The Posthuman CityClimates. Habitats. Environments.
Featuring:
Irene Agrivina (Indonesia)
Animali Domestici (Italy/Thailand)
Ines Doujak (Austria/United Kingdom)
Pierre Huyghe (France/United States)
Jae Rhim Lee (South Korea/United States)
Lucy + Jorge Orta (United Kingdom, Argentina/France)
Nicholas Mangan (Australia)
Marjetica Potrč (Slovenia/Germany)
Hito Steyerl (Germany)
Currently, more than half of the world’s human population lives in urban areas. Urban growth poses challenges to the various city dwellers, and creates material demands that cause lasting damage to the wider environment. The climate crisis is already announcing threatening scenarios particularly for coastal regions and megacities located at coastlines. Global urbanisation and the exploitation of resources happen on the expense of human and other species alike. The Posthuman City features artists who propose a shift in perspective.
Taking NTU CCA Singapore’s overarching research topic Climates. Habitats. Environments. as point of departure, the exhibition The Posthuman City considers the possibilities of a conscious sharing of resources, and a respectful and mindful coexistence between humans and other species. Through imaginative propositions at the intersection of art, design, and architecture, the selected artists engage questions addressing issues of sustainability, water scarcity, invisible communities, nature as a form of culture, and suggest the implementation of lived indigenous knowledges. Examining the urban fabric in its condition as a habitat for a diversity of life forms, the featured works range from installations to time-based media.
Stressing the vital importance of clean water and the challenges of its scarcity around the world, the artist and design duo Lucy + Jorge Orta have developed a long-term project on water collection, purification, and distribution. OrtaWater focuses on the general issues surrounding clean water and the privatisation and corporate control effecting access to it. Starting from a rigorous analysis of this crucial resource through visual and textual research and collaborative workshops with engineers, Lucy + Jorge Orta create sculptures, large-scale installations, and public artworks, that are both artefacts and functional design. One angle of their research—low-cost water purification devices enabling filthy water to be pumped and filtered directly from local sources—is translated into Portable Water Fountain (2005) and Mobile Intervention Unit (2007). These devices have been used to purify and distribute water from the Venice’s Canal Grande (2005) and the Huang Pu River in Shanghai (2012), among others, and now from the creek that runs through Gillman Barracks.
Similarly combating water pollution, Irene Agrivina’s Soya C(o)u(l)ture is a mixed media installation that demonstrates how to transform wastewater from tofu and tempeh production into usable biomaterials, such as fuel, fertiliser, and leather-like fabrics. Soya C(o)u(l)ture was developed in collaboration with XXLab, an all-female transdisciplinary collective that Agrivina co-founded. Usually, large amounts of wastewater pollute the water in the rivers surrounding the plants, which in turn causes cholera and skin and bowel diseases in humans. Soya C(o)u(l)ture intends to divert this wastewater from tofu factories and put it in a homegrown starter culture medium to create useful products. A biological process using various bacteria and cell cultures, for instance Acetobacter xylinum, generates alternative energy sources, foodstuffs, and biological material. This process creates cellulose sheets that can either be used for consumption—nata de coco, a variant made of coconut water, is a popular snack food—or further processed (pressed, dried, enhanced with colouring and coating) to make clothing and craft materials. This biological procedure can be reproduced in any household using normal kitchen utensils in combination with open-source software and simple hardware. In this way, the project could provide women in poverty-stricken regions with opportunities to increase their income.
Indigenous peoples of various territories around the world, with deep historical and cultural ties to their land, have preserved sustainable ways of living that respect the limits of the planet’s resources. The artist and architect Marjetica Potrč’s Earth Drawings refer to these unique indigenous cosmogonies and their essential knowledges, based on research done over the past 15 years, centred on indigenous communities, such as the Asháninkas (in the Brazilian state of Acre in Amazonia), the Aboriginal (in Australian), and the Sami (in northern Norway), The Earth Drawings, a series on paper, point to the growing alliances between indigenous groups and bottom-up initiatives in the effort to ensure a more resilient future, beyond the social and economic agreement of the neoliberal order. Potrč stresses that the world’s diverse societies, taken together, form an intelligent organism: when necessary, they self-generate new models of existence and coexistence—a precondition for human resilience on Earth. Sharing life experiences is, after all, a basic human condition. Coexistence on Earth requires new foundations that foreground collective ownership of the land and a socially-conscious individualism.
Planetary coexistence of species acknowledges the presence and agency of diverse forms of intelligence. The artist Nicholas Mangan is inspired by termites and their capacity to build sophisticated and dynamic architectures that provide a model for decentralised social and economic organisation. The starting point of Termite Economies (Phase 1) was the anecdote that Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) researched termite behaviour in the hope that the insects might one day lead humans to gold deposits; a proposal to exploit the natural activity of termite colonies for economic gain. Mangan, on the contrary, proposes that the termites’ way of living in colonies might suggest other complex and global-scale systems for people to live and work together, better regulating and metabolising human consumption, production, and digestion. Termite Economies combines footage Mangan filmed on locations in Western Australia, alongside archival video and table-mounted sculptures, to speculate on the use of termites as miners and ruminating on how capitalism puts nature to work. The 3D-printed models reference existing infrastructures, for instance an underground tunnelling system for Tindals Mining Centre, a gold mine in Western Australia. The idea was to produce a 1:100 scale model to train termites.
In Bangkok Opportunistic Ecologies, the design practice Animali Domestici studied the urbanity of Bangkok from a non-anthropocentric perspective, focusing on the presence of pythons. Mapping the city through a snake’s experience, the resulting tapestry puts multiple beings of different species at the centre, displacing the human from its exceptionalism. The graphic realisation is freely inspired by the representation techniques, colour palettes, and composition of Thai traditional mural paintings. Their work process translates research and statistics on the Thai capital into multiple encapsulated narratives, including such elements as sewerage, canals, water swamps, and rain water “cracked” pipes—typical spots used by snakes, according to fire department experts—, as well as folkloric cultural practices like the numerology and superstitions connected to the shape and location of the animals.
