10 Questions with | Luca Lum

1. Tell us about yourself in one sentence.

Part-workaholic, part-vegetable, 100% maladjusted young adult and/or 50% type A 50% type B, 100% blood-flesh-bone-sentience-darkenergy.

2. How did you end up in Curating Lab?

When I was eighteen I had the choice of doing either English Literature locally or the Visual Arts overseas. The latter felt like something I had been hurtling towards since the beginning of time, and that very defined and singular trajectory threw me a little at the time, so I picked the former. I turned to Curating Lab as a sort of segue-way, a kind of return to the space of artistic production from a different angle.

3. What has been your most onerous moment of Curating Lab so far?

I'm in charge of exhibition-related tasks. Most recently, I've been stressed about administrative stuff, generating the index of items to loan from Shubigi and writing the labels for the works, a key pitstop in materialising the exhibition. In some ways this is it, this is the point you really gather the materials, the point you materially define the boundaries of your concept for you to play with later on in the space. I think it's pretty clear that I'm uncomfortable with closure. With Shubigi Rao: Exquisite Corpse, we loaned a lot of items — components of installations, marginalia, and books. We were a bit excessive, but due to the nature of Shubigi's work and our concept, it felt like there was no other way to do it. This meant that while other groups were drawing up spreadsheets for the loan of maybe four to five artworks, I had a 15-page document of more than 30 items. For legal reasons, we have to make sure every detail is accounted for. When my document comes back to me with factual and/or typographical errors, it's torturous, not just because I have to correct it, but because this work is shared it delays the work for everyone else along the email chain — the administrative staff, the legal office. This practical process has been formative, a reminder about the nuts and bolts part of curating that is often not as visible, illuminating in the same manner as running into a glass wall — you only realise what you are up against when you are banged up against it, counting your bruises.

4. Tell us about Shubigi Rao: Exquisite Corpse.

"The crocodile signifies a pirate, murderer, or a man who is no less wicked. The way in which the crocodile treats the dreamer determines the way in which he will be treated by the person who is represented by the crocodile. The cat signifies an adulterer. For it is a bird-thief. And birds resemble women, as I have already pointed out in the first book."

— Artemidorus, Book II of Oneirocritica*, 2nd century AD

5. Tell us about your curatorial journey.

Along the way I realised the parallels between essay writing and curating, and that the tenets that make up a great essay are also the keystones of a potentially interesting show. Both are expeditions you can't wholly plan for. It's driving to a mythic destination, like El Dorado or something. You're not even sure it exists or what it looks like, for sure. You begin with an interesting albeit nebulous concept and find ways to get there. If you think you have all the variables mapped out, you don't, and/or you're trying to get to El Dorado via highway Route 66 and end up at the Hollywood sign or something. Really, your curatorial destination is plural, and each audience member is going to find a different one, if they find one at all, which also isn't to say they haven't. I was really anxious about controlling the variables of a curatorial project (and I still am), but am getting the feeling that an element of not being able to totally compute your outcome might be a good thing and I am trying to obey that instinct. I realised the ends of a curatorial project are constantly negotiable, and if we define a thing by its contours or its parts, then the curatorial is in some ways also the chimerical, a monster we can't really name.

6. What is / has been the most exciting thing about your exhibition?

The fact that there's something still surprising about it — a potentiality — even though I've been thinking about it with my co-conspirators for months.

7. What’s next for you?

I've just graduated — so, a road trip, hopefully: I need the open road, temporary shelter, and the company of strangers. I know that I want to write again — poems, short fiction, non-fiction essays. I have some projects lined up, one of which would be to help Kenneth Tay out with NUS Museum's 2015 programme, Concrete Island. And probably a job, at some point.

8. Favourite book.

A menage-a-trois of The Secret History by Donna Tartt, The Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson, Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov.

9. Favourite artwork.

Today, Taryn Simon's An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar.

10. Favourite local art space.

Conceptually, ideally: THE SPACE BETWEEN YOUR FEET, THE VOID BEHIND YOUR HEAD.

Institutionally: The NUS Museum, because of its peculiarities that it makes as its modus operandi (I am probably biased)

*Oneirocritica is an ancient Greek treatise on dream interpretation

Exhibition Programmes | Curating Lab: Phase 03 [1 February]

Telok Kurau Studios

Date: Sunday, 1 February 2015
Time: 2 - 6.30pm
Venue: #01-109, Telok Kurau Studios, 91 Lorong J Telok Kurau

LIMITED TO 25 PAX PER SESSION.
Free with registration at clabtks.peatix.com.  

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The following series of programmes are presented in conjunction with Curating Lab: Phase 03.

