Free Jazz III. Sound. Walks.
bani haykal and Lee Weng Choy
Troubletext #1, 2021
Text, performance
Commissioned by NTU CCA Singapore for Free Jazz III. Sound. Walks.
bani haykal and Lee Weng Choy
Troubletext #2, 2021
Text, performance
Commissioned by NTU CCA Singapore for Free Jazz III. Sound. Walks.
Activation: Trouble with Harmony
by bani haykal in collaboration with Lee Weng Choy
Saturday, 13 March 2021, 3.00 – 6.00pm
Online
Zoom Registration here.
Two participants from the original programme are back for the 3rd Edition, to collaborate on a project they’re calling, “Trouble with Harmony”. It’s not an attempt to articulate the trouble with harmony. Neither to analyse, for instance, the predominant but problematic discourses about political, cultural or racial harmony in a multifarious society like Singapore. Rather, an invitation to play—to play with. Donna Haraway reminds us that the etymology of “trouble” is the French verb “to stir up”, “to make cloudy” or “to disturb”. Perhaps our role here is to “sit in” and find how these instances of harmonies demand us to think deeply about our present—where we are. Trouble with harmony is a proposition to think about trouble alongside thinking about harmony. Shifting the shapes of our thinking, and our listening. Exploring a polyphony of themes, topics and tropes. But perhaps this is saying both too much and not enough.
BIOGRAPHY
bani haykal (Singapore) is an artist, composer, musician who experiments with text and music, and takes the and processes, as material. His projects investigate modes of interfacing and interaction with feedback or feedforward mechanisms. He is a member of b-quartet. In his capacity as a collaborator and a soloist, bani has participated in festivals including MeCA Festival (Japan), Wiener Festwochen (Vienna), Media/Art Kitchen (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Japan), Liquid Architecture and Singapore International Festival of Arts (Singapore) among others. His current work frames encryption as a process and basis for human-machine intimacy by navigating interfaces such as a QWERTY keyboard as mediums of interactivity.
For more video’s by bani haykal please go to here
Lee Weng Choy (Malaysia) is an independent art critic and consultant based in Malaysia. He is president of the Singapore Section of the International Association of Art Critics, and a part-time consultant with A+ Works of Art, Kuala Lumpur. Previously, Lee was Artistic Co-Director of The Substation in Singapore and the first Deputy Director of the NTU CCA Singapore. He has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the Sotheby’s Institute of Art—Singapore. He has done project work with various arts organisations, including Ilham Gallery, Kuala Lumpur and the National Gallery Singapore.
Image: bani haykal and Lee Weng Choy, Trouble With Harmony, 2021. Commissioned by NTU CCA Singapore for Free Jazz III. Sound. Walks. Courtesy the artists.
