Arts And Social Sciences

New exhibition in Singapore from The Migrant Ecologies Project

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Curated by Kenneth Tay and Jason Wee, the exhibition is the latest incarnation of over 6 years of art history-informed explorations of relationships between wood, trees and people from this region.

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Date: 12 June 2014, Thursday
Time: 7.00pm
Venue: NUS Museum

Free admission with registration. To register, please email museum@nus.edu.sg

Guest-of-Honour: Professor Leo Tan, Director (Special Projects), Faculty of Science, National University of Singapore

Special guest: Professor Alan Chan, Dean, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University

Programme:
6.30pm – Arrival of guests
7.00pm – Arrival of Guest-of-Honour, Prof Leo Tan
7.05pm – Welcome remarks by Ahmad Mashadi, Head, NUS Museum
7.15pm – Opening address by Prof Alan Chan
7.30pm – Speech by Guest-of-Honour, Prof Leo Tan
7.50pm – Curator’s tour followed by refreshments

NUS Museum presents an exhibition featuring encounters and exchanges between the arts and sciences, between practice and research, between the inquiring subject and the object inquired. An interdisciplinary project, “When you get closer to the heart, you may find cracks” is a continued inquiry by the Migrant Ecologies Project into the human relationships to trees, forests and forest products in Southeast Asia – explored in terms of materials, metaphors, magic, ecological resources and historical agency. Beginning with an attempt to trace the origins and stories connected to a teak bed found in Singapore, and set against the macro-context of “cutting of wood” (deforestation) today, the project has evolved into an accumulation of the diverse “aborealities” – connections between the peoples, trees and wood – in Southeast Asia.

The exhibition will feature several new woodprint works by artist Lucy Davis alongside works by photographers Shannon Lee Castleman and Kee Ya Ting. Tales from two “Islands after a Timber Boom” form an underlying structure to the exhibition, vacillating between Muna Island, Southeast Sulawesi (where early DNA tests have suggested as the origins of the wood from the teak bed) and Singapore island (where Davis has been researching stories of the local entrepot timber industry in and around the Sungei Kadut Industrial Estate). Fragments of iconic woodblock prints from the NUS Museum’s collection are also reconstructed as animated shadows which weave in and out of the exhibition. A disappearance of forests in the region sees also a similar disappearance of the various stories of wood with their attendant memories and practices. This exhibition is an attempt to re-member and re-animate these tales. “When you get closer to the heart, you may find cracks” is a curatorial collaboration between NUS Museum and Jason Wee from Grey Projects.

Exhibition runs till November 2014.

Works are supported by: Ministry of Education Tier 1 Grant, DoubleHelixx, Singapore International Foundation, Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Art & Heritage Museum, National Arts Council, School of Art, Design and Media, NTU, Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, Lee Foundation, Objectifs Centre for Photography and Film and The Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple.

[Image: Together Again (Wood:Cut) Part V: EVIDENCE, Lucy Davis.  Assembled print fragments of a ripped-up log end. Part of what is supposedly the last shipment of teak logs to Singapore from Burma before a 31 March 2014 ban on whole log exports by the Burmese government. The log ends were donated by Allen Oei, an old-time Singapore timber trader and log grader. The letter and number marks were punched into to the timber in Burma. They tell you the grade of the timber and (if you can decode the marks) where in Burma the logs come from. A star apparently means best quality. 125 x 125 cm, woodprint collage on paper, 2014]

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Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

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Artists’ Plans for Sustainability – June 5th at Warwick Arts Centre

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Wednesday 5th June 2-4.30pm

beuysimageOne of the Creative Spaces’ research focuses has been the role of the arts and artists in developing sustainable cities. Following our curiosity, we would like to take the opportunity of Mead Gallery’sexhibition “Artists’ Plans for Sustainability” to invite three artists to give 15-minute presentations of their work. This will be followed by a roundtable discussion with Warwick academics, addressing the question of:

‘The Role of Art in Developing the Sustainable City’

Visitors attending the roundtable will have the opportunity to comment or ask questions.

The event is free but places are limited, so please reserve a place in advance by phoning Warwick Arts Centre box office: 024 76524524.