Schedule
2pm                 Shifting Representations 
4pm                 Tea reception 
4.30pm            Traversing Spaces

2 - 4pm | Shifting Representations
in conjunction with Conditions of Production
Speakers 
Lina Adam, artist
Wang Ruobing, artist and independent curator
Dr Margaret Tan, Tembusu College, NUS

In Shifting Representations, three speakers will share about their experiences in the arenas of the personal and public as creative producers, and discuss the shifting roles and representations stemmed from these changing contexts. With an open view towards what constitutes creative production, the conversations will focus on the multiple roles within and outside different commitments that women artists hold - as mothers, daughters, educators, artists - and how these roles determine or affect artistic production. By discussing these multiple roles and going beyond the public view of an artist or performer, we may glean insight into different representations of the ‘artist’.

4.30 - 6.30PM | Traversing Spaces
in conjunction with Conditions of Production 
Speakers  
Tan Liting, theatre practitioner 
Chu Chu Yuan, artist
Raksha Mahtani, researcher and theatre practitioner
 
Traversing Spaces deliberates on the artist as citizen, tapping on the experiences of arts practitioners who seek to innovate and transform perspectives around space. It will reflect and expand on the subject of space beyond the physical, exploring its numerous complexities in the realms of the ideological, socio-political and the experiential. Delving into forms of civic engagement stemmed from their artistic practices or experiences in the creative sphere, the speakers may discuss views within civil society, the interplay between the public and private, and the shaping of communities. 

***

About the speakers
Lina Adam is a multi-disciplinary artist and has used various mediums such as performance, printmaking and art installation. Her work involves the scope of dissecting agents of socialization and habits dealing with but not limited to memories, environment and systems of daily life. She is the co-founder of Fetterfield, Singapore Performance Art Event, a site specific performance art festival (founded in 2006) and Your Mother Gallery, an alternative art space in Little India (founded in 2004). She has also been a committee member of The Artists Village since 1998.

Wang Ruobing was born in Chengdu, China and lives and works in Singapore. Comprising installation, sculpture, photograph and video, Wang’s work has a contingent quality that is underlined by the mindful representation of everyday activities. Her materials and subjects are often simple, everyday objects and things, but wittily resonant of the issues relate to consumption and the growth of knowledge. Solo exhibitions include The Earthly World, The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford (2010); Eat Me, The Dolphin Gallery, Oxford (2009); Seeded I, The Substation Gallery, Singapore (1999).

Margaret Tan is currently a Fellow and Director of Programmes at Tembusu College, National University of Singapore (NUS), and the co-director of the NUS Art/ Science Residency Programme. She holds a PhD from the Department of Communications and New Media, National University of Singapore, a BFA from RMIT/LASALLE College of the Arts, and an MA in Interactive Media and Critical Theory from Goldsmiths College, University of London. Her works using a wide range of media had been showcased both locally and internationally. Margaret engages art now as a teacher and administrator but she hopes to return to her art practice some time in the future.

Tan Liting works full time as a theatre practitioner with an interest in devising performance from personal stories. Liting is also a founding member of Theatre Cell. Her past directorial credits include Taking The Subs (The Substation Director’s Lab), The Eulogy Project I: Muah Chee Mei and I (Potluck Productions), (When I’m) Sixty Four (Ageless Theatre), Re: Almost Left Behind (Singapore Arts Festival 2011), Almost Left Behind (NUS Thespis). Liting likes conversation, hearing and telling a good story. Liting also likes guitars, sneakers and referring to herself in third person.

Chu Chu Yuan is a visual artist and researcher, born in Malaysia and currently based in Singapore. With Jay Koh on the iFIMA (International Forum for Intermedia Art) platform, she has been developing a form of relational art practice that is based on dialogue, exchange and negotiation. She maintains an individual practice, using soft sculptures, drawing, installation, performance, painting and photography to explore the performing body as a cultural subject and cultural practices as ‘scripts’ and ‘scores’. She is now with the Singapore Art Museum as Senior Manager of Archive, Library & Research.

Raksha Mahtani functions occasionally as a writer, researcher, spoken word poet and theatre practitioner. She performed, co-wrote and co-directed a spoken word show about queer experiences in convent schools called Mass Hysteria both at the Substation in January 2014 and at Indignation 2014. She teaches poetry and literature in schools and with various groups, including AWARE and Word Forward and performs as part of Sekaliwags. Her writing, both in poetry and plays, explores themes of social justice, gender politics, decoloniality. She recently ran a series of writing workshops focused on gender-based violence, and volunteers with Sayoni. Currently, Raksha is working on a documentation project on violence and discrimination against LBTQ people in Singapore.

Photos


Videos

Shifting Representations from nusmuseum on Vimeo.
Traversing Spaces from nusmuseum on Vimeo.

