Stagings. Soundings. Readings.
Free Jazz II
Stagings. Soundings. Readings. Free Jazz II reviews the performative format that marked NTU CCA Singapore’s inauguration in 2013. Free Jazz 2013 was a series of talks and performances where participants of various disciplines were invited to imagine and envision a new institution and its potential. On its five-year anniversary, the Centre continues advocating for free spaces, celebrating the practice of improvisation, as well as of collective and performative approaches. Discussing ethical values with an expanded sense of community, territorial, and environmental concerns, Stagings. Soundings. Readings. employs an open, multidisciplinary structure that challenges traditional modes of presentation and re-presentation through a range of artistic practices and formats.
Situated within a complex and contemporary understanding of the Centre’s current overarching research topic CLIMATES. HABITATS. ENVIRONMENTS., the featured works link theory and practice, emphasising collectiveness. Today, the planet is witnessing a moment of unprecedented loss of biodiversity, habitat destruction, and cultural transformations. In the face of such agitated times juxtaposed with advanced communicative tools, contemporary social and environmental issues require responses from a collective body, through establishing processes of instigation, negotiation, and collaboration.
Can we learn from what we see as opposed to being merely seduced by images, becoming active participants instead of only passive observers? Stagings. Soundings. Readings. is an enactment between the artists and the audience. The invited artists engage with a less prescribed environment, reflecting on history, collective action, and human interaction.
Located outside the Centre, Maria Loboda‘s sculptural installation is grounded in historical narratives as a reminder that things can change and be taken down overnight, especially by the invisible mechanisms of power. In the Centre’s foyer, Tyler Coburn addresses forms of labour and examines the notion of writing in the 21st century by engaging with complexities of our legal, technological, and geopolitical networks, while Heman Chong analyses motifs of exchange and its boundaries, embracing the space of inter-human connections.
Unfolding in the exhibition space, Cally Spooner brings to Singapore an exercise in building new vocabulary and knowledge through bodily means. Using the space as a laboratory, the work investigates new ways of organising and working together. Alexandra Pirici’s choreography explores the possibility of collectively assembling memories of human and non-human presence on the planet. Carlos Casas presents his long-term multi-format ethnographic research based on the human ecology and richness of one of the world’s highest inhabited villages, Hichigh, located in the Pamir mountain range in Tajikistan. Together with composer Phill Niblock, they will create an audio-visual experience, traversing landscape, soundscape, and contemporary music that changes with every iteration.
In response to the five-year anniversary and by taking the topic of its celebration Free Jazz literally, Ming Wong will stage an improvisational performance. Similarly, Boris Nieslony (Germany), Co-founder of the artist collective Black Market International, will engage with pioneering Singaporean artist Lee Wen with a discussion and performance.
Further probing conventional formats, the accompanying programmes include readings by curator Anca Rujoiu (Romania/Singapore) and poets Peter Sipeli and 1angrynative (both Fiji), as well as Behind the Scenes conversations with contributing artists. In The Single Screen, works by Anton Ginzburg (Russia/United States), Mariana Silva (Portugal/United States), Luke Fowler (United Kingdom), Justin Shoulder and Bhenji Ra (both Philippines/Australia), and others, will add a filmic perspective to the dialogue.
This multitude of celebratory events instigates an active engagement with the now, following a conscious desire to become truly present.
Curated by Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director, NTU CCA Singapore, and Professor, School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University, and Magdalena Magiera, Curator, Outreach and Education, NTU CCA Singapore.
SCHEDULE OF TIME-BASED CONTRIBUTIONS
All works are on view during normal exhibition hours unless otherwise stated.
Friday, 21 September – Tuesday, 6 November 2018
21 September, 7.00 – 11.00pm, during Art After Dark at Gillman Barracks
Heman Chong, A Short Story About Geometry, 2009, durational performance involving a short story (prior registration is required for the first slot on Saturday, 22 September; please email NTUCCAevents@ntu.edu.sg)
Maria Loboda, This Work is Dedicated to an Emperor, 2012–ongoing, installation with 10 Eugenia oleina trees
Cally Spooner, closed workshop (3 – 5 October 2018)
Participation by application, please see below
Saturday, 6 October 2018
12.00 – 6.00pm
OFFSHORE IN SINGAPORE
Radical Philosophy School for Embodied Knowledge
with Maggie Segale (United States), Cally Spooner, and Jesper List Thomsen (Denmark/United Kingdom/Greece)
Saturday, 6 October – Sunday, 14 October 2018
Cally Spooner, DRAG DRAG SOLO, 2016, single-channel projection; Bedtime Beats, 2016, sound installation; TEMP MORT – A lecture for OFFSHORE IN SINGAPORE, 2018
The works on display by Cally Spooner are joined by choreographies carried out by dancer Maggie Segale.
Saturday, 13 October, 1.00 – 3.00pm
Sunday, 14 October, 1.00 – 3.00pm
Saturday, 6 October – Tuesday, 6 November 2018
Tyler Coburn, Richard Roe, 2018, installation
with a Reading by the artist on Tuesday, 16 October 2018, 7.30 – 9.00pm
Wednesday, 17 October – Sunday, 28 October 2018
Carlos Casas in collaboration with Phill Niblock, Avalanche XIV, 2018
Saturday, 20 October 2018, 12.00 – 7.00pm
Avalanche performances by Carlos Casas and Phill Niblock
Sunday, 21 October 2018, 12.00 – 7.00pm
Screening of Movement Of People Working (1973–85) and T H I R (1992) by Phill Niblock
Saturday, 27 October 2018
Late Night Anniversary Party at the Centre
10.00 – 11.00pm
Improvisation by Ming Wong
11.00pm – midnight
Live-soundtrack Environment by Carlos Casas
Wednesday, 31 October – Tuesday, 6 November 2018
27 – 30 October 2018
Closed workshop for Re-Collection (participation by application, please see below)
Alexandra Pirici, Re-Collection, 2018, performative exercise
with performers: Ying Cai, Weixin Chong, Chloe Chotrani, Nina Djekic, Farid Fairuz, Adam Lau, Je Leung, Loo Zihan, Yue Ru Ma, Hanna Mikosch, Yulin Ng, Rachel Nip, Isabel Phua, Jamil Schulze
Wed – Fri: 12.00 – 3.00pm
Sat, Sun, Tue: 2.00 – 6.00pm
The performative exercise remediates, materialises, repeats, hybridises, mutates, amplifies and re-signifies the following natural elements, art-historical references, memories or sensations:
- Raden Saleh, Forest Fire painting
- Swarm movement
- Chun Kai Feng, Totem sculpture
- Sensing movement specific to cats
- Volcano: a feeling of a sudden gathering, abruptly changing the landscape and the atmosphere
- A percussive pulse
- Ezra Pound poem
- Moon and moonlight song excerpt
- Plant life: Bristlecone pine trees, Mangrove trees
- Animal life: gorillas, tigers, eel colonies, green hornbill birdsong
- The sound of waves
- Land reclamation action
- Guanyin sculpture accompanied by a tiger or a dragon
- Antonio Canova, Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss
- Bertold Brecht, Questions from a worker who reads
- Protester holding invisible banner or activist, and artist Seelan Palay performing 32 Years: The Interrogation of a Mirror
- Suzann Victor, Still Waters
- Camille Claudel, Sakuntala
- Nat King Cole, Nature Boy song
CALL FOR APPLICATIONS!