In Untitled (Human Mask), the artist Pierre Huyghe films a monkey, Fuku-chan, who in real life has a work permit as a “waitress” in a traditional sake house in Tokyo. In the film, the animal is wearing a dress and a wig, as well as a white, human-like mask created by Huyghe. Made of resin, the mask is inspired by traditional Japanese Noh theatre masks, where only the main actor wears a mask, meant to show the essential traits of the character. The film’s first images are drone shots of a devastated landscape, that of Fukushima in 2011, after the earthquake-triggered tsunami caused the meltdown of three nuclear plant reactors. It then shifts to an empty restaurant and house, where we follow Fuku-chan moving around in the dark. Fuku-chan is seen acting, and seems to be waiting, shaking her leg, looking at her nails, playing with her hair. A cat appears, and we see close-ups of insects and cockroaches. Raising questions about the essence of human nature and of non-human forms of intelligence and communication, the work points at the prevailing relationship of domination between humans and other species.
Ghostpopulations, a series of collages by the artist Ines Doujak, combines ill human bodies with flora and fauna, transforming drawings from 19th-century medical textbooks into provocative assemblages that investigate desperation as an economic force. Doujak points out that entire populations uproot and flee in the direction of the faintest glimmer of hope, only to find themselves in the worst of predicaments: abandoned and deported, sold, abused or stigmatised forever, circulating as extremely cheap and disposable commodities. While she is giving visibility to such marginalised, abused, and displaced populations, these collages draw a dystopian mirage, reminding us of the pending threat of pandemic illnesses.
Death, from a post-humanist perspective, is not only inevitable and part of life, but is an event that is already in our past. The artist and entrepreneur Jae Rhim Lee developed a burial suit as an environmentally-conscious alternative to conventional funerary processes, shifting the negative narratives around death. The presented Infinity Burial Suit, a handcrafted garment that is worn by the deceased, is completely biodegradable, and co-created with zero waste fashion designer Daniel Silverstein. In addition, the Forever Spot Pet Shroud is featured, also consisting of a built in biomix of mushrooms and other microorganisms that together do three things: aid in decomposition, work to neutralise toxins found in dead bodies, and transfer nutrients to plant life, enriching the earth and fostering new life. Highlighting the importance of decompiculture—the cultivation of waste-decomposing organisms—, this project also suggests a strong link between human resistance to mortality and climate change denial. She advocates for a post-mortem responsibility towards the natural world and a direct engagement with our own mortality, making funerals new beginnings instead of endpoints, becoming more emotionally and socially accessible.
A parable on economic crashes, financial trading, mixed martial arts, and general contemporary culture, artist and writer Hito Steyerl’s large-scale architectural environment features Liquidity Inc., a single-screen projection that uses water and liquidity as guiding tropes. Opening with the quote “be water, my friend” by martial arts legend and actor Bruce Lee, the film comments on the circulation of digital images, big data, information, financial assets, labour, and weather systems. The installation consists of a double-sided projection screen in front of a blue, wave-like ramp, where the viewers find themselves in “troubled water.” Steyerl merges CGI and green screen scenes with an assortment of embedded videos, swipes, clips, scrolls, and pop-up windows, that include the story of Jacob Wood, a former financial analyst who lost his job during the 2008 economic recession and decided to turn his mixed martial arts hobby into a new career. The intricate mesh of late capitalism structures needs to be hijacked in order to allow space for new ecological and sustainable policies that value people and life over profit.
The Posthuman City, through artistic propositions, intends to open a discussion about the imbalanced relationship between an anthropocentric thinking that puts the human at the centre, and the fact that the urban environment is a habitat for many life forms. In her book The Posthuman (2013), Rosi Braidotti calls for resilience, stating that “sustainability does assume faith in a future, and also a sense of responsibility for ‘passing on’ to future generations a world that is liveable and worth living in. A present that endures is a sustainable model of the future.”
Curated by Ute Meta Bauer, Professor, NTU ADM, and Founding Director, NTU CCA Singapore, and Laura Miotto, Associate Professor, NTU ADM.
The accompanying public programmes include seminars addressing techno-optimism and eco-hacktivism on 23 November 2019, and biodiver-city and urban futurism on 18 January 2020, deepening the discussion around posthumanism and the urban condition.
From 15 – 23 February 2020, the second edition of NTU CCA Ideas Fest takes place, guest curated by IdeasCity, New Museum, New York.
Image: 1. Irene Agrivina, SOYA C(O)U(L)TURE, 2014, installation view of XXLab: SOYA C(O)U(L)TURE workshop, Post City, Ars Electronica 2015. Courtesy Ars Electronica, Linz. 2. Ines Doujak, Ghospopulations (detail), 2016–19. Courtesy the artist. 3. Marjetica Potrč, The Pot Maker Shapes Unity, 2016. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Nordenhake, Berlin, Stockholm, Mexico City. 4. Hito Steyerl, Liquidity Inc., 2014, film still. Courtesy the artist, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York, and Esther Schipper, Berlin. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2019.
Public programmes
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2.00 – 2.15pm
Introduction by Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director, NTU CCA Singapore, and Professor, NTU ADM, and Laura Miotto, Associate Professor, NTU ADM
2.15 – 3.00pm
Lecture: On Garages and Genes, or the rise and fall of the California ideology
by Hallam Stevens, Associate Professor, School of Biological Sciences, NTU
Much of today’s biotech was created in the image of Silicon Valley. The first genetic engineers emerged in California in the 1970s and the industry continues to bear the imprint of its origins. But Silicon Valley’s attitude towards technology is coming under increasing pressure—the world is beginning to push back against “tech bros” and social media monopolies. What does this mean for bioscience? Could we perhaps find other ways of working with and manipulating biomatter and living things that move beyond the worlds of venture capital, startups, and IPOs? Could such models even provide clues for new ways of living with others in the Chthulucene?
3.20 – 5.00pm
Presentation and Conversation: Eco-Hacktivism
with Irene Agrivina, artist; inhabitants, artists; Dr Serina Abdul Rahman, Visiting Fellow, ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore; and Janelle Thompson, Associate Professor, Asian School of the Environment, NTU; moderated by Dr Karin Oen, Deputy Director, Curatorial Programmes, NTU CCA Singapore
With practices at the intersection of art and activism, Irene Agrivina and inhabitants will share more about their works, on view in the Exhibition Hall and the Lab respectively. While Agrivina teaches local women communities in Indonesia how to transform wastewater into valuable goods, inhabitants informs a wider public about the threats of seabed mining. Environmental researchers Dr Serina Abdul Rahman and Dr Janelle Thompson will present their findings on floral and faunal marine communities, as well assustainable and ecological solutions regarding natural resources.
