes of celebrated painters Juan Luna (1857 – 1899) and Félix Resurrección Hidalgo (1855 – 1913), the artist locates their vanishing points and brings to the fore unexpected tensions between the viewer and the artwork. Over the course of his residency, Calubayan will extend the scope of the project in order to pinpoint the metaphorical vanishing points in Singapore’s landscape, locating their historical, economic, and religious coordinates.

Laure Prouvost is a French artist living and working in Antwerp, Belgium. She won the 2013 Turner Prize. In 2019, she represented France at the Venice Biennale with the multi-media work The Deep Blue Sea Surrounding You.

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

Weixin Chong‚ (b. 1988, Singapore) work is drawn from fascination with the stylisation of natural elements, digital and organic memory systems and the relationship between surface and perceived superficiality. She sees these concerns as material metaphors for human social relationships and the psychology behind the structures and projections of power, value and desire.

Through printed surfaces and objects, she looks at the constant construction of imposed and composed realities,and reproductions that replace and represent. Interactions of the digital and the organic, and the effects and methods of reproducing and manipulating images across materials, are core to her practice.

SHIMURAbros are a brother/sister artist duo composed of Yuka (b. 1976, Japan) and Kentaro Shimura (b. 1979, Japan). Since 2014, they have been working as researchers at the Studio Olafur Eliasson in Berlin, Germany. Film is a catalyst for their works wherein the equilibrium between light and matter and the material representation of film become a focal point. Between November and December 2016, SHIMURAbros were Artists-in-Residence at NTU CCA Singapore. During the residency, the duo continued their investigations on the archaeology of film and its structural components, focusing on light as the power source in the cinematic process and the essential condition for seeing.

Tamara Weber is an artist. She explores formal questions (light, space, figuration, portraiture, temporality) and the possibilities of multidisciplinary collaboration. Between October and December 2016, Weber was Artist-in-Residence at NTU CCA Singapore. As part of her residency, she produced the unbound book Close Readings that features a series of photographic reinterpretations of the iconic hotel PARKROYAL on Pickering in Singapore, designed by WOHA, an impressive building that merges the rigorousness of abstraction and unruliness of tropical greenery.

Photographer and filmmaker Stan Douglas has, since the late 1980’s, examined complex intersections of narrative, fact and fiction, while scrutinising the constructs of the media he employs and their influence on our understanding of reality. His interest in the social implementation of Western ideas of progress, particularly utopian philosophies, is located in their often divisive political and economic effects. Douglas’s work is often characterised by extensive research and an interrogation of the structural possibilities of film and video, in concert with intricately developed narratives.

Douglas was recently awarded the Scotiabank Photography Award (2013) and the Infinity Award by the International Center of Photography, New York (2012). His work has been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions at prominent institutions worldwide, including: the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota (2012); MOCA, Los Angeles (2012); the Power Plant, Toronto (2011); the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010); the International Center of Photography, New York (2008), Staatsgalerie and Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart (2007); and documentas 11, 10, 9 (2002, 1997, 1992).

Stan Douglas was born in Vancouver, Canada in 1960, where he lives and work.

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

Pratchaya Phinthong creates situations as an invitation made to the visitor to share an experience with him. His projects (without any specific or pre-defined form) suggest a crack in which the spectators are invited to fill the gaps. He builds a set, a fiction, or a process where he can test our perceptions. He proposes to his audience a story with multiple paths. A trip down memory lane combined with subjective perceptions. His projects are often constructed in a dialogue between the artist and the others, making the artist‚ movement glide towards the social field. Beyond any artistic or formal experience, the artist is looking to find his place and his identity playing on the economic representations and cultural existences. The ‚Äògallery‚ space becomes a free area.Therefore, Phinthong works in a dynamic area in between different realities underlining the space and distance that separates them: two geographical points, two societies, two economic systems.

Phinthong was Artist-in-Residence at NTU CCA Singapore between October and December 2014. As part of his residency, Phinthong explored the idea of airspace as monitored and ambiguous, researching into the histories and negotiations of airspace between Singapore and its neighbours, with particular attention given to Thailand.

Thao-Phan Nguyen focuses on historical events, traditional narratives through a combination of painting, video, performance, and installation. She has the ability to condense the manifold references to history, literature, philosophy, and theory that always frames her research into poetic works that open up new spaces for reflection. In 2016, she is the protégé of American artist Joan Jonas within the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, a programme which pairs gifted young artists with internationally recognised masters, sponsoring them to spend a year in a one-to-one mentoring relationship. Her recent exhibitions include Poetic Amnesia (2017), the Factory Contemporary Art Centre, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and Nha San Collective, Hanoi, Vietnam; Concept Context Contestation, Art and the Collective in South East Asia, Goethe Institut, Hanoi, Vietnam (2016); Haunted Thresholds: Spirituality in Contemporary Southeast Asia, Kunstverein Göttingen, Germany, (2014). and Tâm Tã, Hanoi Fine Arts Museum, Vietnam (2014). In 2018, she was the Grand Prize winner of the APB Foundation Signature Art Prize, organised by Singapore Art Museum. Nguyen founded the collective Art Labor together with artist Truong Cong Tung and curator Arlette Quynh-Anh Tran Phan in 2012.

The practice of Trevor Yeung (b. 1988, China/Hong Kong) consistently excavates the inner logics of closed systems and the way in which such systems contain and create emotional and behavioural conditions. In his mixed-media works, carefully staged objects, animals, and plants function asaesthetic pretexts which delicately and ironically address notions of artificiality and the processes ofhuman relations. His works have been exhibited internationally at Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai,China (2019); Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, Lithuania (2019); 4th Dhaka Art Summit 2018,Bangladesh (2018); Para Site, Hong Kong (2017), and Asia Culture Center, Gwangju, South Korea(2017), among other venues.