Exhibition Programmes | Curating Lab: Phase 03 [31 January]

Curating Lab: Phase 03

Date: Saturday, 31 January 2015
Time: 10am - 6.30pm
Venue: NUS Museum

Free admission with registration at clabnusm.peatix.com

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The following series of programmes are presented in conjunction with Curating Lab: Phase 03.

Schedule
10am                Pictureshow: Nodes of Looking
11.15am           Tea reception
11.30am           Pictureshow: Nodes of Looking (continued)
12.45pm          Break
3pm                 Pulp: A Short Biography of the Banished Book
4pm                 Notes from the (under)ground

10am - 1pm | Pictureshow: Nodes of Looking
in conjunction with Pictureshow
Speakers
Stefano Harney, Ground Provisions collective
A/P Stuart Derbyshire, Dept of Psychology, NUS
A/P Maurizio Peleggi, Dept of History, NUS
Shubigi Rao, artist
Kannan Chandran, publisher (moderator)

Pictureshow: Nodes of Looking is an attempt to spark cross-disciplinary conversations about perception as a means of knowledge production. This mini-lecture series bring together speakers from various fields of study and aspires to nurture a comfortable and constructive space for ‘looking’ from multiple vantage points. Through an exposure to multitudinous nodes of perception, participants are invited to explore ‘looking’ beyond its literal sensorial quality and inspire meaningful conversations about the diverse manifestations ‘looking’ can take. Expounding on different registers afforded by the neurological, historical and material, the symposium provides an occasion and platform for the unpacking of various perceptual issues beyond the artistic sphere.

3 - 4pm | Pulp: A Short Biography of the Banished Book
in conjunction with Shubigi Rao: Exquisite Corpse
with Shubigi Rao, artist

Pulp: A Short Biography of the Banished Book is a decade-long film, book and visual art project about the history of book destruction. Join Shubigi Rao as she shares her preliminary interviews, observations and vignettes from ‘Pulp’ as she visits public and private collections, libraries and archives around the world to retrace the disappearance of ideas long gone.

4 - 6.30pm | Notes from the (under)ground
in conjunction with Shubigi Rao: Exquisite Corpse
Speakers 
A/P Farish A Noor, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, NTU
A/P John Miksic, Dept of Southeast Asian Studies, NUS
Koh Nguang How, archivist and artist
Yu-Mei Balasingamchow, writer and independent curator

MACBETH: […] I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
And falls on the other. (1.7.1)
William Shakespeare, Macbeth

Tread through a labyrinth of vault-less ambitions as we trawl through 700 year-old garbage, b-grade adventure stories, tabloid junk, material assemblage and inert email threads. At times a roll-call, a reportage, a reconstruction and restitution, this session examines the outliers of culture — civil waste, popular paraphernalia, itinerant memories.

Photos


Videos 
(*Due to a technical problem, Part 1 of Pictureshow: Nodes of Looking was not captured on video)
 
Pictureshow: Nodes of Looking [Part 2] | Shubigi Rao & Stuart Derbyshire from nusmuseum on Vimeo.

Pulp: A Short Biography of the Banished Book from nusmuseum on Vimeo.

Notes from the (under)ground from nusmuseum on Vimeo.

10 Questions with | Wong Yeang Cherng

1. Tell us about yourself in one sentence.

I am obsessed with the passing of time; I dwell too much on the past; I remember too many redundant details.

2. How did you end up in Curating Lab?
I received an email from NUS Museum about Curating Lab; it had been two years since I received any news about the programme.

I have always fancied curating my very own exhibition.

I applied after my final paper ended.

I went for the interview and I got selected.

I turned up for the Curatorial Intensive.

There you go~!

But really, how does ever anyone know how they end up somewhere?

3. What has been your *sigh* moment of Curating Lab so far?
On the bumboat ride back to mainland Singapore after all that awesome that is Pulau Ubin and the seafood feast.

4. Tell us about Pictureshow.
It is simply an exhibition about the experience of looking at art. It questions exactly how does one make sense of works that mean nothing at first glance? I mean, what do you think of when you see a work? More than encouraging the audience to derive messages, meanings or lessons from the works on display, Pictureshow strives to be a space for spectators to be comfortable and honest with themselves — to take comfort in uncertainties and decide from themselves what they want the art work to mean or perhaps not to mean anything in the least.

5. Tell us about your curatorial journey.

I hadn’t had the words to explain my curatorial journey until I chanced upon this advertorial text for a construction firm while working in the office one day. It was printed on the back of a complimentary post-it pad. Very simply, the text documents quite straightforwardly (or maybe not) my journey with curating as a concept, methodology and a vocation, albeit in a very tongue-in-cheek manner; also, quite cheesy.

