NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore

In this episode, we invited curator Syaheedah Iskandar to explore the multidimensional practice of Artist-in-Residence Irfan Kasban. This conversation marks a full-circle moment for the two as they first collaborated for Hutang Belantara, a public programme at NTU CCA Singapore back in 2016 when Syaheedah was Curatorial Assistant with us at the Centre. The two trace through Irfan’s background that has seen him wear varying hats, weaving through theatre and sound, and addressing what drew to the arts. Irfan also opens up about the significance of curiosity in guiding his working process that is largely collaborative, open, and ever-evolving. He also shares about the various communal activities he held in the studio that he has affectionately called Port of Reciprocity, also the title of his long-term research project. The transdisciplinary practice of Irfan Kasban weaves together multiple roles such as playwright, theatre director, lighting and sound designer, and multimedia artist. Often engaging in collaborations with fellow artists as a method of experimenting across mediums, Irfan creates intricate worlds guided by a principle of visceral ephemerality in an attempt to redefine boundaries between performance, artwork, artist, and audience.  Syaheedah Iskandar is currently Assistant Curator at Singapore Art Museum. She works with vernacular ideas of seeing, thinking, and being. Drawing from Southeast Asia’s visual culture(s), she is interested in the entanglements between the unseen, the hypervisual, and their translations from material to new media practices. She holds an MA in History of Art and Archaeology from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Contributors: Irfan Kasban, Syaheedah IskandarEditor: Magdalena MagieraProgramme Manager: Nadia AmalinaSound Engineer: Ashwin MenonIntro & Outro Music: Zachary ChanCover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine Tan 

This episode features a conversation between Artist-in-Residence Shahmen Suku and Singaporean artist Moses Tan. With disparate practices, the two find synergy as they uncover shared ground in their drawn-out path in becoming a visual artist. They discuss how Shahmen’s experience growing up as a minority in Singapore shaped his practice that employs humour and double-meanings to confront difficult truths. Shahmen also ponders upon the position he occupies in straddling the lines between performance within theatre, performativity, and performance within the visual arts. Shahmen Suku is a performance artist who works between Sydney and Canberra, Australia. Drawing from his personal experience of growing up in a matriarchal Tamil household in Singapore, Shahmen’s body of work explores multifaceted perspectives on migration, displacement, race, culture, colonisation, and gender identity. The personal, poignant, and irreverent narratives generated around these themes are conveyed through performances, installations, and video works and they are often voiced by his alter ego, Radha. Moses Tan is a Singapore-based artist whose work explores histories that intersect with queer theory and politics while looking at melancholia and shame as points of departure. Working with sculpture, drawing, video and installation, his interest lies in the use of subtlety and codes in the articulation of narratives. He currently programs and runs starch.sg, an artist-run space in Singapore. Contributors: Shahmen Suku, Moses TanEditor: Magdalena MagieraProgramme Manager: Nadia AmalinaSound Engineer: Ashwin MenonIntro & Outro Music: Zachary ChanCover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine Tan 

In this episode, we entrusted curator and scholar Karin Oen to converse with our Artist-in-Residence Yanyun Chen. The two come together for a fascinating conversation revolving around the significance of the studio in Yanyun’s practice, revealing how it can act as a stable space for generative experimentation, exploration, and inspiration during transitional periods. Throughout the exchange, Yanyun divulges the importance of materiality in her practice, how the residency has influenced new modes of thinking and working, and the innocuous comments that kindled her interest towards her current research project. They also touch upon Yanyun’s concurrent practices, contemplating the value in allowing them to unfold and weave together naturally. Dr. Yanyun Chen is a visual artist who works across drawings, new media, and installation. Her artistic practice unravels fictional and philosophical notions of embodiment exploring how heritage and legacies are grounded in the physicality of human and botanical forms.Dr. Karin Oen is a curator and art historian based in Singapore where she is Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of Art History at NTU’s School of Humanities. She works on historical, modern, and contemporary creative practices related to the transcultural and the transmediatic. Contributors: Yanyun Chen, Karin OenEditor: Magdalena MagieraProgramme Manager: Nadia AmalinaSound Engineer: Ashwin MenonIntro & Outro Music: Zachary ChanCover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine Tan