5.30 – 7.00pm
Lecture: Termite Economies
by artist Nicholas Mangan, Senior Lecture, Department of Fine Art, Monash University
Nicholas Mangan will work through some of the research and histories that have informed the development of his project Termite Economies (phase 1), on view in The Posthuman City. The Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) researched termite behaviour in the hope that the insects might one day lead humans to gold deposits; a proposal to exploit the natural activity of termite colonies for economic gain. This anecdote compelled Mangan through both the production of the artwork and broader research to explore insect stigmergy, trophallaxis, automated mining ant colony optimization algorithms, cement pheromones, biometric futures, Termodoxia, superorganisms, and neural network rerouting.
BIOGRAPHY
Irene Agrivina (b. 1976, Indonesia) is an open systems advocate, technologist, artist, and educator. She is a graduate of the Graphic Design faculty at the Indonesia Institute of Art (ISI), and the Culture and Religion Master Program at Sanata Dharma University in Yogyakarta. As a founding member and current director of HONF (House of Natural Fiber), a Yogyakarta-based new media and technology laboratory created in 1998, Agrivina runs its Education Focus Programme (EFP) which focuses on the application and practical use in daily life of collaborative, cross-disciplinary, and technological actions responding to social, cultural, and environmental challenges. She has participated in numerous festivals such as re:publica, Transmediale, Pixelache, Mal Au Pixel, New Museum Triennial, and APAP 5. She has also exhibited her work and given lectures around the world in cities such as Vienna, New York, Paris, London, Tokyo, Berlin, Prague, and Singapore. In 2013 she co-founded XXLab, an all-female collective focusing on arts, science, and free technology as a second generation of HONF’s spin-off communities. Their project Soya C(o)u(l)ture (2014) was crowned a winner of the 2015 Prix Ars Electronica awards, a prestigious European Commission-supported competition for cyberarts in Austria.
Ute Meta Bauer (Germany/Singapore) is the Founding Director of the NTU CCA Singapore, and Professor, School of Art, Design and Media, NTU, Singapore. Previously, she was Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, where she also served as Founding Director of the MIT Program in Art, Culture, and Technology (2005–13). For more than three decades, Bauer has curated exhibitions and presentations, connecting contemporary art, film, video, and sound through transdisciplinary formats including Documenta11 (2002), 3rd berlin biennale for contemporary art (2004), and the US Pavilion for the 56th Venice Biennale (2015).
inhabitants (Portugal/United States) is an online channel for exploratory video and documentary reporting. Founded in New York in late 2015 by visual artists Mariana Silva and Pedro Neves Marques, inhabitants produces and streams short-form videos intended for free, online distribution. All episodes are available at www.inhabitants-tv.org, as well as on Vimeo, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.
Nicholas Mangan (b. 1979, Australia) is a multi-disciplinary artist who lives and works in Melbourne. He is senior lecturer at Monash University. Through a practice bridging drawing, sculpture, film, and installation, Mangan creates politically astute and disconcerting assemblages that address some of the most galvanising issues of our time; the ongoing impacts of colonialism, humanity’s fraught relationship with the natural environment, and the complex and evolving dynamics of the global political economy. His recent solo exhibitions include Limits to Growth, Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), Melbourne, the Institute of Modern Art (IMA), Brisbane, Kunst-Werke Institute of Contemporary Art, Berlin, Dowse Art Museum, Wellington (2016); Ancient Lights, Chisenhale Gallery, London, (2015); Some Kinds of Duration, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, (2012). His work has been included in major international exhibitions including Biennale of Sydney(2018); Let’s Talk About the Weather: Art and Ecology in A Time of Crisis, Guangdong Times Museum, Guangzhou (2018); 74 million million million tons, Sculpture Center, New York (2018); The National 2017: new Australian art, AGNSW, Sydney (2017); 4.543 BILLION. The Matter of matter, CAPC, Bordeaux, (2017); New Museum Triennial: Surround Audience, New York (2015); 9th Bienal do Mercosul, Porto Alegre (2013); and the 13th Istanbul Biennial (2013).
Laura Miotto (Italy/Singapore) is Associate Professor at the School of Art, Design and Media (ADM) at Nanyang Technological University, and co-chair of the MA programme in Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices at ADM. She is also Design Director of GSM Project in Singapore, an international firm specialised in exhibition design originating from Montréal, Canada. With 20 years of experience in the design field, both as a creative director and an architectural designer, Miotto has worked on exhibitions focusing on heritage interpretation and sensorial design strategies in the context of museums, thematic galleries, and public spaces.
Dr Karin Oen (United States/Singapore) is Deputy Director, Curatorial Programmes, NTU CCA Singapore, leading the team in exhibitions, residencies, and public programmes. Most recently, she was Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco. Before that, Dr Oen was Curator at the Crow Museum of Asian Art in Dallas, where she also held teaching positions at the University of Texas. Dr Oen holds a PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in history, theory and criticism of art and architecture, MA in modern art history, as well as a degree in urban studies from Stanford University.
Dr Serina Abdul Rahman (Singapore/Malaysia) is a conservation scientist and environmental anthropologist. Her research interests lie in human, floral, and faunal marine communities, as well as their interaction and preservation. She specialises in sustainable development and education; community empowerment; environmental issues; and innovations; including development for urban and rural poor. In 2004, she moved to Malaysia to dedicate her time to marine environmental organisations and island/coastal communities. In 2009, she co-founded Kelab Alami, a community organisation in a fishing village in Johor to empower the community through environmental education for habitat conservation. Since 2015, the programme evolved to focus on community capacity-building.
Hallam Stevens (Australia/Singapore) is Associate Professor of History in the School of Humanities at Nanyang Technological University and the Associate Director of the NTU Institute of Science and Technology For Humanity. He is the author of Life out of Sequence: a data-driven history of bioinformatics (Chicago, 2013), Biotechnology & Society: an introduction (Chicago, 2016), and the co-editor of Postgenomics: Perspectives on Life After the Genome (Duke, 2015). At NTU he teaches courses on the history of the life sciences and the history of information technology.
Dr Janelle Thompson (United States/Singapore) is an environmental microbiologist whose research and teaching drive towards careful stewardship of energy and water. Her ongoing work harnesses bacteria as indicators of water quality and for bioproduction of renewable fuels. She holds graduate degrees from Stanford University and MIT and is newly appointed as an Associate Professor at the Asian School of the Environment, NTU, and Principal Investigator (PI) at the Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering. In previous roles she taught Environmental Engineering at MIT and was Associate Director and PI at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology.
