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More than [show] business: Post-PopUp at NTU CCA Singapore Talk 1: Wildlife

Three presenters spoke on our relationships with wildlife. Dr Alfred Montoya, Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the Sociology & Anthropology department at Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas discussed the wildlife trade in Southeast Asia, wildlife photographer and bird enthusiast, David Tan, discussed the impact of bird photographers on nature, and crew member James Chua spoke about Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

Fiona Jack, Artist, Senior Lecturer and Associate Head of School (Engagament and External Relations) at the Elam School of Fine Arts at The University of Auckland, talked about projects in public spaces which engage with notions of public history in the making through a series of collaborations and interventions.

Kyla McFarlane, curator, writer and Associate Curator at Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, Australia presented her ideas for her exhibition Notes on Performance looking at the role of documentation within performance art.

The Indonesian artist, Elia Nurvista was invited to introduce her work through an on-line conversation coordinated by Alexander Yang, Manager of The Independent Art Archive. Nurvista’s projects are highly engaged with different communities in Java experimenting with local food and social activities around food.

Indonesian Artist Elia Nurvista and Egyptian Artist Dina Danish, broadcasted from the city of Yogyakarta, Indonesia and talked about their recent work.

A participatory event where the artist duo Martinka Bobrika and Oscar de Carmen, Slovakia/Spain provided food from foraged sources.

A performance art salon by Adam Adhiyatma, Guitarist, Composer and Improviser and Shawn Chua Ming Ren, that invited artists, writers and other practitioners to present and engage with new works.

An exhibition that investigated memory and its relation to life. The project invited public and personal reflections on the broader question: How are personal histories individually and collectively curated?

A talk on artist Christo who discusses his works in progress and projects through independent arts worker Hiroko Seki.

A public event where participants were invited to bring a book, share stories and intervene in the texts.

A film presentation of local filmmaker, Ghazi’s journey in Bosnia and his experience working with Hungarian film director, Béla Tarr.

Xi Jie, Carol, Wayne Lim, Ng Huiying a group of arts enthusiasts speaking on collecting as artwork.

An exhibition at the power of design and literary word in sharing personal experiences.

This talk drew on the work of a group of urban researchers who made this possible: a group which under the banner of Hyderabad Urban Lab has been attempting to put their academic research skills at the service of urban communities. Hyderabad is a four hundred year old city, which was a princely state until 1948 when it became a part of independent India. After nearly five decades of slow and incremental growth, the city sprang into global IT labour markets in the late 1990s. In the last two decades, the city witnessed a rapid growth, which put tremendous pressure on its infrastructure. Hyderabad Urban Lab is an attempt to rebuild a sense of embeddedness and belonging at the same time as reformulating questions of equity for the city’s multifarious communities. The talk illustrated examples of the kind of research that takes collective resources of the city as its starting point.

Do Din, literally meaning Two Days, was a multiplex event – with art installations, film screenings, talks, workshops, exhibits and theatrical performances. Anant Maringanti, Director of Hyderabad Urban Lab and previously a postdoctoral fellow at the National University of Singapore, drew on the work of a group of urban researchers who made this possible.

OOOM is Singapore’s first and only social open mike platform, which was accompanied by live art creation.

An exhibition by Huijun Lu, a first year BA Fine Art student at Goldsmiths College, University of London. The installation explored sound and its relationship to people and temporal space.

Shao Han led a discussion on his plans of using games to foster a new culture of learning in Singapore. Shao Han is a tutor of Southeast Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore

Artist, Yen Phang explored the body not merely as a vessel for existence and consciousness, but also as a destination in this performance – installation. Over 200 postcard-sized tiles were created for this performance-installation, each documenting the artist’s daily awareness of his bodily reactions to the sub-zero winter temperatures of Montreal, Quebec.

THING-SPACES 2 is a performance art salon by Adam Adhiyatma, Guitarist, Composer and Improviser and Shawn Chua Ming Ren, that invited artists, writers and other practitioners to present and engage with new works.

Seeing in the Dark: Lenses for a Post-PRISM Landscape – A Talk by Honor Hager, Director of the ArtScience Museum, Singapore

Tea for Two is taking place in a booth that is envisioned as a private meeting space between two strangers, members of the public were able to chat privately and freely with the artist over tea or coffee.

Artwork by Yen Phang an interactive exhibition whereby 250 painted titles were first arranged according to the artist’s schematic understanding of his/her body, visitors were welcome to rearrange these tiles, to reform and reconstitute the artist’s body, like a semiotic Frankenstein.