*For Alexandra Pirici*
NTU CCA Singapore is looking for professional performers or students of performing arts, dance, theatre, or performance art to participate in the workshop and performative exercise, Re-Collection (2018), by internationally established artist and choreographer Alexandra Pirici, on the occasion of our upcoming exhibition Stagings. Soundings. Readings. Free Jazz II.
Available slots: 14
Application deadline: Friday, 12 October 2018
The engagement comprises two parts:
- A free 4-day workshop and
- A paid 6-day performance (if selected)
Dates and times:
Workshop:
- Saturday, 27 October 2018: 9.00am – 1.00pm
- Sunday, 28 October – Tuesday, 30 October 2018: 10.00am – 6.00pm
Durational performance:
Wednesday, 31 October – Tuesday, 6 November 2018
(except on Monday, 5 November as the Centre is closed)
- Wed – Fri: 12.00 – 3.00pm
- Sat, Sun, Tue: 2.00 – 6.00pm
Eligibility and logistics:
- You are a professional performer or studying performing arts, dance, theatre, or performance art (any age and gender)
- All those who attend the workshop should be available to continue for the performative exercise, if selected
How to apply:
Please send your CV and documentation material (if available) to ntuccaeducation@ntu.edu.sg before Friday, 12 October 2018
BIOGRAPHIES
Carlos Casas (Spain/France) is a filmmaker and artist whose practice encompasses film, sound, and the visual arts. His films have been screened and awarded in festivals around the world such as the Venice Film Festival; International Film Festival Rotterdam; Buenos Aires International Film Festival; and Mexico International Film Festival; among others. His work has been exhibited and performed in international art institutions and galleries, including Tate Modern, London; Fondation Cartier, Palais de Tokyo, and Centre Pompidou, Paris; and Hangar Bicocca, Milan. He was an NTU CCA Singapore Artist-in-Residence from December 2017 to February 2018.
Phill Niblock (United States) is a New York-based minimalist composer and multi-media musician, and director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation born in the flames of 1968’s barricade-hopping. He has been a maverick presence on the fringes of the avant-garde ever since.
Heman Chong’s (Singapore) practice is located at the intersection between image, performance, situations, and writing. He has held solo exhibitions at Art Sonje Center, Seoul; South London Gallery; Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai; 72-13, Singapore; Calle Wright, Manila; Rossi & Rossi, Hong Kong; and the Swiss Institute, New York. He is currently working on a novel The Book of Drafts to be published by Polyparenthesis in 2019. He was an NTU CCA Singapore Artist-in-Residence from September 2016 to February 2017.
Tyler Coburn (United States) is a New York-based artist and writer whose practice focuses on the entanglement of technology and human subjectivities, information systems and those who make them. Coburn’s work has been presented at Centre Pompidou, Paris; Kunsthalle Wien; South London Gallery; Kunstverein Munich; Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm; Art Sonje Center, Seoul; Sculpture Center, New York; and in the 11th Gwangju Biennale and 10th Shanghai Biennale. Coburn was an NTU CCA Singapore Artist-in-Residence from June to July 2017.
Maria Loboda (Poland/Germany) is a Berlin-based artist who creates enigmatic spaces that dive deep into rich historical narratives and the current state of affairs. She has exhibited at dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel; Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid; Kunstverein Braunschweig; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; among others. She will have solo exhibitions at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, in November 2018, and at Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City, in 2019.
Alexandra Pirici (Romania) is an artist with a background in choreography that works undisciplined across different mediums, both in galleries and in public space. Her work has been exhibited within the decennial art exhibition Skulptur Projekte Munster 2017; the Romanian Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale; Tate Modern, London; New Museum, New York; 9th Berlin Biennale; Manifesta 10; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the Museum Ludwig Cologne; among others.
Cally Spooner (United Kingdom/Greece) is an artist based in Athens. Her installations unfold in evolutionary phases, in conjunction with the delivery of a project or an exhibition. Recent solo shows include Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève; Whitechapel Gallery, London; The New Museum, New York; and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Her book Scripts was published by Slimvolume in 2016 and her novel Collapsing In Parts by Mousse in 2012.
Ming Wong (Singapore/Germany) builds layers of cinematic language, social structure, identity, and introspection through re-telling world cinema and popular culture in videos, installations, and performances. He often “mis-casts” himself in multiple roles in a foreign language, interconnecting concepts of gender, representation, culture, and identity. Wong represented Singapore at the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009). He has had solo exhibitions at leading institutions worldwide and has participated in international biennials, including Performa, New York; Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane; and Sydney Biennale, among others.
Image credit: Alexandra Pirici, Delicate Instruments of Engagement, 2017. Russian Museum St. Petersburg, within Access Point. Courtesy Vadim Frolov.
Public programmes

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Stagings. Soundings. Readings. Free Jazz II participating artists Heman Chong and Maria Loboda will discuss various facets of their practice based on their works in the exhibition. The artists will share their process, from the initial idea of the work through its development and installation, the way in which the context dictates aspects of display, to the challenges and variations the works undergo.
Moderated by Magdalena Magiera, Curator, Outreach & Education, NTU CCA Singapore
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BIOGRAPHIES
Heman Chong (Singapore) is an artist whose work is located at the intersection between image, performance, situations, and writing. He has held solo exhibitions at Swiss Institute, New York (Legal Bookshop (Shanghai), 2018; Rossi & Rossi, Hong Kong (Abstracts from the Straits Times, 2018); Calle Wright, Manila (Never is a Promise, 2018); 72-13, Singapore (Because, the Night, 2017); Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai (Ifs, Ands, Or Buts, 2016); South London Gallery (An Arm, A Leg and Other Stories, 2015); Art Sonje Center, Seoul (Never, A Dull Moment, 2015); P!, New York (Correspondence(s), 2014); FOST Gallery, Singapore (Of Indeterminate Time Or Occurrence, 2014); Amanda Wilkinson Gallery, London (Interview(s), 2012); NUS Museum, Singapore (Calendars (2020-2096), 2011); and Art in General, New York (Common People and other Stories, 2007). He is the Co-director and Founder (with Renée Staal) of The Library of Unread Books which was installed at the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore; the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD), Manila; Casco Art Institute, Utrecht; and Kunstverein, Milan. Chong is currently working on the novel The Book of Drafts to be published by Polyparenthesis in 2019. He was an NTU CCA Singapore Artist-in-Residence from September 2016 to February 2017.
