01 INTRODUCTION 04 DAYS OF OUR LIVES 10 SITUATIONIST BON GUN BY 16 3 ROOMS: OBJECT DESIGN + THE BODY 20 SEE NO EVIL 28 THE BLEEDING EDGE OF ART 34 PARALLAX POSTHUMOUSLY 36 PRELIMINARY ENCOUNTERS 42 INSIDE THE SUBJECT 46 AND THE MARKETS 50 THE GREAT GAME 54 INTO THE SCHEME OF (UNEASY) THINGS 60 A CONVERSATION ON THEO.DO.LITES 64 LINKING CITIES – VISUALISING: THE VALUE OF THE CITY 68 THE ATYPICAL FREUDIAN CASE

GLOSSA RY TWO THOUSAND AND FOURTEEN VOLUME 2 INTRODUCTION

The second volume of GLOSSARY allows us to reflect on the past year’s programme and how much the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICAS) has grown. In this volume, we look back on some of our exhibitions from 2012 and 2013, revisiting them to gain new perspectives. The following essays and interviews by artists, curators, academics, lecturers, researchers and film directors form a plethora of viewpoints that offer vibrant starting points and points of departures to the exhibitions. They illustrate the geographical and conceptual reach that ICAS prides itself in sharing with our visitors and readers.

In 2013, ICAS produced 54 exhibitions, including 26 faculty-based exhibitions as well as five exhibitions by emerging Singapore-based artists held in TriSpace. There was an international representation of artists including artists from China, , Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, , , , and Uzbekistan.

The Bleeding Edge of Art – p. 30 We began 2013 with Coded Transformations at ICAS Gallery 1, a ground- breaking exhibition by artist, programmer and staff member of LASALLE College of the Arts, Andreas Schlegel. Experimenting with installations, videos, photographs, prints and objects, Schlegel collaborated with artists of varying practices. The result was a gallery installation that resembled a scientific laboratory in which libraries of code, external data conditions and DIY gadgetries are its primary catalysts. In her essay, Joleen Loh discusses the spectrum of artistic innovation, diversity and collaboration encouraged by software and technology and also considers the way technology has reshaped notions of community, distribution and authorship.

Situationist Bon Gun – p. 10 In March 2013, Tang Da Wu’s solo exhibition Situationist Bon Gun featured his new work across Gallery 1, Gallery 2 and TriSpace. As Joleen Loh discusses in her article, Situationist Bon Gun was a reflection of Tang’s artistic and personal experiences since he returned to Singapore from London in 1988, from early beginnings with to present day developments in the arts and arts education. Situationist Bon Gun was the artist’s latest solo exhibition since 2011, and ICAS had some twelve hundred visitors pass through its doors over the duration of the exhibition.

The Great Game by Dana Lam – p. 50 In the essay “The Great Game”, Dana Lam writes about The Retrospectacle of S. Raoul by . The exhibition at Earl Lu Gallery from March to April, chronicled and concluded 10 years of labour and research of S. Raoul, polymathic researcher, archaeologist, inventor and recluse. ICAS published an accompanying exhibition catalogue History’s Malcontents: The Life and Times of S. Raoul.

A Conversation on Theo.do.lites – p. 60 The exhibition Theo.do.lites in April 2013 focused on the engagement with urban and rural realities by artists from both Europe and Asia, revealing a sense of GLOSSARY 2 VOLUME 2 3 Introduction

disillusionment towards the modernization of both locales. With a strong emphasis Preliminary Encounters by Viviana Mejía – p. 38 on moving image, the exhibition presented a compelling mix of documentary, In continuing its commitment to provide a platform for local and pseudo-cartographic and narrative approaches by artists. It was guest curated by international art, ICAS presented Encounter: The Royal Academy in Asia in Kent Chan from Singapore and Silke Schmickl from Paris, and featured works by association with Fortune Cookie Projects in late 2012. The exhibition featured a Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Raqs Media Collective, , Marylène Negro, wide variety of media by 23 Royal Academicians and 24 artists from across Asia, with , Daniel Hui, , to name a few. over 76 works across all seven galleries, including artwork by artists such as Tony Bevan, Chen Chieh-Jen, Michael Craig-Martin, Richard Deacon, Tacita Dean, Tracey Parallax Posthumously by Urich Lau – p. 34 Emin, Jenny Saville, Antony Gormley, FX Harsono, , Ng Joon Kiat, Lani PARALLAX Between_Borders: Singapore_China is a response to Urich Maestro, Liu Xiaodong, Ian Woo, Yee I-Lann, Dinh Q. Lê, and more. Viviana Mejía Lau’s travels in 2012 to the Northeastern borders of China to the provinces of poses pertinent questions about the curatorial strategies undertaken when curating Jilin and Liaoning, where they were able to see the landscapes of Primorsky Krai, an exhibition that brings together works by artists from Britain and Asia. A key panel Russia and North Hamgyong, North Korea from the border. The documentations discussion, ‘Abstraction in ’, was held in conjunction with the of this journey, which included photographs and videos, were featured in Mirror of exhibition, which centered on the work of invited speakers Michael Lin, Om Mee Ai Otherness, a group exhibition in Gaodi Gallery, Shenyang City. Curated by Zhang and Ian Woo and examined abstraction as it figures in their art. Yadong and Urich Lau, this exhibition explored the questions of boundaries and inter-cultural issues. PARALLAX was the second and conclusive exhibition, with Into the Scheme of (Uneasy) Things by Lawrence Chin – p. 56 new works based on new perspectives of the journey, reflecting and re-examining Another major highlight of 2012 was the major survey exhibition of the multifarious relations and representations that occur within cross-cultural Cultural Medallion recipient Milenko Prvacki’s work from 1979 to 2012. Not only is contexts. In his essay, co-curator Urich Lau considers cultural and cross-border he one of the most influential painters today, Prvacki was also Dean of Fine Arts in interactions as he reflects upon his journey along the Northeastern parts of China. LASALLE for 17 years and is currently Senior Fellow at LASALLE. Milenko Prvacki: A Survey, 1979 – 2012 featured work across various media including , inside the subject by Charmaine Toh – p. 42 , watercolour and installation, and offered audiences the opportunity to see In February 2013, Gallery 2 was transformed into a black box for inside the development between and within distinct bodies of work including the Trophy the subject, an exhibition by Bani Haykal in collaboration with Mohamad Riduan Volcano, Fragments, and The Ultimate Visual Dictionary series. Lawrence Chin and anGie Seah. Engaging with concepts of power and social order, Haykal questions discusses the forms, gestures and the many layers of meaning of Prvacki’s works. the extent to which ethics and moral conduct will be re-evaluated when laws and social norms are re-written. Based on an excerpt from a new work of fiction Days of Our Lives by Adele Tan – p. 6 entitled collapse, the work explored the psychological state and dilemma of ‘the Adele Tan discusses Chinese Bible: Yang Zhichao, a spectacular exhibition subject’ before his first kill. Charmaine Toh discusses how the exhibition marked that featured on our gallery walls 3000 personal diaries of overlapping generations an important moment in Haykal’s practice and was the first time that the artist, that the artist collected from second-hand shops over three years. Held in April 2012, who works across various artistic disciplines, fused his interest in installation, the exhibition was a collaboration with 10 Chancery Lane Gallery in , sound, live performance, sound , fiction, narrative and collaboration. realized with the support of H-Kage.

Linking Cities – Visualising: The Value of the City by Yasser Video Art and the Markets by Yow Siew Kah – p. 46 Suratman – p. 64 An essay by Yow Siew Kah, a researcher and writer specializing in art and Visualising: The Value of the City was an exciting example of design, responds to Videologue: Beijing – Singapore ­­– , an exhibition on video collaborative research-based exhibitions at ICAS led by Faculty members of the art from January to February 2012. First exhibited at the Sunshine International Art Design Communication programme. The exhibition presented work by students Museum in Beijing in 2011, this is the second installment of the exhibition, with a from the Faculty of Design in LASALLE together with students from the College third installment subsequently shown in . of Design in Samgyung University, South Korea. Yasser Suratman elaborates on the ethnographical studies of Seoul and Singapore conducted by students, The Atypical Freudian Case by Grace Samboh – p. 68 and their engagement with the two cities, which both experienced rapid shift In March to April 2012, we presented REPOSITION: Art Merdeka! by towards industrial modernity over a short period of time, a phenomena of intense prominent Indonesian artist S. Teddy D., guest curated by Grace Samboh, Enin development that often characterizes developing nations. The result of this Supriyanto and Hendro Wiyanto. The exhibition was an outstanding presentation collaboration was a fantastic showcase of work that drew the connections between of the artist’s pronounced and intriguing language of expression, revealed over 20 the history, culture and infrastructure of the two cities. drawings, installation and performance art. In her essay, Grace Samboh writes about her conversations with Teddy D. and the tenets of his artistic practice. ICAS also See no evil – Jeremy Sharma and Ian Woo – p. 20 presented a panel on Indonesian contemporary art with S. Teddy D., Tony Godfrey This second edition of GLOSSARY also revisits a selection of exhibitions and Paul Khoo. from 2012, featuring a number of essays, including a special interview between LASALLE lecturer and artist Jeremy Sharma and fellow colleague and artist Ian Woo. Revisiting Sharma’s solo exhibition at ICAS Apropos: Jeremy Sharma in April 2012, the two-part interview also engages with the development of Sharma’s work in his 2013 exhibition at Grey Projects. DAYS OF

OF

WRITTEN FOR THE EXHIBITION Chinese Bible: Yang Zhichao 18 April – 11 May 2012 Praxis Space OUR LIVES in collaboration with 10 Chancery Lane Gallery, Hong Kong BY ADELE TAN Images courtesy of the artist GLOSSARY 6 VOLUME 2 7 Days of Our Lives

For mainland Chinese artist Yang Zhichao (b. 1963, Lanzhou, Gansu Province), “ Everyone should keep someone else’s diary”, wrote Oscar the keeping of someone else’s diary is however quite a different matter; it is Wilde in one of his letters. The author was speaking of the literal act of possession and preservation. His work and exhibition of the same title from 2009, Chinese Bible, is a veritable display of a maniacal but his experience of reading to his companion-friend the methodical collecting over three years of more than 3,000 personal journal journal entries (which Wilde had kept) documenting this notebooks that span a fifty-year period from 1949 to 1999, each registering the diary entries of the Chinese everyman from overlapping generations person’s own life. The contents of this friend’s life returned who lived through the Maoist decades of revolution and reform in the in this second instance to surprise the very man who had People’s Republic of China. Yang Zhichao was looking for voices that were unmodified, dealing with unadulterated thoughts and ideas. The motivation lived through those particularities. Keeping someone for such a collection arose from a general distrust of historical records else’s diary, in this Wildean sense, refers to the act of prior to the 1980s, where the history of the people (the proverbial Chinese laobaixing, or literally ‘old hundred surnames’) was a blank apart from the writing down the daily observations of incidents that had official bombast extolling the virtues of the peasant-proletariat. The diaries happened to someone else but as if they were one’s own, a form an arguably more realistic historical record of this ‘lost period’.

slightly disorientating activity that presumes a possible As a result of Yang’s fervour, hundreds of colourful retro-looking notebooks lined position of objectivity as well as of exceptional intimacy. one wall of the gallery from floor to ceiling, with hundreds more spilling over onto an adjacent table, neatly laid out or stacked, as if they were at a stall in one of the Beijing second-hand markets where the artist had patiently scoured for his revelatory goods. There was also a video screened at another corner, of the artist scrubbing clean each diary of its accumulated dust and dirt, the painstaking labour registered only by the close-up of his hands relentlessly purging and purifying the diaries. The cumulative arrangement appear immediately pleasing to the eye, as if a wall or sea of abstraction had unveiled itself before the viewer. The viewers were also invited to peruse the books, looking in on the pages that held views to the Chinese past in non-official and less monumental ways. Unsurprisingly, many of the book covers were red, though a fair number were of different bright hues and patterns. Many also had revolutionary exhortations such as “Developing the Motherland” (jianshe zuguo) and “Diary of the Labouring Class” (laodong renmin de riji) emblazoned on the front cover.

References to diaries have been significant mainstays of cultural life in 20th- century modern China. The most famous is of course Lu Xun’s short story “A Madman’s Diary”, an allegorical fiction that protests against Chinese feudalism and where the worst symptom of this manifested itself as the diarist- madman’s obsession and paranoia that he and his family may have committed cannibalism, a metaphor of the societal ills prevalent in an unprogressive nation. The second lesser-known but nonetheless iconic diary is that of Chinese revolutionary hero-soldier Lei Feng, a possible propagandist confection directed by the disgraced Lin Biao, a former vice-chairman of the CCP and a member of the infamous Gang of Four. Lei Feng’s diary had ostensibly contained a slew of model and infinitely quotable declarations by Lei that were once held up as virtuous ideals for the Chinese citizen during the time of the orchestrated “Learn from Lei Feng” campaign. With these canonical diaries as backdrop, it is little wonder that Yang would nurture a nub of curiosity about whether there might still be some areas of life left untouched by Communist ideology. The evidence gathering to prove or disprove his hypothesis was accomplished through the harvesting of these tiny tracts of discarded mundane minutiae, the putatively authentic emotional record of the Chinese during very trying times in the heat and long shadow of Maoist Communism.

One senses that Yang might have been more than a little disappointed to encounter in the diaries far fewer instances of existence in China untrammelled by ideological forces, which exerted political control over private realms and standardised human behaviour during the height of the Cultural Revolution, putting a different spin on the phrase “the personal is political”. Free thought and expression, it seems, could not be guaranteed even by the socially agreed- upon characteristic of a diary–that it is meant to be kept secret, away from prying eyes. “There is no country or history like China, whose private diaries written GLOSSARY 8 VOLUME 2 9 Days of Our Lives

attitude, and a substantial section to draft up a summation of what should be improved upon in the future in light of the above experiences and teachings.

In contrast to the diaries on display, Yang also showed videos of his past performance works, each one challenging the artist’s bodily limits to pain and endurance and confronting ethical boundaries and aesthetic transgressions. They manifest the cultural violence that impinges on all in China, such as when he asked for his personal ID number to be branded on his shoulder blade with a hot iron stamp. At first consideration, there seems to be a disjunction between Yang’s work as a performance artist and his foray into installation, yet there is an uncanny connection between the diaries and his corporeal interventions. Many of his performances involve a certain quotient of suffering and the embedding of a foreign object into his body, whether it be the implanting of grass saplings from Suzhou Creek into his back without anaesthesia or the insertion by a surgeon of a round object unknown to the artist (chosen by his artist-mentor Ai Weiwei, in contradistinction to the dogmatic instruction of Mao Zedong) into the right thigh of the artist. It is as if the diaries are another extension of the artist’s body, each habouring a secret that inexorably hopes or knows itself to be eventually let out into the open. But whilst the devastation on bodily skin is ephemeral (because skin heals and regenerates) or when the ID number imprint fades from his skin, diaries are more or less permanent records of moments that cannot be so easily erased.

These diaristic secrets are also not unremitting records of a uniform tendency, despite the popular prognosis that entries documenting the decades of the 1950s to the 1970s are largely homogenous. If one had the interest and patience to examine the diaries on display, one would see that overall, each seems to exceed the bounds of its cover, with a kernel of deeply felt belief structure and a simple earnestness about the descriptions of daily preoccupations. There are the obligatory propaganda posters (an image of a steaming train hurtling by the general public could attempt to share the same degree of similarity ahead), photographs of people putting up dazibao (big letter posters), appeals and collectiveness in both political and psychological position”, writes Yang to the past with popular folk art, and revolutionary operas advancing their in his exhibition preface. “Thus the term ‘Chinese Bible’ is befitting. It hints moral dramas so that one can never give up the fight for the Socialist cause. at the dilemmas of a nation within a trying and complex situation and serves But the notebooks are also intermittently filled with handwritten intimate as a study on the state of mind during that tense period of centralisation.” tales of joy and grief, drawings and photographs of loved ones and the journals’ respective owners, rousing song lyrics, and tracts of mathematical and scientific But the artist lays out the conundrum or contradiction inherent to the discourses, thereby giving us an archived microcosm of Communist China’s situation, the crux being the truth-telling function of diaristic texts. Should culture. Even though we are asked in Yang’s Chinese Bible to reflect on the the artist be frustrated by the discovery of the inauthenticity of the Chinese effect of the overwhelming consistency of power and control on Communist self during the regime (because ideological pervasiveness had inhibited true era diaries, it does seem that after all this, the diary is the article of power, individual ideas and intentions) or accept the texts as authentic moments of condensing the spirit of a self that is capable of the highest aesthetic and ethical the Chinese self (because they reflect the extent of ideological brainwashing control as much as it is controlled. This may be why Canadian poet-songwriter and interpolation)? Either way, these are two sides of the same coin, both Leonard Cohen proclaimed in his Book of Longings the diary greater than valid portraits of a psychically wrenching period of modern China. Perhaps the Bible, the Conference of Birds and the Upanishads all put together. one should not even consider them conventional diaries. On reading the entries they appear meaningfully addressed to an external subject, already .... assuming that a disapproving eye might be cast over their pages and Adele Tan is a writer and curator. She received her PhD in from the uncensored thoughts turned into incriminating evidence against the writer. Courtauld Institute of Art.