6. What is / has been the most exciting thing about your exhibition?

For sure, the trunking! Visitors, please take a moment to admire the (also) work of art that is the coated-in-silver-duct-tape trunking at our exhibition! We (Euginia, Selene, Jia Yun and I) and the Uncle Electricians are glad to have left our mark in the exhibition space alongside the spectacular artists on show. I’m assuming…

7. What’s next for you?

Off the top of my head, I’m working really hard on waking up at 7 am each morning so my day will seem and effectively be considerably longer. Just very mundane pursuits really.

8. Favourite book(s)

The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng.

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.

These are my own personal copies (thus the bad lighting).

My favourite page from the book.

9. Favourite artwork.
Sorry, I haven’t found it yet.

10. Favourite local art space.

CoffeeExpress 2000.

Sells good bakchormee too.

10 Questions with | Bernice Ong

1. Tell us about yourself in one sentence.

Hi, my name is Bernice Ong. 

2. How did you end up in Curating Lab?

A forwarded link from a friend, an application, an interview, and magic! But primarily, I was looking for another project to be part of, guess I projectified myself well enough to end up here.

3. What has been your coolest moment of Curating Lab so far?

Hong Kong was pretty cool. Not a fan of large group trips, had thought I was past the age of excursions. But yeah, that was real cool. Thanks NAC! Another please?

4. Tell us about Conditions of Production.

May I simply insert our exhibition blurb:  COP is an ongoing project that seeks to pursue a field of enquiry situating objects and process within the complexities of artistic production and reception. To emulate the plurality of situations where artistic discourse may arise, this project calls attention to less tangible structures immanent in the creation of an artwork by adopting the multiple platforms of an exhibition, dialogue sessions, and an online repository of interviews and essays.

5. Tell us about your curatorial journey.

I’m a bit hesitant to latch on to this lab experience as a journeying towards a destination. I suppose, I have found it to be more about practicing my ninja eyes and ninja chops, observing and thinking about what the world needs more of, daring to ask those questions, being critical, practical, and trusting your intuition. Funny story, my group had looked at (artistic) ‘post-fertility’ as a starting point, and now we’re into the conditions of production. Ok…

6. What is the most exciting thing about your exhibition?

For me, the exhibition is as much about the unseen, as it is about the exhibited. We have three main artworks which I think dialogue really well with each other: a light fixture L O D N H A C G E E K of Chun Kaifeng's which for me exists as a sort of urban beacon, the documentary images of Matthew Ngui’s public art project TIMBRE!! that had come only partially into existence, and Amanda Heng’s intimate embrace with her mother in a beautiful photographic image Twenty Years Later.

7. What’s next for you?

Plodding on through life, finding more work as a freelancer. I’m onto a range of jobs, as theatre technician, set builder etc. and looking to get paid for my art and curatorial labour someday.

8. Favourite book.

FB

9. Favourite artwork.

Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square (1915)

 Source: http://www.tretyakovgallery.ru/en/collection/_show/image/_id/378

10. Favourite local art space.

HDB estates are my favourite observatories. When days were much freer, I enjoyed taking the elevator up random flats facing large construction sites to peer beneath the hoarding.

10 Questions with | Cheng Jia Yun

1. Tell us about yourself in one sentence.

 An unassuming walking contradiction.

 

2. How did you end up in Curating Lab? 

An itch to make something, to put your best conceptual foot forward and do up the laces in real time/in real life needed to be scratched and Curating Lab promised the biggest satiation of itch-relief. I have many at the Gallery to thank for very generously recognizing and supporting my itch-relief efforts.

3. What has been your most prized moment of Curating Lab so far? 

There are too many prizes! And none too many consolation ones, either! My constant fangirly discovery of more to admire in everyone who’s part of the programme, mentors and participants alike, be it a new novel or a fixation with a certain concept or a fantastic piece of kit – that sense of sharing is something prized; immutable; fleeting. Zealously attacking the contents of Safe Sea with cleaning brushes together, first inhabiting Spring Workshop as this loose mass of acquaintances, and then slowly breaking ice by facing fire, crit by crit, deadline by deadline, wall text by wall text, sweat by sweat, freeze and melt, wah buay tahan until song. In the lead up to our exhibition, the artists/artist’s estates we are working with, who amaze with how patient (,tolerant) and kind they are with our young attempts, learning more about how they are pushing the envelope in their own directions, my teammates YC, Euginia and Selene are very precious and vital to the whole education that is Curating Lab, always able to Doraemon that extra ounce of energy and patience to push our adventure one step forward.

4. What do you do at the National Gallery? 

I’m a Curatorial Assistant with the Southeast Asia Gallery at the moment, involved in a lateral assortment of tasks that include research, infrastructure and amazing paperwork, currently focused on the 1970s and up.