Maria Loboda (Poland/Germany) creates puzzling and enigmatic spaces that lead deep into layers of rich historical narratives, referring to current affairs. In her artistic approach she pursues the antagonism between form and content: the artist underlines the poetic effect of her sculptures and spatial installations with sober aesthetics and an economy of means. She channels historical and philosophical research into formal equations of language and materiality, examining how they act and interact, and what they can express beyond their common readings. Loboda graduated from the Städelschule in Frankfurt under the class of renowned British artist Mark Leckey, recognised for his collage art, music, and videos. Recent solo shows include Kunsthalle Basel; IAC Villeurbanne, Lyon; CAC Vilnius; The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto; and Vulcano Extravaganza, Stromboli. She has also exhibited at dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel; Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid; Kunstverein Braunschweig; and Palais de Tokyo, Paris; among others. Loboda will have solo exhibitions at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt in November 2018, Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City; and Ujazdowski Castle Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, in 2019.
Magdalena Magiera (Germany/Singapore) is Curator, Outreach & Education at NTU CCA Singapore. She was an independent curator, Managing Editor of frieze d/e, and currently Editor of mono.kultur, a quarterly interview magazine. She co-curated Based in Berlin (2011) as well as exhibitions for The Building and SPLACE in Berlin. Magiera was Project Manager of The Maybe Education and Other Programs at dOCUMENTA(13), Kassel (2012) and UNITEDNATIONSPLAZA, Berlin (2006–08). Prior to joining NTU CCA Singapore, she worked for e-flux exhibitions and public programmes in New York City.
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A public programme of Stagings. Soundings. Readings. Free Jazz II.
Image caption: Heman Chong, A Short Story About Geometry, 2009, durational performance involving a short story. Courtesy the artist and FOST Gallery.

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**COME MEMORISE A SHORT STORY**
Be a part of Heman Chong’s durational performance as part of the exhibition Stagings. Soundings. Readings. Free Jazz II.
Heman Chong’s A Short Story About Geometry is a transaction between an instructor and a participant, with the main “protagonist” being a short story written by the artist in 2009. It is the first of seven stories, each approximately 500 words long and specifically written to be transmitted via memorising the story, word for word. The story is taught only verbally by the instructor, who holds the text in her hands.
Participants are requested to not leave the room until the transaction is completed, and they have memorised the story by heart. Chong has promised that this story will never be published neither on paper nor digitally; the content remains known only to the instructor and the participants. As they offer their time and energy to receive the gift of the story, a unique way of ‘reading’ it emerges each time this situation occurs.
Transactions will take place Saturdays and Sundays over the course of the exhibition period, 21 September – 6 November 2018, starting each day from 1.00pm.
To book a slot with your personal coach, please email your preferred day and time to: ntuccaevents@ntu.edu.sg
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BIOGRAPHY
Heman Chong’s (Singapore) practice is located at the intersection between image, performance, situations, and writing. He has held solo exhibitions at Art Sonje Center, Seoul; South London Gallery; Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai; 72-13, Singapore; Calle Wright, Manila; Rossi & Rossi, Hong Kong; and the Swiss Institute, New York. He is currently working on a novel The Book of Drafts to be published by Polyparenthesis in 2019. He was an NTU CCA Singapore Artist-in-Residence from September 2016 to February 2017.
Image caption: Heman Chong, A Short Story About Geometry, 2009. Photo by Ho Rui An. Courtesy the artist.

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Videos will be shown on a continuous loop during opening hours over the course of Stagings. Soundings. Readings. Free Jazz II.
21 – 30 September 2018
Mariana Silva, Digital Specimens: Pointcloudfallout, 2015, 10 min 35 sec
In Digital Specimens: Pointcloudfallout an offscreen dialogue, set in the near future, unfolds on the politics of scanning artefacts and monuments into 3-D. Amidst the consequences of climate change and war, the two characters discuss how digital copies unsettle repatriation claims and colonial tensions under the pretext of digital conservation.
Mariana Silva (Portugal/United States) has exhibited and screened her work at Anthology Film Archives, New York (2018); Gwangju Biennale (2016); Moscow Biennale (2016); and EDP Foundation, Lisbon (2015); among others. Solo shows include For more Information, fluent, Santander (2018); Camera Traps, Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon (2018); Audience Response Systems, Parkour, Lisbon (2014); P/p, Mews Project Space, London (2013); Environments, e-flux exhibition space, New York (2013); and The Organization of Forms, Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon (2011). She was a resident at Gasworks (2016), Zentrum Paul Klee Sommerakademie, Bern (2010), and at ISCP, New York (2009–10). Together with artist Pedro Neves Marques, she runs Inhabitants, an online channel for exploratory video and documentary reporting (inhabitants-tv.org).
2 – 7 October 2018
Justin Shoulder and Bhenji Ra, Deep Alamat, 2014, 4 min
Deep Alamat is a compelling narrative concerning two mythic figures, “OO” and “Beige Cantrell,” drawn from the artists’ collective imaginations. Shoulder’s OO is from his series of Fantastic Creatures that feature sculptural costumes and are animated in live performance, video, and photographic works. OO’s patterns are a form of Aposematism (warning colouration). OO performs a gestural dance drawing from animal signals and carnivalesque spectacle. Initially inspired by a one-hit-wonder pop star, Beige Cantrell derives from Ra’s obsession with digital failure, internet hype, software intelligence, and the online secondary experience. Ra’s understanding of movement, body control, and precision allows for his character to physically represent ideas of recognition software as he scans, detects, and aligns his body accordingly.
Club Ate is a Sydney-based collective founded by artists Justin Shoulder and Bhenji Ra (both Philippines/Australia), who draw from their own experiences and personal relationships as queer, bi-cultural Filipino-Australians in their art making. Justin Shoulder works in performance, sculpture, and video. His main body of work, Fantastic Creatures, comprises invented beings and alter-personas based on interpretations of mythology, folktale, and fantasy. These creatures are embodied through movement and elaborate, hand-crafted costumes and prostheses, forging connections between queer, migrant, spiritual, and intercultural experiences. Bhenji Ra is an interdisciplinary artist who reframes performance through a combination of dance, choreography, video, and installation. Her work is often concerned with the dissection of cultural theory and identity. She uses spectacle and her own personal histories to explore themes of race, sexuality, and gender, giving voice to hidden and marginalised communities, and suggesting alternative modules of community.
9 – 14 October 2018
Anton Ginzburg, Ultraviolet, 2015, 25 min
Ultraviolet explores the issues of perception and phenomenology at the intersection of nature and technology. The film is divided into three parts that correspond to the musical structure and composition. The film was conceived as an ongoing dialogue with its soundtrack composed by Michael Pisaro. The relationship between the cinematic image and the live sound is an experiment in a tradition of expanded cinema. It starts with very high frequencies in the first part, later working its way down into the guitar range. The film addresses the aura of representation through the video footage of various landscapes such as waterfalls, trees, and mountains, both in high- and low-res.