In this episode, curator Syed Muhammad Hafiz digs deep into the practice of Artist-in-Residence Ben Loong. We are pleased to bring the two of them back together since their last collaboration two years ago for Squaring the Circle, Ben’s solo exhibition curated by Hafiz. In this contemplative conversation, the two trace their concurrent professional growth over the years of collaboration and friendship, all while delving into Ben’s ever evolving artistic sensibilities and interests. They address the significance of the studio space for the development of a material-based practice and how the discipline necessary to upkeep such a space seeps into Ben’s everyday routine. Throughout the conversation, they also weave in discussions on the perennial question of form versus function, the future of ceramics in the current era of technological emphasis, as well as other core themes underlying Ben’s practice such as the value of labour, craftsmanship, and aesthetics in the art world.  Working at the intersection of painting and sculpture, Ben Loong explores themes and questions of utility within traditional craftsmanship. Through the manipulation of industrial and mass-produced materials and the observation of textures and patterns in the everyday, his practice attempts to challenge the value systems embedded in our material culture. Syed Muhammad Hafiz is a curator and art historian based in Singapore. He has worked in the arts and in heritage museums over the past decade and also curated for galleries in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Besides curating exhibitions, he has also spoken at various symposiums and frequently contributes his writings to publications on Southeast Asian art.Contributors: Ben Loong, Syed Muhammad HafizEditor: Anna LovecchioProgramme Manager: Nadia AmalinaSound Engineer: Ashwin MenonIntro & Outro Music: Zachary ChanCover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine Tan

Kicking off the first episode of our third season, we hand the microphone over to acclaimed playwright, writer, and poet Alfian Sa’at for a conversation with our Artist-in-Residence Zulkhairi Zulkiflee. In this insightful exchange dotted with amusing observations on Singaporean Malay slang, the two trace Zulkhairi’s artistic trajectory—from his educational background to his ongoing inquiry into Malay social ontology and into the politics of representation. Throughout the conversation, they discuss the trope of the “Malay boy” that features prominently across Zulkhairi’s body of work, addressing questions of agency, empowerment, and the subject-object dichotomy in art. Zulkhairi also opens up about his current research on the Malay slang word “world” which he frames as a concept and a creative proposition to find new ways of looking at historical representations of minorities. Before they take it a way, a quick introduction.With a body of work spanning across film, installation, and photography, the artistic practice of Zulkhairi Zulkiflee is committed to exploring Malay identity and its social ontology. His lens-based artworks investigate themes of Malayness in relation to local and global contexts, social agency, knowledge production, and notions of taste. Zulkhairi is also an educator, independent curator, and founder of Sikap, a project group that engages with the creative value of ‘let do’ in the form of organizational experiments. Alfian Sa’at is the Resident Playwright of the theatre company Wild Rice. His published works include collections of poetry, short stories, flash fiction, and plays. In 2001, Alfian won the Golden Point Award for Poetry as well as the National Arts Council Young Artist Award for Literature. In past years, Alfian has received the Best Original Script at the Life! Theatre Awards four times and was nominated for the Singapore Literature Price three times. Contributors: Zulkhairi Zulkiflee, Alfian Sa'atEditor: Anna LovecchioProgramme Manager: Nadia AmalinaSound Engineer: Ashwin MenonIntro & Outro Music: Zachary ChanCover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine Tan

In this episode, we hand over the microphone to curator Tamares Goh to interview our Artist-in-Residence Wang Ruobing. Ruobing and Tamares share a long history of working together throughout their careers, one that goes back to 2004 and will continue on in the years to come. This conversation between peers shines a spotlight on Ruobing’s practice rooted in materiality, the importance of found objects in her art-making process, as well as her ongoing research into the symbiotic relationship between environmental sciences and visual arts. They also touch upon the collaborations Ruobing has activated with deep-sea divers and marine scientists, and how these collaborations continue to shape the trajectory of her artistic practice.Committed to exploring new ways of seeing and methods of knowledge production, the artistic practice of Dr Wang Ruobing stretches from drawing to photography, sculpture, kinetic art, and installation. With a diverse range of methodological approaches to present her ideas, her body of work addresses environmental issues and transcultural discourses on identity and hybridity.Tamares Goh is the deputy director of Audience Engagement at National Gallery Singapore, overseeing festivals like Light To Night, Painting With Light and the Gallery’s Childrens Biennale. She was the former head of Visual Arts at Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay, and co-headed the Programming department overseeing festivals and programmes. In 2017, she was the Producer for the Singapore Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale.Contributors: Wang Ruobing, Tamares GohEditor: Anna LovecchioProgramme Manager: Nadia AmalinaSound Engineer: Ashwin MenonIntro & Outro Music: Yuen Chee WaiCover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine Tan