 

5. Has your understanding of curating changed since being part of Curating Lab? 

I think it has acquired a much more tangible character, because of how raw the process is in working one (or four)-on-one with the artists, and having such a privilege to be able to talk about their processes, their considerations and their artistic machinations and then be in charge of the responsibility to respond to that curatorially is equally terrifying and rewarding at the same time.

6. Why does the world need curators?

Why does the world need humans? I think curators help us remember parts of ourselves or elements of experience that we neglect, aside from ordering content for us to show off about knowing later. Empowered by artists, they can, like great shampoo, revitalize existence, and, on occasion, jolt us out of the amnesia of living. 

7. What are you up to at present? / What’s next for you?

I’ll be seeing the Gallery through to the opening in 2015, but between then and now, I foresee the itch persisting and it being scratched through more thought and more collaboration. 

8. Favourite book.

Because I’ve been susceptible to alternate worlds lately, I’d have to say Dune by Herbert Read/the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov. 

9. Favourite artwork.

Untitled photographic print taken by a friend of mine; my first purchase 

10. Favourite local art space.

Hanis Café at NLB. No one ever knows what’s being discussed there of course, but there’s been a lot of percolating going on, I assure you.

10 Questions with | Raksha Mahtani

1. Tell us about yourself in one sentence.

I occasionally function as performer-poet, writer-researcher, activist-curator, and at other times, read poetry to myself while undesirably occupying public spaces.

2. How did you end up in Curating Lab?

A rave, a rant, a referral, but also, delusions of grandeur.

3. What has been your most poignant moment of Curating Lab so far?

Best moment: seeing a Queer Film in Ten Million Years of Yearning: Sex in Hong Kong, about a love story between a girl and a paper-eating ghost. The absurdity of the girl getting angry at the ghost and saying, “Do you mind asking me first before you eat my diary?” compounded with realizing that there is space for things I want to curate: space that is community-focused, political, performative, reformative, beautiful. 

4. Tell us about the projects you are involved in.

Aside from curating, I am part of a four-woman poetry troupe, Sekaliwags. I am currently teaching a series of creative-writing workshops focused on gender-based violence entitled “Body/Language” with AWARE. We have been conducting these workshops with various groups: volunteers at H.O.M.E, participants of a Malay Muslim support group Gender Equality is Our Culture and LGBTQ youth group G-Spot, among others. I am also working on a documentation of violence and discrimination against LBTQ people with Sayoni.

5. What should I look out for in the next few months (Jan-Mar)?

Wonder. Look twice before you cross the road. Look twice before you criticize. Jan to March will be a time for reflection. More events, especially Sekaliwags-related coming in June / July.

6. How has being in a curating programme changed how you approach your work?

It’s expanded my field of vision, given birth to new possibilities, a new way of approaching space, object, sentiment, ressentiment.  

7. Favourite book.

Skepticism, Inc. by Bo Fowler. It’s about a sentient supermarket trolley that tries to climb Mt Everest while his best friend starts a metaphysical betting service and tries to conquer the world.

8. Favourite artwork.

Tsai Ming-Liang’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn, for its cinematic absence.

9. Current favourite poet.

Anything Warsan Shire.

10. Favourite local art space.

The Substation.

Exhibition | Curating Lab: Phase 03

Opening night: 
Thursday, 8 January 2015, 7pm

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

CLICK TO ACCESS EFLYER  
CLICK TO ACCESS PRESS RELEASE

Exhibition period: 9 January - 8 February 2015
Venue: Lee Kong Chian Temp Gallery, NUS Museum 

Curating Lab: Phase 03 presents three exhibitions put together by participants of Curating Lab 2014 working with a selection of artists: Song-Ming Ang, Chun Kaifeng, Amanda Heng, Kim Lim, Matthew Ngui and Shubigi Rao. Situated in tandem with one another, the exhibitions may be seen as a constellation of divergent views and curatorial interests glimpsed from the works and practices of these six artists. Building upon the potentials of multiple perspectives that these three exhibitions point towards is also the very porousness of exhibitions themselves in facilitating such encounters between one another.
Conditions of Production is an ongoing project that seeks to pursue a field of enquiry situating objects and process within the complexities of artistic production and reception. To emulate the plurality of situations where artistic discourse may arise, this project calls attention to less tangible structures immanent in the creation of an artwork by adopting the multiple platforms of an exhibition, dialogue sessions, and an online repository of interviews and essays. The exhibition, as one part of a greater whole, examines these conditions by looking at the practice of three artists – Amanda Heng, Chun Kaifeng and Matthew Ngui. http://conditionsofproduction.com/
Curated by: Bernice Ong, Samantha Yap, Kenneth Loe and Melvin Tan.