In this sense, the diaries feel closer to the Maoist practice of self-criticism, or jiantao. Communist cadres and comrades who strayed from the party line often had to produce written statements elaborating how they were misguided in their thoughts before reaffirming their adherence to the ‘correct’ beliefs and behaviour of the Party. These extracted confessions successfully were used (not always) for political rehabilitation and frequently read aloud by the offender. And when persons can be easily denounced and accused of being anti-revolutionary, diaries, if they were kept by individuals, had therefore to be ‘correct’, betraying Notebook content from no bourgeois emotions or sympathies. As to be expected, there is a “Self Chinese Bible, an exhibition by Yang Zhichao at 10 Chancery Criticism Form” embedded in one of the journal pages, where there are explicit Lane Gallery, Hong Kong, segments asking for aspects related to one’s job, learning, personal behaviour, 10 Nov to 3 Dec, 2011 GLOSSARY 10 VOLUME 2 11 Situationist Bon Gun by Tang Da Wu

presented in Situationist Bon Gun, While Tang Da Wu has long a large installation titled Banquet. been recognised as the father of contemporary art in Singapore It is a scene that undeniably evokes (though he always abstains from destruction: there are steel chairs such distinction), he is certainly suspended within the space or not complacent with his artistic collapsed on the floor; in the achievements. Resisting any middle, it appears that a large stone traditional exhibition model that has smashed into a dining table, presents the summation of an leaving its steel frame as it supports artistic oeuvre, Tang chose to large broken sheets of glass with a feature new works for Situationist red-stained tablecloth strewn over Bon Gun, his latest solo exhibition. it. This is the chaos presented in Banquet that confronts the viewer The exhibition title Situationist at the entrance of the gallery. The Bon Gun is a play on the Hainanese entire room is bathed in a dim, lurid expression pom gang for foolish yellow light that hauntingly casts and is a reference to the avant- the shadows of the upturned chairs garde practices of the Situationist over the gallery walls. It is unclear International, which reached what has happened or who was their heights during the May 1968 here. It is an image constituted of protests in Paris when the advanced ambiguities, a fraught situation. capitalist economy of France came to a dramatic standstill. The exhibition During the installation of the consisted of new works across exhibition, Tang tells us that it four parts: Banquet, Brother’s Pool, is a banquet meant for art policy , and Revolution. The makers and institutional delegates. works in the show were conceived He shared a vivid memory of a upon Tang’s reflections upon his conversation during a meeting in artistic and personal experiences London years ago. Prior to the setting since returning to Singapore from up of the National Arts Council in London in 1988. The Sembawang Singapore, a delegation had been sent series, which consisted of to research cultural institutions in Sembawang, Sembawang Man and London, and Tang had helped put Sembawang Phoenix, revisited The these local delegates in touch with Artists Village, the artist colony that their British counterparts. During Tang had founded. Yet, while his the meeting, one of the seminar staff works look back to the past where it for the arts council mentioned that finds its criticality, they do so only to the driving force and purpose behind project themselves to the present and the arts council is to ensure artists move ahead with future imaginings. today do not face the same suffering The exhibition calls attention to many and tragedy of Vincent Van Gogh. long-standing status quos, signaling a need for change and renewal. The memory of that conversation and of Van Gogh himself is located SITUATIONIST In an interview with in significantly in the installation 2006, Tang said, “We don’t want through the chairs and an umbrella another Van Gogh situation to bearing prints of the artist’s famous BON GUN happen again in our modern society Starry Night painting installed where a brilliant artist goes starving. at the far ceiling of the gallery. 15 March – 10 April 2013 And the arts council should be The umbrella, a reminder of Van Gallery 1, Gallery 2 and TriSpace doing the job to prevent another Gogh’s suffering, was also for Tang Van Gogh situation.”1 This “Van a representation of Van Gogh’s (二十年目睹现象) Gogh situation” refers to the artist’s spirit watching over the chaos and neglect by society, his desperation corruption within the installation. Tang D a Wu 宴 (Banquet) and suicide, and only posthumous The chairs, reminiscent of those in 2013 recognition. Six years since the the painting Van Gogh’s Chairs, were BY Steel table and chairs, conversation between Tang and also seen in Tang’s exhibition, First glass, tablecloth, umbrella, rock, wine Lee Wen, these concerns manifest Arts Council, at Valentine Willie Fine BY JOLEEN LOH TANG DA WU Dimensions variable themselves again in the first work Art in 2011. Yet here, the chairs are GLOSSARY 12 VOLUME 2 13 Situationist Bon Gun by Tang Da Wu

made of excessively heavy steel, as it – it was mounted high above, if they have become commodified overseeing the entire exhibition. objects on which bureaucrats would sit. It is also worth noting Tang’s We recall the dystopic world of 1984, choice of materials throughout where a society is tyrannised by the the exhibition. The sheer size, ruling party and totalitarian ideology, weight and customisation of these where independent thought and materials, and the labour involved critical thinking are seen as “thought in their making are all calculated crimes”. It is a world of omnipresent moves. Even his choice of materials governmental surveillance and public seems pitted against the clichés control of thought, misinformation, of the culture industry and the and denial of truth. It is headed by Big ‘instant’ art-making of today aided Brother, the divine leader who enjoys by technology, offering political a cult of personality, and who justifies resistance to the digital modes their rule in the name of a greater that produce contemporary life. good. Represented by the heavy 2 steel sheet, it rests upon six white The table felled by a large stone radishes. Aside from being a common and the shattered glass recalls food used, it is said to be once used the satirical tableau of Maurizio as a derogatory term for Chinese Cattelan’s The Ninth Hour (1999), people. Here they are halved and which depicts the pope being crammed, squashed under the weight crushed by a meteorite as he is of “Orwell’s world”. The work draws clutching his crosier. Like Cattelan’s a connection between Orwellian installation, Banquet invites several society of 1984, published in 1949, probable readings. The celebratory and the policies practiced by modern atmosphere often associated with repressive governments, pointing to expensive banquet dinners is here mechanisms of control that repeat disrupted, subverted and seemingly themselves in different permutations. depicted as unearned privilege. For writer Paul Khoo, the table “suggests The exhibition was like an the perpetual national dialogues and unfolding organism, changing with 1 policy reviews that punctuate the performances and intermittent scene, purporting to expand spaces interventions by the artist. The for the arts yet seemingly unable to series Revolution was perhaps the address the continued frustration of most dynamic and unpredictable the arts community with respect to section in the exhibition, with restrictions and viability”.2 The work work changing even on the last revisits the past and is a metaphor for day of the exhibition. Tang also 1 Tang D a Wu the frustrations that still mark the performed on 5 April together 深 疤 ︵ (Sembawang) artistic landscape of Singapore today with students, a collaboration that 2013 Mixed media installation while at the same time pointing back responded to works in Banquet, Dimensions variable to the memory of Van Gogh’s tragedy, Revolution, and Sembawang. signaling the need for change. 2 The performance started at Banquet, Tang D a Wu Sembawang Man and In another work, Untitled, a large where Tang began by serving wine to Sembawang Man black steel sheet rests uneasily on the audience, after which he broke the 2005 six white radishes, an installation wine bottle against the table frame. Chinese ink on paper, wood that is part of the series of works After cutting a piece of cloth from the Dimensions variable in Revolution. With “1984” and the tablecloth, he poured the next bottle Penguin Books logo engraved onto of wine onto it, using the stained cloth 3 Tang D a Wu it, the work undeniable references to write on large pieces of paper laid 深 疤鳳 (Sembawang Phoenix) 3 Orwell’s Penguin-published out on the floor, with words including 2013 毒酒 阴谋 玩物丧志 Steel and mirror satirical novel 1984. Mounted “ ” “ ”, and “ ”. A Dimensions variable above the work was a brush with lady dressed in black with a red cloth the words “LEE” painted onto it, band around her arm stood on one 4 wedged uncomfortably in a pail. of the chairs and recited text about Tang D a Wu Rape of Sembawang Like an extensive surveillance Van Gogh. Other performers dressed 2013 – or “Big Brother”, “Thought similarly stood on the chairs and Mixed media installation Police”, as Orwell would have began shouting. Noise spilled over Dimensions variable 4 GLOSSARY 14 VOLUME 2 15 Situationist Bon Gun by Tang Da Wu

from the next gallery, and the crowd if to signal a time to re-celebrate the NOTES 1 was re-directed to the adjacent space. provisional, the independent, the Tang D a Wu 革命 (Revolution) 1 Lee Wen, ‘Interview – Tang Da Wu’, collectives, initiatives and contingent 2013 The Future of Imagination 3, 2006, p.17. The performance continued in front organisations. Situationist Bon Gun Mixed media installation Dimensions variable of the painting Revolution, an ink revisited old and new conversations 2 Paul Khoo, ‘On Spaces and Ghosts’, painting caged by steel bars that and excavated history if only to Pipeline, Issue 36, May/June 2013, p. 98. renovated Eugene Delacroix’s Liberty dedicate itself to the present and 2 Tang D a Wu Leading the People within the local project itself into future imaginings, 池 (Brother’s Pool) art context, replacing its characters interrogating the weight of 2013 with Singaporean artists and institutions on artistic practices, Stones, mirror, lights, steel panels, water, glass institutional leaders. The noise and and the capital in producing and Dimensions variable clamor were produced by his student- consuming art and the need for performers who were repeatedly change. Now is the prescient time 3 striking their bars and sticks against to re-imagine alternatives. Tang D a Wu Untitled the steel bars of the work, singing 2013 to the chorus of the French national Steel, radish, light, brush, glass bowl anthem. Dressed as characters in Dimensions variable Liberty Leading the People carrying toy guns, swords, and with Liberty carrying the French flag, the group of performers made their rounds, going back and forth between Revolution and Sembawang, banging on the steel cages of the works and encouraging audiences to do the same. The cacophony carried on and it was so loud that people began to leave the space. At one point, the beating 2 against the steel cages caused one of Tang’s caged to fall.

It was clear who Tang was gathering as his protestors here in his tableau of the July revolution; the performance, in some manner, positions students and artists as active participants in the construction of the social body and makers of a collective mind. If the body itself speaks, its rhythmic relationships among other bodies shape the political. And the questions surface: what is he fighting against? Are the leaders and key players in the Singapore arts landscape the leaders of artists and the champions of liberty?

Our revolutionary potential is considerable but often we forget how to recognise it especially when the domination of neo-liberal political economy blocks our ability to create collective change. Yet ultimately, the works remind us of the power of revolution: how it begins with us, 1 with everyday life. The performance mimicked self-organised, networked, collaborative and mobile forms of action, which persists while .... remaining leaderless. It seemed as Joleen Loh is a curator and writer. 3 GLOSSARY 16 VOLUME 2 17 3 ROOMS: Object Design + the Body

1 Lauren Sims 3 ROOMS: OBJECT DESIGN Room 1_1 2 Katherine Young (left) + Jocelyn Tan (centre & right) THE BODY Room 1_2

3 23 November – 7 December 2012 Imogene Spencer Brother Joseph McNally Gallery, Praxis Space and Project Space Room 1_3 Presented by Faculty of Design, LASALLE College of the 1 Arts, and The School of Design and Art, Curtin University Curated by Anne Farren and Emily Wills

Exhibiting designers: 3 ROOMS: Object Design + the Body of objects and the interaction of of exhibited objects. Each of the Elizabeth Delfs, Jocelyn Tan, is a creative concept showcasing audiences with these objects can three galleries in 3 ROOMS: Object 2 and Alister Yiap the innovative outcomes from an facilitate new fashion concepts. Design + the Body communicated a international collaboration involving different research area, underpinned Students of LASALLE curators, lecturers, and students from For 3 ROOMS co-curator Anne Farren, by a designer case study. Contributing College of the Arts: and Singapore. This project the format of presenting the fashion designers Alister Yiap, Jocelyn Tan Pathmapriya D/O Alagasan, asked students from Curtin University, outcomes in an exhibition reinforced and Elizabeth Delfs were selected Nalin Cherdjareewatananun, , and LASALLE College of the her PhD research in redefining as designer case studies as their Valentina Chua, Acelyn Arts, Singapore, to consider fashion as conceptual fashion by moving garment conceptual thinking and creative Chuabaazuan, Hu Min, Ivanna a form of object design with reference away from its commercial coding and outcomes could not be defined by a Ainora Kuswara, Hailey Lim SW, to the body rather than redesigning into a space that vacillates between single area of study. Yiap’s work sits Loke Mei Yen, Shan Low, Herlianti existing clothing made exclusively design and art. “The exhibition has between jewellery, fashion, and object Iskandar Setiawan, Maleka to be worn as garment. The exciting emerged as a key component in the design. Off the body, his sculptural 3 Rajul Shah, Valencia Angelina products were showcased in an presentation of the fashion object forms blur the boundary between Soenoyo, Melissa Surya, and exhibition of emerging practice that and is providing a new perspective on design and sculpture, object and Edison Wong. spanned three galleries at the Institute both conventional and new forms of accessory. Tan has an interdisciplinary the visual merchandising environment catalogue, presenting the designer’s of Contemporary Arts Singapore. practice. It provides an opportunity education background in fashion, to know how to read and translate and students’ collective concepts Students of Curtin University: The aim of the 3 ROOMS: Object for us to reassess the nature of textiles, product and furniture design, these objects into a real and very within one thematic title. ROOM 1 Celene Bridge, Ariana Davis, Design + the Body project was to works that emerge from a broader evinced through her multifaceted tangible experience. This knowledge explored the visual slippages between Stephanie Fulham, Shinead engage students in interdisciplinary consideration of the relationship outcomes. Delfs refers to herself as and personal engagement with the visual merchandising and exhibition Gecas, Stephanie Kinsman, research and practice to encourage between garment, accessory and the an interdisciplinary artist, with the fashion object is what heightens display. Case study Jocelyn Tan’s Samuel McCloy, Emily Muco, new ways of designing and making body. The exhibition is an opportunity intention that her work is perceived its appeal above other forms in the work explores the intersection Lauren Sims, Imogene Spencer, fashion. Inspired by the presentation to contemplate these objects with without pre-connotations of textiles gallery environment. Even when not between accessory and garment, Hannah Steens, Timothy Watson, of Beyond Garment as part of the 2010 greater focus on concept, materials, or fashion. Farren (2012) summarises being worn we know and understand exhibition and retail display. Tan’s and Katherine Young. Perth Fashion Festival, 3 ROOMS form, and structure – to examine the in the exhibition catalogue that the experience of the wearer; in the designs encourage interaction, thus extends this re-examination of the aesthetics of the object away from the resulting dialogue of ideas gallery contemplating these objects allowing an exchange between the fashion object through exhibition. the distraction of issues of the body investigated in 3 ROOMS was voiced we can project and imagine our consumer and her products. Through Co-curators Anne Farren and Emily or wearer. While the absence of by a new generation of designers personal experiences onto the object. this dialogue, accessory becomes a Wills selected twenty-five students the body is argued by some fashion who work with concepts that reflect The gallery installation presents a process that carries the self beyond to showcase their creative fashion theorists to be inappropriate for the evolving nature of fashion. new perspective, an opportunity to adornment. “Her work questions responses to three Australian fashion exhibition, 3 ROOMS presents contemplate the aesthetics of the the function, configuration and designers: Alister Yiap, Jocelyn Tan a case for the exhibition to provide the “The immediate connection that we fashion object away from function wearing of the object and challenges and Elizabeth Delfs. These designer viewer with the opportunity to explore have to the fashion object is born out and commercial imperatives that the definition of these forms: ...is case studies similarly question a new dialogue between viewer, of the intimacy of the relationship surround these forms in a retail it a bag... is it a neck piece... is it a the changing role of fashion and object and maker.” (Farren, 2012, p7) we have with the worn object. [...] environment.” (Farren, 2012, p8) garment...; establishing ambiguity and how fashion can move beyond the We have learnt what it means to illustrating the potential for slippages context of garment to challenge not The presentation of fashion in wear an object of dress and have Each of the three ‘rooms’ was in the definition of object through only how objects can be considered exhibition uses the format of also been trained through the retail colour coded through signage on orientation on the body.” (Farren, BY EMILY WILLS fashion but also how the presentation installation to challenge the reading experience of viewing these forms in the walls and in the accompanying 2012, p8-11) Tan’s interdisciplinary GLOSSARY 18 VOLUME 2 19 3 ROOMS: Object Design + the Body

1 technology, fashion and the body. perspective that moved fashion away Ivanna Cinora Kuswara (left) Alister Yiap (right) 3 ROOMS: Object Design + the Body from its existing ties with garment, Room 2_1 relied on contributors to draw upon production and business to evolve their existing knowledge to integrate new notions of what fashion is, and 2 ideas, synthesise similarities and can be. The intention of curators and Edison Poh Room 2_2 produce new outcomes that blur the participating designers and students perspective of fashion. Participating is that these records of personal and 3 students were selected based on their collective narrative will remain in Stephanie Fulham (left) ability to blur the boundaries between future histories to be interpreted and Melissa Surya (centre) Alister Yiap (right) 1 commercial and conceptual fashion, reinterpreted through the process Room 2_3 and finding parallels between their of continued transformation and own perspectives and those of their re-examination of future fashion. 4 chosen designer case studies. For Elizabeth Delfs (left) References Emily Muco (right) the lecturers from Curtin University Room 3_2 and LASALLE College of the Arts, this exciting project challenged Benson, M. (1998) “The Curators Moment”, 5 students enrolled in their respective Art Journal Vol.57 No. 4 Carter, M. (2003) Maleka Rajul Shah (left) fashion programmes to explore Fashion Classics from Carlyle to Barthes. Sinead Gecas (right) Berg: Oxford. Room 3_2 fashion from an interdisciplinary Clark, H. (2012) Conceptual Fashion in 6 Fashion and Art by Adam Geczy and Vicki Samuel McCoy (left) 2 Karaminas (eds). Berg: London. photograph & works by Elizabeth Delfs (right) Cope, B. & Kalantzis, M. (2011) “Design in Room 3_3 Principle and Practice: A reconsideration of the terms of design engagement”. The Design Journal, Volume 14, Issue 1. Berg: UK.

Delfs, E. (2010) “Elizabeth Delfs” in Beyond Garment. Western Australian Museum: Welshpool.