This episode features a conversation between two multidisciplinary creatives who are also previous collaborators: Artist-in-Residence Zachary Chan and Singaporean playwright Joel Tan. The two come together for a fascinating exchange revolving around Zachary’s research into the religion he grew up with, Pentecostal Christianity, as well as the practice of spiritual mapping and strategic-level spiritual warfare. This research thread unraveled out of Restless Topographies, a project they developed together during a residency at the Goethe Institute Singapore last year. Throughout the conversation, they weave together personal experiences, insights, and revelations, with discussions of the historical anecdotes and religious texts that Zachary has been poring over during his time in residence at NTU CCA Singapore. They also contemplate upon Zachary’s proclivity for collaborations and how the residency has afforded him time to focus on his solo artistic practice. Spanning several mediums, the work of Zachary Chan reflects his composite background in visual communications, graphic design, and sonic arts. His practice often unfolds through collaborations with other artists and he has written music and designed sound for experimental films, theatre plays, video games, storytelling, and art installations.Joel Tan is a writer and performer based between London and Singapore. His interdisciplinary practice examines the ways in which politics distort the personal and spiritual, exploring subjects ranging from colonial history, nature, queer experience, and contemporary Singapore life. Contributors: Zachary Chan, Joel TanEditor: Anna LovecchioProgramme Manager: Nadia AmalinaSound Engineer: Ashwin MenonIntro & Outro Music: Yuen Chee WaiCover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine Tan

In this episode, we invited Viknesh Kobinathan to traverse the trajectory of our Artist-in-Residence Min-Wei Ting’s filmic practice. This conversation marks a full-circle moment for the pair as they first collaborated at the beginning of their careers at the Singapore Short Cuts programme in 2014. In this conversation, they exchange memories that reveal shared notions of space and architecture, while contemplating upon the latent anxieties that stem from the everchanging landscape of Singapore prevalent in Min-Wei’s films. They also touch upon Min-Wei’s ongoing reflections and speculations on the Singapore state’s reactions and endeavours to address climate which he  developed during his time in residence at NTU CCA Singapore. Working primarily with the moving image, Min-Wei Ting explores the politics of space and the dynamic of belonging in his native Singapore. Adopting a first-person perspective where the tension between embodiment and disembodiment is often at play, his films enact gestures of protracted observation and slow movement.  Viknesh Kobinathan is a programmer at the Asian Film Archive (AFA), where he curates film screenings and discursive events that examine issues affecting Asian societies, explore the art of Asian cinema, and furthers the preservation mission of the AFA. He oversees the execution of the commissioning project, Monographs, a series that features critical text-based and audio-visual essays on the moving image. Contributors: Min-Wei Ting, Viknesh KobinathanEditor: Anna LovecchioProgramme Manager: Nadia AmalinaSound Engineer: Ashwin MenonIntro & Outro Music: Yuen Chee WaiCover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine Tan

This episode features a conversation between two artists who work primarily with painting: our Artist-in-Residence Hilmi Johandi and Singaporean artist and educator Ian Woo.In this peer-to-peer exchange between thoughtful image-makers, Hilmi and Ian ponder over the significance of the studio in Hilmi's practice revealing how walls, and spaces, can shape artistic mindsets and generate different patterns of thought. Throughout the conversation, they address the potential of a local residency to shift the perception of the familiar, open up new ways of seeing and refresh routines and rituals. They also touch upon the artist-audience relation and other core aspects in Hilmi’s practice such as the role of emptiness in the painted surface, the process of reframing, and the inspiration that comes from old films and photographs. Drawing on archival footage, old films, and other imagery produced for mass consumption, the artistic practice of Hilmi Johandi refigures the iconography of Singapore and our relation with images. His body of work is deeply rooted in painting but it also harnesses other mediums to mobilise symbols and sites where memory and nostalgia, leisure and desire become deeply entangled. Ian Woo is an artist influenced by modernist abstractions, the phenomenology of perception, and the sound structures of music improvisation. His paintings, painted objects, and drawings are traversed by a sense of gravitational change that makes the image function as a diagram of states of consciousness. The distinct use of frames, axis, and invisible grids is expressive of his “compartments and systems” approach, a methodology the artist has developed in his exploration of the painted space as activated time.Contributors: Hilmi Johandi, Ian WooEditor: Anna LovecchioProgramme Manager: Nadia AmalinaSound Engineer: Ashwin MenonIntro & Outro Music: Yuen Chee WaiCover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine Tan