Anton Ginzburg (Russia/United States) is known for his films, sculptures, paintings, and text-based printed work that investigates historical narratives and poetic studies of place, representation, and post-Soviet identity. He earned a BFA from The New School for Social Research and an MFA from Bard College, Milton Avery Graduate School of Arts. His work has been shown at the 54th Venice Biennale; the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston; Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Canada; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; White Columns, New York; Lille 3000, Euralille, France; and the first and second Moscow Biennales. His films have been screened at the Whitechapel Gallery, London; Rotterdam International Film Festival; Dallas Symphony Orchestra; Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas; Les Rencontres Internationales, Paris; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; and New York Film Festival/Projections; among others.
16 – 21 October 2018
Vladimir Erofeev, Pamir: Krysha mira (Pamir: Roof of the World), 1927, 49 min (original: 71 min)
Version with music by Carlos Casas
Vladimir Erofeev (1898–1940) was a pioneer of expedition cinema in the Soviet Union, advocating for increased attention and investment in edifying non-fiction films made to win the interest of broad audiences. In summer 1927, a trek to the mountainous Pamir region, known as the “Roof of the World,” in present-day Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, was organised by the Sovkino studio in co-operation with the Geological Committee. Erofeev worked with prominent geologist Dmitrii Nalivkin and ethnographer Mikhail Andreyev, who had both extensively researched the area and contributed to the planning for the crew’s journey. The film starts off in Moscow, the symbolic centre of the new empire, leading through Samara and Orenburg, to Tashkent and Osh, and further on to the Pamir Mountains of Central Asia. The film features the expedition’s progress through crossing mountain rivers, traversing snowy passes and descending into valleys in bloom, while at the same time recording the daily practices of the Krygz nomads, the religious customs of a Tajik village community, finally entering Dushanbe, observing the city life in the capital of Soviet Tajikistan. The final result demonstrates a portrait of a rich and vibrant region in which the interaction of various cultures have not yet fully streamlined to the requirements of the uniformed all-Soviet world.
23 – 28 October 2018
Phill Niblock, The Magic Sun, 1966, 60 min
Shot in 1966, while the Sun Ra Arkestra was still based in New York City (before relocating to Philadelphia in 1968), the composer and filmmaker Phill Niblock’s The Magic Sun is an obscure artefact of profound beauty. It features frenetic black-and-white footage of the band playing, and an incredible soundtrack. Its existence displays an often understated relationship between two contemporary iterations of the New York avant-garde. Considering the neglect that free jazz usually suffers in the face of its peer, the film could be considered important for that alone, being also a wonderful journey through sight and sound.
Phill Niblock (United States) is an intermedia artist using music, film, photography, video, and computers. Since the mid-60s he has been making music and intermedia performances shown at numerous venues around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Wadsworth Atheneum, Connecticut; the Kitchen, New York; Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels; Institute of Contemporary Art, London; Akademie der Künste, Berlin; ZKM, Karlsruhe; Harvard University’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Cambridge; World Music Institute, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris and Metz; and the Maerzmusik Festival, Berlin. Since 1985, he is the Director of the Experimental Intermedia Foundation (EI) in New York, which he joined as member in 1968. He is the Producer of Music and Intermedia presentations at EI since 1973 (about 1,000 performances) and the curator of EI’s XI Records label. In 1993, he was part of the formation of an EI organisation in Gent, which supports artists-in-residence. Niblock’s music is available on the XI, Moikai, Mode, VonArchive, Touch, and Extreme labels. In 2014, he was the recipient of the John Cage Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in New York. Recently, he presented films and photographs from 1970 and ’71 at Tate Modern, London, with music from the past three years.
30 October – 6 November 2018
Luke Fowler, Country Grammar (with Sue Tompkins), 2017, 18 min 29 sec
The film begins with Tompkins performing at Chem19 Recording Studio. The camera films from a multitude of perspectives, employing rhythmic pans, tilts, and opaque or reflective screens. These distorted views, combined with non-synchronised images of the performer, depart from a 70s “direct cinema” approach to filming musicians. After the ritualistic opening section, the film widens its view to locations outside of the studio. The repetition of actions (picking books from a shelf, re-arranging the contents of a fridge) suggest a searching for a threshold between the filmed image and Tompkins’ own spoken word acts. Taking cues from the performers’ hypnotic yet concrete play with words, the film creates a metaphoric, symbiotic language, where an open-ended approach to montage transcends both reductive imagery and straight documentation.
Luke Fowler (United Kingdom) is an artist, filmmaker and musician based in Glasgow. His work explores the limits and conventions of biographical and documentary filmmaking, and has often been compared to the British Free Cinema of the 1950s. Working with archival footage, photography and sound, Fowler’s filmic montages create portraits of intriguing, counter cultural figures, including Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing and English composer Cornelius Cardew.
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A public programme of Stagings. Soundings. Readings. Free Jazz II.
Image caption: Luke Fowler, still from Country Grammar (with Sue Tompkins), 2017. Courtesy the artist and The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd, Glasgow.

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Choreographer and artist Cally Spooner shares her fascination with language, politics, and philosophy and how societies’ orders and regimes are reflected in her work. She will elaborate on how subjectivity and its bodies are shaped by technological and performative conditions, where language undergoes damage. Together with her collaborators Maggie Segale and Jesper List Thomsen, they will discuss OFFSHORE, a philosophy school for embodied knowledge, its diverse aspects, forms, and the concept of the laboratory.
Moderated by Magdalena Magiera, Curator, Outreach & Education, NTU CCA Singapore
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BIOGRAPHIES
Maggie Segale (United States) is a dancer, artist, and teacher with a focus on performing and interdisciplinary, collaborative work. She graduated from the Juilliard School, where she received multiple awards and fellowships including the 2014 Entrepreneurship Fellowship for her writing on self-image and dance. Segale works with Helen Simoneau Danse, Bryan Arias, and artist Cally Spooner, having collaborated with A24 Films, Center for Innovation in the Arts, Roya Carreras in the upcoming Pussy Riot music video, composer Zubin Hensler, and Matilda Sakamoto. Segale choreographed the opera Role of Reason at the Interarts Festival 2018, and was an Artist-in-Residence at the New Jersey Dance Theatre Ensemble (2016).
Cally Spooner’s (United Kingdom/Greece) spatialisations are continuously evolving in accordance to temporal contexts to render society’s orders and social regimes visible. Her projects look at “language-making” and alternative compositions of communication and movement in today’s context, where speech and attention are automated, the body is hired technology, and subjectivity and communication are consistently outsourced. Addressing the damage chrono-normativity can cause, she works with duration and rehearsals as alternative spaces. Appropriating and referencing genres such as the musical, the novel, or the radio play, Spooner builds a new sonic, literary, and living language to trigger public reaction towards the rapidly changing digital communication and how our understanding of the world changes along. Spooner’s work has been widely exhibited since 2008. Recent solo shows include Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève (2018); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2017); New Museum, New York (2016); and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2016). Recent group shows include Serpentine Gallery, London (2017) and the Geneva Moving Image Biennial (2016–17). Upcoming shows include Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2018); Swiss Institute, New York (2018); and Art Institute Chicago (2019). Spooner’s book Scripts was published by Slimvolume in 2016, and her novel Collapsing In Parts was published by Mousse in 2012.