Shubigi Rao: Exquisite Corpse combines a selection of Shubigi Rao's work with items from her personal library, and material that has never been exhibited publicly. "Waste", in Rao's work — as a material presence, underlying poetic logic, and anxiety — becomes a way of framing her oeuvre and process, and forms the exhibition's curatorial provocation. At once a kind of monologue and dialogue, a coded silence, and a cacophonic game of cadavre exquis, Shubigi Rao: Exquisite Corpse invites the entanglement of old and new voices as audiences engage in the exhibition's premise of intertextuality, spectrality, hidden layers, and remainders.
Curated by: Luca Lum, Raksha Mahtani and Chua Ying Qing.

Pictureshow seeks to spotlight the act of looking as the primal means of perception and knowledge acquisition. Assembling works and materials which have since grown distant from the stability of the canvas, the painting, and the two-dimensional that the word picture is so comfortably associated with, this exhibition asks: How has the relationship between artistic expression and the pictorial mode evolved over time? By unhinging the habitual mode of seeing a picture with works and materials that generate their own definitions about representation, Pictureshow contemplates the image as mediator in the relationship between artistic production and consumption. The exhibition features the works and materials of Chun Kaifeng, Kim Lim, Matthew Ngui and Song-Ming Ang.
Curated by: Selene Yap, Cheng Jia Yun, Euginia Tan and Wong Yeang Cherng.

More:
facebook.com/curatinglab2014

Photos | Exhibition Opening


Photos | Gallery Impressions

10 Questions with | Euginia Tan

1. Tell us about yourself in a sentence.
I volunteer as tribute.

2. How did you end up in Curating Lab?
I've volunteered.... as tribute.

3. What has been your ________ moment of Curating Lab so far?

funniest moment is taking screenshots of all our group's discussions.
without them knowing.

they know now.

4. What is it like being a poet in a curating programme?

fleeting curating haiku;
mastering facebook -
indomitable hell

Yes I'm one syllable too long.

5. Tell us about your work with Latent Spaces.

I just joined Latent Spaces not long ago really. And I don't know much about my bosses... they slip me my assignments in abandoned briefcases by dark stairwells, in code, and I have three days to decipher them or they send me a random torn page from my first book, day by day.....

Just kidding. I'm working with them for their Art Stage project.

6. What should I look out for at the collaboration with Art Stage?
Latent Spaces is doing a collaborative piece in an attempt to capture conditions of art production, 60 local artists have contributed to a collective piece of work titled Economy. Each invited artist has created one fridge magnet which will be strategically arranged in a grid on a single metallic panel. All artists’ contributions will be sold as a complete set of one edition at the art fair. Our Curating Lab participants Melvin and Bernice have contributed their works to this. Also our mentor Heman Chong but he’s already too famous so don’t put a link on his name.

Latent Spaces will also be selling Potong ice cream at Art Stage 2015, which has been an ongoing business venture they initiated at Haw Par Villa to help fund the daily operations of their gallery. The project, going by the tongue in cheek moniker Potong Ice Cream $2 has commissioned artist Ang Song Ming to create a catchy jingle for the booth in its spirit of effervescence.

7. What are you up to at present? / What’s next for you?
Junoesq is a new literary journal set up by Singaporean poet Grace Chia Krakovic, for female writers. I read at their launch in SWF. Here’s a link to my work:

http://www.junoesq.com/?p=332

From the same gods that willed the births of Ulysses, The Waste Land, Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey, please allow my third book to happen.

8. Favourite book.

The Outsiders by S.E Hinton.

*MEANINGFUL BACKSTORY SPOILER ALERT* I first picked this book up when I was nine, and I always assumed Hinton was male. Later on in another of her books, Some of Tim's Stories, I read an interview in which they referred to her as Susie. And I realized Susie was S.E Hinton herself. Here's an excerpt of the interview:

Q: Your given name is Susan Eloise. How did you become S.E.?
A: My publishers asked me if they could just use my initials because of the subject matter. They thought if reviewers picked up The Outsiders and saw that a girl had written it, they would read it with bias. The initials sounded great to me. I liked having a public name and a private name. At first, the reviewers would mention that a young man had written the book, but after a while I wasn't a secret. I was on television; I was on radio.

I'm not sure if this was the rationale behind J.K. Rowling's initials as well, but I like to think that it is. From a very young age finding out about this bias made me very aware about looking at work objectively, and this also heavily impacted me producing work as a female writer. People often neglect the fact that emotions are general consensus, applicable to anyone, they are not gender based. But we continue to be victims/bullies to a flawed imbalance that society has set. As a poet this gives me great room to build on that.

9. Favourite artwork.

Guernica, Pablo Picasso, 1937. Oil on canvas.

10. Favourite local art space.

Latent Spaces..... thanks for the raise, Kaifeng and Kaiqun.

10 Questions with | Kenneth Loe

1. Tell us about yourself in one sentence.

Either I'm poetically pregnant or my alliteration's asunder.