In this episode, curator Samantha Yap digs deep into the practice of Artist-in-Residence Fazleen Karlan. We are happy to bring the two of them back together, after they first collaborated a couple of year ago on an exhibition titled Time Passes (2020-21), to talk about Fazleen’s evolving artistic sensibility and sources of inspiration. In this circular conversation that revolves around a shared reading, the novel Lighthousekeeping by Jeanette Winterson, Fazleen and Samantha exchange memories, experiences, and thoughts about time, materiality, pop culture, and the vitality of archaeology in Fazleen’s work. And they do so with that special kind of fluid intimacy that interlaces persons of the same age. The practice of Fazleen Karlan (b. 1993, Singapore) weaves together art-making and archaeology to explore matters of time by mapping and reframing physical remains found within the landscape and socio-historical context of Singapore. By engaging the stratifications of a site and by reassessing the chronology of everyday objects through the tools of archaeology, her work generates news records of contemporary life that cast the relation between past, present, and future into a speculative framework. Her artworks have been in Singapore presented in exhibitions such as d3ar succ3ss0r, Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay (2022); Between the Living and the Archive and Pivot Point, Gillman Barracks (2021); and Time Passes, National Gallery Singapore (2020). She received the Anugerah Cemerlang Mendaki Award in 2019 and the Winston Oh Travel Award in 2016.Shuffling between writing and curation, Samantha Yap nurtures her interests in forms of reciprocity, the ethics of care, love, vulnerability as well as an ongoing exploration of feminist perspectives across literature and visual culture. She has curated a number of exhibitions in Singapore, including Time Passes, National Gallery Singapore (2020) which marked her first collaboration with Fazleen Karlan. Her curatorial texts are featured in several exhibition catalogues and her creative writing is included in My Lot is a Sky (Math Paper Press, 2018), an anthology of poetry by Asian women. She graduated with a BA (Hons) in English Literature and Art History from Nanyang Technological University of Singapore. Contributors: Fazleen Karlan, Samantha YapEditor: Anna LovecchioProgramme Manager: Nadia AmalinaSound Engineer: Ashwin MenonIntro & Outro Music: Yuen Chee WaiCover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine Tan

Starting off the second season of AiRCAST, we hand over the microphone to curator and writer Anca Rujoiu to interview our Artist-in-Residence Priyageetha Dia. Priyageetha and Anca are fresh out of a year-long collaboration that culminated in Forget Me, Forget Me Not (2022), Priyageetha’s solo exhibition curated by Anca which opened last May. In this conversation they share about the background research, interests, and aesthetic strategies behind the new body of work presented in the exhibition. They will also expand upon the significance of colonial histories and marginalised communities, agency and empowerment, as well as media and materials in Priyageetha’s practice. Spanning moving image, sculpture, as well as performance and installation, the practice of Priyageetha Dia (b. 1992, Singapore) addresses identity politics by questioning dominant narratives, material histories, and socio-spatial relations. In the past few years, she has been experimenting with world-making gestures that rehash stories of repression and envision alternative futures. Her works have been included in several group exhibitions including Attention Seeker, La Trobe Art Institute, Bendigo, Australia (2022); An Exercise of Meaning in a Glitch Season, National Gallery Singapore (2020); 2219: Futures Imagined, ArtScience Museum Singapore (2019). Anca Rujoiu is a Romanian curator and editor who has been living and working in Singapore since 2013. Taking an artist-centred approach, she is committed to artistic practices beyond the West and to what falls through the cracks within its borders. She was a member of the founding team of NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, as Curator of Exhibitions (2013–15) and Head of Publications (2016–18) and she has curated numerous exhibitions, public programs, and publishing projects.  Currently, she is a Ph.D. candidate at Monash University with a research focused on institution building, artists-led institutions, and transnational exchanges. Contributors: Priyageetha Dia, Anca RujoiuEditor: Anna LovecchioProgramme Manager: Nadia AmalinaSound Engineer: Ashwin MenonIntro & Outro Music: Yuen Chee Wai Cover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine TanCREDITS03’03”: Audio excerpt from WE.REMAIN.IN.MULTIPLE.MOTIONS_MALAYA, 2022. Courtesy the artist.17’17”: Audio excerpt from WE.REMAIN.IN.MULTIPLE.MOTIONS_MALAYA, 2022. Courtesy the artist.19’10”: Audio excerpt from WE.REMAIN.IN.MULTIPLE.MOTIONS_MALAYA, 2022. Courtesy the artist.32’07”: Audio excerpt from WE.REMAIN.IN.MULTIPLE.MOTIONS_MALAYA, 2022. Courtesy the artist.