Jesper List Thomsen (Denmark/United Kingdom/Greece) is an artist and writer. Recent exhibitions and performances include Hollis and Money, ICA, London and Künstlerhaus, Stuttgart; Speak Through You, Hot Wheels Projects, Athens; A Social Body Event, Serpentine Gallery, London; Micro-Composition, Rozenstraat, Amsterdam; The body, the body, the tongue, Reading International; Hand and Mind, Grand Union, Birmingham; The boys the girls and the political, Lisson Gallery, London; and One Hour Exhibition, South London Gallery, London. A book-length collection of his texts will be published in Autumn 2018 by Juan de la Cosa (John of the Thing). He is also a part of the artist collective Am Nuden Da.
Magdalena Magiera (Germany/Singapore) is Curator, Outreach & Education at NTU CCA Singapore. She was an independent curator, Managing Editor of frieze d/e, and currently Editor of mono.kultur, a quarterly interview magazine. She co-curated Based in Berlin (2011) as well as exhibitions for The Building and SPLACE in Berlin. Magiera was Project Manager of The Maybe Education and Other Programs at dOCUMENTA(13), Kassel (2012) and UNITEDNATIONSPLAZA, Berlin (2006–08). Prior to joining NTU CCA Singapore, she worked for e-flux exhibitions and public programmes in New York City.
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A public programme of Stagings. Soundings. Readings. Free Jazz II.
Image caption: Cally Spooner, OFFSHORE in Kingston, 2018. Courtesy the artist.

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OFFSHORE IN SINGAPORE
Radical Philosophy School for Embodied Knowledge
With Maggie Segale, Cally Spooner, and Jesper List Thomsen
OFFSHORE –
A structure that enables EVERYONE
(some of whom will have met before, some
of whom will not have met) to maintain a
state of rehearsal, over a number of days,
in public.
OFFSHORE IN SINGAPORE is a day-long school, which asks what durations, pragmatics, and cooperative arrangements might upset contemporary, patriarchal states of chrono-normativity and chrono-normative accounts of history. Chrono-normativity, in its simplest terms, may be understood as all life being engineered to run on the same clock: a clock usually set by those in power, to grant control, maximum efficiency, and profit. It is a temporal regime which renders slower and more durational activities such as maintenance and care—crucial to our survival— invisible. Through studying forms of “hidden,” often disavowed time, the school day will open up thoughts around maintenance in correlation to a “continual rehearsal” and the concept of “ongoingness;” forms of practical work that are never “done” and are therefore profoundly reciprocal, as they mould and are moulded by its subjects.
Maggie Segale will be exploring the ways in which a body “keeps count” as an alternative to neo-liberal metrics; the counting, measuring, assessing, and financialising of day-to-day life. Through simple, pedestrian movements Segale will work with the group to realise a stored memory or experience in their bodies (say, frustration in a shoulder, or tension in a hand) and then move with it, to find where time and memory embeds and shapes a present through the body. Jesper List Thomsen will lead a session on how to accumulate language within over time, by sharing several durational pieces of writing he has made, as readings and as a discussion. Cally Spooner will give a lecture on deep time geology and cognitive capitalism.
OFFSHORE is an itinerant performance company and school formed by Cally Spooner to draft new vocabulary and terms of how to organise, work, and perform. “Arriving from literature, theatre, and a messy, unrequited love affair with philosophy, OFFSHORE sits somewhere between a philosophy school for embodied knowledge, an engine, an alibi, a backroom, a rehearsal, and some deliberate, unguaranteed, social plumbing.”
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BIOGRAPHIES
Maggie Segale (United States) is a dancer, artist, and teacher with a focus on performing and interdisciplinary, collaborative work. She graduated from the Juilliard School, where she received multiple awards and fellowships including the 2014 Entrepreneurship Fellowship for her writing on self-image and dance. Segale works with Helen Simoneau Danse, Bryan Arias, and artist Cally Spooner, having collaborated with A24 Films, Center for Innovation in the Arts, Roya Carreras in the upcoming Pussy Riot music video, composer Zubin Hensler, and Matilda Sakamoto. Segale choreographed the opera Role of Reason at the Interarts Festival 2018, and was an Artist-in-Residence at the New Jersey Dance Theatre Ensemble (2016).
Cally Spooner’s (United Kingdom/Greece) absurdist scripts, fictions, and installations render visible the choreography of invisible violence in the digital age, reflecting on the erosion of life in neoliberal and technological milieus. Her comedic and dystopian replays of the political, economic, and media rhetoric of our time act as virulent critiques of corporate performance and “chrono-normative history” alike. Considering these as “corrosive” to both life and utterance, she responds by presenting rehearsals and duration as a mode of resistance. Always “in the making,” each exhibition or work by Spooner is a continuation and rehearsal of the last. Evolved over long periods of time, across a variety of venues, constellations of immaterial and mediated matter arrive through writing, objects, drawing, casts of performers, and sound. Recent solo exhibitions include Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève (2018); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2017); New Museum, New York (2016); and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2016). Recent group shows include Serpentine Gallery, London (2017) and the Geneva Moving Image Biennial (2016–17). Upcoming shows include Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2018); Swiss Institute, New York (2018); and Art Institute Chicago (2019). Spooner’s book of Scripts was published by Slimvolume in 2016, and her novel Collapsing in Parts was published by Mousse in 2012.
Jesper List Thomsen (Denmark/United Kingdom/ Greece) is an artist and writer. Recent exhibitions and performances include Hollis and Money, ICA, London and Künstlerhaus, Stuttgart; Speak Through You, Hot Wheels Projects, Athens; A Social Body Event, Serpentine Gallery, London; Micro-Composition, Rozenstraat, Amsterdam; The body, the body, the tongue, Reading International; Hand and Mind, Grand Union, Birmingham; The boys the girls and the political, Lisson Gallery, London; and One Hour Exhibition, South London Gallery. A book-length collection of his texts will be published in autumn 2018 by Juan de la Cosa (John of the Thing). He is also a part of the artist collective Am Nuden Da.
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Part of Stagings. Soundings. Readings. Free Jazz II
Image credit: OFFSHORE IN KINGSTON. Courtesy Cally Spooner.

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NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore is hosting the launch of the Afterall journal issue 46, Autumn/Winter 2018 as well as the latest publication in the Afterall Exhibition Histories series, Artist-to-Artist: Independent Art Festivals in Chiang Mai 1992–98 with the presence of the editors on Saturday, 13 October 2018.
As part of the three-year research and publishing partnership between the Nanyang Technological University and the University of the Arts London started in 2017, issue 46 was conceived in Singapore in a collective effort by the editorial team (Ute Meta Bauer, Ana Bilbao, Charles Esche, Anders Kreuger, David Morris, Anca Rujoiu, and Charles Stankievech). This issue traverses different geographies and contexts, from Southeast Asia to the Americas with a focus on artistic practices that take a clear position against the long-lasting endurance of oppressive systems, be it racial, patriarchal or colonial. The performative body of work of Singaporean artist Lee Wen and his explorations on identity and representation are unpacked in two essays by Alice Ming Wai Jim, Professor and Concordia University Research Chair in Ethnocultural Art Histories, Canada, and Võ H`ông Chu’o’ng-Đài, Researcher at Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong. Yin Ker, Assistant Professor at the School of Art, Design and Media at Nanyang Technical University, Singapore, discusses the internal complexities of the Burmese contemporary art scene in one of this issue’s contextual essays.
