Future

of 6
Imagination
International Performance Art Event Singapore 2010
 Future of Imagination 6
With support from
 Future of Imagination 6 catalogue is published on the occasion of the performance art event Future of Imagination 6 (FOI 6) at
Sculpture Square Limited, 155 Middle Road, Singapore 188977 CONTENTS
Event Dates
7 - 11 April 2010

Website PERFORMANCE ART PERFORMING 4

www.foi.sg by Lee Wen
Artistic Directors
Lee Wen, Kai Lam

Artists The Art of Engagement in Everyday Life 10

Alastair MacLennan (UK/Ireland), Amanda Heng (Singapore), Angie Seah (Singapore), Boris Nieslony (Germany), Elvira Santamaría Interview with Amanda Heng by Kaimei Olsson Wang
(Mexico), Helge Meyer (Germany), Jacques van Poppel (The Netherlands), Jason Lim (Singapore), Jeremy Hiah (Singapore),
Juliana Yasin (Singapore), Julie Andrée T. (Canada), Jürgen Fritz (Germany), Kai Lam (Singapore), Lee Wen (Singapore), Lynn
Lu (Singapore), Marco Teubner (Germany), Melati Suryodarmo (Indonesia), Myriam Laplante (Canada/Italy), Norbert Klassen
(Switzerland), Roi Vaara (Finland), Sabrina Koh (Singapore), Vichukorn Tangpaiboon (Thailand), Zai Kuning (Singapore) A Nervous System 16
Editors Interview with Ho Tzu Nyen by June Yap
Future of Imagination 6

Future of Imagination 6
Lee Wen, Kai Lam

Design/Publications
Chun Kai Qun A Very Expanded Notion of Culture 22
Interview with Woon Tien Wei by Lee Wen
Logistics/Technical Support
Dan Yeo

Public Relations
Magdalen Chua, Jacklyn Soo, Juliana Yasin Some Notes On Collective Performance 26
by Jonas Stampe
Artists’ Liaison
Angie Seah, Yuzuru Maeda

Administration
Annabelle Felise Aw Participating Artists’ Biographies 30
Photo Documentation
Lim Yeow Sen (Nel)

Video Documentation
Ghazi Alqudcy Festival Programme 53
Volunteers I/Cs:
Marienne Yang, Joo Choon Lin

First published in an edition of 1000 in 2010 by Future of Imagination 6 (FOI 6), Lee Wen, Singapore
Artists and supporters LINKS 54
© 2010 the publisher, authors and contributors

ISBN 978-981-08-5577-2

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission from the publisher
and the copyright owners.
 Performance art performing1 with the state’s desire to extend its economic success to cultural distinction in parity with global trends and especially
in preparation for the then upcoming Singapore Biennale in 2006.6
by Lee Wen
Tang Da Wu may be the only one to be able to get away with such a self-contradictory statement and yet able to
resonate with almost mystical wisdom, bringing to mind various poignant questions that reverberate even today. Most
artists are constantly asking for more financial grant support, enigmatically, Tang beseeched the President not to give
money to the arts. Tang was later quoted to say that public money funded the “wrong kind of art”, art that was too
commercial and had no taste.7 Hence it was not a total rejection of arts funding that is advocated by Tang but rather a
Introduction
timely query on how arts funding was administered and distributed.
Tan Teng Kee’s Picnic event of 1979 was cited by veteran art historian TK Sabapathy
What Tang did by way of simple actions may be claimed as proceedings in ‘real life’, rather than performance art in
as the first evidence of performance art in Singapore. Tan created a one-hundred-
public, which would entail a need for ‘licensing’ as some law-enforcing stickler might insist. What may be seen as
meters long painting entitled “The Lonely Road”. He then cut into smaller pieces
performance art intervention par excellence by the art world, in the eyes of the law will quietly be seen as a personal
and incinerated one of his sculptures at the end of the event.2 It is hard to believe
message by an artist to the president and thus could not involve any legal violations. In contrast to the case of Josef
these actions amounted to a work of performance art as Tan did not continue his
Ng’s “Brother Cane” that may qualify as an excellent work in performance art parlance, yet could not override the law of
explorations in performance but became known to us as a sculptor. However the image
obscenity as according to the hearing, claims of artistic merit does not count in Singapore’s courts.
of an artist destroying and burning his own painting and sculptural creations seemed
like an appropriate one for the beginning of performance art in Singapore. Especially
With the changed situation of support funding from the NAC, performance art practice grapples with balancing a
when many artists find it hard to have a decent studio space in land scarce Singapore,
desire to be financially viable and maintaining artistic authenticity. Especially when looking into the historical context of
hence expensive real estate, and in moving every few years tend to discard some of
performance art, being anti-establishment, provocative, interventionist, and an opposition to the commodification of art
Future of Imagination 6