Wrapping up the first season of AiRCAST, in the sixth and final episode former Artist-in-Residence Yuen Chee Wai speaks to Dr Anna Lovecchio, Assistant Director, Programmes.Get acquainted with Chee Wai as he meditates on his long and expansive journey in experimental music, collaborative networks, and multimedia crossovers. Grown out of an interest in independent music, his creative practice has evolved into a vortex of acts of resistance, melancholic drifts, and world-making gestures that reverberate with critical perspectives on the status quo. Through the course of this exchange, you will also discover how the unprecedented challenges brought about by the pandemic triggered an outburst of creative energy and pushed him even further into the exploration of new alliances and forms of expression. Musician, artist, designer, and curator Yuen Chee Wai (b. 1975, Singapore) is known for his commitment to improvised music and experimental projects that explore memory and loss, indeterminacy and invisibility. Ranging from the obsolescent and the newfangled, his eclectic toolbox comprises noise, field recordings, found sounds as well as guitars and various electronic instruments which reverberate with critical perspectives inspired by philosophy, literature, film, and politics. Together with FEN (Far East Network), an improvised music quartet he co-formed in 2008, Yuen is active in triggering multifaceted collaborations across Asia. Since 2014, he is Project Director of Asian Music Network for which he co-curates Asian Meeting Festival. Yuen is also a member of the experimental band The Observatory with whom he plays guitar, efx and objects, and organises a range of projects such Playfreely and BlackKaji.For the episode’s transcript and more information on Chee Wai, please visit: https://ntu.ccasingapore.org/residency/yuen-chee-wai/Contributors: Yuen Chee WaiConducted by: Anna Lovecchio Programme Manager: Nadia AmalinaSound Engineer: Ashwin Menon (The Music Parlour)Intro & Outro Music: Tini Aliman Cover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine TanCredits02’15”: Audio excerpt from installation recordings of REFUSE. Courtesy The Observatory.12’26”: Audio excerpt of George Chua and Yuen Chee Wai live session at Strategies v.02, The Substation, 2003. Courtesy the artist.27’38”: Audio excerpt from unreleased studio recordings of Ishikawa Ko, Iman Jimbot, and Yuen Chee Wai, for Asian Meeting Festival. Courtesy the artist.30’36”: Audio excerpt of The Observatory and Haino Keiji, Authority is Alive, Playfreely, 2019. Courtesy the artist.48’40”: Audio excerpt of Imprisoned Mind from the upcoming album Demon State by The Observatory and Koichi Shimizu, 2022. Courtesy the artist. 56’59”: Audio excerpt from installation recordings of REFUSE. Courtesy The Observatory.1h00’52”: Audio excerpt from Yuen Chee Wai’s recording of packing up the studio in the last hours of his residency at NTU CCA Singapore, 30 March 2022. Courtesy the artist. 