Farren, A. (2010) ‘Beyond Garment’ in 4 Beyond Garment. Western Australian 3 Museum: Welshpool. bricolage of product, furniture and By using new materials and engaging work she exhibited for 3 ROOMS Farren, A. (2012) ‘Reassessing the Fashion Object...’ in 3 ROOMS: Object Design and fashion is interactive – suggesting in an interdisciplinary approach encapsulated the more sensual the Body. Institute of Contemporary Arts altered ways of making/wearing/ Yiap’s work explores the creation elements of her vision with ethereal Singapore: Singapore. using. Through her exhibition of what Shanken (2005) refers to fabrics that vacillated between format, Tan allows the prospective as “boundary objects”, capable of two-dimensional shapes and three- Pink, D. (2005) A Whole New Mind. Riverhead Books, Penguin Group: New York. consumer to define the functions of transcending the limits of any one dimensional sculptures. The exhibited the products they are interacting with. discipline. Student works that were student works that responded to Delfs’ Ryan, Z. (2012) Fashioning the Object: selected to be exhibited alongside sculptural forms similarly blur the Bless, Boudicca, Sandra Backlund. The Art Institute of Chicago, Yale University Press: Alister Yiap, the designer case study Yiap in ROOM 2 showed innovative line between the conceptual polarities 5 New Haven, USA. for ROOM 2, is a jewellery designer explorations into non-fashion of object/surface, permanent/ who explores the junction where materials and construction processes, ephemeral, gender/genderless, Schilo, A. (2010) “On Dress and Adornment” jewelry and garment meet. Through constructing new narratives which sculpture/garment. Student responses in Beyond Garment. Western Australian questioning the conventions of jewelry offered the exhibition viewer more moved beyond the casual creation Museum: Welshpool. materials and production techniques, complex readings of their work. of structural forms or aesthetically Shanken, A. (2005) “Artists in Industry and Yiap’s ‘runway couture’ represents pleasing fashion related objects the Academy: Collaborative Research, the transformative potential of object Designer case study Elizabeth Delfs, to showcase a variety of outcomes Interdisciplinary Scholarship and the design as it moves away from the body exhibited in ROOM 3, presented ranging from film to photography, Creation and Interpretation of Hybrid Forms”. Leonardo, Volume 38, Number 5. towards standalone sculpture. Yiap’s three “anthropomorphic figures” that lighting, sculpture and textiles. MIT Press: USA. designs create three-dimensional reflected an absence of the body. Delfs’ Stringfellow, N. (2011) “Introduction” in objects that carry the memory of intricately manipulated textile forms The practice of the three contributing 6 the human form to create new provide a “new experience in beauty artists and participating students Fast Forward Fashion: Fall/ Winter 2011 curated by Nathalie Grolimund. Farameh design narratives. Designers who relating to fashion and design with a similarly explored the fringes of Media: New York. successfully cross the boundaries of delicate sense of equipoise.” (Schilo, various disciplines of study from .... their discipline are better equipped to 2010, p29) Delfs’ work explores the fashion and textiles, to interior, Emily Wills co-curated 3 ROOMS: Object Design + the Body and lectures Wills, E. (2012) “Changing Perspectives: develop expertise across disciplines interaction between the organic and product, and interactive design; at LASALLE College of the Arts in the Fashion Design and Textiles An Interdisciplinary Fashion Approach” in 3 ROOMS: Object Design and the Body. because they seek alternative the inorganic and the bodies place the exhibited works investigating programme. Through her company Surface 1°22, Emily explores the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore: approaches to find new outcomes. within the built environment. The the relationships between art and interdisciplinary intersection between image, surface and textiles. Singapore. GLOSSARY 20 VOLUME 2 21 See No Evil

interested in a blank canvas. I want It may look easy, but it never was. I JS: I would tread carefully to work off something that already think in terms of variations and not when saying “pure” (only in relation exists in the world. I think a lot about improvisations, so it’s more classical in to Bresson), because paradoxes and the dialogue in creating a painting. that sense; like in music where there contradictions loom over the paintings The postcards were done with the are variations of a theme or chord, like a dark cloud. It was never about remainder of the paint from making but the structure remains the same. purity, if you know what I mean. The the Gaussian, hence the title Parergon, “indeterminate” and “a different because they exist outside what I set IW: You use the words “purer sphere of consciousness” seem like out to achieve. Ironically those became language” as well as “mechanical” apt descriptions. People will talk just as important. The Gaussians were in relation to painting. Bresson about surface, materiality and process; really about extracting colour and pushed the actors to an extreme in however, for me those are not ends data to create some sort of atmosphere rehearsals to make them lose their in themselves. The indeterminacy is through this mechanical striations, sense of control so as to unlearn controlled and not given to entropy. sort of like a 21st-century Turner but habits and discover another I am not interested in losing control more mathematical. It didn’t matter sphere of consciousness – the or the paint cracking up or spilling, where they came from; the paintings indeterminate. It reminds me of or sagging over or out of the frame, became their own, but their titles are John Cage’s idea of indeterminacy or the painting becoming more than sort of entry points, traces if you will. where he is obsessed with ways a painting. I like how the four sides to remove any form of the lyrical govern the painting because I still see I am opposed to the idea of the or the beautiful associated with painting in terms of pictures, images. masterpiece, the heroic. I don’t bodily expression so as to reach Only the postcards have a strong trace think of style when creating a work, another paradigm. It is interesting of the hand, or rather a knife. Someone I prefer concepts and philosophical to note that many of your new mentioned “attack” and that’s it; I ideas that deal with perception. You paintings have little or no trace of attacked the postcards there and then. know the filmmaker Robert Bresson, the brush as a traditional hand- The grey paintings, and the Gaussians, who made his actors repeat multiple rendering device. The brush marks, because of the disappearance of the takes of what they were doing until if apparent, always assume the hand – you could even look at them their performance was stripped to form of a single sweep appearing through a photographic code and 1 a purer language of cinema – that’s from one edge of the surface to hence their references to (and these how I see my paintings going, in another. There are of course the are comments I’ve gotten): X-rays, terms of serialism. The first painting brushless grey paintings, which celluloid, film, the point just before JS: I always start off with an starts off very enthusiastic and such, remind me of windows and a Polaroid assumes an image (my idea. An ideal in my head, but the but repeating that in the 8th or 14th blocked light filters. Would you say favourite!), windows, mirrors and now, SEE NO EVIL idea always shifts with the reality painting, something happens beyond “pure” painting is to highlight the blocked light filters. With the greys, Ian Woo interviews Jeremy Sharma of making a painting. One process me, and I only select what is best. phenomena of the physical world? it’s even harder; you don’t quite know informs the other. The spectrum It’s frustrating, not to mention very what you are looking at. There are paintings started off from a colour expensive, but I am obsessive like that. numerous phenomena here, especially swatch on my computer which I in terms of light, matter, and gravity. attempted to recreate, not represent, WRITTEN FOR THE EXHIBITION PART ONE but recreate in paint, with the IW: Let’s move on to the analogy of paint: pixels are pixels, postcards, which to me, assume Apropos: paint is paint. I could never quite get double readings of identities. One Jeremy Sharma IW: The word “exercises” what I really wanted; you never get notices the historic image or in comes to mind when I look at what you want, but then something some instances, a found image. 12 April – 11 May 2012 your new paintings and mixed interesting happens, and that chance The way it is treated with paint Gallery 2 media surfaces made within the or accident informs much more. on top makes the content of the last two years. I use the word image unimportant, subjected as a “exercises” based on the serial Similarly that led to the greys, because 1 background, a backdrop to a colour- nature of your works, where an the colours were getting too messed Jeremy Sharma matched secretion of the image, exploration of perception and up and muddy, so I pushed it the other Enamels (vertical viewed like a suspended action of grey, decalcomania) surface is repeated and varied in way, similar processes pushed to #1, #2, #5, #6 morphing captured in time. I also a spontaneous manner, making different extremes. A lot happens out 2012 feel as if the identity of the image several attempts at engaging with of what I couldn’t get originally. The Enamel paint on aluminium on the postcard has been merged similarities and differences from wax-cast magazines came out of my composite with the substance of paint. It is 172 x 115 cm each painting to painting. I will start fascination with the nude or figure. perhaps a mutation of elements, a with three questions: How do I just cannot paint one anymore, not 2 game of parody, to cover up, yet the you start, and what variations do that I can’t; I can do it quite easily, Jeremy Sharma paint seems to pull the contents you work towards when making but I’m not interested in that. I’m Pantheon into itself (the paint). It confounds 2012 a series of works? What leads you not interested in say, seeing an apple Oil, beeswax, magazine one’s recognition of space, content, BY IAN WOO to end a series and start another? and then painting an apple. I’m not 32 x 23.5 cm 2 and matter. I have used the word GLOSSARY 22 VOLUME 2 23 See No Evil

Richter’s overpainted photographs and Gaussian (seascapes). The time and environment and medium, from opposite poles of aesthetic and thinking they were so wrong, blurring creates new content. If so it’s not quite absolute, almost. I like concerns and cannot agree. Yet, painting on top of a photograph; it’s I can use a reference to music it “almost”. So we return to Cage again… your work somehow reminds me almost taboo or even cheating! I look is akin to the use of distortion in I don’t listen to a lot of Cage, but he is of the characteristics that these at this whole uneasy relationship transforming the sound production a good example, and the analogy of the two artists possess, the weight between painting and photography of a clean signal of a guitar to guitar signal is interesting, and you are bearing more on Twombly’s – painting imitating photography, that of a completely different right, if anything it’s more of sound romance towards innocence. You photography imitating painting. I presence. In reference to Richter’s than music, more signal than noise. mentioned “almost”, which brings think we have had enough of that use of blurring, how would you The blurring is a strategy to achieve to mind the example of an axis, already. I am now very comfortable differentiate your use of this act? a desired state of flatness, you could where ideas between two opposites with them being themselves and This is especially interesting when call it a utopian endgame if you wish. shift and adjust themselves. Do you working together, they don’t even have we relook at the ideals of early I know Richter works on a canvas think that contemporary painting to integrate and merge as one. They minimalism and even abstract until he cannot go on, and of course I needs to find new experiences by are both indexical in how they achieve expressionism. Are you wiping our cannot compare myself with someone reconnecting the network of genres a final identity. Painting is always seen everyday consumption of images who has painted for almost 50 years, within the history of painting? as a laboured process whereas the so as to enable us to return to or but the fundamental difference is I To reconnect would be to unplug photograph is instantaneous; can I say revisit ideas of utopian endgames? do not stay as long in the painting. I some links or reestablish new 3 I am reaching a median point here? end the game a lot quicker, it cannot connections. Your concern for JS: I understand what you are be overdone or too worked upon, and digital and technological aesthetics IW: You brought up an saying and what you are getting at. it’s a lot more mechanical than you seems to also point to the way in interesting perspective about how How do I put this? It is not so much think. People think there are many which aspects of contemporary 3 one can understand an artist’s abstraction but what one is unable layers in the Gaussians, but in fact design have found their way into Jeremy Sharma intentions before and after the to represent by blocking, blurring there is only one. The repetition of the composite of new painting. Parergon (landscape: Golden Mile) completion of a work. In relation to and erasing. It is as much about form the gesture is key to the work. Signals, However, is the composite a 2011 the casualness in your application as it is about the content. It is sort of filters, transformation, and repetition mutant? Or is the engineered Oil on postcard of paint on the photograph, there ideological that way. As I have said, it’s all point to contemporary experience. whole seamless? I guess this is an 10.5 x 15 cm is almost desperation to block the not about purity or absolutism, though The works acknowledge the existence open question, which attempts to image with the act of painting, I may have thought of that or given the of computers and digitisation, address our constant search for 4 like an impulse to remove/shift its impression of that before, or maybe multiplicity, fragmentation and new imagery as painters involved Jeremy Sharma Gaussian (nudes) identity, to disengage it from its you and I see them differently. And it’s technology, because I cannot see in contemporary art practice. 2011 function. I guess I would see that not as cold, perfect and industrial as in how they would exist without these Oil on postcard JS: 10.5 x 15 cm as a personal engagement, which Judd’s brand of minimalism. I like the experiences. That’s a good way to put it. is perhaps not necessarily related human endeavour and indeterminacy Especially with Twombly, his work 5 to the final outcome. I also find in creating the paintings; they are IW: I was thinking about exists beyond technology, right from Jeremy Sharma that your work does not deal with certainly imperfect and relative to Judd and Twombly – how both are the beginning, from antiquity or Variations Suite 4 – Yellow Light Achillea notions of representation as such, (Golden) and but rather a return to formal ideas Variations Suite 3 – about absolutism in art-making. Yellow Light Abelia I would say that you are making 2011 Oil on linen images that go through several each 153 x 183 cm stages of filters. Complex filters that you hope can restore purity. 4 Donald Judd would be proud!

“negation” before, but now I am thinking of negation or iconoclasm or But really, it is about painting thinking more of a “possession” revealing or concealing. It’s not a game in order to restore the essence of image. Is the matching of paint of peek-a-boo. Charles [Merewether] of a picture object, subjugating to the colour of the image on the used a word ‘dis/close’ which comes content to a point of flatness, card an instinctive process? How close to my intention. But ‘dis/ in order that we return to the is the relationship formed? closure’ applies more to a reading beginnings of the frame and surface of the work when it is finished. It is image. You physically flatten all JS: Double readings, failure closer to something more primal, an reference to representation to of representation… I have to find impulse to smear, why and how we its purest form–that of surface, something in the image to respond to mark surfaces or images. Colour and materiality and distortion, like in the history of images – a vocabulary sensuality could heighten the desired in the Variations Suites. In those of portraits and landscapes – like effect. They weren’t meant to be works, you give the essence of a history of representations that I serious at first; it was something done landscape and atmosphere by work on. I like the idea of working on in jest. They are, in a way, photo-based completely removing all content reproductions. When I was applying paintings and again, they concern and imagery to the point of a blur, paint or swiping it off, I wasn’t really the image. I remember first seeing same with the Gaussian (nudes) 5 GLOSSARY 24 VOLUME 2 25 See No Evil

6 combined, will translate into pure textures. The blankest paintings of art.” – Susan Sontag. Jeremy Sharma Gaussian (seascape) white light, but that’s not what you are in the white room. I actually 2012 get with paint or physical material. love daylight on my work; it’s my 3. “Content is a glimpse of something, Oil on aluminum composite They turn grey, an ambiguous colour favourite kind of light. It is natural, an encounter like a flash. It’s very 28 x 31.5 cm that evokes no emotional response ever-changing, ambient light that the tiny – very tiny, content.” that you would normally get from paintings react to. I had the windows, – Willem de Kooning pure intense colours. So it’s not black, doorway and space in mind in regards and it’s not resin as you mentioned. to space, frames and structure of 4. “I believe that the quintessential It’s pure enamel paint. The grey is verticals and horizontals. In reference task of every painter in any time dark like asphalt, the way I want it, to what you have just said about a has been to concentrate on the or a sort of urban concrete and iron work that has no history and culture, essential.” – Gerhard Richter grey. They absorb light as much as I was trying to think of statements I they reflect and thus have a kind of read that somewhat relates to what 5. “The fondest, least plausible dream effect of being continuously in the I’m interested in. There are certainly of Modernist art and literature present. Don’t you think they work many tangents on which to go off, and was of a world without memory: a like echoes? There is an interesting when your neurons are fired up, there cultural tabula rasa from which all anecdote of how Theodor Adorno had are a billion thoughts in your head, trace of the styles of the past had the auditorium where he taught at but you end up saying nothing. But been erased. The arts of evacuation the Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt these are the ones I can remember: imagined by the likes of Samuel painted grey to aid concentration. Beckett, Yves Klein and John Cage 6 1. “Art is art. Everything else is aspired to a deliberate vacuity: a The white walls in some parts of the everything else.” – Ad Reinhardt vacant stage, an empty gallery, a exhibition space are a nice contrast silent orchestra.” – Brian Dillon against the dark theatrical drama in 2. “Science fiction films are not about even earlier, out of cave paintings. JS: Paintings for spaceships! PART TWO the grey room where the paintings science. They are about disaster, 6. “I know one thing: that I know Innocence! Like a child learning That’s what I mentioned. You know have more incidental details and which is one of the oldest subjects nothing.” – Socrates to speak, write, or draw again. the black monolith from Stanley Opposites and shifts, ambivalence... Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, IW: Previously you mentioned I link this to a certain kind of doubt where the apes gather around and that your work has neither history All the statements above are true when you paint, that unknown that in the future at the end of the film, it nor culture. I was just looking and at the same time paradoxical. you dive into. “Almost” connotes appears again. It sums up modernity at your new exhibition at Grey I want to create art of the highest an in-between, like a precipice, or in a perfect symbol; it’s a mystery, a Projects, and as I was in the order that operates on many levels of a kind of becoming or otherness. spectre. It’s a kind of an unknown; brighter room, it struck me that consciousness. I want it to exist for I am thinking how painting could it doesn’t exist in any time but you the black resin paintings seem to itself. I think art functions as a belief be more relevant in contemporary have seen it happening in the past, work very well with the frames of system that takes the place in the practice, or at least how it is relevant present and [you will see it happening the doors and the windows. The absence of science, or ritual, for me to continue to paint. Aren’t in the] future. It knows no culture or paintings seem to function like an or a dependency on chemicals or we all already some form of mutant, history. Everything is blanked out and in-between fixture of those two activities that take you to a different cyborg or really slow computers? Yet erased and the spaceship is a vessel specific items (doors and windows) consciousness. However, everything I think what I am doing is related to that is a liminal space between past of space and time. It occurred to else is not quite everything else and something more primal. If you knew, and future, known and unknown, so me that the idea of non-history they are not quite separate, they creep you wouldn’t paint. You can only try. it has got to be devoid of culture or and non-culture is because your into the consciousness of your making, history and has to continuously be in paintings are reflective, always and I also want to make work that is IW: Speaking of cyborgs, you the present, but sometimes you have absorbing everything around closer to life, or life’s narrative, or the mentioned at your talk that you traces of humanity. Like that fantastic them and they therefore have no everyday, or the present, but yet I want often imagine that you are making plant life in Andrei Tarkovsky’s constant, which pertains to their to exalt it to a level that makes it art. these works for a science-fiction Solaris at the beginning and in the characteristics of having no sense movie set (or something to that spacecraft – in fact you get that sense of baggage. This is especially true There was always a political and social extent). Could you talk about the in all of his films, well the ones that with the ones that have no imagery dimension to what constructivism, relationship between imagination I have watched, if memory serves or markings on them. Is that a fair post-war art, abstraction, minimalism, and the production of artworks? me well. That is exciting for me! But observation? the avant-garde and conceptual art Again we are referring back to the back to this science fiction idea, I was responding to, and I guess I am ideas about the artist’s personal think it also has something to do with JS: You’ve really opened a can responding to an environment and the processes and that of the viewers. my recent predilection for synthetic of worms there! I think I said that in generation I live in. In the short ten What I am interested in is the way paints and composite surfaces. reference to the monolith in 2001: years or so that I’ve been painting, I we artists often need to psyche A Space Odyssey. The reflection is a have gone through the movements and ourselves up to shift into another perceptual phenomenon that perhaps understanding modernism through realm so as to fully zone out from suggests what you have mentioned. my own practice, not just where the realities of life, in some kind of Grey, for me, has all the colours of painting comes from, but where I serious daydreaming or play-acting. the spectrum. Light waves, when come from and trying to exhaust every GLOSSARY 26 VOLUME 2 27 See No Evil