2. How did you end up in Curating Lab?

I have to thank my dear friend Joleen without whom my adventure through this fantastic terra incognita would not have happened nor been possible.

3. What has been your curate’s egg moment of Curating Lab so far?

The early conceptions (pun intended) of our final project.

4. Tell us about your work with the Centre of Contemporary Art, Singapore.

I’m working on the post-exhibition catalogue for Theatrical Fields as an editorial assistant. The discursive breadth covered by the exhibition, film screenings, symposia, artist talks and roundtable discussions in Umea and Singapore is quite extensive, both within and beyond the scope of theatricality - and I assist with the accumulation, selection and editing of the material.

5. What should I know about Theatrical Fields?

That “theatricality”, while necessarily summoning associations with the oft-cited “theatrical” as derogative, can be situated and understood outside of the context of theatre and the well-made play. My reaction, albeit a little knee-jerk, when I first visited the exhibition was shock - at the absence of recognisable drama, of the “Days of Our Lives” daytime soap opera register y’know?

It was initially tenuous for me - the links between contemporary art and theatre that the project seemingly tried to draw, the notion of live bodies vs mediatized bodies still very much a contested area in performance studies and performativity, how different the strategies employed by visual art and theatre practitioners both in the past and with the advent of digital technologies are, the often separate lineages and reference points of both fields, etc. Having spent much more time with the works, I would say Theatrical Fields delves productively beyond this dichotomy by alluding to the staged realities of everyday life through its own constructed-ness of the phantasmagorical.

6. Has your understanding of curating changed since being part of Curating Lab?

Most definitely! A heightened sense of awareness for one.

Image: meetville.com

7. What are you up to at present? / What’s next for you?

We’re in the midst of preparing for the next exhibition Moving Light, Roving Sight at Ikkan Art Gallery where I work at full-time. It opens on 22nd Jan next year and is the biggest and most challenging one that I’ve been involved in to date. I’d like to imagine 2015 would be slower for me with lots of time in between projects to read.

8. Favourite poem

The End Is Near The Beginning

Yes you have said enough for the time being

There will be plenty of lace later on

Plenty of electric wool

And you will forget the eglantine

Growing around the edge of the green lake

And if you forget the colour of my hands

You will remember the wheels of the chair

In which the wax figure resembling you sat

Several men are standing on the pier

Unloading the sea

The device on the trolly says MOTHER’S MEAT

Which means Until the end.

David Gascoyne

9. Favourite artwork.

10. Favourite local art space.

Image: www.articulate.com

10 Questions with | Selene Yap

1. Tell us about yourself in one sentence.

I’m Selene, a Sociology graduate who finds interest in issues regarding art and its publics. More recently, I’ve been kept intrigued by discussions revolving around ‘participatory art’, spectatorship, and museums as hotbeds of engagement-centric crowdsourced/outsourced curated experiences.

Photo credit: Bernice Ong

2. How did you end up in Curating Lab?

I saw Curating Lab as a test bed for me to experiment with and progressively develop my initial interest (or naivety) in curating. The opportunity also came at a time when I was seriously considering my career path and the possibility of entering grad school.

That said, the “How” part of it was with much encouragement and pep talk from friends. I must’ve read through the application process a million times before deciding to spend a day off at the Singapore Art Museum (SAM) “critique[ing] the shit out of” some works and submitting it as part of my application

 

3. What has been the most challenging moment of Curating Lab so far?

Every moment spent at Hanis Café at NLB. From agonizing over exhibition proposals/essays with team NAC (Euginia, YC, Jia and myself) to keeping up during the brilliant reading sessions facilitated by our mentor, Mustafa, it seems as if the place has become a metaphor for all the ‘curatorial combustions’ we’ve experienced in Curating Lab.  

Adventures ahoy with team NAC

Photo credit (left): Hanis Café and Bakery Singapore

4. What do you do at the National Library Board?

I’m one in a team of ‘Cultural Concierges’ – the designation for my role in NLB (not too far away from being a cultural bell-boy, really). We plan for arts and culture programmes and public arts education, which include exhibitions and community engagement outreach in Public Libraries.

5. Has Curating Lab changed how you approach your work?

I used to look at things in a firmly logistical and practical manner of how the art work can suit the exhibition spaces that we have, but in recent times, I have become more curious about the process and the poetics leading up to creation.

6. What kind of programmes should we look out for at the library?

Depending on one’s area of interest; I would say look out for design-related programmes in Library@Orchard and programmes with a focus on literary arts at Central Public Library. 

7. What are you up to at present? / What’s next for you?

I’m currently working with NAC and curator, Joanna Lee in presenting the Ho Chee Lick: Homage to the Faithful exhibition in our Public Libraries as part of Art Week 2015. Next on my to-do list: I would really like to start seriously looking through open calls and residencies for emerging curators just to see what the requirements for these projects are; how to write a letter of intent, craft a proposal etc. To finally have the guts to apply for something!