For our fifth episode of AiRCAST, we entrusted curator and scholar Hsu Fang-Tze to converse with our Artist-in-Residence Han Xuemei. In their insightful exchange, Xuemei discusses how her urgency for engagement steers her fluid theatre practice towards experimenting with different modes of audience participation. As she shares about her current efforts to carve out “intervals of quiet” and “plots of rest” in the hectic context of Singapore, you will also discover that the research on the topic of “rest as resistance” she conducted throughout her residency at NTU CCA Singapore grows out from another residency she did in Taipei a few years ago. Committed to socially engaged practices, multi-disciplinary theatre practitioner Han Xuemei (b. 1987, Singapore) employs art as a tool for bringing communities together and engaging the audience in visceral and personal ways. In her practice, she creates spaces and experiences that incite participants to think outside the box of existing paradigms and articulate forms of hope and resistance. Since 2012, she is Resident Artist at the Singapore-based theatre company Drama Box. In 2021 she received Young Artist Award, Singapore’s highest award for young arts practitioners.Hsu Fang-Tze is a lecturer at the Communications and New Media Department, National University of Singapore where she is also a coordinator of the M.A. in Arts and Cultural Entrepreneurship. Her research interests include the formation of audiovisual modernity in Asia, Cold War aesthetics, philosophies of sonic technology, and the embodiment of artistic praxis in everyday life. Apart from her academic work, she is also active as a curator and has curated exhibitions such as Art Histories of a Forever War: Modernism between Space and Home at the Taipei Fine Art Museum, Taiwan (2021-2022) and Wishful Images at National University of Singapore Museum (2020). Contributors: Han Xuemei, Hsu Fang-TzeEditor: Anna LovecchioProgramme Manager: Kristine Tan Sound Engineer: Ashwin Menon (The Music Parlour) Intro & Outro Music: Tini Aliman Cover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine TanCREDITS12’38”: Audio excerpt from MISSING: The City of Lost Things, 2018. Courtesy Drama Box.15’07”: Audio excerpt from MISSING: The City of Lost Things, 2018. Courtesy Drama Box.19’15”: Audio excerpt from FLOWERS, 2019. Courtesy Drama Box. 21’00”: Audio excerpt from FLOWERS, 2019. Courtesy Drama Box. 26’24”: Audio excerpt from Taipei Main Station & Research Field Recording workshop part ofAsia Discovers Asia Meeting for Contemporary Performance Artist Lab, 2019. Courtesy the artist. 35’30’’: Audio excerpt from Han Xuemei, field recordings at Tanah Merah, January 2022. Courtesy the artist.

Artist-in-Residence Chua Chye Teck speaks to Dr Anna Lovecchio, Assistant Director, Programmes, in our fourth episode of AiRCAST. Follow Chye Teck's stream of consciousness as he tells us about his journey with the medium of photography and his enduring fascination for fleeting forms and makeshift compositions. In recent years, Chye Teck is developing a more experimental attitude towards the image-making process creating works that respond to the specificity of a site, rather than to a subject matter, and reverberate with emotional vibrations. He has also become involved in several collaborations with other artists and he is cultivating a new fascination for cellphone images and the creative potential of readily available, off-the-shelf digital technologies.The evocative and subtly layered works of Chua Chye Teck (b. 1974, Singapore) result from prolonged visual and experiential quests. His body of work draws attention to the discarded and the overlooked articulating a reflection on the multiple processes of disappearing that result from the impact of progress and development on the natural environment. His works have been exhibited in venues such as at Singapore Art Museum (2021), Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2020), Jendela Esplanade, Singapore (2018, 2015), Institute of Contemporary Arts, Singapore (2017), Chiang Mai University Art Centre, Thailand (2015), and Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany (2010).For the episode’s transcripts and more information about Chua Chye Teck, visit: https://ntu.ccasingapore.org/residency/chua-chye-teck/Contributor: Chua Chye Teck Conducted by: Anna Lovecchio Programme Manager: Kristine Tan Sound Engineer: Ashwin Menon (The Music Parlour)Intro & Outro Music: Tini AlimanCover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine Tan