possibility of what painting means sprayed in layers but poured. They exact thing which could collapse prodigy, and when he played them to me. It was very important for me are not protected by any lacquer, in relation to the inability of our again as an old man, they became to discover that through exploration coating or resin. I had to create body to cope, to match the speed slower and more thoughtful. He in the studio. I really don’t know of special boxes for them just to protect of a machine’s perfect memory. summarised it well when he said, anyone else who has worked in a their surface after the hard lessons So your paintings and objects “The purpose of art is not the release more ‘schizophrenic’ manner as I learnt. I could possibly improve seem to signal a seemingly perfect of a momentary ejection of adrenaline have in such a short time, on top of the boxes in the future and perhaps end, an endgame with the trace of but is, rather, the gradual lifelong my performance and sound works the protective cover that sits just humankind. I have been interested construction of a state of wonder and with KYTV [Kill Your Television] and above the surface during packing in the relation between the machine serenity.” At the end of the day when my music and video works. I think and only exposing them for the first and the body in my own work. I see the viewer steps into the gallery to it’s symptomatic of the generation time during exhibition. The title the history of the perfect machine look at a painting of mine, they could I come from, considering the rate Exposition was a play on that. and humans as an endless relation, be moved or fascinated by it or regard and speed the nation was becoming in search for systems, knowledge, it as a blank, dull object and pass by modernised. We were the first to really It is also a hidden reference to what the unknown, the map of which it in two seconds. I am beginning utilise and understand the power of Dan Flavin said about his fluorescent we made, destroyed and remade: to care less about these things. the Internet as a globalised entity light works being an exposition our endgames. Do you see your and an information-gathering tool. instead of an installation and you’d work as one of our endgames? IW: I was told that you have think of that as an exhibition of been asked to do a work for the In reference to Walter Benjamin, manufactured products. This is the JS: Maybe not. Recently I read upcoming Singapore . the Internet has completely pure language I am after. Putting the an article on provisional painting Congratulations! What are you revolutionised how we look at, think paintings in a space is like putting being a response to the lofty ideals planning to make? What kind about, and make art. I really believe them on stage as actors and seeing of modernism and end paintings like of space are you being asked to you can transform an intangible reality what they do; it is the audience Reinhardt’s and others’. Provisional consider? Since it’s difficult or from search engines and convert this that interprets them. I did not set painters were not interested in perhaps challenging to foresee information into tangible objects and out to make works like these; they completing their paintings and conditions at this early stage artworks. The speed at which images came out after a lot of thought and their gestures are contingent on the of planning, I would like you and information proliferates is just refinement and many paintings that moment of making, and they weren’t to consider this question as an crazy. Painting requires you to slow did not see the light of day. Painting so much concerned with the whole imaginary press release. down, which is the hardest thing to is a practice steeped in mimesis, baggage of history and as such were do today despite its popularity. If which is basically trying to represent freer to do whatever they wanted. JS: Without divulging too you ask me, I don’t necessarily need what you see. It could be based on End painters like Rodchenko and much, I am making something at sketchbooks anymore when I have a still life, photograph, or another the Constructivists were serious the intersection of print, drawing, computers to help me remember, jot painting, hence the influence of and saw painting as a kind of death sculpture and painting. In a down notes, even construct and make have always been interested in the idea memories, knowledge, culture and past painters in your work. I guess and worked towards reduction and nutshell, it’s basically turning the drawings. The Internet knows no of death, catastrophe, destruction, history. These are only assumptions process painting and abstraction the monochrome, towards a logical transmissions of dead stars into large boundaries and is lawless and more apocalypse and end/beginning, made by the mind when the could be seen as a way out of that, and conclusion. I am not too comfortable slabs, like slices of eternity. They will democratic than the most democratic something more primeval and now, foundation of consciousness lies I thought that it was important that with the idea of provisional painting, be pairing me with a little-known nations. We live in such a controlled with my renewed interests in form without any pre-determined baggage, a blank state involves the viewer and neither do I consider myself an end Indonesian artist, whose work I’m also environment in Singapore, where and material, and ideas of time, space, simply put, to know nothing at all. the environment much more. I don’t painter. I think painting has so much excited about. We will be exhibiting everything is rigorously planned, repetition and return. I really want think anyone starts out painting blank more to offer if we possibly just stop in the same gallery at the Singapore predetermined and projected to you to strip it down and concentrate on Then there was the whole idea of the panels or monochromes. One arrives seeing them as paintings but seeing Art Museum. It’s very different but in minute detail. Everything has a the basest level, and the encounter dematerialisation of the art object at that. And I have finally arrived at them as art. I like what the future yet is tied to the same interests and formula; it is modular, systemised with the artwork is very important in the ‘60s: minimalism and the a point where I could throw out the holds and I like the object, production concerns that have occupied me for and strategised. I think it’s the very for me. I am not a fan of de Kooning, faceless impersonality yet fetishistic baggage and head for somewhere new. and matter of painting. I see myself years. It is tied to my belief of making thing that kills and at the same but I understand what he was saying, of industrially made objects à la more as a conceptual painter who works that make themselves, and to time spurs creativity. We almost and he was very sporting in letting Donald Judd that reflects capitalism IW: Your idea of Singapore as responds to the current milieu. I see my practice as a reflection of the age don’t have individual voices and Rauschenberg, of whom I’m fond of, and consumer culture. I wanted to a controlled environment makes my works as extensions of machines, of mechanical, industrial and digital yet it alarms me how vocal and erase his drawings almost to the point make something like that but with me think that it is a psychological culture and memory. They are tied to reproduction and interconnectivity. uncensored we are on online forums. of disappearing completely (and for the human hand and see what kind war zone. This war zone makes a vision of a personal utopia, one that My point is that these visible and that matter, it was ironic, based on of dialogue that arises, something Singapore an apt location for starts as a desire for that space, but it invisible systems, structures, and, what de Kooning had said). For me, between process and product. My interesting art to happen. I like the becomes less individualistic, which images go into my subconscious. Rauschenberg one-upped de Kooning work is not industrial other than its idea of no-memory because it is is opposed to what most painters .... with due respect. I was also thinking support, which was custom built, impossible but yet contradictory. build their identity on. The purity and Ian Woo is a painter working in People have mentioned the radical of Malevich’s black square, which was and because they are not industrially The reason for this is that we live perfection strive for the ideal form the language of abstraction with shifts in my practice; galleries don’t so symbolic and reminded me of some painted, they cannot withstand any in times where virtual memories in painting but yet at times you want an interest in painting’s inherent know where to place me. But if you dark matter; it’s almost as symbolic as sort of force or violence exerted are compressed and at the same to disturb them. I always liken it to ability to suggest modes of look at what I was dealing with before the cross. Buddhist comes on the surface. They are extremely speed which cancellation occurs. a slow computer. Take for example representation. He is senior lecturer in my earlier paintings, they have to mind – it explores the void as an fragile and vulnerable and a fingernail What you mentioned about the Glenn Gould’s rendition of J.S. Bach’s with the Postgraduate Programme always come from an existential point in-between of what is there to us; what could put a scratch on the smooth Internet as a possible utopia, a Goldberg Variations. He played them in the Faculty of Fine Arts at of view, not of doom and gloom – I we know as ‘us’ is an accumulation of slick of paint, because they are not kind of fictional democracy, is the to a mechanical perfection as a child LASALLE College of the Arts. Coded Transformations 11 January – 3 February 2013 Gallery 1

Exhibition by Andreas Schlegel, in Collaboration with Dhiya Muhammad, Vladimir Todorovic, Mohamad Riduan, Mithru Vigneshwara and Judith Lee

THE 1 BLEEDING BY JOLEEN LOH EDGE OF ART GLOSSARY 30 VOLUME 2 31 The Bleeding Edge of Art

While software has too often been undermined prototyping by machines and custom software. The imagistic, beautiful and as merely an instrument for executing pre-existing invented mutations of natural phenomena position the work on an artistic neutrally formulated tasks, there is certainly more to the borderline between abstraction and custom software programming. significance of software art than the argument that these tools brought about by digital technology are what makes Discussions surrounding the historical precursors for software or generative art have often focused upon Fluxus art and Happenings, both it relevant to contemporary society. There is an extended of which rely on instructions or a set of rules.2 As with many Fluxus projects, potential of software for contemporary artistic thought, Schlegel’s work problematises notions of authenticity and uniqueness by which artists have continually demonstrated in their forms removing or blurring the artist’s role in artwork production. Even if the of cultural expression through the usage of software and physical and visual manifestations of digital art conceal the layer of data new technologies. At the same time these works and their and code, any ‘digital image’ is essentially produced by instructions and the software that was used to manipulate it. In RandomNoiseFlow, the driving principles, to varying degrees, have art historical algorithms are used to position a set of particles in a 2D-space over time, and precedents or are informed by conceptual practices. parameters are set to determine the aesthetics of the outcome. It is these layers of ‘code’ and set of determined parameters that form a conceptual level of the work, connecting it to previous conceptual experiments by New media artist Andreas Schlegel’s practice traverses the artists who share the same strategies – of instructions, dematerialisation, shifting and blurry terrains of art and new technologies, playing a significant appropriation, for example – such as Marcel Duchamp, John Cage and role in the shaping of media art in Singapore. Born in and based in Sol LeWitt, whose works are based on the execution of instructions.3 Singapore, his artistic practice extends the use of emerging and open source technology simultaneously on several fronts, often seeking to generate new Mithru Vigneshwara forms of audio, visual and physical output. His latest solo exhibition, Coded Aleph of Emotions 2012 Transformations, at Gallery 1 in January 2013 brought together a number of Custom software, custom works that explore software and emerging technologies as a cultural form hardware, Arduino, compass, in order to create a dialogue between the digital and physical domains of art. potentimeter, smart phone Through a series of clever experiments, new computing and manufacturing technologies are used to transform physical input to produce new forms of cultural objects or formats. The methods and technologies employed here, despite being used by artists or within the digital domain for years, have not yet attained mainstream status in contemporary art today.

Andreas Schlegel RandomNoiseFlow 2010 Custom software and print Dimensions variable

Schlegel’s concerns with human-computer interactions in the context of the everyday unfolded through works like Aleph of Emotions, a project by Mithru Vigneshwara.4 As an attempt to archive emotions, data In RandomNoiseFlow, Schlegel explores aesthetics and forms of is collected from Twitter’s public feeds over one month based on keywords natural hazards through the mediation of computer software. The work, a defining emotions. It is presented together with an interactive camera-like triptych of large black and white prints, consists of an immense traffic of tiny interface that reacts to a particular direction and focuses on a particular city. rectangular particles generated by the program. At a distance, they simulate The information collected is then color-coded according to Robert Plutchik’s and aestheticise the flow within natural structures, from lava to rock strata. Wheel of Emotions and linked to specific geolocations. Once all the data was Upon closer inspection, we see the particle is a tiny white rectangle with a collected, it is visualized into a graph according to countries. The work treated one-pixel black outline. What is apparent in these reproductions is a unique custom software and hardware as fodder for experimentation to explore computer-generated image, which is given by algorithms and inscribed in the the relationship between Internet space and geographical organisation language of prototyping machines. On the one hand, there is interplay between and to suggest the possible observable patterns of ‘global emotions’. It an active setting of parameters and defining of algorithms by Andreas and transformed physical data taken from social networking platforms, processing his collaborators on the other, the active ‘participation’ of the computer, the it through custom software and hardware, before its eventual physical medium. The work examined the subliminal aspects of natural phenomena, output, that allowing us to contemplate the way in which these applied converting physical input into an aesthetic experience mediated by the technologies can affect the way we express or archive ourselves today. GLOSSARY 32 VOLUME 2 33 The Bleeding Edge of Art

Andreas Schlegel, Another layer to Coded Transformations is the reference to Vladimir Todorovic Formations and commerce. Andreas’ use of open source software, DIY process 2011 and his display of the assembled parts adhere to an aesthetic and philosophy Custom software Processing, of resistance to capitalist monopoly of technology, a critique against the OpenGL, FInalcut Pro, cloud textures assumptions of existing computer and information technologies and its Dimensions variable limited set of commands that inhibits autonomy. Unlike proprietary software which does not allow alterations and is expensive, open source systems allow for experimentation, innovation and collaboration. In fact, it is common that the open-source technologies and its users often have communities that organize and share libraries of codes. Open source software has been described as a ‘bottom-up’ system, rather than ‘top-down’ systems such as proprietary software (such as those developed by Microsoft Corporation) in which its basis of capitalist monopoly relies heavily on the secrecy of its source code.5 Politics and commerce, as Greene suggests, are “often referred to with internet art as it is no straightforward complement to dot.com era capitalism” but is somewhat a counterbalance to its excess and injustices, developing actual alternatives. Schlegel’s assembly of parts on the ‘DIY Table’ Andreas Schlegel, Vladimir Todorovic such as electronic components, batteries, screws and wires are a deliberate Syntboutique gesture. The equipment laid here, inexpensive and easily obtainable, are 2008 enough to assemble various forms of electrical devices, which elsewhere in VeroWhite Polyjet Resin, Meshlab software, the commercial market would be expensive and have pre-designed functions. custom software Dimensions variable Coded Transformations demonstrated the significance of the role of software and new media technologies in cultural expression today. Rather than simply a tool to process preset tasks, the works in the exhibition demonstrated the conceptual strategies and the malleability of new technologies that Andreas and his collaborators take advantage of in their artistic processes. Through creating a dialogue between the digital domains and physical formats in art through producing new forms of cultural objects, we are invited to observe the way technology can change the way we produce, consume, collect and memorise today.

This text is reproduced with permission from Media Lab Projects 2008 – 2013.

.... Joleen Loh is a curator and writer.

NOTES

1 Bleeding edge refers to technology that has been released but is still not ready for or not adopted by the general public due to the fact that it has not been reliably tested. The term ‘bleeding edge’ was an allusion to the similar terms ‘leading edge’ and ‘cutting edge’.

2 Rachel Greene, Internet Art, Thames & Hudson, London, 2004, p. 152.

3 Ibid., p.152.

This strong focus on the process of transformation is what all 4 The Aleph, according to author Jorge Luis Borges refers to a point in the of the works in the exhibition share. As with RandomNoiseFlow, works like Universe where all other points exist. Formations and Syntboutique all begin with physical input in the form of Therefore, anyone looking at the Aleph samples or data sets and undergo a digital process performed by a computer could see everything in the Universe and custom software to be transformed into physical output. It has, as its at once. Andreas Schlegel, Coded Transformations exhibition notes, 2013. drive, the need for dialogue about the boundaries between digital and the physical registers. 5 Greene, 2004, p. 152. GLOSSARY 34 VOLUME 2 35 PARALLAX Posthumously

--- with the outside world was not that was to be based on individual par allax is art by process and easy. Then unusual things started to viewpoints and assimilations of research: to make sense of the unfold. For instance, while ordering the context and environment. methods and demonstrations our food, the Korean waitress PARALLAX employed by the artists. Concept persistently attempted to push for To state an example, one of the is intangible and a product from certain dishes. It was not because Singaporean artists, Lim Shengen, the stages or levels of process. To these were more expensive nor were bought a vintage looking telescope BY URICH LAU POSTHUMOUSLY investigate and question cultural specials; she was just pushing it. (almost a rip-off from a pirate movie) diversities, differences and impacts Another extraordinary instance from an antique shop while on

WRITTEN FOR THE EXHIBITION par allax is a visual art exhibition artists invited to respond to the one would find in a society with was when Cheng made a dare to the trip. He used it to record short following an expedition-project theme were Lin Dong, Yan Shi and cross-border interactions from Jeremy Hiah that there were no other videos on his iPhone, zooming into PARALLAX by five with four Shen Shaomin. Artworks created for two or more nations. There is no channels than the channel showing the opposite shores of North Korea Between_Borders: invited Chinese artists to respond this project were later presented in culture but only the context to which the old Russian film. Cheng claimed from the side of the Broken Bridge. Singapore_China and create multi-media artworks to the exhibition Mirror of Otherness one is bound. The only ‘cultural’ that the TV has only one channel. Those videos became the exhibits for the cross-border/cultural thematic at Gaodi Gallery in Shenyang City, significance that surfaces is when A disbelieved Hiah called out to the the show as ‘peek-holes’ depicting 15 – 27 February 2013 approach. The idea of the project co-curated by Lau and Chinese people from different contexts meet. waitress and asked her to change unsettling scenes of the other side. was to journey to the Sino-Korean writer Zhang Yadong in July. It would either arouse curiosity, the channel, to which he got an Gallery 1 Friendship Bridge, also nicknamed intrigue, questions or create friction. unapologetic response, “There are no And for Cheng, whose idea it was “The Broken Bridge”. It is situated par allax was the following and final other channels!” from the waitress. to bring the Singaporean artists in Dandong City in the province of exchange-exhibition in Singapore We gained a very different The food was fantastic, but we ate to visit the Broken Bridge, was to Liaoning China and sits on the Yalu curated by Lau and Zhang at the perspective when we reached our quickly and left the restaurant. relook the subject matter of his River that divides China and North Institute of Contemporary Arts final destination of Dandong City, performance video piece Bridge, Korea. The Bridge is the physical link Singapore in February 2013, to where the artists went for dinner --- where he played a tune of ‘Auld between the two countries and from reflect on what was found, seen at a particular North Korean par allax is art for originality: to Lang Syne’ on the violin with the where one can see the shores of North or experienced from the various restaurant that was immediately create new and original works based strings attached onto his hands Korea and its quiet city of Sinuiji. locations on the journey. It was also recognisable with its distinctive on the experiences during this trip. with fishhooks. It was shown in the an attempt to realise some of the national flag at the entrance. But the underlying approach that was collaborative exhibition Videologue For over a week in the month of universal but somewhat clichéd rationalised as the need to travel on in 2012 at the ICAS, and the video June 2012, the group of Singaporean ‘artistic ideals’–art by process, by The restaurant was a spacious dining such a road trip to the Northeastern became the catalyst for the journey. CURATED BY URICH LAU artists–Urich Lau, Jeremy Hiah, Lim research and the creation of original space with large round tables that parts of China along the border of AND ZHANG YADONG Shengen, Sai Hua Kuan and Teow works of art. The exhibition was also could easily accommodate a small North Korea came initially from Yue Han, accompanied by Chinese coming from a series of exchanges banquet, and only one table was Cheng who suggested making the trip artist Cheng Guangfeng and two conceptualised and curated by Cheng occupied by patrons. The interior was to create original works based on the Exhibiting artists: Singaporean artist-assistants Marcel and Lau that began with Videologue sparsely decorated and adorned with relations of the bordering landscapes .... Cheng Guangfeng, Jeremy Hiah, Gaspar and Victoria Tan–embarked at the Sunshine International Art golden and jade-like ornaments, and between two nations and in the Urich Lau is the co-curator of Urich Lau, Lim Shengen, on the journey to explore various Museum in Beijing in March 2011, there was a television hung on the Singaporean artists’ perspectives, par allax. He is a video artist Lin Dong, Sai Hua Kuan, destinations on their way to their and the second Videologue at the wall showing an old Russian film. It reflect on how it might correlate to and a lecturer at the Faculty Shen Shaomin, Teow Yue Han, final destination, the Broken Bridge Institute of Contemporary Arts felt like we were back in the pre- the Singapore- bordering for the Creative Industries, and Yan Shi in Dandong City. The other Chinese Singapore in February 2012. Internet age when communication landscapes. The perspective LASALLE College of the Arts. PRELIMINARY