8. Favourite book.

The book that I’m halfway through now - A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit. It’s such a great book that I feel like I’m compromising its elegance by reading the e-version out of my crappy LED-backlit iPhone.

9. Favourite artwork(s).

I thoroughly enjoyed WE THINK ALONE by Miranda July and Chen Sai Hua Kuan’s Space Drawing 5.

Photo credit: Randian Online

10. Favourite local art space.

No favourite local art space at the moment. Having said that, I’d like to think that a good art space is one that matches the quirks of the exhibition it houses!

10 Questions with | Samantha Yap

Tell us about yourself in one sentence.

I’m like all the other girls; I’m Samantha, an arts management graduate since two years ago, gallery girl since seven months ago, a twin since 21 years ago, I enjoy being long-winded, my perennial passions lie in feminism, visual culture, twin-ness, dystopia and eschatology and the romance of many things.

How did you end up in Curating Lab?

I found out about it in 2012 but didn’t felt ready to apply then. Two years later, I still didn’t felt ready. It was May and I had only just left school a few months ago. I was only in my third month at Silverlens and I still felt very raw. But. I realized I would never ever be ready, so I applied and I’m here. It’s been great, I’ve been learning so much from my peers.

What has been your favorite moment(s) in Curating Lab so far?

Visits to Amanda Heng’s studio – curry puffs, chamomile tea, conversations and Conditions of Production.

Photo (right) by Bernice

Group discussions over food, laughter and drinks.

What do you do at Silverlens Galleries? What should I know about Silverlens?

Photos by (left) Germaine and (right) Melvin.

I’m the gallery assistant at Silverlens. I do a little bit of this and that, everything and nothing.

I do some of the administrative grunt work that goes behind undertaking art fairs or setting up exhibitions. I sometimes smile at visitors too. Contrary to common belief, I don’t detest my job scope; I see it as a very important and often overlooked aspect of the exhibition-making process and by further extension, even the curatorial. I’m happy to assist. I’m absorbing a lot just from being here, whether as a shadow or a self.

Silverlens (Manila and Singapore) was founded by Isa Lorenzo and Rachel Rillo in 2004. It started out as a photography gallery but has since branched out to encompass and engage other forms of contemporary art. 

What’s something I value a lot about (being in) Silverlens: the women. Buzz words: art world equality.

What has been your most memorable exhibition at the gallery?

Photos by Silverlens Galleries

99% by Gary-Ross Pastrana. A show of just one work.

Art within its own set of valuation. Gary’s sculpture, noticeably, 99 percent metal parts and one percent gold, is the strange opposite of what it appears to be. He acquired an old car, got it scrapped and sold most of the scraps, save for one small percent. The money earned was in turn used to buy gold – which took the form of a small golden ball dangling inconspicuously like a Christmas ornament. Everything else is the initial one percent of the car scraps that he had put aside.  

I can’t just pick one. I’m going to squeeze in another.

My favorite show at Silverlens, so far in my time, with them is The First Kiss on Earth by Chati Coronel.

Chati imagines the kiss in a time before language, deliberating on the possibilities of unifying and separating forces being one and the same. These series of paintings were very real to me, speaking to a dull unidentifiable ache…perhaps the enduring ache of our times, an affliction stirred by the desire for union and connection.

Has your understanding of curating changed since being part of Curating Lab?

Of course. Off course. Many times, it has meandered and presumably gone off course but I find that these detours can be productive.

What are you up to at present? / What’s next for you?

At present, I am still trying to figure the future out. More tangibly, I am preparing for our last show of the year at Silverlens. I am trying to plan my vacation. Right at this moment, I’m thinking a lot about Uterus Man by tech artist Lu Yang. Curatorial activism (via Maura Reilly) has also been a lot on my mind. Not so presently but always urgently at the back of my mind, I am trying to come up with a show proposal for Silverlens next year.

What’s next is:

Cowboy Bebop, 1999.

Probably University. Probably trying to concretize some ideas, work on new projects. Probably nothing.

Favourite books.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami.

I’m currently reading Blue Nights by Joan Didion. I’ve been reading this book slowly and consistently since Curating Lab started. It’s been a torrid six-month affair. The book makes me sad. It keeps me awake.

Favourite artists.

I’m really enjoying the works of Lee Bul and Amalia Ullman right now.

(left) Lee Bul, Cyborg Red, Cyborg Blue, 1997–98.

(right) Lee Bul: From Me, Belongs to You Only installation view.

Photos from zootmagazine.

Excellences & Perfections, 2014 (detail). Performance: Instagram. Source.

Favourite local art space.

Gillman Barracks ;)