In our third episode, we open up this platform for the first time to a guest interviewer. We invited artist and filmmaker Kent Chan to pick the brain of our Artist-in-Residence Yeo Siew Hua. Beyond being both filmmakers and artists, Siew Hua and Kent have been occasional collaborators in the past and, most importantly, they are also long-time friends. Hear them speak candidly about the intertwined cycles of art-making and fund-raising, the blurred line between cinema and visual arts, as well as the philosophical underpinnings and the importance of collaboration in Siew Hua’s practice.  The practice of Yeo Siew Hua (b. 1985, Singapore) spans film directing and screenwriting. His films probe the darkest side of contemporary society through narratives layered with mysterious atmospheres, inscrutable characters, and mythological references, all steeped in arresting visuals and sounds. His last feature film A Land Imagined (2018) harnessed recognition around the world receiving the Golden Leopard at the 71st Locarno Film Festival and the Best Original Screenplay and Best Original Music Score Awards at the 56th Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival. After A Land Imagined, Siew Hua has created a number of short films, one of which, An Invocation to the Earth (2020), commissioned by the Singapore International Film Festival and TBA21, was co-produced with NTU CCA Singapore. An Invocation to the Earth can be viewed online at www.stage.tba21.org. During the residency, Siew Hua has been completing his next major production titled The Once and Future, an expanded cinema project which will premiere at the Singapore International Festival of Arts 2022. In 2021, he received the Young Artist Award, Singapore’s highest award for young arts practitioners.Kent Chan (b. 1984, Singapore) is an artist, curator, and filmmaker currently based in Amsterdam. His practice weaves encounters between art, fiction, and cinema with a particular interest in the tropical imagination, colonialism, and the relation between heat and art. He has held solo presentations at Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht, Netherlands (2020-21), National University Singapore Museum (2019-21) and SCCA-Ljubljana, Centre for Contemporary Arts, Slovenia (2017). He was Artist-in-Residence at Jan van Eyck Academie (2019-20) and at NTU CCA Singapore (2017-2018). For the episode’s transcripts and more information about Yeo Siew Hua, visit: https://ntu.ccasingapore.org/residency/yeo-siew-hua/Contributors: Yeo Siew Hua, Kent Chan Editor: Anna Lovecchio Programme Manager: Kristine Tan Sound Engineer: Ashwin Menon (The Music Parlour)Intro & Outro Music: Tini Aliman Cover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine TanCredits:06'42": Audio excerpt from Yeo Siew Hua, A Land Imagined, 2018. Courtesy the artist.11'46": Audio excerpt from Yeo Siew Hua, The Obs: A Singapore Story, 2014. Courtesy the artist.22'55": Audio excerpt from Yeo Siew Hua, The Once and Future, 2022. Courtesy the artist.40'49": Audio excerpt from Yeo Siew Hua, The Lover, The Excess, The Ascetic and the Fool, 2021. Courtesy the artist.

In this episode, we venture into the mysterious and mobile mindscape of our Artist-in-Residence, Russell Morton. During the residency, Russell has been deeply immersed in the development of his most ambitious project to date, his first feature film. Find out how a grim, largely forgotten historical event and past personal experiences will contribute to shape the narrative and the ambience of the film. The artist also reveals how he managed to overcome ‘the anxiety of influence’ and expands on his fascination for Southeast Asian folklore, the psychological underpinnings of horror films, and the role music plays in his work.The filmic and performative practice of Russell Morton (b. 1982, Singapore) explores folkloric myths, esoteric rituals, and the conventions of cinema itself. His film Saudade (2020) was commissioned for State of Motion: Rushes of Time, Asian Film Archives, Singapore, and presented at the 31st Singapore International Film Festival (2020); The Forest of Copper Columns (2015) won the Cinematic Achievement Award at the 57th Thessaloniki Film Festival, Greece (2016) and was selected for several festivals including the Short Shorts Film Festival, Tokyo, Japan (2017); the Thai Short Film and Video Festival, Bangkok, Thailand and Jogja-NETPAC Asian Film Festival, Indonesia (both 2016).For the episode’s transcripts and more information about Russell Morton visit: https://ntu.ccasingapore.org/residency/russell-morton/Contributor: Russell MortonConducted by: Anna LovecchioProgramme Manager: Kristine TanSound Engineer: Rudi Osman Intro & Outro Music: Tini AlimanCover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine TanCredits:11:53: Audio excerpt from Island of Hope, National Archives Website, Record date 1960s, https://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/audiovisual_records/recorddetails/46b4445e-1164-11e3-83d5-0050568939ad21:35: Recording from Russell Morton’s site visit to a kelong in Singapore. Courtesy the artist.25:48: Audio excerpt from Russell Morton’s Saudade, 2020. Music by Syafii Ghazali. Courtesy the artist35:20: Audio excerpt from Tani Yutaka, Marai no Tora, 1943 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lTigyqta_k]36:58: Audio excerpt from “Siapa Dia” by Zainab Majid, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gDHPP6K-mA]