The discussion on issue 46 will be preceded by a presentation of Afterall’s history by its Co-founder, Charles Esche, Director of Van Abbemuseum, The Netherlands. Celebrating 20 years of activity this year, Afterall journal is widely acknowledged for its in-depth analysis of artistic practices, contextual essays, engagement with exhibition histories and curatorial practices within various geographical constituencies.
Edited by David Teh and David Morris, Artist-to-Artist: Independent Art Festivals in Chiang Mai 1992–98 is published by Afterall Books in association with Asia Art Archive and the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, United States. The publication is the first comprehensive survey on a series of festivals known as Chiang Mai Social Installation, emerging amidst a regional constellation of artists’ initiatives and independent spaces. The book presents extensive photographic documentation alongside a multivocal account by its participants and commissioned writers.
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SCHEDULE
2.00pm
Introduction by Ute Meta Bauer
2.15 – 3.00pm
20 Years of Afterall, presentation by Charles Esche
3.00 – 4.00pm
Launch of the Afterall issue 46 introduced by editors: Ute Meta Bauer, Ana Bilbao, Charles Esche, Anders Kreuger, David Morris, Anca Rujoiu, and Charles Stankievech
4.15 – 5.00pm
Launch of the publication Artist-to-Artist: Independent Art Festivals in Chiang Mai 1992–98, Afterall Exhibition Histories, introduced by the book’s editors: David Teh and David Morris
5.00 – 5.30pm
Performative Reading by Peter Daniel Sipeli
*Kindly note that 1angrynative also planned on doing a reading, but due to unforeseen circumstances, will not be able to join.
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BIOGRAPHIES
Ute Meta Bauer (Germany/Singapore) is the Founding Director of the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore; Professor at the School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University where she teaches in the MA in Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices; and an editor of Afterall journal. Previously, she was Professor and Dean of the School of Fine Art at the Royal College of Art, London and Associate Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, United States, where she served as the Founding Director of ACT, the Program in Art, Culture, and Technology.
Ana Bilbao (Mexico/United Kingdom) is an editor of Afterall journal and a Research Fellow in Afterall Research Centre in Central Saint Martins (CSM), University of the Arts London. She often teaches at the University of Essex courses in modern and contemporary art history, curating, and the history of exhibition-making. Recently she was a Visiting Scholar in the Art History department at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.
Charles Esche (Netherlands) is Director of Van Abbemuseum, The Netherlands, Professor of Contemporary Art and Curating at CSM, University of the Arts London, and Co-director of Afterall journal and books. He teaches on the Exhibition Studies MRes course at CSM, and at Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, The Netherlands. He received the 2012 Princess Margriet Award from the Eureopean Cultural Foundation and the 2014 Center for Curatorial Studies Bard College Prize for Curatorial Excellence.
Anders Kreuger (Sweden/Belgium) is Curator at M MKA Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp, and an editor of Afterall journal. He was previously Director of the Malmö Art Academy and Exhibitions Curator at Lunds konsthall, Sweden, and a member of the Programme Team for the European Kunsthalle, Cologne. A frequent contributor to Afterall journal, Kreuger has also published numerous catalogue essays and other texts.
David Morris (United Kingdom) is an editor of Afterall journal and the Exhibition Histories series. He is Associate Lecturer on the Exhibition Studies MRes course at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. He has also been working with the Semiotext(e) archive since 2011, with a focus on the 1975 Schizo-Culture conference.
Anca Rujoiu (Romania/Singapore) is a curator and editor of the Afterall journal. Curator for exhibitions and later Manager of Publications, she was part of the founding team at the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore contributing to numerous exhibitions, as well as the public and publishing programme of the institution.
Charles Stankievech (Canada) is founding faculty member of the Yukon School of Visual Arts in Dawson City, Canada; Assistant Professor in the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto; and an editor of Afterall journal. Since 2011, he has been Co-director of the art and theory press K. Verlag in Berlin.
David Teh (Australia/Singapore) is Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore. His writings have appeared in journals including Third Text, ARTMargins, Afterall, and Theory, Culture and Society. His book Thai Art: Currencies of the Contemporary was published by MIT Press in 2017. Teh is part of the curatorial team of the 2018 edition of Gwangju Biennale, South Korea.

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*Kindly note that 1angrynative also planned on doing a reading for this programme, but due to unforeseen circumstances, will not be able to join.
Maps to the Ancestors
by Peter Sipeli
Maps to the Ancestors is a poem by Peter Sipeli that leverages digital tools using sound, imagery, and spoken word. It is part of a solo performance exploring ways of connection with the ancestors premised on the belief that to be without language is to be caught in a state of being without maps, without the vehicle to allow one’s access to the knowledge of the ancestors. The idea that our DNA holds secret to our heritage implies that memory is inherited. We come to know that inside of us are all the memories of our ancestors and the return to the source becomes a spiritual process of an inwards journey into the self to unlock these secret connections. With this performative reading of Maps of the Ancestors, Sipeli hopes to map a journey into his past and across his different heritage and bloodlines (Fijian, Tongan, Samoan, Pacific Islander, Scottish, etc.) As a second generation, Pacific urbanite, and though he does not have language other than English, Sipeli believes he would be able to find lost parts of himself through his poetry and spoken word performances.
Peter Daniel Sipeli (Fiji) is passionate about storytelling because he believes that stories humanise people by showing that we all face the same choices, struggles, and triumphs. A well-known spoken word artist, he was instrumental in the revitalisation of the Fiji SLAM in Suva. He founded the Poetryshop Fiji to fill a development gap for new and emerging local writers, as well as the only online Pacific islands arts magazine ARTalk. Having worked for 10 years with NGOs as a human rights and LGBTQ activist, he has also worked in the Fiji Arts Council and in the Dean’s Office at the Fiji School of Medicine. Additionally, he managed the popularised ROC Sunday street market.

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Please register via Peatix: https://tylercoburntohgarden.peatix.com/
During his 2017 residency at NTU CCA Singapore, Tyler Coburn developed a relationship with Singapore’s Toh Garden, which cultivates many orchid hybrids named after politicians and celebrities. In turn, Coburn legally named one of the Garden’s hybrids “Richard Roe,” a name used in American and British case law when the actual name of a person cannot be given. This session will start at NTU CCA Singapore, where Coburn will introduce his orchid hybrid and elaborate on the conventions of naming, then conclude at Toh Garden with a tour led by Zhuo Hongyi.