Future of Imagination 6
their creations each time they move.
would be leading a list of its common characteristics.8 When working with the support of NAC sponsorship the artist
loses some autonomy and is forced to abide by various regulations, such as the licensing procedures, which restricts
That Tan’s one and only action could also put him into Singapore’s art historical context
spontaneity and threatens authenticity.
forebode later short-lived forays by other artists and the capricious wavering support
by institutions. Such erratic inclination is also indicative of the uncertainties faced by
Death is not the end
artists as well as art institutions in an incessantly, rapidly changing society. At the
same time the various fluctuating arts policies implemented were meant to administer
It can be quite intimidating to see a Chinese funeral band play during an art event in the Substation especially if you
orderly cultural growth carried questionable advantage. I would like to expose some
are the organizer of the event. Instead of performing something himself as expected, the invited artist Ray Langenbach
focal positions asserted through some artists’ pertinent performances in response to
had engaged an 8 piece Chinese funeral band musicians to play at The Substation for his presentation during ‘Future of
local conditions.
Imagination 3’, the international performance art event that I was organizer.9 My first thoughts were “whose funeral is

the artist referring to? Kuo Pao Kun? The Substation? Democratic processes in Singapore? Or the U.S.? The world? Was
Money for your ‘live’
it art itself? Or more specifically performance art? Or worse, more specifically the festival itself?”
At the opening ceremony of Singapore Art ‘95, one of the preceding incarnations
As I watched more intensely I started to notice the musicians were also nervous and uncomfortable. Dressed in bright
leading up to the Singapore Biennale, Tang Da Wu had asked sculptor, founder of
yellow shiny uniforms they could have been mistaken for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band playing off-key. It
La Salle College of Art, Brother Joseph McNally and major water colorist, Ong Kim
seemed that they were not used to being watched and listened to so closely, with so many cameras pointed at them.
Seng, to introduce him to the Guest of Honour, the President of Singapore, Mr. Ong
Chinese funeral bands play a function in the funeral ritual where musical excellence is not of prime concern. Its off-
Teng Cheong.3 Tang first handed the President, a card, not unlike a calling name card,
key notes often sounded in tune with the wailing cries of the mourners. But no one was mourning today, in fact this is
hand written with the words: “Dear Mr.President, I am an artist, I am important, Yours
probably the first time the band was facing an audience and an ‘art’ audience at that. I began to wonder who was more
Sincerely, Tang Da Wu”. Then asking for permission to put on his black jacket, Tang
amused: the audience or the musicians?
elegantly slipped it on and revealed the words for the President and all to see: “Don’t
Give Money To The Arts”, which was embroidered on the back in golden thread.4
As the band marched into the gallery, their solemn out of tune playing rang out a mischievous nuance, which brought me
back to all those questions about what the artist is trying to say through such an engagement. Was Langenbach referring
It was a gesture that acted out a message of deep concern for the changes that arts
to the recent disquiet in KL? The week before the invited artists for our festival went to Kuala Lumpur to participate in
funding were bringing. Especially when the National Arts Council (NAC) withheld all
another event, Satu Kali, which we helped co-coordinate.10 Satu Kali was organized by Kuala Lumpur-based artists, Liew
support and funding for performance art since 1994 arising out of the controversial
Kungyu and Ray Langenbach and was meant to be a private event but the police came to stop it on the third day based
performance, ‘Brother Cane’ by Josef Ng.5 The NAC policy of not funding performance
on a single audience complaint that some performances done by Muslim artists were “un-Islamic”. It was unfortunate
art was almost a categorical ban on the art form itself. Although we could still hold
but a learning experience. As our plans for a three days event faltered without completion, it felt like death. Not quite, but
performance art events without the support from National Arts Council, the withdrawal
close. As an organizer I see our role as facilitators akin to the Socratic notion of the dialectical philosopher as a mid-wife
of support signaled to the public at large an official disapproval that many did not dare
assisting to bring forth the birth and enactment of art. A stoppage after months of anticipation, felt almost like having a
or wish to dispute with. Those who continued to do so face the risk of being blacklisted
miscarriage or worse still, a forced abortion.
as ‘trouble-makers’, ‘dissenters’ or ‘rebels’. Although the de facto ban was lifted in late
2003, we have been subjected to a burdensome licensing system up to today. There
However, Langenbach did not hire the funeral band to play because of the shutdown of Satu Kali by the police in Kuala
are many speculations what brought on the change after almost a decade. Perhaps
Lumpur. On the contrary, its unexpected suppression showed that art can still be deemed dangerous and therefore may
both due to the lobbying pressure of local and international arts community together