In the first episode of AiRCAST, NTU CCA Singapore curator Dr Anna Lovecchio speaks to Artist-in-Residence Tini Aliman about how her sonic practice revolves around a close listening of the natural environment. Tini shares about the experience of growing up in a fast-developing city, her encounters with nature, the human and other-than-human sources of inspiration for her work, and the sonification of tree stumps she is experimenting with during the residency. As a special treat to our ears, the conversation is punctuated with excerpts from her recordings. Working at the intersection of film, sound, theatre, and installation and often through collaborative projects, the sonic and spatial experiments of Tini Aliman (b. 1980, Singapore) focus on forest networks and plant consciousness, bioacoustics and biodata sonification. Her recent projects and collaborations have been presented at Free Jazz III: Sound. Walks., NTU CCA Singapore (2021); An Exercise of Meaning in a Glitch Season, National Gallery Singapore (2020); Sound Kite Orchestra, Biennale Urbana, Venice, Italy and Stories We Tell to Scare Ourselves With, Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei, Taiwan (both 2019). For the episode’s transcripts and more information about Tini Aliman visit: https://ntu.ccasingapore.org/residency/tini-aliman/Contributor: Tini AlimanConducted by: Anna LovecchioProgramme Manager: Kristine TanSound Engineer: Rudi Osman Intro & Outro Music: Tini AlimanCover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine TanCredits:9:11: Recording of plants in Fort Canning Park, Aug 2018. Courtesy the artist.17: 20: Audio excerpt from Plants emit sound when stressed, ILTV Israel News, Dec 11, 2018, https://youtu.be/5YHnVdA2ZG824:01: Audio excerpt from Zarina Muhammad, Flowers of our Bloodlines, lecture performance, NTU CCA Singapore, 2017. Courtesy the artist. 26:35: Audio excerpt from Tini Aliman, Pokoknya, performance, 17 January 2020, NTU CCA Singapore. Courtesy the artist. 30:37: Audio excerpt from Tini Aliman, Pokoknya: Organic Cancellation, 2020, mixed media installation. Courtesy the artist. 36:08: Sounds from Tini Aliman’s studio. Courtesy the artist. 44:54: Underground sounds from the forest at Gillman Barracks captured by Tini Aliman with a geophone, August 2021. Courtesy the artist. 49:06: Field recordings of a walk through the forest at Gillman Barracks, December 2020. Courtesy the artist.

Wrapping up our third season, we invited back curator Hsu Fang-Tze to dig deep into the practice of Artist-in-Residence Anthony Chin. In their insightful exchange, Anthony discusses his art-making process that often begins with extensive research into archives addressing imperial and colonial histories, and how this eventually informs the conceptualisation of his site-specific installations that bring to light the geopolitical reverberations that continue to resonate until today. Anthony also considers how his background in industrial design has shaped his practice and interest in the symbolic significance of objects.  The research-driven conceptual practice of Anthony Chin grows out of site-specific engagements with the historical, social, and architectural stratifications of a place. Through the articulation of ordinary materials into poetic installations, his work unravel the latent power structures and complex geopolitical narratives that undergird the colonial past and the post-colonial present. He has regularly presented his work in Singapore and abroad.  Hsu Fang-Tze is currently a curator at the Singapore Art Museum (SAM), with previous experience as a lecturer in the Department of Communications and New Media at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Over the past decade, she has extended her expertise beyond academia, actively engaging as a curator, film programmer, and archivist. Her collaborative efforts with artists, art historians, and institutions have been the most important aspects for her in defining her practices. Her current research pursuits revolve around the nuanced exploration of sonic modernity, Cold War aesthetics, and the convergence of critical curation historiography with a decolonial pedagogical approach.Contributors: Anthony Chin, Hsu Fang-TzeEditor: Magdalena MagieraProgramme Manager: Nadia AmalinaSound Engineer: Ashwin MenonIntro & Outro Music: Zachary ChanCover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine Tan