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BIOGRAPHIES
Tyler Coburn (United States) works with writing, installation, performance, and sound, addressing historical and emergent forms of labour: from the artist to the data miner, the factory worker to the cognitariat. Coburn works in a research-oriented, interdisciplinary, and occasionally collaborative manner, involving the participation of those working within the fields in question. No matter the focus of a given project, there are certain questions that drive Coburn’s practice at large: What does creative (or “uncreative”) writing look like in the 21st century? How can an artwork engage the complexities of our legal, technological, and geopolitical networks? Finally, what becomes of “subjectivity” and “the self” within post-human discourse? Coburn received a BA in Comparative Literature from Yale University and an MFA from the University of Southern California. He also served as a fellow in the Whitney Independent Study Program from 2014–15. His work has been presented at South London Gallery; Kunstverein Munich; Kunsthalle Wien; Western Front, Vancouver; Grazer Kunstverein; UCCA, Beijing; and Sculpture Center, New York. Coburn participated in the 11th Gwangju Biennale and the 10th Shanghai Biennale. His writing has appeared in e-flux journal, Frieze, Dis, Mousse, and Rhizome. Coburn was an NTU CCA Singapore Artist-in-Residence from June to July 2017.
Zhuo Hongyi (Singapore) is Project Manager at Toh Garden. Raised in a family of commercial orchid growers, Zhuo has a BSc in Life Sciences from National University Singapore. At Toh Garden, he is mainly responsible for the orchid projects, securing orchid supplies and designing orchidscapes for clients. Zhuo has managed projects with the National Orchid Garden, Gardens by the Bay, Orchid Country Club, and UBS AG, among others.
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A public programme of Stagings. Soundings. Readings. Free Jazz II.
Image caption: Tyler Coburn, Richard Roe, 2018, orchid hybrid legally named “Richard Roe” by the artist, custom glass pots fabricated by Verreum, performance and related texts. Commissioned by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary. Courtesy the artist.

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Tyler Coburn will read from his forthcoming book, a fictional memoir of the legal person “Richard Roe” that accompanies his orchid hybrid of the same name. This text, a hybrid of an essay and stand-up comedy, describes a world populated by legal fictions that creep around the margins of selfhood—and increasingly dictate the terms of economic and political process. Coburn will read the first chapter of this book, which discusses everything from the ancient trials of objects to recent arguments for the legal personhood of rivers and other elements of the natural world.
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BIOGRAPHY
Tyler Coburn (United States) works with writing, installation, performance, and sound, addressing historical and emergent forms of labour: from the artist to the data miner, the factory worker to the cognitariat. Coburn works in a research-oriented, interdisciplinary, and occasionally collaborative manner, involving the participation of those working within the fields in question. No matter the focus of a given project, there are certain questions that drive Coburn’s practice at large: What does creative (or “uncreative”) writing look like in the 21st century? How can an artwork engage the complexities of our legal, technological, and geopolitical networks? Finally, what becomes of “subjectivity” and “the self” within post-human discourse? Coburn received a BA in Comparative Literature from Yale University and an MFA from the University of Southern California. He also served as a fellow in the Whitney Independent Study Program from 2014–15. His work has been presented at South London Gallery; Kunstverein Munich; Kunsthalle Wien; Western Front, Vancouver; Grazer Kunstverein; UCCA, Beijing; and Sculpture Center, New York. Coburn participated in the 11th Gwangju Biennale and the 10th Shanghai Biennale. His writing has appeared in e-flux journal, Frieze, Dis, Mousse, and Rhizome. Coburn was an NTU CCA Singapore Artist-in-Residence from June to July 2017.
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A public programme of Stagings. Soundings. Readings. Free Jazz II.
Image caption: Tyler Coburn, Richard Roe (detail: drawing by Krisia Ayala), 2018, orchid hybrid legally named “Richard Roe” by the artist, custom glass pots fabricated by Verreum, performance and related texts. Commissioned by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary. Courtesy the artist.

3 Nov 2018, Sat 10:00 AM - 01:00 PM
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Registration is required via Peatix:
20 October — https://dailypractice.peatix.com/
3 November — https://dailypractice3nov.peatix.com/
Rooted in the varied modes of performance by artists within the exhibition Stagings. Soundings. Readings. Free Jazz II, this workshop explores activities and strategies to stretch our daily embodied and sensory awareness. It will facilitate participants in discovering and physicalising the building blocks utilised as material for the various performative modalities experienced. Moreover, through play and tuning in to somatic (bodily) knowledge, the over-riding exhibition theme of climate change can be proactively dialogued and questioned.
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BIOGRAPHIES
Kelly Reedy (United States/Singapore) has worked in Singapore for over 18 years as an artist and educator, holding an MA in Education, Hunter College, and an MA in Art Therapy, LASALLE College of the Arts. She has exhibited her artworks internationally in Paris, Chicago, and Berlin, as well as locally at Jendela Visual Arts Space, Esplanade, Singapore Tyler Print Institute, and Alliance Française. Reedy has developed educational resources for the National Gallery Singapore and trained teachers at the National Institute of Education, specialising in visual arts education in museums and galleries. Reedy is a long-term collaborator for NTU CCA Singapore’s workshop for teachers.
Susan Sentler (United States/United Kingdom/Singapore) is a choreographer, teacher, researcher, director, dramaturg, and performer. She was senior lecturer at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance for 18 years and has taught globally in the field of dance for over 30 years. Sentler performed with the Martha Graham Ensemble, and has recently returned to performing in works by artists such as Tino Sehgal, Xavier le Roy, and Jérôme Bel. Her multi-disciplinary practice is anchored by a honed somatic relationship to image, working in gallery and museum contexts to create “responses” or “activations” for specific visual artworks as well as generating personal durational installations. She is a lecturer at the School of Dance & Theatre at LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore.
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A public programme of Stagings. Soundings. Readings. Free Jazz II.
Image caption: Irina Baldini in stroke/sky/stroke. Courtesy Susan Sentler.

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Artist Carlos Casas together with eminent composer and filmmaker Phill Niblock will discuss their approaches to film, video, and soundscapes. Sharing their experience of collaborating on Avalanche—the project on view in Stagings. Soundings. Readings. Free Jazz II—Casas and Niblock will expand on notions of improvisation and site-specificity.
The work Avalanche documents Hichigh, a village in Tajikistan and one of the highest located villages in the world. With each iteration and presentation, the work will change according to the context and space it’s being presented.
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BIOGRAPHIES
Carlos Casas (Spain/France) works with film and the sonic. His last three films have been awarded in festivals around the world including Torino, Madrid, Buenos Aires, and Mexico City. He has recently concluded a trilogy of films, END, dedicated to the most extreme environments on the planet: Patagonia, Aral Sea, and Siberia. Avalanche is a lifelong project and site-specific film based on one of the highest inhabited villages in the Pamirs, a mountain range in Central Asia. His films have been shown in festivals such as the Venice Film Festival; Rotterdam Film Festival; FID Marseille; BAFICI Buenos Aires; Jeonju International Film Festival, South Korea; Documenta Madrid; FICCO Mexico; and others. His works have been presented at institutions including Tate Modern, London; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Hangar Bicocca, Milan; Bozar Bruxelles; Oi Futuro, Rio de Janeiro; MIS São Paulo; Centre Pompidou and Fondation Cartier, Paris; Centre Cultura Contemporanea, Barcelona; MALBA, Buenos Aires; and GAM, Torino. He was Creative Director of Colors Music and Films from 2005–08 where he developed audio-visual projects and music research in various regions around the world. He is Co-founder of Map Productions and the visual sound label Von Archives. Casas is Visiting Professor at Dartmouth College, United States, and ECAM, the Madrid film school. He was an NTU CCA Singapore Artist-in-Residence from December 2017 to February 2018.