Artists:

  • Nils Norman, Ion Sørvin (N55) and Carolyn Deby (sirenscrossing)

Academics:

  • Dr Nicolas Whybrow (chair, Theatre and Performance Studies)
  • Dr Cath Lambert (Sociology)
  • Dr Jonathan Vickery (Cultural Policy Studies)
  • Dr Ria Dunkley (IATL and Cardiff University Sustainable Places Institute)
  • Dr Susan Haedicke (Theatre and Performance Studies)
  • Nese Tosun (PhD candidate, Theatre and Performance Studies)

Creative Spaces is a network member of the AHRC-funded ‘Making Sense of
Sustainability’ arts and social sciences collaboration based at Cardiff
University.(PDF Document)

Creative Spaces Research at the moment focuses on two main areas:

The Role of the Arts in Developing Sustainable Cities

For Rosalyn Deutsche urban space is not only socially-produced but agonistic. Thus, the practices of urban societies – that which its various constituencies do or are allowed to do – defines or creates the space of the city, and such space is dependent for its very condition of existence on that which is produced by ‘conflicting interests’. As Henri Lefebvre puts it with regard to the abstract space of modernism and capital: ‘Inasmuch as [such space] tends towards homogeneity, towards the elimination of existing differences or peculiarities, a new space cannot be born (produced) unless it accentuates differences’ (1991: 52).

Read more (PDF) >  (PDF Document)

Venice and Sustainability

The city of Venice conveys an impression of sinking. It is known to be doing so literally – some twenty-three centimetres in the last century – with the fabric and foundations of buildings gradually dissolving and the seasonal floods of the acqua alta on the increase, whilst figuratively the sheer weight of tourists – estimated at 16.5 million annually – can be said to be forcing the city down and its citizens to ‘jump ship’ in a desperate bid to save their futures.

Read more (PDF) > (PDF Document)

Minutes of the previous meetings are available here:

24.10.2012 (PDF Document)

30.01.2013 (PDF Document)

Call for Seminal Presentation Proposals: PROJECT EARTH-TO-ART

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CALL FOR PANEL PROPOSALS, THEORY PAPERS / PRESENTATIONS AND EXHIBITIONS / WORKSHOPS

THE KUMASI SYMPOSIUM: Tapping Local Resources for Sustainable Education Through Art

Department of General Arts & Art Education, College of Arts and Social Sciences

Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology KNUST, Kumasi, Ghana

July 31-August 14, 2009

A call is made for contributions addressing one or more of the symposium strands and topics: Art Education Practice, Studio Practice, Curatorial/Museum/Community Arts Practice, Art History/Criticism, Arts Administration/Management/Marketing Practice, and Open Session. The symposium entails plenary sessions and support activities such as demonstrations/workshops, exhibitions, and site-specific tours of local national resources. Expression of interest and proposals for Plenary Sessions and Exhibitions/Practical Workshops will be reviews until January 17, 2009. We expect about 200 participants from around the world. The working language of the conference will be English. Applications for individual paper presentation and participation will be reviewed until the space is filled. All abstracts and brief biographies should be submitted electronically to africoae@gmail.com

The symposium is organized as collaboration between African Community of Arts Educators AfriCOAE and KNUST’s Department of General Arts & Art Education. As a follow-up to AfriCOAE’s Project Earth to Art: Tapping Local Natural Resources for Sustainable Art Education Development at Accra. The two-week symposium July 31-August 14, 2009 will deal with the issue of sustainability in the 21st century to enable visual arts education developments in Ghana and perhaps similar settings. Owing to the challenges of transition from the postcolonial stance and to many others, best practices and resourceful programs often fail to roll out nationwide and to be sustained. The following questions will therefore guide the dialogues: Is sustainability of art teaching and learning developments in the postcolonial African environment possible? Can the postcolonial Ghanaian environment and non-Western others today provide adapt resources for sustainable artistic practice? If so, how can the resources best be tapped for education through art in Anglophone Ghana and other Modernist African settings?

Tapping Local Natural Resources for Sustainable Art

Education Development

PROJECT EARTH-TO-ART is an experimental eco-pedagogy project for application in art education in the Anglophone, Lusophone and Francophone African settings. The project addresses problems of shortages of adequately trained school art teachers, costs and reliance on imported art materials, and collaborations with stakeholders of the public and private schools in creating desirable human capital for teaching and learning in art. The idea is to bring together a cohort of art educators for a two-week workshop in Ghana in summer 2008.

The workshop will entail formal discussions and mini-lab tours of regional sites to explore for ecological materials and test their effectiveness in art making. Upon return to their place of teaching, the participants will work with their students to likewise explore, identity, collect, and design art materials from the local environment and test them by art making. In the following year, the cohort will reconvene to share the results of the art laboratory and engaged in papermaking workshop using local-ecological materials. A driving concept of the project is that art materials come from one’s own environment; we reason that in the traditional African setting, the art materials come from the local environment; tools come from the community, and conceptual basis from the human condition. The focus is Ghana, in hope that the results would disperse into other parts of Africa and elsewhere.

via PROJECT EARTH-TO-ART.