Image: Photo by Hallam Stevens.
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Registration required via Peatix: ecoprints.peatix.com
Fee: $25
Get a hands-on experience in making your very own eco-prints using easily available materials such as flowers and leaves. You will get the opportunity to print on SOYA C(O)U(L)TURE, a bio-leather derived from the byproduct of soy production. This is a Bring Your Own Flowers workshop!
BIOGRAPHY
Artist, technologist, and educator Irene Agrivina (Indonesia) works at the intersection between art, science and technology. A founding member and current co-director of House of Natural Fiber (HONF) in Yogyakarta, she is engaged in collaborative, cross-disciplinary, and multimedia actions responding to social, cultural, and environmental challenges. Her projects have been presented internationally at IFVA New Media Art Festival, Hong Kong (2017); 5th Anyang Public Art Project, South Korea (2016); Ars Electronica Festival, Linz, Austria (2015) and Pixelache Festival, Helsinki, Finland (2013).
Image courtesy the artist.
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This film programme accompanies the exhibition, The Posthuman City. Climates. Habitats. Environments. It involves a selection of 11 artists’ films that expand on the exhibition’s topics, as well as two sci-fi classics.
Screening on loop during opening hours.
26 November – 1 December 2019
Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Waste Flow, 1984
Video, colour, 58 minutes
Waste Flow is one of two videos chronicling Ukeles’s ground-breaking performance Touch Sanitation (1978–80), in which she shook hands with over 8,500 New York City Sanitation workers to appreciate and destigmatise their labour. The film portrays a large grid of coloured photographic prints, and sundry text-based archival materials depicting the performance work.
3 – 8 December 2019
De Rijke/De Rooij, Bantar Gebang, 2000
35mm film, colour, sound, 10 min
This film consists of a single static view of a shanty town built on a vast rubbish dump near Jakarta, Indonesia. It begins in semidarkness before dawn, to broad daylight, and ends with the light shifting from dreamy twilight to daybreak. The entrance to the walled shanty town is framed in the centre, where roads intersect with people walking along them. The structure of the image is revealed and sobering even, as the viewer observes its details and actions in the changing light.
10 – 15 December 2019
Lucy Walker, Waste Land, 2010
Colour, sound, 99 min
This feature documentary follows Vik Muniz, a Brazilian artist and photographer, on an emotional journey from Jardim Gramacho, the world’s largest landfill on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, to the heights of international art stardom. Muniz collaborates with “catadores,” pickers of recyclable materials who live on the landfill, to create photographic images of themselves out of garbage. The process portrays their plight; at the same time, the resulting work highlights their dignity, the transformative power of art, and the beauty of the human spirit.
17 – 22 December 2019
Tejal Shah, Between the Waves, 2012
HD Video, colour and b&w, multi-channel sound
Five-channel video installation, adapted to two-channel (back-to-back loop)
Channel I, A Fable in Five Chapters, 26 min 15 sec
Channel II, Landfill Dance, 5 min
Channel III, Animation, 1 min 40 sec
Channel IV, Moon Burning, 26 min 15 sec
Channel V, Morse Code, 26 min 15 sec
Between the Waves portrays personal/political metaphors—embodiments of the queer, eco-sexual, inter-special, technological, spiritual, and scientific—within sensual, poetic, heterotopic landscapes. Neither bourgeois or asexual, the subjects can be read as assertively political in their local context, where freedom of speech and creative expression often face serious censorship. The immersive environments they are in represent spaces of refuge or expulsion, while their activities feel both archaic and futuristic, filled with urgency and agency. Multiple historic and mythological references are woven and problematised within the video. A Fable in Five Chapters touches on the ecological importance and parthenogenetic nature of corals and reef fish; Landfill Dance explores the potency of the geological, social, and cultural histories embedded in a landfill; Animation and Morse Code move between low-tech animation to the use of iPhone Morse code application; and Moon Burning highlights the cyclic nature of existence and impermanence, and the fluid entities of things and beings.
One-time screening
Thursday, 19 December 2019, 7.30pm
Fritz Lang, Metropolis, 1927
B&w, sound, 2h 30 min
This German expressionist science-fiction drama film presents a futuristic utopian city that exists above a grim underground world populated by exploited workers who runs the machinery that keeps the utopian world above functioning. Freder, the son of the city’s master is intrigued by a young woman named Maria, who brings a group of workers’ children to the city and eventually learns about their living conditions. Freder seeks to be a mediator between the separating classes and this puts him in conflict with his authoritative father. This quickly culminates into a revolution that spells disaster for those involved.
24 – 29 December 2019
Ursula Biemann, Deep Weather, 2013
Video essay, colour, sound, 9 min
This video draws a connection between the relentless reach for fossil resources and the impact on broad indigenous populations in remote parts of the world. Water and oil form the undercurrents of all narrations as they are activating profound change in the planetary ecology. The work documents communities living in the Deltas of the Global South that are building protective mud embankments by hand without any mechanic help. In Bangladesh, such measures are taken when large parts of the country become submerged and water is declared a territory of citizenship for populations forced to live on water.
One-time screening
Thursday, 26 December 2019, 7.30pm
Ridley Scott, Blade Runner, 1982
Colour, sound, 117 min
In the year 2019, Rick Deckard, a Blade Runner and law enforcer, is forced out of retirement to hunt down and kill four illegally bio-engineered humans known as replicants before they kill more people. These replicants are androids that look virtually identical to human beings. They are designed with superior strength and higher intelligence but feel no emotions. Centred on the theme of humanity, the film examines the effects of technology on the environment and society; where other forms of natural life no longer exists and the future is depicted as both high-tech and hopeful in some places but decayed in others.
31 December 2019 – 5 January 2020
Jan Peter Hammer, Tilikum, 2013
HD-video, colour, sound, 45 min
The film charts the entangled history of behaviourism, neuroscience, animal training, interspecies affection, and English-speaking dolphins. Its narrative starts on 25 February 2010 with a 911 call. Seconds after having completed a live performance at SeaWorld Orlando, Florida, a trainer Dawn Brancheau was dragged underwater, drowned and dismembered by Tilikum, a bull orca. He was Tilikum’s third victim. The film reveals details about the entertainment-industrial complex which SeaWorld is a part of, and the connections between the earliest oceanic leisure centres and Cold War military research, from Hammer’s research on the incident.