Phill Niblock (United States) is an intermedia artist using music, film, photography, video, and computers. Since the mid-60s he has been making music and intermedia performances shown at numerous venues around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Wadsworth Atheneum, Connecticut; the Kitchen, New York; Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels; Institute of Contemporary Art, London; Akademie der Künste, Berlin; ZKM, Karlsruhe; Harvard University’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Cambridge; World Music Institute, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris and Metz; and the Maerzmusik Festival, Berlin. Since 1985, he is the Director of the Experimental Intermedia Foundation (EI) in New York, which he joined as member in 1968. He is the Producer of Music and Intermedia presentations at EI since 1973 (about 1,000 performances) and the curator of EI’s XI Records label. In 1993, he was part of the formation of an EI organisation in Gent, which supports artists-in-residence. Niblock’s music is available on the XI, Moikai, Mode, VonArchive, Touch, and Extreme labels. In 2014, he was the recipient of the John Cage Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in New York. Recently, he presented films and photographs from 1970 and ’71 at Tate Modern, London, with music from the past three years.
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A public programme of Stagings. Soundings. Readings. Free Jazz II.
Image caption: Carlos Casas, Avalanche, 2009–ongoing, film, sound performance. Courtesy the artist.

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BIOGRAPHIES
Alexandra Pirici (Romania) is a classically-trained dancer and choreographer who naturally transitioned into the art world as her works grew increasingly experimental. Her performative installations straddle contemporary dance, performance, body art, and sculpture, while acknowledging the dramatic shifts in contemporary understanding of labour and the body, revealing the influence of present geopolitical realities. With choreographed pieces that work undisciplined, spanning across mediums and spatial contexts, Pirici addresses ideas of history, collective body, the rise of technology’s agency over the “human,” and the invisible structures and hidden mechanisms of power. The artist’s use of the human living body as a medium is a reflection on and exploration of such ideas and their impact on the “human” subject. Pirici has exhibited widely, including at the decennial art exhibition Skulptur Projekte Münster 2017; the Romanian Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale; Tate Modern, London; New Museum, New York; the 9th Berlin Biennale; Manifesta 10; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum Ludwig Cologne; Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin; the 12th Swiss Sculpture Exhibition; the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin; and the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw; among others. In 2015 she received the Excellency Award from the National Dance Centre, Bucharest.
Ute Meta Bauer (Germany/Singapore) is Founding Director, NTU CCA Singapore and Professor, NTU ADM. Previously, she was Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, where she also served as Founding Director of the MIT Program in Art, Culture, and Technology. For more than three decades, Bauer has worked as curator of exhibitions and presentations, connecting contemporary art, film, video, and sound through transdisciplinary formats. She publishes regularly on artistic and curatorial practice. Bauer served as expedition leader of TBA21–Academy The Current 2015–18 exploring the Pacific Archipelago and littorals that are most impacted by climate change and human interventions in their environments.
Susan Sentler (United States/United Kingdom/Singapore) is a choreographer, teacher, researcher, director, dramaturg, and performer. She was senior lecturer at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance for 18 years and has taught globally in the field of dance for over 30 years. Sentler performed with the Martha Graham Ensemble, and has recently returned to performing in works by artists such as Tino Sehgal, Xavier le Roy, and Jérôme Bel. Her multi-disciplinary practice is anchored by a honed somatic relationship to image, working in gallery and museum contexts to create “responses” or “activations” for specific visual artworks as well as generating personal durational installations. She is a lecturer at the School of Dance & Theatre at LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore.
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A public programme of Stagings. Soundings. Readings. Free Jazz II.
Image caption: Alexandra Pirici, Delicate Instruments of Engagement, 2017. Russian Museum St. Petersburg, within Access Point. Photo by Vadim Frolov. Courtesy the artist.

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An artistic medium praised for its immediacy, performance art has relied on the mediated document for writing its history. Photographs and video recordings were the privileged access points to works defined by liveness and ephemerality. In this session, we will focus on forms of documentation produced by artists and intimately connected to their performance works. In an act of collective reading and listening, we will explore interviews, scores, and notebooks as performative means of artistic self-archiving. No prior reading is required for participants in this session.
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BIOGRAPHY
Anca Rujoiu (Romania/Singapore) is a curator and editor. Curator for exhibitions and later manager of publications, she was part of the founding team of the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore contributing to numerous exhibitions, the public and publishing programme of the institution between October 2013 and January 2018. Together with Ute Meta Bauer and Lee Weng Choy, she co-curated the Centre’s inaugural programme Free Jazz (2013–14). She is the co-editor of Place.Labour.Capital (NTU CCA Singapore and Mousse Publishing, 2018), Becoming Palm (NTU CCA Singapore and Sternberg Press, 2017), and Theatrical Fields (NTU CCA Singapore and Koenig Books, 2016), amongst others. Since 2010, she joined FormContent, a curatorial initiative adopting a subjective attitude towards cultural production and experimenting with curatorial formats. She is currently teaching at LASALLE College of the Arts Singapore.

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In this performative lecture, renowned performance artist Boris Nieslony will talk about the performance art archive the Black Kit in Cologne, which he started in 1981. Exploring how such an endeavour generates theoretical and practical knowledge, Nieslony will share about how the archive keeps growing, amassing documentation pertaining to over 4000 artists, theorists, groups, networks, non-profit organisation, and artist-run spaces, as well as specific local and international performance projects, including in public space. In response to the Independent Archive established in Singapore by Lee Wen, Nieslony will also touch upon the importance of creating networks worldwide to support each other’s efforts and exchange valuable information and knowledge.
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BIOGRAPHY
Boris Nieslony (Germany) has worked intensively as a performance artist, curator, archivist, and independent scholar, staging various installations, interventions, and artist projects since the 1970s. He is the Founder of Black Market International, a performance group that meets regularly in various configurations to realise group performance projects. And also the instigator of the ASA foundation, a platform for a self-organising rhizomatic network of performance artists and theorists. Nieslony is recognised as one of the most prolific and significant contributors to performance art. He creates unpredictable and unrepeatable improvisational performance works that manifest “an encounter and its effects.”
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A public programme of Stagings. Soundings. Readings. Free Jazz II.
Image credit: Boris Nieslony and Black Market International (BMI), Action on Route, Mexico City, 2003. Photo by Antonio Juarez. Courtesy BMI.