FFF5 | Lectures/Performances | 1st Day
Ho Rui An, Ho Tzu Nyen, June Yap
Dates
Tickets
Venue
Time & Date
Information
Tickets
Free entrance, on a first come first served basis.
Prebooking: infotickets@onassis.org.
The distribution of entrance tickets begins one (1) hour before and during the symposium
Introduction
Misleading legends haunt recent history – whether we talk about Lebanon or Singapore. Armed with witty humour, the five FFF lectures/performances have a lot to say about fabricated narratives: from archaeological excavations and spy stories in Sidon and Tell Halaf, the genealogy of swamps and the geopolitical construct “Southeast Asia”, to the image of the sweaty colonial in Hollywood movies. At the end, there will be an open discussion with the artists.
Photo: Ho Rui An
Solar: A Meltdown (2014)
Singapore is much more than the most expensive city in the world to live in. Colonial memories are central to the ironically reflective lectures and performances by the two distinguished artists of this Asiatic island metropolis. At the end, there will be a discussion between the artists and June Yap, Director of Curatorial, Programs and Publications at the Singapore Art Museum.
19:00 | "Solar: A Meltdown" (2014) | Performed in English with Greek subtitles | 60 minutes | No latecomers will be admitted once the performance has started.
"Solar: A Meltdown" is a lecture that takes off from the sweaty back of a mannequin of the anthropologist Charles le Roux that the artist encountered in the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam. From this image launches a series of investigations that attempts to get to the “behinds” of Empire and more crucially, the merciless sun behind it, beating down on the imperial back. Probing this “solar unconscious” underpinning the European colonial project, the lecture further considers the white woman and the punkawallah (manual fan operator) as figures constitutive of a “global domestic”— an all-encompassing, air-conditioned planetary interior. Spiralling into the contemporary moment of terrestrial meltdown, it finally seeks to reclaim sweat as a way of getting out of ourselves and in touch with the Solar."
—Ho Rui An
Concept, Direction & Performance: Ho Rui An
Dramaturgy: Tang Fu Kuen
Technical Design: ARTFACTORY
Production & Technical Management: Yap Seok Hui | ARTFACTORY
20:30 | "The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia" | Performed in English | 60 minutes
"The term ‘Southeast Asia’ emerged at the close of the Second World War, a nomenclature invented by the Allied forces to describe a particular theatre of war. The "Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia" begins as a question: what constitutes the unity of Southeast Asia - a region never unified by language, religion or political power? "The Dictionary" proceeds by proposing 26 terms – one for each letter of the English / Latin alphabet, each a concept, a motif, or a biography that suggests an approach to the thinking and imagining of the region.
In 2016, my collaborators and I created a platform for absorbing and annotating online audio-visual materials, which are in turn ‘fed’ into a specially created ‘algorithmic editing system’ that endlessly creates new audio-visual combinations according to conceptual parameters based on the 26 terms. The workings of this is visible on a website. I think of this as my working journal, and the film endlessly put together by the system, my journal’s animated dream."
The lecture takes us through the A, B, Cs of the Dictionary and the projects it has spawned.
—Ho Tzu Nyen
21:30 | After lecture performances a discussion will follow among the artists and June Yap, Director of Curatorial, Programmes and Publications at the Singapore Art Museum.
Photo: Ho Tzu Nyen
The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia
CREDITS
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