4 5
 be seen as a triumph in its ability to play a continued historical position as resistance to the status quo. It evoked the
position performance art clearly held in Singapore during the 1994-2003 ten years of censure on performance art. The
recent acceptance and endowment of financial support has perhaps upset its integrity.
Langenbach’s hired Chinese funeral band was playing a critical lament to imply the ‘death of the Artist’. And if the Artist
were not already dead, this was his provocation for the Artist to die now, instead of continuing to play a heroic role just to
upkeep the show.11 In relinquishing his role to be the main actor on the stage by engaging the funeral band Langenbach
had transferred the acting role to unsuspecting yet willing players.
But if art is really dead how do we bury it? Are we then just mourners and sympathizers at the wake of art? Placing
a funeral band to play and march through The Substation does not make a funeral. No one was mourning while we
responded like voyeurs, amused, entertained, uncomfortable, bored watchers of passivity; are we not merely waiting
for the climax before we applaud to show our satisfaction, our approval? Looking at the nervous discomfort on their
spotlighted faces is not the same thing as looking at the cold breathless face of death. Instead of feeling remorse one
instead related to the musicians’ grimaces as they hit the off notes, taking their solemn role ever more seriously as the
performance proceeded.
However it did send a chill down my spine to think that the acceptance of once controversial practices such as conceptual
art or performance art into the mainstream culture may be seen as a satisfactory victory while giving up its stances of
resistance.12 On the contrary, it may also be seen rather as that of failure if not death, whereby its earlier motivations
Future of Imagination 6
as strategies of resistance to dominant global capitalism and commercialization or commodification of art as well as a
tool for directly effecting social changes will be surrendered in order to gain admission through the heavenly gates of
“Arte paradiso”, in the form of international biennales, art auctions, traveling block-busters museum exhibitions and
other material gains.
Naked jokes
In 2003 soon after the announcement that NAC will resume funding for performance art again Kai Lam, Jason Lim
and I organized Future of Imagination, a performance art event, which would later present more international artists in
Singapore over the years. As producers we try as much as possible to help the invited artists achieve their proposed
ideas. Often we would sound off the ‘danger zones’ trying hard not to play the censor’s role but to ask for sensitivity
from the invited artists to our local conditions. Besides the disparaging or desecration of national, religious and racial
symbols and icons is the problem of nudity in performance. This is easily acceptable in performance art contexts in
various secular societies including some Asian countries like Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, The Philippines, S.Korea, and
even China today but not in Singapore.
For some artists performing in the nude is necessary to the image that they have conceived and would find it difficult to
present their work otherwise. One option would be to hold a private event for invited guests only. However this is difficult
to arrange properly within the time frame of our festival, which usually runs over four or five days.
Since 1999 Arai Shinichi had been doing a series of performances, “Happy Japan!”13 He talks about his experience as
a member of Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers (JOCV) in Zanzibar, Tanzania in 1992 to 1994. This undertaking
intensified his consciousness of Japan’s imperialist tendencies and he related it to the dangers of the proliferation of
right wing ideas through the popular manga series “Senso-ron (War Theory)” by Kobayashi Yoshinori. At some point in
his performance he would sing the national song in the nude while appearing to let out red paint through his bowels over
a white canvas, in order to spin over the paint with his backside on the paint to create the Japanese sun-disc flag.
Arai’s performance actions may have moved some audiences in China to tears; it can also be grotesque, alarming and
offensive to others. However I only sounded the problem of nudity for his performance in Singapore. His first response
was that he had decided to make a different performance, since we were going to Kuala Lumpur for Satu Kali, which
the organizers were willing to take the risk by putting his “Happy Japan!” as the last performance of the event. As it
turned out Satu Kali, got shut down on the third day so that Arai did not get the chance to do his piece and he decided
to incorporate some of his actions from “Happy Japan!” into the one he proposed to do in our festival in Singapore
instead.14 He had the consideration not to be totally naked but to put on a pair of skin coloured panty-hose and also a
6 7
Pikachu soft-toy over his genitals while he did his Japanese red sun-disc flag routine. However the costume actually
exaggerated his nakedness and gave him an unexpected surrealistic bizarre dimension, making him look hilarious but
not in the way he intended.
Herma Auguste Wittstock is an obese artist who often performs simple actions responding to local site and contexts
with spontaneous humour. Her piece, “Welcome To Singapure” was in direct response to her encounter with rule-
laden Singapore.15 She entered the performance space dressed in a see-through dress and stood still, staring at