WRITTEN FOR THE EXHIBITION Encounter: The Royal Academy in Asia 14 September – 21 October 2012 ENCOUNTERS Gallery 1, Gallery 2, TriSpace, Praxis Space, BY VIVIANA MEJÍA Project Space and Brother Joseph McNally Gallery GLOSSARY 38 VOLUME 2 39 Preliminary Encounters

the contrast of exhibition venues and what happens with the translation from one physical space to the other. The design of the LASALLE College of the Encounter: The Royal Academy in Asia, presented at the Institute of Arts campus is suggestive of the Singaporean ideal of modernity and constant Contemporary Arts Singapore in association with Fortune Cookie Projects, transformation. Conceptualising the layout for this show was undoubtedly a featured 75 works of art by 23 Royal Academicians and 24 artists from across challenge, but it also presented a curatorial opportunity. Encounter was shown in Asia. The exhibition featured art created in an extensive array of media and all seven galleries of LASALLE and was a departure from the more conventional genres: from painting, sculpture and installation, to video and photography. spatial configurations offered by the white-cube like spaces at Burlington. The The curatorial team comprised of a convergence of both regions: Paul Huxley, display allowed visitors to view the exhibition in a non-linear way. Michael Craig-Martin, Richard Wilson, Lisa Milroy, Charles Merewether and Josef Ng. For the first time since its launch in 1769 and after 244 editions, the The presentation of Asian and British instances of modernity and Royal Academy’s annual Summer Exhibition was shown in Asia, with the intent contemporaneity in one exhibition will inevitably be haunted by the spectres to not only create an encounter but to initiate a dialogue between the artists, of centre and periphery. How can a curatorial team create a dialogue where the works and local audiences. Traditionally, the artworks shown in the annual artworks can converse with one another, and without one cultural discourse exhibition are selected through an open submission; for this occasion, however, imposing itself upon the other? For this to happen, there has to be a highly participating artists were invited by members of the Royal Academy to present self-reflexive consciousness of interaction and conversation, and intention their creations. and context, where there are multiple points of entry for audiences to engage with the artworks. The Encounter exhibition appears to approach these issues The Royal Academicians selected for the exhibition are discernable not as obstacles but as unresolved curatorial challenges. It is seldom that representatives of the legacy of British modern and contemporary art. Paul local and regional audiences have the opportunity to see such an impressive Huxley is part of the generation of artists influenced by post-Cubism, exploring collection, and all presented within a single exhibition. But in some ways the painting beyond abstract formalism. Albert Irwin made his way through whole exhibition seems more like a survey show, a smorgasbord where seminal the intensity of visceral emotion and colour of Abstract Expressionism. pieces from the ‘West’ are juxtaposed with those from the ‘East’. The immediate Richard Long, in addition to creating art out of walks into the landscapes, proximity of the works can confound the viewer or can suggest a divide between created archetypical shapes that allude to organic forms and materials. Jenny cultures. Yet these juxtapositions can also suggest a sense of reciprocity and Saville’s depictions of oversized bodies are graphic, raw and intense images of tacit understanding between diverse cultural visions and practices. that complicate traditional paradigms of female beauty and femininity, while In trying to understand the contrasts within the exhibition, two works came Tacita Dean’s work translates contemplative instances into 16mm colour anamorphic film and optical sound. These are just some punctuated instances of the history of British art, which have been brought to Singapore with the aim of engaging local audiences. Audiences may well be aware of these famous artworks and artists, though only a few have had the chance to experience what the German critic Walter Benjamin would refer to as their ‘aura’.

Eleven countries were chosen from Asia: Singapore, Malaysia, , South Korea, Vietnam, China, Taiwan, Japan, , Cambodia and . The 24 artists from the region have established regional and international presence, and they explore diverse genres and media in their practices. Among the more well-known artists in the group are Sopheap Pich (Cambodia), Lani Maestro (Philippines), Tiffany Chung (Vietnam), Chen Chieh-Jen (Taiwan), and Ho Tzu Nyen (Singapore). In his curatorial essay An Encounter, Charles Merewether explains, “What is distinctive about the region and the artists chosen is the degree of both or either a historical consciousness and conceptual reflexivity about their practice.” These artists were selected, because their work is reflective of an intellectual and critical engagement that often resonates into political, social and cultural spheres. While there are artists in the exhibition who contemplate and dissect issues such as oppression, dictatorship and violence, other artists explore aesthetic languages that are more removed from overt political stances. However, one might generalise and say that there is a predominantly strong post-colonial tone – sometimes more vocal, other times more subtle. The juxtaposition of these diverse works from the region in the exhibition helps to demystify certain Western attitudes towards Asia, an issue Merewether consciously wanted to avoid in the curation: “there is, by and large, a lack of knowledge and appreciation of the texture and depth of contemporary urban cultures in Asian countries. Not least is the lingering perception in the West that Asia is homogenous and therefore undifferentiated when it comes to a specificity of understanding cultural characteristics and differences.” Rudi Mantofani The Royal Academy of the Arts’ Summer Exhibition is traditionally shown at The Earth and The World 2009 –– 12 Burlington House, a building whose architectural heritage contributes to the Painted aluminium solemnity of the event. One of the interesting aspects of the Singapore show is 71 x 150 x 80 cm GLOSSARY 40 VOLUME 2 41 Preliminary Encounters

in the region. Ai Wei Wei comes readily to mind as an artist whose practice has, among its many dimensions, the amalgam of political stance, dramatic gesture, art rhetoric and fascinating enigma. But should the curators have included an artist like Ai? (Ai is an honorary member of RA) Is it necessary to pursue such symmetries in the exhibition to reveal as many parallels between West and East as possible?

These are just some of the questions the exhibition provokes. One does not expect Encounter to provide resolutions to these kinds of curatorial challenges that arise from the encounters between the artworks on display. Today, the art world is very eager to engage in conversations about cultural differences and comparison. As an experiment, the exhibition may offer a promising start, but the partner institutions have a responsibility to sustain and pursue these conversations. Very likely these pursuits may have to take place on a smaller scale rather than in another grand exhibition, but they will be no less important.

into mind: Rudi Mantofani’s The Earth and The World (2012) and Tracey Tracey Emin Emin’s Trust Me (2011) and Trust Yourself (2012). Mantofani’s The Earth Trust Yourself and The World seems like an apropos metaphor to reflect on the anxiety of 2012 Neon (Coral Pink) overcoming the stereotypical conjunction of East and West. The tautology 29 x 116.5 cm in Mantofani’s title plays with the two notions that define the planet we live in–they are often used synonymously–but his conjoining the two Tracey Emin creates a tension. The artwork is a painted aluminum sculpture of the world Trust Me 2012 composed of two opposing terrestrial globes stretching the latitudes of the Neon (Super Turqouise) planet. It is as if opposing forces were pulling the planet in two different 22.8 x 81.3 cm directions or as if there were a dilating angst over the expansion of Asia in the 21st century. Borders are slowly banished and reconfigured.

Tracey Emin is known for her polarising artistic persona and her cross-media works, such as the controversial pieces Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963 – 1995 (1995) and My Bed (1998). She is one of the first female professors of the Royal Academy of Arts. For this exhibition, she presented Trust Me and Trust Yourself, two neon calligraphic works. Their simple and yet glaring fluorescence seems to evoke a message of solace and comfort. Almost like a declaration of love and palpable emotion that invokes faith and belief in one’s own judgment. These texts appear to be the basic premises to establish any type of relationship between two counterparts. Could they be persuasion tactics to overcome an unrequited love? Her day-glo scriptures distinctively replicate her .... handwriting and offer emotional and personal gestures for everyone to see. Viviana Mejía is a writer and curator from Colombia currently Emin represents a confluence of art and personality, where the latter becomes based in Singapore. She has a definitive characteristic of the former. The borders between her private and an M.A. in Contemporary Art personal life have translated into pivotal instances of her artistic practice. The from the Sotheby’s Institute Encounter exhibition presents artists from Britain that combine art and persona, of Art and an M.A. in Modern but it does not have clear examples of such representations from Asia. While and Contemporary Art this artistic strategy is not unusual in the West, and may not be as common in History and Theory from Los Asia, it does not mean that there are no artists with larger than life personalities Andes University, Bogotá. GLOSSARY 42 VOLUME 2 43 Inside the Subject

COLLAPSE “Text or sound? Theatre, Literature or 16 March 2013. Image courtesy of ?” Mish’aal Syed Nasar. I asked the artist.

INSIDE “I don’t suppose I actively seek to categorise my work in any way. It’s all part of it. The text is as important as the physical imagery or sonic expression. It’s just as weighted, and they are active ingredients in narrating an idea. How any person experiences it and calls it into being is a completely uncontrollable experience/

translation/exercise Bani is perhaps best known for his he himself was enlisted into National of consciousness music, with several albums and Service in 2006. It was a very prolific which I submit to.” 1 numerous performances under his time for his writing, and in 2007 he belt. He is a founding member of published a book of poetry Sit Quietly b-quartet, a local indie group that in the Flood with Word Forward, and started in 1999, for which he was also had his writing included in several Writing this essay was problematic the main songwriter and vocalist. other publications. Writing was a for me, because I found it difficult More recently, he joined the natural extension of his earlier work as THE to reconcile approaching inside observatory in 2012, where he has a lyricist and allowed him more space the subject as text vs. sound vs. been experimenting with various to work as an individual rather than sculpture. Writer, musician and types of instruments within the band’s in a collective. It was also the easiest artist Bani Haykal’s practice spans a own style of electronic music. Bani outlet for his thoughts during the wide range of disciplines and inside has also performed with artists such years of National Service, and he used the subject brought these elements as Kuik Swee Boon (Silences We Are his writing to explore diverse themes together for the first time in a single Familiar With, Dans Fest, Singapore, ranging from fear, love and isolation. exhibition. A collaborative effort 2012), Ho Tzu Nyen (The Cloud of with anGie seah and Mohamad Unknowing, Singapore, 2012), Song- All these prior projects tended to Riduan, the presentation took several Ming Ang (Sonic Visions, Singapore keep to their discrete literary or SUBJECT forms–text, installation, sound and 2011) and George Chua (He is not sonic forms, which is what makes BY BANI HAYKAL, IN COLLABORATION WITH performance–and was itself part an Impostor, Singapore, 2008). inside the subject interesting and at ANGIE SEAH AND MOHAMAD RIDUAN of a larger research project with the same time difficult to pin down. The Substation. It subsequently Less known are Bani’s literary efforts. The exhibition comprises a mixed Photos by Joleen Loh culminated in a play, collapse, In mid-2005, several members of media installation with objects, presented at The Substation Theatre b-quartet were enlisted into National sound and performance. The starting in March 2013. It thus seemed as Service. With the band in hiatus, Bani point for the exhibition is text; a play though I would be missing the bigger started exploring different interests, that examines a hypothetical future 8 – 24 February 2013 picture if I took a straightforward which included poetry, prose and where criminals charged with the Gallery 2 BY CHARMAINE TOH formal approach to the exhibition. spoken word. This continued even as death penalty are allowed back into GLOSSARY 44 VOLUME 2 45 Inside the Subject

society on two conditions: the first built on a system of thought, and it’s condition is that they must wear a philosophy I hope to develop.”6 The orange jumpsuits for the rest of their collective aspect of the show also lives and the second condition is that points to Bani’s increasing desire civilians are allowed to openly execute to create work that allows multiple these criminals without penalty. The experiences and interpretations. installation is based on the first scene of this play, which represented the inside the subject is an important living quarters of the protagonist of step in Bani’s developing practice the play, otherwise known as ‘the as it is the first time he is given the subject’, and his depleting tolerance opportunity to articulate his many for his next-door neighbour, a varied concerns in one exhibition. criminal who has opted to accept From concept to presentation, it the two conditions for returning to brings together different strands society. The exhibition is not merely of thoughts in both process and a theatre set for the play. Instead, it The turning point in Bani’s practice Instead it acts upon their actions.”5 outcome. It is also the first time the is an exploration of the mental and came from his participation in The By offering a simple premise–the artist employs objects and space in physical space of the subject. Within Substation’s Associate Artist Research ability to kill certain individuals addition to sound and text to convey the gallery are three key objects and Program and The Art Incubator’s without legal repercussions–Bani a more complex and layered artwork. three soundtracks. The centerpiece residency program between 2011 and considers how social norms and values Compared to the script and the play, of the room is a large metal bed-frame 2013 where he was able to experiment might shift together with empathy the exhibition is a richer experience in with a chair suspended above it, with objects and different ways of and apathy. From the individual’s exploring the psyche of an individual and at the far end of the gallery is a presenting his ideas beyond that of standpoint, how does our desire to exercising his power over another wooden door, scribbled with text. The performance or text. Bani notes, “I’m secure legitimacy within the existing within a state-sanctioned order. space is filled with a wordless sound finding more grounds for my work; I social order constrain our actions? composition, while two directional find it too restricted for an idea to exist .... speakers continually project two on just a single medium or plane. But Another very significant aspect of Charmaine Toh is the programme separate monologues. The first even in that aspect it is unimportant. this exhibition is the collaboration director at and director and monologue consists of the subject’s It’s more important to think about with Seah and Riduan. While Bani founder of The Art Incubator, where thoughts over three separate periods how to create a work which allows formulated the concept and direction Bani Haykal completed his residency of time: when he first moves into the the experiencer (sic) to navigate for the installation as well as the text in 2012. She will be working with him apartment, when his calm is disrupted through the system and formulate used as the starting point, each artist again for an upcoming exhibition by his neighbour’s music, and just their interpretation and perspective.”4 gave input in developing the sound Media/Art Kitchen that will tour to before he kills his neighbour. The work and in setting up the spatial Jakarta, and Manila. second monologue, audible only at the subject in an invisible psy-scape. in relation to time, and so I needed Just as Bani shifts between objects, presentation to express the psyche the other end of the gallery, consists There is also a sense of time as the something physical, something sound, performance, and text to of the subject. Each artist selected of two confrontations between the subject moves from his initial pleasure visual to encompass the reality. A enter the mind of the protagonist one object and worked together to subject and his neighbour, the first at moving into the new apartment static display is necessary but just as and explore how consciousness is place them within the exhibition NOTES warning that he gives his neighbour – “This is it. This is the beginning important is the movement of time, exercised, inside the subject toggles to create a certain narrative. This and the taunts just before the killing. of everything… This is mine. This is something which is performed. It between the two meanings of the process of collaboration is not only 1 Bani Haykal, in an email exchange mine. This is perfect.” – to his rage at is how the idea, as an abstract or word ‘subject’ – (a) a self-awareness typical of Bani’s wider practice with the author, 28 April 2013. At first glance, the installation appears his neighbour – “fuck you, fuck you, abstracts, can exist in various spaces or conscious mind and (b) to be but also echoes the exhibition’s 2 Excerpts from the monologues in 3 minimal, with just three objects and fuck you, I hate your music, I hate or forms.” To this end, Bani also placed under authority or control concerns about giving power back the exhibition. the soundscape in a dimly lit room, your face, I hate your guts because you chose to present a performance wth – to explore systems of power in to individuals and how that affects representing the physical space of remind me of every other brainless his two collaborators, anGie seah and this imaginary setting. inside the the collective. “Writing the work was 3 Bani Haykal, op. cit., 28 April 2013. the subject. However, as the viewer shitfuck human that walks this earth.”2 Mohamad Riduan, on the opening subject is essentially a Foucauldian just as tricky as collaborating with 4 Ibid. wanders around the gallery, he/ night of the exhibition in a different exercise in examining power relations other artists. Every ingredient is an she also encounters the mental When asked about the choice of manifestation of ‘the subject’. The live within a society and how it affects active element in narrating the work, 5 Foucault, Michel, “The Subject and wonderings of the subject. The use medium, Bani replied that he “felt aspect of performing the sound work one’s actions. “Power exists only and this for me is an example of a Power”, Critical Inquiry, Vol 8, No 4 of the directional speakers creates one medium wasn’t enough. Text from the installation was important when it is put into action. [It is a] system that might work on a larger (Summer 1982), The University of Chicago Press, pp. 788-989. pockets of space where the viewer was powerful but too limited by for the artists in order to provide a mode of action which does not act level from a societal perspective. I can stumble across the thoughts of physical space. Sound, too, is limiting different experience for the audience. directly and immediately on others. think of it as a body of work that is 6 Bani Haykal, op. cit., 28 April 2013. GLOSSARY 46 VOLUME 2 47 Video Art and the Markets

