Singapore

New exhibition in Singapore from The Migrant Ecologies Project

This post comes to you from Cultura21

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 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

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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Arts & Sustainability – Events in Singapore

This post comes to you from Cultura21

(Click on ‘More’ and scroll down for ‘UNEARTHED’ exhibition at the Singapore Art Museum)

i Light Festival

7th – 30th of March 2014, 7:30pm – 11pm, Marina Bay Waterfront, Free Admission

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i Light Marina Bay is Asia’s only sustainable light art festival that showcases innovative content, the intelligent use of lighting as well as an international line-up of creative talents. Themed Light+heART, the festival this year featured 28 innovative and environmentally sustainable light art installations from around the world. The Marina Bay waterfront was transformed into a magical space of light and colour for the public to celebrate both public spaces and creativity.

A full array of events, programmes and fun activities were lined up from 7 to 30 March 2014 to create a dazzling, diverse and more enriching experience for the community. From free guided tours and entertaining performances, outdoor dining to educational talks and workshops, this festival strove to build on the achievements of the previous festivals to bring an even more enjoyable experience.

The sociologist and transdisciplinary researcher, and Board Member of Cultura21, Dr. Sacha Kagan, gave the keynote opening speech at the i Light Symposium 2014.

More Information.

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UNEARTHED

21 Mar – 6 Jul 2014, Singapore Art Museum

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The first exhibition presented by the Singapore Art Museum (SAM) after the Singapore Biennale, UNEARTHED investigated our relationship with Earth and the natural world, and charted SAM’s new direction in encompassing and presenting projects and practices where art intersects with other disciplines and modalities.

Drawing on works from SAM’s permanent collection as well as private collections, the exhibition at SAM offered an insight on how artists in Singapore view and respond to the natural world, coming from and living in such an urban and built-up environment. As such, one strand running through the exhibition was the idea of nature as something that can be studied, controlled, and constructed – an idea that often extends into a metaphor for the nation and national identity. In contrast to the notion of a carefully cultivated ‘Garden City’, other artists regard nature as unknown, uncanny, and untamed, drawing on memories of nature’s recent incursions into the urban cityscape. Natural sites as repositories of social memory and history also featured in these artistic excavations, as artists seeked to call attention to forgotten or overlooked terrain in Singapore.

This conversation was extended with a complementary exhibition at 8Q which presented artworks that have ensued from residencies undertaken by artists from Singapore and the region at the Earth Observatory of Singapore, a research centre dedicated to the study of earth sciences and natural phenomena. By turns poetic, reflective, experimental, and urgent, these works charged us to reconsider our assumptions and attitudes towards the natural environment and phenomena beyond human control, and how life is bound up with the land.

More Details

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Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

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

Powered by WPeMatico