7 – 12 January 2020
Jonathas de Andrade, O Peixe [The Fish], 2016
16mm film transferred to 2K video, sound, colour, 37 minutes
The film adopts an aesthetic style typically employed in ethnographic films by anthropologists from the 1960s and 70s when recording the cultures and traditions they study. In a series of vignettes shot on 16 mm film, we witness what seems to be an intimate ritual—one actually invented by the artist—among fishermen in a coastal village in North-eastern Brazil. The camera captures individual fishermen as they catch and then tenderly hold their prey to their chest until it stops breathing. There lurks an understanding that this gesture disguises violence as benevolence and suggests a symmetry between the power that humans wield over other life forms.
14 – 19 January 2020
Fabrizio Terranova, Donna Haraway: Story Telling for Earthly Survival, 2016
Colour, sound, 81 min
Donna Haraway is a prominent scholar in the field of science and technology, a feminist, and a science-fiction enthusiast who works at building a bridge between science and fiction. She became known in the 1980s through her work on gender, identity, and technology, which broke with the prevailing trends and opened the door to a frank and cheerful trans-species feminism. Haraway is a gifted storyteller who paints a rebellious and hopeful universe teeming with creatures and futuristic trans-species, in an era of disasters. The filmmaker Fabrizio Terranova visited Donna Haraway at her home in Southern California, producing this rare, candid, intellectual portrait of a highly original thinker.
21 – 26 January 2020
Armin Linke, Pulau-pulau kelapa sawit, 2017
In collaboration with Giulia Bruno and Giuseppe Ielasi.
HD video, colour, sound, 95 min
With footage of oil palm plantations, active peat fires, and olive-related production sites in Java, Sumatra, and Kalimantan (Borneo), the film illustrates why the oil-farming business has grown so rapidly in Asia. Various stages of palm oil production are linked through provocative interviews with residents, activists, scientists, and government officials who express their often-conflicting views on the transformation of Indonesia into a palm oil nation. While the pace of production has positively impacted Indonesia’s GDP, the steep rise in demand for palm oil and its derivatives has dire consequences for Indonesia and its rainforests.
28 January – 2 February 2020
Liam Young, Seoul City Machine, 2019
Digital 3D film, sound, 7 min 41 sec
Seoul City Machine is an abstract sequence of vignettes, fragments and moments of a city where machines and technology are now the dominant inhabitants. It portrays the urban landscape of tomorrow; a city in which all of the fears and wonders of emerging technologies have come true. An AI chatbot voices its own creation story through its City Operating System to the citizens it affectionately manages. Using contemporary Seoul as a visual backdrop, the present-day city is overlaid with cinematic visual effects to depict an autonomous world where drones fill the sky, cars are driverless, streets are draped in augmented reality, and everyone is connected to everything.
4 – 9 February 2020
Karlos Gil, Uncanny Valley, 2019
The film is a dystopian sci-fi story that takes the replacement of waiters in Japanese restaurants by androids as its starting point. It explores complex existential problems due to the Uncanny Valley Hypothesis in the field of robotics: in which an android created too much in the image and likeness of a human faces rejection. The underlying themes of the video deal with the relationship between machines and humans based on the encounter between an android and its doppelgänger. Through this relationship and the implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in everyday life, the film reflects the socio-economic paradigm effects by the technological transformation.
Image: Fabrizio Terranova, Donna Haraway: Story Telling for Earthly Survival, 2016, film still. Courtesy Fabrizio Terranova and Centre de l’Audiovisuel à Bruxelles.
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We are now surrounded by the living products of our own ingenuity. Hybrid fish, transgenic corn, and Wolbachia mosquitoes. We tend to view such creatures with dread, thinking of them as unnatural hybrids that confuse boundaries and cross categories. But what if we found ways of loving our creations more? What if embracing these hybrids allowed us to find new ways of living with and in nature? New institutional, structural, and philosophical relationships to our genetically modified cousins might just help us survive in the Anthropocene.
BIOGRAPHY
Hallam Stevens (Australia/Singapore) is Associate Professor of History in the School of Humanities at Nanyang Technological University and the Associate Director of the NTU Institute of Science and Technology For Humanity. He is the author of Life out of Sequence: a data-driven history of bioinformatics (Chicago, 2013), Biotechnology & Society: an introduction (Chicago, 2016), and the co-editor of Postgenomics: Perspectives on Life After the Genome (Duke, 2015). At NTU he teaches courses on the history of the life sciences and the history of information technology.
Image: On Garages and Genes, or the rise and fall of the California ideology, lecture by Hallam Stevens, Saturday, 23 November 2019, NTU CCA Singapore.
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Registration required via Peatix: impactofinsects.peatix.com
Fee: $12
Insects are crucial to our ecosystem. However, rapid environmental degradation has caused a major decline of their population, affecting humans and other interdependent species. In this workshop, participants will learn the important role that insects play in our ecosystems, fostering a deeper appreciation for them. Using recycled materials, participants will study and create their own six-legged animals through printed images and real insect specimens brought in by Wendy.gnahZ.
This workshop is held in collaboration with Migrant x Me, a registered social enterprise that aims to provide public education and raise awareness of the migrant worker community in Singapore. Participants will work hand-in-hand with the local migrant worker community, and exchange thoughts and experiences on how to share resources more consciously.
BIOGRAPHY
An artist volunteer with Migrant x Me, Wendy.gnahZ (Singapore) is a creator and scientific illustrator. Fascinated with the strange, the dead and the unseen matter in nature, she is driven to learn more about them and the role they play in our ecosystem.
Migrant x Me (Singapore) is a social enterprise that provides public education on the migrant worker community in Singapore through experiential programmes, workshops, and learning journeys. It collaborates with like-minded organisations such as schools, corporates, and NGOs, to provide education to Singaporean youths. It also conducts monthly art sessions for migrant workers at clinics run by its partner NGOs.
Image courtesy the artist.