We often think of art and the other things, “an ethic in itself, artworks featured, remains fluid. financial markets to have little in capable of acting as a guide to all The concept of ‘dialogue’, however, common; an artwork is usually human action, and substituting for all is also related to that of ‘exchange’, VIDEO ART AND 2 considered distinctive and unique, previous held ethical beliefs”. The a term that suggests trading and the while financial instruments are global financial markets are no doubt markets. As we will see, the idea of BY YOW SIEW KAH understood as homogenised and shaped by this philosophy.3 So is art, ‘exchange’, together with related THE MARKETS standardised commodities. However, including its creation, display and ones such as ‘standardisation’ and trading in the financial markets and distribution.4 The idea of “markets”, ‘homogenisation’, are central to this creating art may not be as different however, is abstract, and the way that exhibition. as they appear. At least since the we experience it is primarily through 1980s, the concept of the markets has interaction with the various ways in The notion of ‘exchange’ is key to been given an esteemed position in which it manifests itself materially.5 how the exhibition is set up. The our society and has shaped a wide The following paragraphs will gallery is divided into two parts with variety of institutions, including discuss how the conceptualisation large white partitions, which are finance and art. This essay is about and design of Videologue offer a also the surfaces on which the videos how the financial market informs material expression of the notion of are projected. There are no isolated Videologue, a video art exhibition the markets. spaces for an observer to contemplate of 8 international artists. the works individually. Instead, the Videologue at the Institute of videos appear on facing walls, an In the last three decades or so, Contemporary Arts Singapore is the arrangement meant to create the the markets have been touted by second leg of a two-part exhibition. impression that the works are, and business and political elites the The first was held at the Sunshine by implication the artists who made world over as a solution to a wide International Art Museum in Beijing them, engaged in a conversation and variety of problems brought about in March – April 2011. Although it are exchanging views. by social and political processes was not the curators’ intention, the that are seemingly disorganised logic of the markets is fundamental This setup of displaying moving and inefficient. According to this to the exhibition’s conception. images as large projections in dimly belief, the best way to advance the lit surroundings is related to prior WRITTEN FOR THE EXHIBITION health of human society is to create a The word ‘Videologue’ comes from examples of exhibiting video art as Videologue: Beijing – Singapore – Tokyo system in which the entrepreneurial the words ‘video’ and ‘dialogue’. It painting and as film. It is derived skills of the individual are set free. is envisioned as a series of video art in part from how video art gained 20 January – 19 February 2012 Such a system emphasises property exhibitions that are also interchanged legitimacy as ‘mainstream’ art, Gallery 2 rights and free trade, and is based where ideas are shared. The term suitable for display in museums largely on the belief that the markets ‘dialogue’ is to be understood and galleries in the last third of the are unquestionably good and must generally: it can take place between 20th century.6 As some scholars be protected at all costs. In areas the exhibiting artists, the observers, have argued, in order for newer where markets do not exist, such as or more broadly between the visual forms to be understood CURATED BY CHENG GUANGFENG AND URICH LAU education and healthcare, they must countries and cities where the artists by the public, they often have to be created, with state involvement are located. Based on this concept, be presented in ways that show Exhibiting artists: Cheng Guangfeng, Han Tao, if necessary.1 The thinking that the idea swapping is to be the focus of affinities to older media.7 Such Tetsugo Hyakutake, Urich Lau, Li Ning, Lim Shengen, markets are inviolable has penetrated the exhibitions; the format of shows, examples include showing the works Shen Shaomin and Teow Yue Han deep in society, becoming, among as well as the types of artists and of photographers Jeff Wall and GLOSSARY 48 VOLUME 2 49

Andreas Gursky as large, visually continuously at a price that everyone meant to create an immersive Art historian Malcolm Bull has NOTES impressive paintings, and the in the market can know, and that experience for the observer. If such contended that a significant amount change in the method of displaying products are not normally sold at is the intention in Videologue, it may of contemporary art functions in 1 David Harvey, A Brief History of Liquidity: Flexibility, Markets and States”, video art from small TV monitors a price that diverges substantially have worked if the art works were a space that is distinct from what Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Theory and Society 28, no. 3 (1999), 344. Press, 2005), 5-9. 10 in the 1970s to film-like projections from the market price” . In order allocated semi-enclosed spaces for we traditionally understand as ‘art 11 Ibid. in the darkened environments for some degree of liquidity to occur, more contemplative viewing. But market’. The success of the artists 2 Paul Treanor, “Neoliberalism: Origins, of 21st century art spaces.8 homogenisation and standardisation such an idea would likely have been and their art are measured not so Theory, Definition” (2 December 2005), 12 Sean Cubitt, “Current Screens”, in of the entities to be traded need rejected as it goes against the idea much by sales, but by the amount of (11 May 2012). with Thomas Veigl (Cambridge MA: The MIT 11 Presenting video art as painting to take place. Making video art of ‘exchange’. As the exhibition is exposure they get from prominent Press, 2011), 21. or film also has the potential of look and feel less distinguishable curated, for an observer standing in galleries, museums and international 3 Gerald A. Epstein, “Introduction: making it more collectible. From from older art forms suggests both the space surrounded by the large art exhibitions.14 Although this art Financialisation and the World Economy”, 13 Sze Tsung Leong, “…And Then There the 1970s to 1990s, artists, museums of these operations at work. projections, the idea of exchange is not directly exchanged for money, in Financialisation and the World Economy Was Shopping”, in Chuihua Judy Chung (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, et al, The Harvard Design School Guide to and galleries came up with various does not immediately come to mind. it is traded for human attention, 2006), 1-16. Shopping (Cologne: Taschen, 2002), 129. ways to turn video art into distinct Standardisation and homogenisation Rather, the observer is confronted another scarce resource. Not only ‘products’. These include presenting also take place between the artworks with a cacophony of sounds and does it compete to be noticed with 4 Noah Horowitz, Art of the Deal: 14 Julian Stallabrass, “In Conversation it as sculpture or – at Videologue. The screen is an sights, much like how one may other art, it also battles with the Contemporary Art in a Global Financial with Malcolm Bull, ‘Money and Attention on Market (Princeton NJ: Princeton University the Global Art Scene”, Immediations: the packaging it in limited quantities important part of displaying any experience a retail space installed non-art audiovisual forms that have Press, 2011), 1-25; William N. Goetzmann, Courtauld of Art Journal of Postgraduate as DVD boxed sets, displaying it video art. Although often thought of with advertisements competing for proliferated our public spaces for “Accounting for Taste: Art and the Research 2 no. 3, (2010), 1, (13 May 2013). no.5 (1993), 1370–1376; Mark C. Taylor, contractual restrictions on how it shape how the artwork is the most important social activities of foregrounds this market of attention. “Financialisation of Art”, Capitalism and 15 Zaloom, 2006 can be displayed. These methods are experienced.12 As mentioned earlier, the 21st century. The mall has become Society 6 no. 2 (2011), 1-19, (13 February 2012). similar to paintings and sculptures dimensions. The panels are not including museums and galleries; expression of certain abstract ideals 5 Caitlin Zaloom, Out of the Pits: Traders – art that museums, galleries, and perfectly smooth – they are ‘recycled’ such a phenomenon is the “material of the markets. This was not the and Technology from Chicago to London private individuals are used to from other exhibitions, and the outcome of the degree to which curators’ intention, and it likely (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), collecting.9 While participating brushstrokes from repainting are the market economy has shaped resulted from the artists, the curators 15-50. 13 artists in Videologue are unlikely clearly visible. Had the gallery been our surroundings” . Although the and the gallery staff working together 6 Horowitz, 40-72. to be consciously making their art brightly lit, the surface imperfections show was meant to express the to address the practical, day-to-day more collectible; the way the videos could have been visible, increasing idea of a conversation, the outcome issues of setting up an exhibition. 7 Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, are displayed is clearly rooted the likelihood that they are viewed as approaches a space of commercial Such is the power of the markets. Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2000). in how art created in this newer screens with distinctive features. But transactions, the kind of market that It can be given material shape by a medium sought to be comparable in the darkened surroundings, the an observer is most familiar with. network of individuals working on a 8 Horowitz, 53-72; Julian Stallabrass, and exchangeable with older, projection surfaces seem transparent, seemingly unrelated set of issues.15 “Museum Photography and Museum more ‘mainstream’ genres of art. making the artworks look similar. Within this space, the attention Prose”, New Left Review 65, (2012), (6 May 2012). Videologue relates to ‘liquidity’, one appearing to be fully interchangeable. with various visual devices associated Yow Siew Kah is a researcher and of the virtues of the free markets, with commercial television and writer in art and design. He teaches 9 Horowitz, 40-72. which refers to how “[standardised] Displaying videos as large projections cinema, including quick edits and at the School of Design, Nanyang 10 Bruce G. Carruthers and Arther L products can be bought and sold in a dimly lit environment is often scenes of violence and nudity. Polytechnic. Stinchcombe, “The Social Structure of GLOSSARY 50 VOLUME 2 51 The Great Game

go-round of art discourse” and art world conceits. Picking at and appropriating at will to feed a lively inventiveness that allows her to THE play along, play back, and play out The ‘retrospectacle’ is of typical what she regards self-reflexively as Raolian construction. It is both futile enterprise with the ease of a instrument and performance; at once habitué. She is an avowed adherent the fogged glass1 through which the of “Borgesian” thought (“To speak is reader/viewer is invited to look – to to commit tautologies”) and relishes look back on to be exact–and the in the labyrinthine passages and spectacle of both the act and the meanderings of the game she has thing. Debord is invoked to undo the built in which she is both narrator whole enterprise even before it gets and narrated. off the ground, albeit tongue-in- cheek and not a little self-referencing. A knowing self-deprecating wit and clever word play are Raolian conceits Shubigi Rao is a gamer, a proclivity employed to mask, or sharpen, as the to which she readily confesses with case may be, a rambling critique made the cheeky relish of someone spilling the merrier through the ‘artifice’ of over with a tale to tell. With Rao, the the iconoclastic S. Raoul, believer in telling is nearly as much fun as the obscure scholarship, subscriber to game. This is abundantly evident in knowledge for knowledge’s sake. Free her rampant notes and ruminations from economic and other normative spilling over from book to exhibits. imperatives, the iconoclast is free to Needless to say, Rao knows her think and has a field day espousing, terrain like no other and speaks to a exposing, and reconstructing the presumably interested, if not equally very sense of the world around. knowing, audience. The artist book accompanying the spectacle is the In The Study of Leftovers (2003–4), rulebook signposting the play for fragments brought in by the tide off willing gamers in the guise of a the Pasir Ris coast near where Rao retrospective sketch2. Rao is happy to lives are accrued, organised and take one by the hand, fully expecting studied with meticulous care, as one to know better than being led! evident in cataloguing and display, as Skip the rulebook at your own peril! well as the drawings accompanying Guise is the name of the game and S. the copious field notes. Rao puts her Raoul is equally indebted to Rrose knowledge of scientific methods Sélavy, Borges and Sherlock Holmes. and print-making skills to play here, borrowing and mimicking the language and the posturing of The literary conceit and near science and scholarship to effect universal reception of the fictional a critique of power and received Holmes as historical figure is knowledge. The exalted posture of an inspiration. This fuels Rao’s scientific inquiry is exposed as a exploration of the fact and fiction, banal activity in the titling. Yet, it truth and falsehood (On Fictive is clearly in the study of the banal Fact: A Circumambulation). The that knowledge of civilisations is recent installment at the ICAS brings derived. Put another way, our exalted into play the artist’s ambulation civilisations are built upon leftovers. of a decade, one from every year of A final commentary is slipped in with GREAT GAME her practice from 2002, the year some of the notations on the studies. she arrived in Singapore, to the “Notes and Observations: Where one present. Wearing the guise of the can observe much in these notes” and “prickly pedant with the squishy “More Notes: Where one can deduce innards of the romantic,”3 Rao much from the tiniest observation.”4 The Retrospectacle of S. Raoul by Shubigi Rao roams a “wide-ranging (rambling)” Elsewhere, in Singapore: A Prehistory intellectual playing field of choice; Reconstructed Notes from a 22 March – 11 April 2013 “circumambulating”, darting in Reconstruction, the sophistication of Earl Lu Gallery BY DANA LAM and out and around “the merry Rao the artist and social critic GLOSSARY 52 VOLUME 2 53 The Great Game

can be gleaned in the quiet but Rao’s strategies involve a kind of pointed political commentary self-negation. She is wont to attempt scattered in journal entries to destroy her own contentions and accompanying the archaeological arguments from the onset in mimicry digs and study of the lost civilisation of the circular reasoning she critiques of Singapore, where “No flying but with which is very much at home. buttress/ overarching concept/ nor Her aesthetics insisting on investing vaulting ambition/ can redeem this equal measure on the written text ruin of twisted girders”. and the image, requiring the viewer to tarry and to read, have been The Tuning Fork of the Mind pointed out as self-defeating. (2008), the pièce de résistance of the show, arose as a response to the In the final denouement of the wilful persistence of ignorance in Retrospectacle, Rao emerges commentaries on contemporary from behind the smoke screen art in the popular press. Once looking paradoxically like her own again drawing on her vast capacity doppelgänger. Rao the artist appears for grasping complex theories similarly sprung from the slippery and concepts, Rao produced an throat of self-devouring. instrument that purportedly measured the activity of a brain .... deranged by over-exposure to art. As Dana Lam is the author of Days of with her earlier work with leftovers, Being Wild: Walking the Line with Rao puts to service the commonplace the Opposition (Ethos Books, 2006) debris of banal assumptions on art on the Singapore General Elections and its conventions, in the production of 2006, and writer/director of She of her expansive theory, again with Shapes a Nation, a short documentary tongue firmly in cheek. The work is on the nuances of women’s choices NOTES encyclopaedic in scope and clarity. and women’s lives in eight decades Art, artist, critic, and viewer are of the nation-building project. She 1 “That cloudy glass through which we peer, hoping for comprehension is equally implicated in the neuro- is a self-appointed Raolian scholar paradoxically fogged over by the heavy scientific theory by S. Raoul5. and lectures part time at LASALLE breathing of our own earnest attempt.” College of the Arts. In On Fictive Fact: A Circumambulation, That this work was also presented Shubigi Rao 2008. by invitation at the Conference of 2 History’s Malcontents: The Life and the Organisation for Human Brain Times of S. Raoul, released in conjunction Mapping (OHBM), Beijing, China with the exhibition. 2012, is firm testament to the rigour 3 in Being a Biographical Sketch of of the artist’s research and practice, S. Raoul – Inventor, Theorist, Writer, and the sophistication of her trope. Iconoclast and Eccentric Polymath. History’s Malcontents: The Life and Times Among other things, the artist’s of S. Raoul. P 6. sleight of hand is achieved by her 4 From Letters and Ephemera in fidelity to a “methodical curiosity” History’s Malcontents: The Life and Times and a “curious method”6. However, of S. Raoul by Shubigi Rao. p. LXXXII. after all is said, one suspects Rao’s 5 Which can also be found in History’s greater reward is in effecting a laugh Malcontents: The Life and Times of within the texts. And Rao has the last S. Raoul, a book released to coincide laugh in laughing at herself. with the exhibition.

6 In ‘How to Use This Book’, Curiosity But there is one other thing–the and Method: Ten Years of Cabinet Magazine, symbol of the Ouroboros, the serpent NY: Cabinet Books 2012. “Methodical that swallows its own tail. Evoked on curiosity” is a pretty good definition of more than one occasion in the many science as we know it; “curious method” resumes much of what some people call Rao papers, the serpent gives life to art. Applying the canons of methodical itself even as it devours its own tail in curiosity to the productions of those an infinity of making and unmaking; curious methods, or applying curious the one act negating the other by turn methods to the productions of methodical curiosity, does not, in fact, precipitate the so that the acts are rendered both kind of matter-antimatter dematerialisation futile and infinite. familiar to students of science fiction.” INTO THE SCHEME OF

WRITTEN FOR THE EXHIBITION Milenko Prvacki: A Survey, 1979 – 2012 2 November – 5 December 2012 ICA Gallery 1, Gallery 2 and TriSpace (UNEASY) THINGS CURATED BY DR. CHARLES MEREWETHER BY LAWRENCE CHIN GLOSSARY 56 VOLUME 2 57 Into the Scheme of Uneasy Things

Walking through the exhibition Milenko Prvacki: A Survey, 1979 – 2012, one cannot help but be intrigued by the diversity of visual forms and marks that seem to peer back at one’s attempt to make sense. Lines are smeared into patches of colour, overlaid with lightly touched stains, reemphasised with energetic strokes of paint, dissolving into their adjacent forms, and yet retaining a semblance to something that is almost familiar. Before long, one gets a sense that these visual forms must be understood as something more than just themselves.

Giorgio Agamben, an Italian political philosopher, argued in his essay Notes on Gesture that:

“ Every image, in fact, is animated by an antinomic polarity: o n t h e o n e h a n d, i m a g e s a r e t h e r e i fi c a t i o n a n d obliteration of a gesture (it is the imago a s d e a t h m a s k o r a s sy m b o l); on the other hand, they preserve the dynamis i n t a c t (a s i n

Muybridge’s s n a p s h o t s o r i n a ny s p o r t s photograph).” (5 5) 3

Characterising images as both dead and alive, as both absent and present, ‘Fire’, ‘Construction’, ‘In’, ‘Out’, ‘Too Much, Too Little’, ‘Island’, ‘Porcelain Agamben opened up a line of thought that re-centred the tension between Factory’, ‘Covered Up’, ‘Covered Again’, ‘Rusted’–belie their usefulness. the materiality of the image and what it purports to represent, without Though there may be a very tenuous link between each incorporated text and overtly privileging either. In a way, it is to say that this is a project to the image (or images), the very representative prowess of each textual label de-centre meaning-making away from a purely symbolic or semantic become suspect eventually. Is it really this? These labels declare a flash of enterprise and to shift it towards the realm of materials, traces, gestures and coherent meaning briefly and then seem to fade in the face of an overwhelming experiences. Perhaps the same could be said of Milenko Prvacki’s oeuvre. context in which words can be more meaningful not as words. Words become visual material–imago–almost obliterated but not quite. The very nature of In Between Gestures the painted surface erupts into view as a distinct skin of meaning in itself – the very material and manipulation of paint, or ink, or mark-making implements, A discernible tension that could be said to run through Prvacki’s work is must mean something more, even if they do not mean just one thing. that of between visuality and materiality. Images are made in a manner that give equal credence to what they are as well as how that is achieved. This suspension of the finitude of meaning had been identified by Agamben Not only are marks left as visible traces across the paper or canvas, even as that which characterises a gesture: “The gesture is the exhibition of as these same marks attempt to describe a perceived reality, but textual a mediality; it is the process of making a means visible as such.” (58) It is content is introduced to both augment and dismantle that perception. A recognising that means and processes have to be reckoned on their own terms multitude of textual insertions–such as ‘But sa slaninom’ (Leg with bacon and not just for an end or telos. It is also allowing the gesture to shift the work fat), ‘Šunka–dokument iz Ecka’ (Ham – document from Ecka), ‘Trofejni from the register of representation as absolute meaning to that of process as Predeo’ (Trophy Landscape), ‘Paradise’, ‘Crkva, Kisa’ (Church, Rain), indeterminately meaningful, or allowing for a gesture towards the meaningful ‘Trophy Painting’, ‘Home’, ‘Fontanes’, ‘Red’, ‘The Ultimate Visual Dictionary’, in between other things.

