Loo Zihan
Residency period
16 June – 9 September 2016
About
Loo Zihan (b. 1983, Singapore) is a performance and moving-image artist and educator. He is interested in the affectual transference and transmutation of shame in his work. His recent body of work strives to expose the tension between the flesh of the body with the ‘bone’ of the archive. He emphasises the labour and malleability of memory through various representational strategies that includes performance re-enactments, essay films and data visualisation.
Loo’s moving-image works have been selected and screened at various international film festivals such as the Pusan International Film Festival, South Korea (2009). His co-directorial debut feature Solos was also selected the Deauville Asian Film Festival, France (2008) and the AFI Festival, Los Angeles (2007). Most notably, Solos was awarded the Nuovo Sguardi award at the 23rd Turin GLBT Film Festival, Italy (2008). Loo’s solo performances have also been presented at various performance events such as the Macau International Performance Art Festival (2011) and Rapid Pulse International Performance Art Festival, Chicago (2012). Loo also participates actively as a performer and collaborator in projects by other artists. As a collaborator he has worked with ‘The Necessary Stage’ on various theatrical projects as a multimedia designer and artist, this includes inter-cultural productions with participants from countries such as Australia and Croatia.
Focus
Public programmes

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Loo Zihan presents his ongoing research into Dr Ray Langenbach’s personal archive, comprising over 20 years of documents and archival material on performance art in Southeast Asia. Dr Langenbach, Professor of Performance Art and Theory, University of the Arts, Helsinki, has for the past 22 years been documenting Southeast Asian aesthetic performance (theatre and performance art) and social performance (demonstrations, elections, riots, daily life) and the contexts in which they take place. This is articulated in the performance experiment ‘I Am LGB’, commissioned by the Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA) and performed over three days, from 18 – 20 August 2016. Developed in collaboration with Dr Langenbach, Lee Mun Wai, Shawn Chua Ming Ren and Bani Haykal, the work questions notions of identity and social as well as existing power structures.
Post-performance, Loo’s studio session will serve as a moment of reflection and discussion on the collaborative development of ‘I Am LGB’ and its reception by the audience.
Loo Zihan is a performance and moving-image artist and educator. He is interested in the affectual transference and transmutation of shame in his work. His recent body of work strives to expose the tension between the ‘flesh’ of the body with the ‘bone’ of the archive. He emphasises the labour and malleability of memory through various representational strategies that include performance re-enactments, essay films and data visualisation.
Image credit: Kelvin Chew.