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Exploring plant consciousness and communication networks in forests, sound artist Tini Aliman has developed a practice that involves collaborating with diverse plant species. Together with her guests, the artist will translate captured biodata into music and aural architecture. Finding ways of interspecies communication through pick-up mics and feedback loops, this performance allows for a deeper contemplation of what it means to share existence and listen to life. Pokoknya is a term in Bahasa Melayu/ Indonesia that translates to “essentially” or referring to the root of an issue, which is a play on the word “tree.” The word could also be read as the “tree belonging to…”
BIOGRAPHY
Tini Aliman (Singapore) is a sound designer, field recordist, and foley artist who works at the intersection of theatre and film sound design, live sound art performance, installation, and collaborative projects. Her research interests include forest networks, aural architecture, plant consciousness, and the variables of data translations via biodata sonification. In 2018, she was nominated for the Best Sound Design category for Life! Theatre Awards for her work for Angkat by Teater Ekamatra. She has been involved in projects and exhibitions across Asia Pacific and Europe. Her recent projects have been presented at NTU CCA Singapore, Biennale Urbana at Caserma Pepe, Venice, and Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei.
Image courtesy the artist.
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Registration required via Peatix: ecoenzyme.peatix.com
Fee: $12
763,100 tonnes of food waste were generated in 2019, accounting for 10% of the total waste generated in Singapore. In this workshop, you will learn how to reduce your environmental impact by upcycling fruit waste into non-toxic multi-purpose cleaning solutions for your home and gardens. Bring home a bottle of eco-enzyme product and cultivate a healthy waste-free lifestyle. You are encouraged to bring your own wide-mouth bottles or containers.
BIOGRAPHY
ZeroWaste Food Singapore (Singapore) is a new ground-up initiative that aims to help Singapore reduce food waste and accelerate our shift towards becoming a zerowaste nation. They raise awareness on food waste issues in Singapore through food waste education and hands-on workshops such as composting, fermenting, and eco-enzyme workshops.
Image courtesy ZeroWaste Food Singapore.
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2.00 – 2.15pm
Introduction by Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director, NTU CCA Singapore, and Professor, NTU ADM, and Laura Miotto, Associate Professor, NTU ADM
2.15 – 3.00pm
Lecture: A Global Art Criticism for a Global Climate Crisis
by Jason Farago, art critic, The New York Times
From Schiller and Hegel onward, art critics and philosophers of aesthetics have defined art in contrast to nature—but that distinction has collapsed in the epoch of the Anthropocene, when humans have become the authors of geology itself. This talk will consider how artists and curators have approached urbanisation, climate change, and extinction in the 21st century, from Hou Hanru’s Zone of Urgency (Venice Biennale, 2003) to Maria Stavrinaki’s Prehistory (Centre Pompidou, 2019). It will also assess the climate externalities of the global art market, and how fairs, biennials, and other nodes of the global art world might reshape themselves in a post-carbon economy.
3.20 – 5.00pm
Presentation and Conversation: Biodiver-city and Urban Futures
with Animali Domestici, artists; Yun Hye Hwang, Associate Professor, School of Design and Environment, NUS; Sarah Ichioka, Desire Lines; and Michelle Lai, TANAH; moderated by Laura Miotto, Associate Professor, NTU ADM
Thinking through co-existence of species and the city as a habitat for diverse life forms, this panel consists of artists, researchers, and practitioners for whom interspecies interaction is at the core of their practice. Animali Domestici studied the existence of pythons in the city of Bangkok, Yun Hye Hwang observes the outcomes of zero intervention on landscapes, Sarah Ichioka looks at social-impact architecture at the intersections of urban planning and ecology, and Michelle Lai advocates for urban farming embedded in local culture and knowledge.
BIOGRAPHIES
Ute Meta Bauer (Germany/Singapore) is the Founding Director of the NTU CCA Singapore, and Professor, School of Art, Design and Media, NTU, Singapore. Previously, she was Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, where she also served as Founding Director of the MIT Program in Art, Culture, and Technology (2005–13). For more than three decades, Bauer has curated exhibitions and presentations, connecting contemporary art, film, video, and sound through transdisciplinary formats including Documenta11 (2002), 3rd berlin biennale for contemporary art (2004), and the US Pavilion for the 56th Venice Biennale (2015).
Animali Domestici (Italy/Thailand), founded by Antonio Bernacchi and Alicia Lazzaroni (both b. 1983), is a duo and design practice based in Bangkok. They focus on the development of experimental and speculative projects, products, and processes, beyond the dichotomies of culture and nature, “infra-ordinary” and “ab-normal,” human and non-human. With admittedly fragmented and heterogeneous sources of inspiration, they are interested in post-anthropocentric spaces, subjects, and materialities, in human and animal behaviour, vernacular crafts and traditions, popular tastes and everyday life references, rendered “lifestyles” and marketing strategies. Animali Domestici is also intensively involved in teaching and research. Lazzaroni and Bernacchi, who obtained a postgraduate Master from ETSAM, Polytechnic University of Madrid, worked in Singapore from 2010 to 2014, and since 2015 have been teaching architectural design at the International Program in Design and Architecture (INDA) of Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.
Jason Farago (United States) is an art critic for the New York Times. He reviews exhibitions in New York and abroad, with a focus on global approaches to art history. From 2015 to 2018 he edited Even, an art magazine he co-founded, whose ten issues are collected in the anthology Out of Practice. He has also been a regular contributor to the Guardian, the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, Artforum, and Frieze. Farago studied art history at Yale University and at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. In 2017 he was awarded the inaugural Rabkin Prize for art criticism.
Yun Hye Hwang (South Korea/Singapore) is an accredited landscape architect in Singapore, and Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the School of Design and Environment, NUS, currently serving as Programme Director of the Bachelor’s programme. She holds two Master’s degrees in landscape architecture, one from Seoul National University in Korea and another from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. Her research, teaching, and professional activities speculate on emerging demands in fast-growing Asian cities by exploring ecological design and management versus manicured greenery and the multifunctional role of everyday landscapes. She focuses on transferring knowledge of urban ecology from academia to practice through active interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaborations.
Sarah Ichioka (United States/United Kingdom/Singapore) is an urbanist, curator and writer, currently leading Desire Lines, a strategic consultancy for environmental, cultural, and social-impact organisations and initiatives. In previous roles, she has explored the intersections of cities, society, and ecology within leading international institutions of culture, policy, and research. Ichioka’s outlook is glocal, interdisciplinary, and future-facing. She has been recognised as a World Cities Summit Young Leader, one of the Global Public Interest Design 100, a British Council/ Clore Duffield Cultural Leadership International Fellow, and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects.