‘Fur’, ‘The New Visual Dictionary’, ‘Collection’, ‘Visual Dictionary’, 1 ‘Corridor’, ‘Dictionary’, ‘Brickyard’, ‘Leaf’, ‘Bee-hive’, ‘Construction Site’, Milenko Prvacki As Things as Thoughts as Things ‘Fragments’, ‘Fragmented’, ‘Building’, ‘Recollection’, ‘Structure’, ‘About Fur 1998 Building’, ‘Now You See It, Now You Don’t’, ‘In Transit’, ‘Overlapping’, Oil on linen Agamben’s schema of the gesture could be compared to what Levi Bryant, a 152.5 x 158 cm key philosopher in the field of object-oriented ontology, argued as the first Image courtesy of the artist and proper question to ask when encountering any artwork: “What does it Private collection invent through and with its medium?” (7) This is an understanding of artwork as being meaningful beyond a convenient recourse to an original point of 2 Milenko Prvacki intention nor final meaning outside of its own materiality. Fragments 2004 Artworks are meaningful in relation to both external and internal realities. Oil on canvas 96 x 183 cm It is not so much an attempt to discredit the notion of representation or telos, Image courtesy of the artist even if that is remotely possible, but to understand artworks or even gestures Private collection as objects that must also exist independent of what they mean or represent. Or as Bryant put it: 3 Milenko Prvacki In Transit “ [...] every object is both irreducible t o w h a t e v e r r e l a t i o n s 2008 i t m i g h t c u r r e n t l y h a v e t o o t h e r e n t i t i e s a n d c o n t a i n s t h e Mixed media on paper possibility o f r u p t u r e w i t h w h a t e v e r r e l a t i o n s i t h a p p e n s 2 33 x 42 cm Image courtesy of the artist t o e n t e r t a i n a t a p a r t i c u l a r m o m e n t . ” ( 8 ; e m p h a s i s o r i g i n a l ) Private collection It is a rupture that makes new meanings possible and even necessary. 1 GLOSSARY 58 VOLUME 2 59 Into the Scheme of Uneasy Things

6 The ability of artwork to tear away from its existing fabric of signification to Milenko Prvacki mean something else makes for an uneasy relationship between the viewer Island 1984 and the work. This mild anxiety is apparent when viewing Prvacki’s works. Oil on canvas The question “what does it mean?” not only becomes irrelevant but stands as 150 x 185 cm an impediment to the very experience of the work. In order to move beyond that initial uncertain sense of not knowing, one has to be to begin to accept that 7 Prvacki’s works are (painted) things encapsulated in a sense of meaningfulness, Milenko Prvacki Island without having to always mean something specific, which is their significance. 2010 Oil on linen That sense of meaningfulness could also be discerned in Agamben’s schema 124.5 x 100 cm of the gesture as a “communication of a communicability” after “the Kantian expression ‘purposiveness without purpose’” (59). As the gesture is fragmented and resists total resolution, its value lies in not what is said through the gesture but what is possible to say through that same gesture. The gesture becomes a work of meaning-making in between its temporal and material states. It is meaningful both in time and in place without recourse to a singular fixity. And as Bryant pointed out “objects have the capacity to move, breaking with relations to other entities they currently entertain, thereby entering into new relations with other objects”. (8) Perhaps this breaking and re-making 4 5 of relations of meaning is best intuited through two of Prvacki’s work, Island (1984) and Island (2010). 4 The reductive nature of a denotative meaning allows for identification and Milenko Prvacki Visual Dictionary definition, such as word entries in a dictionary. It is what it is by virtue of its 2000 difference from other discernible entities. Yet, the same denoted meaning must Oil on linen depend on the meaning and difference of other entities used in its definition. 59.5 x 59.5 cm It is a recursive process of meaning depending on (being different from) other meanings ad infinitum. And in this recursive chain of relationships, one must 5 then find meaning not just in fixed points but in the flux or related points. Milenko Prvacki Dictionary Much like looking at Prvacki’s discontinuous but somewhat coherent (The 2000 Ultimate/New) Visual Dictionary series, or even for the different ‘word’ entries: Mixed media on paper 42.5 x 34 cm building; construction; corridor; fire; fragment; home; in; island; leaf; out; paradise; red; structure ...

Prvacki’s amalgamation of disparate visual forms in all their complex and varied manifestations is a prolonged attempt to bring forth a semblance of meaning. But it is a very different meaning from a denotative one, in that forms resemble but do not necessarily coincide entirely with what it is supposed to be. It is a slippage of meaning because of the attention being paid to the very materials and processes of painting or art-making. A painted form cannot substitute or represent the original reference or being in exactitude. Hence, the notion of a dictionary, with its assumed denotative meanings, is a broken 6 7 one, not as a refusal of meaning but as an extension of meaning by way of thinking through connotation. And one could also say by way of gesturing And even as meanings break and remake, one must continue to gesture, towards meaning. rethink, mend, walk, collect, sort, peer, rummage, try, abandon, show, repeat ... to no end but slightly differently than before. As in Prvacki’s praxis.

If S(ch)emantics Could Move .... Lawrence Chin is an occasional writer with interests in visual art, cultural This movement towards meaning implies that meaning is not solely inherent studies and philosophy. His own practice centres on art conservation and but also contextual as well. restoration, in addition to part-time teaching at LASALLE College of the Arts for the Faculty of Fine Arts and School of Arts Management. “ [Art]works, like all objects, fall i n t o c o n t e x t s o r fi e l d s WORKS CITED o f r e l a t i o n s, ye t c a n n e v e r b e e x h a u s t e d by t h e s e r e l a t i o n s Agamben, Giorgio. “Notes on Gesture”. Alternatively, t h e r e i s n o e n t i ty t h a t i s s o s a t u r a t e d w i t h Means Without End: Notes on Politics. i t s c o n t e x t t h a t i t c o n t a i n s n o t h i n g i n r e s e r v e t h a t c o u l d fl e e Trans. Vincenzo Binetti and Cesare or rupture with this context.” (Bryant 12; emphasis original) Casarino. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 2000. 49-60. Print. Meanings must be both given and implied–both denoted and connoted, Bryant, Levi R. “Towards a Machine- both innate and referential–and yet cannot be reduced to just any one Orientated Aesthetics: On the Power aspect. The artwork will always mean something other than its intended. of Art”. (2012): 1-22. Web. 5 Sep 2012. GLOSSARY 60 VOLUME 2 61 A Conversation on Theo.do.lites

A theodolite is an optical instrument The time and labour spent in the elaboration of the works is another aspect consisting of a small mounted telescope that becomes tangible in the exhibition. Debbie Ding’s and Alexander Schellow’s drawings, Romain Kronenberg and Benjamin Graindorge’s thoroughly rotatable in horizontal and vertical planes, elaborated film-objects, Marylène Negro’s particular editing process, used to measure angles in surveying, Masayo Kajimura’s systematic recordings, Uriel Orlow’s subtle observations are evident of the attention to the presence of time. It takes a remarkable astronomy, meteorology and navigation. intensity and concentration, which contrasts with the current production habits that tend to focus on speed in the communication of an idea.

What was your impression when seeing Theo.do.lites installed in the gallery?

KC: Well, I think you’ve pretty much covered most of it. I suppose I was rather surprised how the exhibition turned out eventually from an aesthetic standpoint. I think it was interesting that for a ‘video’ show, there A CONVERSATION were relatively few projections within the space. We had of course planned for this, but nonetheless, it was a pleasant surprise to see it come together physically within the space. Masayo Kajimura’s set up was particularly ON interesting for me and similarly for many of the viewers. I like how she imbued a materiality using floating transparent paper to a medium that basically exist THEO.DO.LITES solely as light. She had spent hours creating patterns on the paper with many tiny punctures.

WRITTEN FOR THE EXHIBITION KENT CHAN: Silke, now that Theo.do.lites has ended, I’m interested to hear your thoughts about the exhibition. Theo.do.lites 18 April – 12 May 2013 SILKE SCHMICKL: For me, the exhibition is a great example of how an intuitive, personal and observant approach by two curators, in close collaboration with Gallery 1 the artists, can lead to an exhibition that forms a sort of a complete work of art.

CURATED BY KENT CHAN I like how the works engage a dialogue and how they unfold aspects that I and SILKE SCHMICKL haven’t seen before. Unexpected sub-themes emerged through the juxtaposition of the various works in the open exhibition setup, notably in the first part Exhibiting artists: of the exhibition where the fluid element of water created a link between Apichatpong Weerasethakul the works of Masayo Kajimura, Charles Lim, Alexander Schellow, and Raqs Raqs Media Collective Media Collective. I also appreciate how the different artistic strategies Uriel Orlow of mapping a territory illustrate the idea of a theodolite surveying, as was 1 2 Alexander Schellow suggested in the title of the exhibition. This aspect appeared particularly Charles Lim strong in regards to the Singaporean works where Daniel Hui, Charles Lim and 1 Daniel Hui’s set up of Syzygy, as many people had commented, was Romain Kronenberg & Tan Pin Pin exhibit various approaches in portraying a common territory. Masayo Kajimura particularly sculptural. Similarly, both Romain Kronenberg & Benjamin traveling time series: Benjamin Graindorge Ahrenshoop #01 Graindorge’s and Alexander Schellow’s works had many physical components Marylène Negro Video installation to it. Along with Charles Lim’s presentation, these vid Glossary Vol.2 eos were Tan Pin Pin Dimensions variable very much curated as objects. There was a particularly physical element to the Daniel Hui exhibition, which I very much liked. Masayo Kajimura 2 Daniel Hui Massimilian & Nina Breeder Syzygy What are your opinions on the thematic explorations of the exhibition? Debbie Ding 16mm to DVD I suppose some perspectives would have changed? 12 mins SS: I appreciated how all the works exhibited the idea of portraying a space in different ways and through various techniques and how they opened up spaces that are often invisible or imperceptible in such a poetic and reflective way. In this sense, their investigational and experimental character beautifully illustrated the theme of the theodolite. I felt that the research aspect in form and content was an important element in bringing together works from different continents without creating an East-West dichotomy. The confrontation of urban Asian and rural European realities that served as a starting point for our research didn’t seem as significant in the end. It was the particular time-space relationship that the artists explored in BY KENT CHAN and their productions rather than the purely filmic objects that gave strength to SILKE SCHMICKL the exhibition. The fact that every piece was strongly connected to a specific GLOSSARY 62 VOLUME 2 63 A Conversation on Theo.do.lites

contemporary reality through a clear documentary yet imaginary approach subtly reflects upon the notion of modernity that we were investigating, even if I am not sure if this was perceived by the viewers.

I am curious to hear your thoughts on the deployment of the theme, possible ideas and developments for the next edition of Theo.do.lites.

KC: The history of moving images is comparatively shorter and more universal than that of visual arts. It came at a time when the world was already well connected. It was by no means as well connected as we are today and at the same time, these connections were a lot more physical and much more time-consuming. However, as this project suggests, this physical nature might not be such a bad thing after all.

Few modern art forms can claim to be as ubiquitous, maybe with the exception of architecture. Stripped of its inhabitants, I suppose we were in fact working on an aspect of modernity that is far more pervasive than we had realised. Despite picking the works from Asia and Europe, Theo.do.lites and the theodolite are after all not about the collision of people and their culture so much as it is about putting different spaces together to look upon as a continuous terrain. It didn’t matter so much as to where the art works were from; the reality was global to begin with. comment directly on the topic set out by the colloquium. I am after all, born and bred within a city, within a country that no longer possess any natural Having said that, I think a direction that I would like to explore for the next landscapes. But in regards to the “contemporary intelligence of landscape” that edition of Theo.do.lites would be to look at particular aspects of modernity you’ve highlighted, let me talk about it in a somewhat roundabout manner. relating to people. To look at spaces but to also examine these spaces in relation to its inhabitants. I think when and if we do that, the distinctions that exist A couple of years ago, when I was in film school I remember watching between Asia and Europe might begin to surface, don’t you think? I think it’s Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera during one of our weekly film interesting that way – to explore more and more aspects of modernity as the screenings on European cinema. While this may sound rather sacrilegious, project continues to develop. I could never quite understand what the fascination with the film was about. I enjoyed the film and thought it was a good film, but I wouldn’t SS: I agree that it would be interesting now to connect these spaces to have thought of it as a masterpiece. Now, after being fortunate enough to people and their cultures, if we were to explore this idea of modernity further. have travelled since graduating and with the beauty of hindsight since On a personal level I was surprised that after having worked for almost 3 years completing the first leg of Theo.do.lites, I am again reminded of Vertov’s on a Asian-European project called Human Frames where the human being and film by Dr. Charles Merewether’s text in the exhibition catalogue. his/her emotions were the focus, I moved on to Theo.do.lites where most of the works were either emptied of the human presence or showed it in an alienated Let me explain. I’ve since realised that the city and the life within it way. It is as if humanity had no entitlement yet to enter the new territories that came to be during that period of modernity was a relatively new that the artists created with their works. I feel a fragility in these conceived phenomenon. Vertov’s hyper-kineticism in Man with a Movie Camera was spaces and an uncertainty about how humanly inhabitable they can be. I am very much a crystallisation of the exuberance of the new and rapid city life referring more so to the natural and less to the urbanized spaces, of course. then. I guess I have a newfound appreciation for the film. I still wouldn’t think of it as a masterpiece, but if I were asked if I would consider it a I read in an announcement of a colloquium, ‘Thinking the Contemporary masterpiece in the history of , the answer would be very much Landscape – Positions & Oppositions’ taking place in Hanover, Germany in yes. Amongst many things, the film was very much a reflection of its time. June this year: “[...] landscape is the belaboured making of humans, and has nothing to do with the ideal of an untouched wilderness. [...] It is essentially In a similar way, the works in Theo.do.lites are a reaction to our time. Within by questioning and bringing symbolic expressions of nature back into focus these works is an appeal for slowness, and it asks of us to not so much as spend that landscape will resolve the inherent contradiction of its being, namely that .... time on them but rather to take up time with them in the here and now. It of offering the promise of a wilderness where there is none. In contrast is the Silke Schmickl is the co-curator opens up in us a moment of contemplation. It’s like within Milan Kundera’s great spatial disparity and dispersion prevailing in today’s landscape. This can of Theo.do.lites, an art historian novel Slowness where the movements of the characters in the novel slow down be attributed to the multitude of actors and factors shaping the land. [...] The and the founding director of Paris- whenever they wish to reflect and remember but speed up when they choose conference is looking for a critical debate about the contemporary intelligence based curatorial platform Lowave. to forget. of landscape at a time of relentless conceptual oscillation and uncertainty.” Kent Chan is the co-curator of Within this idea of a “contemporary intelligence to landscape”, the My attention was drawn to the expression, “contemporary intelligence of Theo.do.lites. He is an artist, a contemporary is nonetheless always historical. landscape”… filmmaker, a curator, and the founding editor of Locale, a soon- KC: So what it is saying is that landscapes, as we know them, are to-be launched online art journal invariably a form of man-made construct? Admittedly, my connections and platform on Southeast Asian to landscapes are not particularly deep, so I am not sure how well I could contemporary arts. GLOSSARY 64 VOLUME 2 65 Linking Cities

“ The most meaningful forms of social encounters and traces BELOW character of the metropolis of the multifaceted dynamics of their Melissa Gan Chian Yi & team LINKING CITIES Suffocation lies in this multiplicity cities. Images were then curated 2013 beyond physical borders.” and archived in the groups’ journals, Kenny Cupers & Markus Miessen, which became a travel compendium. ‘Spaces of Uncertainty’ (2003) The journals were kept in the host city and updated regularly until the start of the exhibition. The second Seoul and Singapore, two archetypal leg of the project required the sites of the industrialised world, participants to pick images that best displayed incredible rates of demonstrate the pairing of visuals, economic growth in the last decade. textual or cultural readings of both Urbanisation has led the way for cities. The selected images were then rapid development outside the West. collated and the visual keys were Both cities have rich history, culture then extracted, deconstructed and and infrastructure. The comparison re-mapped into different contexts to Melissa Gan Chian Yi and her between the two becomes inevitable. create new meanings. Participants team’s Suffocation framed the cities then developed appropriate forms of extension as a conglomerate of Weaving together urbanism, design, which carried and translated different entities, each growing upon sociology and visual culture, their concepts. the other, creating a bewildering Linking Cities – Visualising: The organic form. Ensnared between Value of the City aimed to study Through experimentation of different rapid development and encroaching the convergence between the two materials, techniques and processes, personal space, Gan recounted cities. By documenting the ‘space the project aimed to explore the her experience through the small in-between’, this research project shift of industrial modernity and the crevices of space left between people sought to address the micro-politics specific processes of urban renewal and structures of the expansive cities, of the exclusive space and explore the that have characterised the developing a malevolent crochet necklace rose rhetoric of the city as a medium. This nations. Acute observations of over the miniaturised buildings to joint endeavour was a collaborative globalisation and the expansion of create a sense of urban asphyxiation. project between Faculty of Design, technology are expressed through LASALLE College of the Arts and relief works and paper installations The monolithic skyline of Singapore College of Design, Sangmyung that looked at the redefined roles of and the low-lying houses of Seoul University, Seoul, South Korea. The cities and regions across national and accounted for one of the top most VISUALISING: project is an engagement in cross- geographical boundaries. densely populated cities in Asia. cultural design collaboration involving two groups of students with THE VALUE OF THE CITY diverse backgrounds and different 22 February – 1 March 2013 specialist design disciplines. Students Earl Lu Gallery worked together to develop design proposals that encapsulate the merging of both cities; they drew Presented by Faculty of Design, Students of LASALLE Students of similarities and differences in social College of the Arts: Sangmyung University: and cultural contexts, which acted as LASALLE College of the Arts, Meidiana Agita Gang Minjeong litmus for examining cross-cultural and College of Design, Sangmyung Donovan Auyong Jung Yootaek collaboration and the understanding University, South Korea. Nicholas Mitchell Brasali Kang Jina of global and local discourses. The Lani Diana Kim Daiea collaborative experience hopes to Katherina Er Zong Lin Kim Minkyeung enable critical reflection on the CURATED BY YASSER SURATMAN Melissa Gan Chian Yi Kim Yebin relationship between culture and AND MIKE CHEN Lee Yun Ying Kim Youngwoo space based on an ethnographic study Li Si Yang Lee Jeongjae of both cities. Luke Lim Kok Yong Lee Nayeong Martha Margaretha Oh Teaseong The research project was dual- Natasha Pradjanata Park Miyeon pronged. Participants from both Martin Tey Chee Hong Ryu Jinho institutions collected images from Thein Zaw their respective countries. Images Yao Qiong were in the form of visual narratives, Margaret Yap from vernacular flora and fauna to cartography and indigenous artifacts. BY YASSER SURATMAN Other responses came in the abstract GLOSSARY 66 VOLUME 2 67 Linking Cities