“THE USE OF MOBILE PHONES AND OTHER ELECTRONIC DEVICES IS NOT PERMITTED IN THIS ROOM” is a project that aimed to activate people’s creativity in an empty space.

Three presentations on “Official” Heritage. Dr Wong Chee Meng, Postdoctoral Fellow, Research Cluster of Literary and Cultural Studies Division of Chinese, School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Nanyang Technological University, spoke on Official Heritage and Beyond: Singapore as Garden City vs Singapore as Kampong; Gözde Zehnder, Director of Freestate Productions spoke about 3 documentary series she has produced; and writer Yu-Mei Balasingamchow, reflected on her recent exhibition “Balik Pulau”.

An inquiry into engagements with art in the age of the internet. As our attention ecology manoeuvres between the online and offline, the agency and spectatorship of art in real life (IRL) extends beyond the physical and durational, through their parallel lives on the web (URL). Artists in this exhibition undertook these modes of encounters, producing works that are framed for diverse online platforms. Curated by Free of Charge Artshow (FOCA,) featuring artworks by Dennis Tan, Gilles Massot, Jonathan Tan, Marcus Yee, Mike HJ Chang, Melvin Tan, Teow Yue Han, Lee Lip Jiang, Koh Nguang How and Kwok Jiayang.

Cryptoparty is free, public and fun. People bring their computers, mobile devices, and a willingness to learn! CryptoParty is a decentralized, global initiative to introduce the most basic cryptography software and the fundamental concepts of their operation to the general public, such as the Tor anonymity network, public key encryption (PGP/GPG), and OTR (Off The Record messaging).

This dialogue session was a program of WHO’S LOOKING: SURF & TURF, an inquiry into engagements with art in the age of the Internet. The speakers, Bernard Leong, Vice- President, Digital Services, Singapore Post Ltd, Gilles Massot, Artist and Educator, Lasalle School of the Arts, Huifen Zheng (Corporate Technology Lawyer discussed how our attention ecology manoeuvres between the online and offline, the agency and spectatorship of art in real life (IRL) extends beyond the physical and durational, through their parallel lives on the web (URL). The panel session was moderated by, Randall Packer, Artist, Educator and Founder of Open Source Studio, OSS via Adobe Connect.

This session featured three presentations: Milica Topalovic, an architect from Belgrade and currently Assistant Professor of Architecture and Territorial Planning at the ETH Future Cities Laboratory, spoke on ‘Constructed Land – Singapore 1924-2012’ and focused on comparing the topographic changes of Singapore between this two moments in time and the implications of this territorial transformation; Chun Kai Feng and Chun Kai Qun spoke about their project LATENT SPACES which is currently situated in Haw Par Villa; and Dr Chong Ja Ian, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science at the National University of Singapore, will speak on ‘States, Land, and People: Some Observations from Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

Singapore LabArt, an exhibition that featured 2 “laboratories” by artists Isabelle Desjeux and Agus Tri Budiarto + Cindy Lin (Sewon FoodLab).

Veni, Weedy, Vici exhibition featured three works: “Weeding Singapore” by Isabelle Desjeux, “(Re)Thinking Invasive Alien Species” by Sewon FoodLab (Agus Tri Budiarto and Cindy Lin), and “I Have Read and Agreed to the Following Terms and Conditions*” by Luca Lum, Raksha Mahtani and Chua Ying Qing.

The third session of the forum series that aimed to unpack the myths of Singapore history.

Making Malaysia featured three presentations related to the creation of present-day Malaysia: Dr Lai Chee Kien, researcher on histories of art, architecture, settlements, urbanism and landscapes in Southeast Asia, spoke on “Malaya” in Post-war Architecture; Dr Fiona Lee, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore, spoke on ‘Picturing Difference, Reading Differently: The Making of Lat as National Icon’; and Mohamed Imran Mohamed, founding member of Leftwrite Center, a dialogue initiative for young professionals to engage on issues of race, religion and society, spoke on ‘Fundamental(ist) Shift in Malaysian Society’.

Art & Design book exhibition presented by Grey Projects. Contributors to Print Lab included: artists Tang Ling Nah, Lucy Davis, and Shannon Castleman; writers June Yap, Viviana Meija, and Stephan Black; book artist Eriko Hirashi; as well as students from the School of Art, Design & Media in Nanyang Technological University.

The Singapore Film Society presents 6 Singapore heritage-themed short films that made it to the finals of the inaugural competition. These films are made by our young and enthusiastic filmmakers, who take a fresh look at different aspects of Singapore history.