Michelle Lai (Singapore) is an urban farmer and forager, who spends her time tinkering with food experiments at Native, a cocktail bar in Singapore. Interested in issues related to the local agricultural and food system, she explores community-driven innovation and community engagement practices, forming symbiotic relationships through everyday participation, research, and dialogue. Lai is also part of TANAH, an interdisciplinary collective that playfully questions urban living via site-specific interventions within and around the city.
Laura Miotto (Italy/Singapore) is Associate Professor at the School of Art, Design and Media (ADM) at Nanyang Technological University, and co-chair of the MA programme in Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices at ADM. She is also Design Director of GSM Project in Singapore, an international firm specialised in exhibition design originating from Montréal, Canada. With 20 years of experience in the design field, both as a creative director and an architectural designer, Miotto has worked on exhibitions focusing on heritage interpretation and sensorial design strategies in the context of museums, thematic galleries, and public spaces.
Animali Domestici, Bangkok Opportunistic Ecologies (detail), 2019, printed synthetic fabric canvas, embroidery, 300 x 300 cm. Courtesy the artists.
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Registration required via Peatix: visualwildmapping.peatix.com
Fee: $12
Developed for ages 16 – 23.
The presence and roles of different species within urban metropolitan environments are often overlooked or not perceived at all, even if they represent fundamental components of urban ecologies. This workshop aims for a collective sharing of such species through immediate and trans-disciplinary storytelling techniques.
Participants will learn to engage with different graphic composition techniques, utilising both prearranged and personalised elements. They will also be using multiple scales, from fragments of cities to small objects, to expand the range of layers that can be included in the narrative from technical to cultural, superstition to institutional and many more.
BIOGRAPHY
Animali Domestici (Italy/Thailand), founded by Antonio Bernacchi and Alicia Lazzaroni, is a duo and design practice based in Bangkok. They focus on the development of experimental and speculative projects, products, and processes, beyond the dichotomies of culture and nature, “infra-ordinary” and “ab-normal,” human and non-human. With admittedly fragmented and heterogeneous sources of inspiration, they are interested in post-anthropocentric spaces, subjects, and materialities, in human and animal behaviour, vernacular crafts and traditions, popular tastes and everyday life references, rendered “lifestyles” and marketing strategies. Animali Domestici is also intensively involved in teaching and research. Lazzaroni and Bernacchi, who obtained a postgraduate Master from ETSAM, Polytechnic University of Madrid, worked in Singapore from 2010 to 2014, and since 2015 have been teaching architectural design at the International Program in Design and Architecture (INDA) of Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.
Image: Image-making process of BKK Opportunistic Ecologies, 2019. Courtesy the artists.
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By Olivo Miotto, Associate Professor, University of Oxford, Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU), Bangkok
Humans are engaged in a constant battle against infectious diseases. The weapons used by microbes are different from those we employ, but very effective at frustrating our efforts to control and eliminate disease. For example, malaria parasites can rapidly develop mutations that make treatments less effective; the more people use antimalarial drugs, the more dramatic the response from the parasites. The battlefield also plays a decisive role: for pathogens like dengue or malaria, which are transmitted by insects, changes in the environment that affect natural habitats make a profound difference. Can humanity create a disease-free future while protecting the environment?
BIOGRAPHY
Olivo Miotto (Italy/Thailand) is Associate Professor at the University of Oxford based at the Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit in Bangkok, where he specialises in genomic epidemiology of malaria parasites. Miotto is the principal investigator of GenRe-Mekong, a regional genetic surveillance project that uses advanced genomic technologies to produce maps of drug resistance and gene flow in local parasite population, which are used by national malaria control programmes to make strategic decisions on treatments and interventions. He also collaborates with researchers across the globe, analysing thousands of parasite genomes to understand the evolution of antimalarial drug resistance and, ultimately, help support the eradication of this diseases.
Image: Olivo Miotto.
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Programme on 22 February 2020
Livestream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68D4oR2KnE0&feature=youtu.be
10.00am
Start and Finish by Ute Meta Bauer and Vere van Gool
10.15am
Dialogues by Shumon Basar and Ho Rui An on capitalism and the extreme self
11.00am
Lecture by Kirsten Han on emergent medias and speech
11.20am
Film screening by ila
12.00pm
Presentation by Heman Chong on archives as commons
12.15pm
Lecture Screening by Marwa Arsanios on ecofeminism and community
1.00pm
Presentation by Monica Narula on submarine horizons
1.30pm
Performance by Radha “Midnight Masala”
1.55pm
Hologram lecture by Audrey Tang
2.00pm
Conversation between Becca D’Bus and Fellows on solidarity with nature
3.00pm
Discussion by Shumon Basar, Heman Chong, Vere van Gool, Charles Lim, and Zarina Muhammad on sovereignty and indigenous contexts
4.00pm
Lecture by Emeka Ogboh on food diasporas
4.15pm
Reading by Alfian Sa’at on the poetics of migration
4.30pm
Presentations by House of Natural Fiber and the Land Foundation on strategies for combatting climate change
5.00pm
Video Presentation by Angela Dimayuga on culture and cookbooks
5.10pm
Discussion by Ute Meta Bauer, Vanessa Ho, and Prasoon Kumar on trust networks and sustainability
6.00pm
Kitchen Mapping Workshop by Bakudapan Food Study Group
6.30pm
VR Demo by Rindon Johnson on speculative futures
7.00pm
Roundtable by Fellows
7.45pm
Live Music by Bani Haykal
8.00pm
Lecture Screenings by Kunlé Adeyemi, Eleena Jamil, and Bouchra Khalili on the poetics of migration
10.00pm
Start and Finish by Ute Meta Bauer and Vere van Gool
EVENT ADVISORY:
Due to the outbreak of the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19), Ministry of Health (MOH) has advised and implemented safeguards to prevent the spread of the virus. NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore is working closely with Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in responding timely and appropriately, to ensure that NTU CCA Ideas Fest 2020, guest-curated by IdeasCity, New Museum, does not pose any health risks to all involved.
The event is progressing ahead with some adjustments including temperature screenings for all visitors and staff accessing the Centre’s premises, as well as declarations of symptoms and travel history (including details for contact tracing). Staff members are additionally required to monitor and log their temperatures twice daily. These measures are consistent with the current MOH advisory.
The public programme on 22 February will be live streamed. We will share the livestream link shortly when it is available.
NTU CCA Singapore is committed to maintaining a safe environment for all staff, collaborators and visitors, and will continue to comply with official advisories.