The inspiration for the video 3 The boundaries of language were explored in Nicholas Memory of a City installation Vertical Lines by Yasser Mitchell Brasali’s collaborative effort Korean Singlish, Suratman and Mike Chen was derived the installation focused on the unique aspect of 4 from the bus journey in Seoul and the Korean Singlish Singapore’s culture through the examination of the Singapore highway. The interlaced creole Singlish. The project scrutinised the pidgin images were placed side by side to Korean rendition in synthesis with Singlish, producing generate a live dialogue between a hybrid form of diction. The playful dialogue generated the two places. Both opposing through simplistic exchanges in turn questioned footages became synchronised at the role of language in the formation of a culture. some juncture of the video. The project was sought to capture the intersections that were no longer demarcated, a commentary on the need of cross-cultural understanding Extending the premise of branding at both macro and micro scales. a city, Memory of a City by Martin Tey Chee Hong’s team was an installation piece made from laser-cut acrylics sheets of skylines 1 and landmarks of both cityscapes. In The Heart of the City, Luke Lim’s While comparing elements from group explored the interlacing both cities, what stood out was of the elaborate subway systems how the skylines metonymically from both cities into a metasis of represented each other as they grids that mirrored the structural both lacked a cogent landmark. ferment that was part biology and The silhouettes of these landmarks part architecture. As the city’s were arranged in a pattern, metro system functioned very much creating a unison [one structure] like its central nervous system, the ‘S&S’ logotype, representing intertwining of the transportation both Seoul and Singapore. 3 systems became a transplant to an anatomical structure. Using delicately cut compressed foams, this project subsisted to demonstrate how modernisation brought the culture of Seoul and Singapore closer through a harmonious fusion of both the cities train systems. The work The project was intended to study was a poignant study of the cultural the intricacies and equivalence of connection between these two cities. the cities through etymological research and visual culture but Martha Margaretha’s group much more was established during collaborative piece Service Design the short exchange. There was Application focused on how the a healthy blend of competition cities of Seoul and Singapore could and professional camaraderie be connected digitally through a amongst the participants and travel companion application. The academics alike. Despite the application allowed direct access for occasional language barrier and visitors to find information about interdisciplinary complexities, the

2 both cities through crowd source projects were done together with recommendations and mediations. mutual respect and cooperation. This was intended to create a more meaningful and efficient travel .... experience of the ‘New Asian City’ by Yasser Suratman co-curated 1 means of studying the expansion as Linking Cities – Visualising: The Value Yasser Suratman & Mike Chen Vertical Lines well as the connection and contrast of the City and is a lecturer from the 2013 of both metropolitan modernities. Faculty of Design, LASALLE College of the Arts. He was awarded The 2 Creative Industries Scholarship Luke Lim & team The Heart of the City by DesignSingapore to read MFA 2013 at Yale University in 2007. 4 GLOSSARY 68 VOLUME 2 69 The Atypical Freudian Case

30 March – 26 April 2012, ICA Gallery 1 in collaboration with Langgeng Art Foundation, Indonesia THE ATYPICAL

FREUDIAN 1 2 3

1 Head House Series in the demonstrations, I was doing S. TEDDY D “These are truly sick works. Literally it in my works too.”1 Head House Series 1998 sick. I was afraid to go out of the Screenprint on paper house for three months. At first I Teddy thoroughly documented Dimensions variable made drawings on paper every single his anger and love about things, Private collection day. I really made a lot of them. I along with all his thoughts and was indeed crazy at the time. Sick. feelings, be it social and political 2 S. TEDDY D The drawings are quite sick too. I discourses, scientific theories, or Headscream Seller wasn’t the one who made the prints, the banalities of his neighbours’ 1999 really. I was afraid of my drawings, affairs. It has been said that it would Oil on canvas 130 x 110 cm so I just had them transferred to be very difficult for humans to learn Private collection another medium. I burnt some of about things with no meaning, the original drawings and discarded much less to remember them, as to 3 some others. I was truly scared. remember them is to incorporate S. TEDDY D 1997 Bonyong [Munny Ardhie] said that them into a section of the brain that 1998 these drawing works are dangerous psychologists have identified as Oil on printed textile for my mental well-being. I felt that storage for long-term memories. (military uniform) I had to transfer those drawings All of Teddy’s strong recollections 130 x 110 cm Private collection to another medium. Producing the about his works immediately series was a bit like menstruation–I tell us how significant his life just had to let it all out.” experiences, thoughts, and freedom Try pointing out one or two old works are for him. In an essay written for by an artist and ask the creator the Headscream Seller Teddy’s retrospective exhibition following questions: “What’s the title “At the time, Wall’s ice-cream at Langgeng Art Foundation, the of this work? When did you make it?” sellers started to come around on curator Hendro Wiyanto pronounced Most artists would stop and think their bikes, you see. [chuckling] him “a thinker in art”. Hendro uses hard to answer these questions, This is actually an ice-cream seller. as his basis a pronouncement by especially if the works are not their This is the ice-cream, but the Teddy’s fellow artist, Ugo Untoro: ‘top works’. S. Teddy D., however, ice-cream is in the form of human “Teddy is an artist who creates all CURATED BY GRACE SAMBOH, is often able to give immediate heads. It’s head ice-cream, so we’ll of his works using his head”.2 ENIN SUPRIYANTO AND HENDRO WIYANTO answers. He can even describe lick the heads. [chuckling]” CASE the situations surrounding these In Teddy’s artistic journey, works–his feelings, his anxieties, and 1997 consciousness is everything. He other issues during their creation. “People had been really afraid to describes his awareness about use such [military] camouflage his conditions (his experience Below are three extreme examples material to joke around, much less and feelings) when he is at work that we can use as a reference to make insults. But well, this was as ‘mindscapes’, a term borrowed when talking about Teddy and his in 1997. People were demonstrating, from the late Omi Intan Naomi, a BY GRACE SAMBOH recollections about his works: protesting. Apart from being involved writer and one of his closest friends.3 GLOSSARY 70 VOLUME 2 71 The Atypical Freudian Case

Whether we use psychology (one untouched by modernity. To be a 1 S. TEDDY D of the oldest branches of science) romantic, or in other words to lay The Temple (Love Tank) or neuroscience (one of the greater emphasis on imaginations 2009 latest), we have yet to come to an and emotions, seems to be a simpler Plywood and spray paint finishing 240 x 560 x 790 cm agreement about that which we call way of survival, easier than to observe Commissioned by National Museum ‘consciousness’. “Consciousness the changes of the time, which might of Singapore remains the last unexplored frontier take place in a matter of minutes. It of psychology, and arguably one would be much easier to say, “This 2 S. TEDDY D of the greatest mysteries of life is my expression”, than to explain Ha Na Ca Ra Ka (Keluar, Masuk) itself”, wrote psychologist David where the ‘collage’ of thoughts [Getting Out, Coming In] Groome.4 The most prominent originates from in the artist’s mind. 2003 figure in the discourse about Handmade iron sword and glass box Dimensions variable consciousness is Sigmund Freud. On another occasion, however, Teddy Private collection 2 Freud’s entire work builds on the could also begin his stories about consciousness trichotomy, which the theme of violence in his works 3 in turn is very much influenced by by talking about different aspects of S. TEDDY D Paduan Suara Tidak Bisa the ambiguity in the use of the term power (by Foucault’s, Nietzsche’s, Berkata Tidak [The Choir 4 ‘unconscious’. In Teddy’s context, or Machiavelli’s definition) or about that Cannot Say No] the consciousness (or awareness) homo homini lupus. He can also tell 1997 that we are talking about is the us about the ‘collage’ of his thoughts Mixed media installation Dimensions variable Freudian ‘conscious awareness’. that formed the conceptual basis of The Temple (Love Tank) (2009), while 4 “My father was a soldier, so when I laughingly explaining the symbols. S. TEDDY D Chicken Molotov was a child, I moved around quite “You see, if it had been only four 1 3 2007 a bit, from one city to another, tanks colliding into one another in Aluminum, wood and oil paint depending on where he was posted. the middle of the Rotunda, it would latter work, two similar swords 28.5 x 26 x 18.5 cm There was a constant change of seem too trivial. So, it seemed apt to (or, to use Teddy’s words: the two Private collection atmosphere and I kept having new play around with my own codes. I swords are similarly powerful) friends.” This is, more or less, how did away with the violent image of perish in one ‘home’. The complete Teddy begins his stories (to anyone tanks. I used plywood, pink colour, set of Javanese alphabets have been political parties. Teddy’s choice of It seems as if there are corrections the almost ancient Freudian theory who asks) about the theme of violence with lotus images. Then when I was inscribed on the swords: Ha Na Ca language of expression that he uses of the images that I’ve stored in my of Id, Ego, and Super-ego.8 In short, in his works. Even with his keen sense taking a walk in the city, in Singapore, Ra Ka, Da Ta Sa Wa La, Pa Dha Ja in his works tends to be genuinely mind, all of a sudden popping up in the ‘Super-ego’ according to Freud is of ‘conscious awareness’, Teddy is I found there were so many temples Ya Nya, Ma Ga Ba Ta Nga – which authentic, simple, and effective. my head and conducting internal the moral element of a human being, not immediately free from the ‘curse’ in different corners of the city. That form a poem saying: “There [were] dialogues with my being. As soon as growing and developing in line with of being a romantic. Indeed, more gave me the idea to make the tanks two messengers, having animosity Ever since he felt certain and a new image appears, this process the agreements (and constructions) of often than not, Indonesian artists look like a temple. Offering, the [among each other], [they were] resolute about his choice to become a takes place. I think it’s because ethics around him, arising at the end are a romantic bunch (or perhaps ceremonial dishes... It’s the rituals. equally powerful [in fight], here professional artist, which he used as of the accumulation of the many of that which Freud called the ‘Phallic it’s us who often accuse them of It’s still about hope, I think. War is are the corpses.” Teddy has used a the main idea for his first solo show other things that I’ve seen and Stage’ (before adolescent). Super-ego being romantic!). I suspect that this still not the right thing to do; it has variety of approaches to talk about at Cemeti Contemporary Art Gallery, experienced, which then transform is human consciousness that enables is a chronic illness which might no use,” explained Teddy about his violence, apart from ‘killing’ it. He 1996, Teddy has been constructing the original form of the image.”7 one to determine whether something have even been here for centuries. installation of seven tanks, arranged might, for example, employ mockery. his visual vocabulary. Today it would During our discussion to prepare is right or wrong. I position Super-ego It started from the time when the to appear like a pagoda.5 Although There are at least two of his works seem as if Teddy has his own visual for this exhibition, Teddy decided to as the representative of humanity, modern lifestyle and all its trappings he does not try to reject the curse of that I strongly remember as having dictionary. Virtually all the images stop using images of tanks. He has which according to Teddy we humans were being introduced to the Indies, being a romantic, Teddy can still trace to do with mockery: Paduan Suara that one often finds today in his taken such decisions before with the have outwitted through wars. To or Indonesia of the Dutch colonial era, the origins of his ideas and at the end Tidak Bisa Berkata Tidak [The Choir works have been used previously chicken-head image, which he then Teddy, the war is masculine, phallus and found in the awkwardness among of the day come up with statements that Cannot Say No] (1997) and in the 1995–2000 period, images of ‘imprisoned’ in a resin cube. To him, is masculine, war is wrong, and Indonesians in using the ‘water that in no way romanticizes different Chicken Molotov (2003). Observe heads, feet, hands, phallus, houses, such ‘imprisonment’ is a symbol of masculinity disturbs him. It is classic closet’ and in their acquaintance with aspects of his works. According to the simplicity in the elements that bridges, peanuts, tanks, and AK- 47, his stance. Obviously, this time he and clichéd, just as Teddy’s stance is asphalt roads and motor vehicles, the Freudian structural model6, Teddy used there to convey his ideas. for example. Teddy’s collection of would not be freezing his 7.5 metre- toward his works. Just as how Freud etc. Then there was S. Sudjojono Teddy’s conscious awareness is a Both works ‘mutilate’ chickens images appear with a variety of high tank pagoda, but we should not had cursed the phallus, the symbol who tried to assert the philosophy part of the Ego that one can train to talk about followers, cowards, stories. Before I began writing this be surprised if he ends up ‘freezing’ of human potency, as ancient libido. of Indonesian modern art with to summon the preconscious ‘scaredy-cats’, and a variety of key essay, I had the chance to ask him, one of his tank merchandises as his concept of jiwa ketok [revealed and unconscious elements. words that might be associated “When and how do you decide which a symbolic act. That is what he Let us ask Teddy when he first used soul] from the thirties onward, to with ‘chicken’. The colours used images to use in your works?” Teddy does–he reinforces his convictions the images of phallus, tanks, clenched challenge the exoticism of the Mooi The tank prototypes installed at the in the works immediately say answered, “I’m neither original nor a through his acts upon his works. fist, etc. He remembers (virtually) Indie [beautiful Indies] found in National Museum of Singapore was something too – yellow, the color genius. Those elements seem to pop everything. One thing is certain: the paintings of his predecessors. not Teddy’s first attempt to ‘kill’ of the dominant party at the time up, like records of what I have seen. The phallus images, as well as he remembers the mindscape – his It is still true in contemporary living, violence; Ha Na Ca Ra Ka (Keluar, that tended to exert repressive From the myriad of events, some have his noisy motorbike that keeps mindscape. Some memory theorists in this archipelago where there Masuk) [Getting Out, Coming In] power; and green, which we often been recorded clearly in my minds reoccurring in Teddy’s works believe that historical memories are pockets of lands that remain (2003) also did exactly that. In the associate with Islam or Islamic and frequently appear in my mind. intrigued me to write this essay using about what one is doing/seeing/ GLOSSARY 72

experiencing are often imprecise simple but with extraordinary visual NOTES (Neisser and Harsch, 1991). In one strength and message, presented of their experiments, Neisser and in very simple forms that might 1 In 1998, Indonesia was undergoing Harsch interviewed a group of seem messy, rough, or wild. a reform period. The government with its “guided democracy” style, led by a “smiling students one day after an event of dictator” who had ruled the country natural disaster struck their campus. “Teddy always creates his works for 32 years, went down after a tide of Three years later, they interviewed using such basic media as oil paints, demonstrations and protests initiated by the same group of people about the charcoal, and woodcut,” said university students all over the country. disaster, and a third of them gave Nindityo Adipurnomo, Teddy’s 2 Wiyanto, Hendro. “Someone Who inaccurate answers, all the while colleague and fellow artist.10 The Is Afraid to Lose His Head”, from the fully believing that they had been media that Teddy has used so far monograph on S. Teddy D., REPOSITION: accurate. Neisser (1967) delineated in play an important part in almost Art Merdeka!. Yogyakarta, Indonesia: Langgeng Art Foundation, 2011. an entire chapter how memory can be all his works. The simplicity of the reconstructive and not reproductive media in Teddy’s works (as well as his 3 It is difficult to trace when Omi Intan at all. Teddy said that the phallus straightforward treatment of them) Naomi first used the term ‘mindscape’ image first came up in his work when reflect how the ideas that he wishes when talking about S. Teddy D.’s art. See compilation of her writing on Ugo Untoro he was going out with a feminist. to convey are more important than (The Sound of Silence and the Colors of When he was younger, he felt that he anything else. Teddy only draws the Wind: Between the Tip of a Cigarette suffered from a trauma of ‘oppressive what he needs to draw. This is clearly and Fire of the Lighter [17 Years of Ugo masculinity’ and the phallus to not the first time for Teddy to find Untoro’s Fine Art, 1989 – 2006]. Yogyakarta, Indonesia: Museum Tanah Liat, 2008.) and him was the symbol of masculinity. a distinct expression—visually and one can find a fragment that talks about I wonder why the image keeps verbally. His tattoo of “Art Merdeka!” Teddy and his ‘mindscape’. on appearing to this day. Doesn’t (or, literally, “Art Freedom!”) that human memory automatically now also serves as the name of his 4 Groome, David. An Introduction to Cognitive Psychology: Processes and try to repress bad experiences? studio is not without significance; Disorders. London: Psychology, 1999 Teddy’s statements regarding his In the era where artists tend to ‘take art—such as “My two-dimensional 5 The Temple (The Stories), 29”, 2011. cover’ in such arguments as “this is works are my breath, and the three- DVD interview between S. Teddy D. and Jaya Limas. my experience” or “this is my diary”, dimensional works are my soul”11 and Teddy is one of the few artists, at least “painting is a picture made simple 6 Freud, Sigmund. The Ego and the Id, in Indonesia, who no longer need to or complex”12 and his “ideology” to London: Hogarth Press, 1949. use such arguments. Each work by an draw only that which is necessary 7 Interview with S. Teddy D., 13 artist will in any case result from that to draw —really mean something September 10, 2011. artist’s idea and is therefore based on to him. So, when we see only a his or her experience. The father of clenched fist, without the arm or the 8 Freud, Sigmund. The Ego and the Id. cognitive psychology, Ulric Neisser, elbow that means the fist is enough 9 Neisser, Ulric. Cognitive Psychology, offers an interesting statement about for him to tell the story he wants New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1967. human memory. Neisser explained to convey. Let us observe again the how the process of remembering series of clenched fists. Won’t the key 10 The record of the discussion during S. in human’s brain is the same with words that arise in your brain be the Teddy D’s artist talk, with Agung Kurniawan, Nindityo Adipurnomo, Ugo Untoro, and 9 the process of problem solving. To following: demonstration, the crowd, Yustoni Volunteero can be accessed on remember is not actually to explore workers? Teddy’s freedom from the www.langgengfoundation.org in all accuracy the events as recorded pretense of conveying lofty messages, in our mind but rather to reconstruct annoying sermons, and extravagant 11 Tan, Boon Hui. “On S. Teddy D.’s Love Tank (The Temple) at the National Museum the recollected event, mixed with comments has been achieved through of Singapore”, exhibition catalogue. our experiences and the wish to extraordinary self-discipline. It Yogyakarta: Art Merdeka, 2009. see that what is being remembered does not come automatically. is in accordance with our current 12 BOAT, exhibition catalogue. Jakarta: Nadi Gallery, 2001. condition. When we apply Neisser’s Whoever said freedom means free? explanation in the case of Teddy’s 13 Interview with S. Teddy D., April 14, 2011. recollection about the image of .... phallus, we can say that Teddy seems Grace Samboh co-curated to want to experience a trauma. He REPOSITION: Art Merdeka! by wants to use trauma as the reason S. Teddy D. She graduated with a – his reason. It is a straightforward Master’s degree from the Visual Art process, but at the same time is also Studies program at Gadjah Mada complex. The human mind (and University’s Graduate School, co- consciousness) is a complicated founded an office for arts researches thing. Teddy’s works, more often and development, Hyphen, and than not, succeed in appearing works as an independent curator.