NTU CCA Ideas Fest 2020
NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore and the New Museum are pleased to announce participants and collaborators for the second edition of the NTU CCA Ideas Fest, IdeasCity Singapore, guest-curated by IdeasCity, taking place in Singapore and across Southeast Asia from February 15 to 22, 2020.
Building upon the NTU CCA Singapore’s research theme Climates. Habitats. Environments. and IdeasCity’s exploration of the role of art and culture beyond the walls of the museum, IdeasCity Singapore’s residency and public program will examine the urgency of solidarity structures in negating climate change and its impact on Southeast Asia and communities worldwide.
Twenty practitioners have been selected from an international open call for the residency program at the NTU CCA Singapore to develop independent research at the intersection of art and ecology. Throughout the residency, participants will engage in workshops and lectures presented by local artists, practitioners, and community leaders, including Heman Chong, Lynette Chua, Drama Box, Charles Lim, Zarina Muhammad, and Post-Museum, along with organizations such as New Naratif, The Projector, Singapore Community Radio, soft/WALLS/studs, and The Substation.
Residency Fellows include: Francisco Brown (United States), Jane Chang Mi (United States), Kar-men Cheng (Singapore), Lingying Chong (Singapore), Chloe C. Chotrani (Philippines/Singapore), Calvin Chua (Singapore), Fataah T. Dihaan (United States), ila (Singapore), Heider Ismail (Singapore), Lily Kwong (United States), Clarissa Ai Ling Lee (Malaysia), Michelle Lai (Singapore), Kwan Q Li (Hong Kong), Angela Mayrina (Indonesia/United Kingdom), John Kenneth Paranada (Philippines/United Kingdom), Patricia Sayuri (Japan/Brazil), Pen Sereypagna (Cambodia), Shahmen Suku (Singapore/Australia), Ruby Thiagarajan (Singapore), Dat Vu (Vietnam), Nikan Wasinondh (Bow) (Thailand) and Jason Wee (Singapore). For more information please visit: http://www.ideas-city.org.
On February 22, 2020 at NTU CCA Singapore, IdeasCity Singapore will present and broadcast a series of dialogues between local and international artists and community leaders on topics including food sovereignty (Angela Dimayuga and Emeka Ogboh), underground archives (Heman Chong and Monica Narula of Raqs Media Collective), image and power (Ho Rui An and Shumon Basar), ecofeminism (Marwa Arsanios), and traces of migration (Kunlé Adeyemi, Eleena Jamil, Bouchra Khalili and Alfian Sa’at). A sequence of debate circles will examine the roles of solidarity and speculation in addressing climate injustice, featuring interdisciplinary perspectives from speakers such as Becca D’Bus, Kirsten Han, Prasoon Kumar and Zarina Muhammad.
Workshops and conversations facilitated by Bakudapan Food Study Group and a presentation of new VR work by artist Rindon Johnson will invite select audiences to engage directly with artists envisioning pathways to equitable and sustainable futures. The programme will also feature screenings, showings, and remarks by performance artist ila and Digital Minister of Taiwan, Audrey Tang.
Responding to the context of climate crisis, in which artists, activists, and scholars around the world are working today, IdeasCity Singapore will include a series of programmes across Southeast Asia in collaboration with The Forest Curriculum and Nomina Nuda (Los Baños, Philippines), Malaysia Design Archive (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia), House of Natural Fiber (Yogyakarta, Indonesia), The Land (Chiang Mai, Thailand), Sàn Art (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam) and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (Boston, United States).
Facilitated by IdeasCity and workshopped at NTU CCA Singapore with an advisory council of Singaporean community members whose work exemplifies equitable practices, a community agreement was developed that details best practices for achieving an accountable, sustainable, and authentic collaboration in Singapore.
NTU CCA Ideas Fest 2020 is guest-curated by IdeasCity, New Museum, New York.
IdeasCity Singapore is conceived and organized by Vere van Gool with Gabe Gordon, Nicholas Liong, Gregory Ng Yong He, and Karen Wong at the New Museum, as well as Ute Meta Bauer, Karin Oen, Magdalena Magiera, Leong Min Yu Samantha, and Ze-Tian Lim at NTU CCA Singapore.
NTU CCA Ideas Fest is a platform to catalyze the critical exchange of ideas and encourage thinking outside the box. It is a bottom-up approach linking the artistic and the academic with community groups and grassroots initiatives. The pilot edition, Cities for People (2016–17), expanded on artistic interventions and engaged with contemporary issues such as air, water, food, environment, and social interaction in connection to artistic and cultural fields, academic research, and design applications. This second iteration in 2020 coincides with the exhibition The Posthuman City. Climates. Habitats. Environments (November 23, 2019–March 15, 2020) at NTU CCA Singapore.
About IdeasCity
IdeasCity is a collaborative, civic, and creative platform that starts from the premise that art and culture are essential to the future vitality of cities. This international initiative provides a forum for designers, artists, technologists, and policymakers to exchange ideas, identify challenges, propose solutions, and engage the public’s participation. The initiative was cofounded at the New Museum by Lisa Phillips, Toby Devan Lewis, Director, and Karen Wong, Deputy Director. Previous international IdeasCity programs have taken place in Istanbul (2012), São Paulo (2013), Athens (2016), Arles (2017), and Toronto (2018).
About New Museum
The New Museum is the only museum in New York City exclusively devoted to contemporary art. Founded in 1977, the New Museum is a center for exhibitions, information, and documentation about living artists from around the world. From its beginnings as a one-room office on Hudson Street to the inauguration of its first freestanding building on the Bowery designed by SANAA in 2007, the New Museum continues to be a place of experimentation and a hub of new art and new ideas.
Image: Ho Rui An, Green Screen Studio, Medan, c. 1898, 2016. Print mounted on acrylic glass with aluminium backing, 40 x 30.7 in (101.6 x 78.1 cm). Courtesy the artist.
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*Due to the outbreak of the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) and growing health concerns, we regret to announce that the upcoming 2020 Benefit: A Posthuman Night on 27 February 2020 is now cancelled. NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore is grateful for the support received from our patrons and colleagues, and would like to thank the artists who have donated their works as well as the partners who have worked alongside us to realise this event. The Centre is committed to maintaining a safe environment for all our staff, collaborators and visitors, and will continue to comply with official advisories.