the audience. Her stillness, in contrast to Arai’s performance made us even more aware how her transparent dress
actually accentuated her nakedness. Blue ‘blood’ began to drip from her nose and later from her mouth. Her skin
begins to redden as she slowly begins to scream. At first it looked too cliché for me to take it sitting down. The kind
of usual stereotypical take on our situation, like the old joke about Singapore being a ‘fine’ city. She could have worn
that “Singapore-city of fines” tourist T-shirt, chew gum, spit them out and made the same impression. However as her
scream got louder I realize my reaction was actually out of an anger that was triggered in seeing her manifestation which
seemed to poke fun at my inability to find release and my own decision to submit to these inane rules and regulations
in order to gain continued trust and support to run this event in Singapore. I held back my tears, swallowed my pride as
it was more important to reconcile my contradictions as an artist who disdains censorship with that of a compromising
organizer and learnt to laugh at her painful joke in order to keep our hopes for a higher cause.
Staying alive: Revenue, Resistance, Regulations
Future of Imagination 6
The acceptance of financial support from the state does not mean that we shun ethical responsibility by conformity
and compromise although it does give us more liability to adhere to binding regulations imposed by the sponsorship.
What happened to Satu Kali in Kuala Lumpur is of different dynamics and consequences as compared to that for
performance art in Singapore. The political and bureaucratic processes in Malaysia have their unique complexities that I
can sympathize with but it’s not for outsiders to deal with directly. However in Singapore performance art faces various
peculiar restrictive regulations for it to develop and grow spontaneously, unhampered by repressive state interventions.
The ten years of funding ban had traumatized and stunted its growth in contrast to other genres of art. The increased
in state support and funding today for conceptual and performance art does not translate easily to an augmented art
market. This may actually be a blessing in disguise as it remains perpetually negating its own commercialization and
commodification by default. However this also perpetuates its dependence on centralized public funding of the NAC.
The market command of various performance artists like Zhang Huang, Marina Abramovic or Fluxus is evidential of
the possibility of its commodification. That will be the day when we get an enlightened collector like, Francesco Conz,
an Italian cultivated self made businessman who had been collecting avant-garde, performance art relics since the
seventies and now houses them in one of the most comprehensive archives for performance art in the world, the
‘Archivio e Edizione Conz’ in Verona.16 A pragmatic consideration is to create an independent funding body that will be
able to dispense financial assistance to artists without conservative obligations to allow more cutting edge works to
surface.
Performance art can continue to contend with various current contemporary issues and need not directly transgress
or be oppositional to social norms and status quo in order to stay relevant and hence live on. Critical responses can
take various poetics and not necessarily be anti-establishment to the point of contumacy or even negating market
commodification that one remains impoverished forever. No doubt resistant and interventionist stances that transgresses
taboos or even legality remain one of the important strategies of performance art practice but it should not be assumed
to be the one and only of all the possibilities that it can be.
The severe conditions of licensing and regulatory rules coupled with an inevitable dependence on the conciliatory
availability of funding that we willingly now work under does not mean we are compromised as artists but rather having
reached a point of transition in the evolving role of artists within changed circumstances. There is need for revising
these rules now and again to keep up with our changing consciousness. Is it not time that laws written and adopted
during Victorian times such as those that found the artist Josef Ng guilty in 1994 be reviewed and updated? After being
inducted into the contemporary art world by hosting Biennales and building billion dollar art infrastructures do we still
fear the effects of performance artists creating chaotic public disorder threatening internal security?
 In the meantime, it is up to artists to organize themselves in order to help keep performance
art stay alive. The choices remain open whether to work with the support of public funding or
be independently self-sufficient. There is a price to pay in taking either choice but hopefully
the battleground should not be tilted against performance art and artists like those 1994-
2003 watershed years again. What we hope to see is a society that allows performance art’s
varied possibilities to flourish and reveal itself like the full spectrum of the rainbow not to be
obscured by the dark clouds of cumbersome bureaucracy, dictatorial suppression or intolerant
fundamentalism.

Notes:
1 
This essay will be published in “Singapore Shifting Boundaries: Social Change in the early 21st century”, edited by Sharon Siddique, William Lim,
and Tan Dan Feng (Singapore: Select Publishers, forthcoming August 2010).
2 
T.K. Sabapathy: Sculpture in Singapore. Exhibition Catalogue Singapore: National Museum Art Gallery. 1991.
3 
“Don’t Give Money To The Arts”, performance by Tang Da Wu, Venue: Singapore Art ‘95, Suntec City, Singapore, 11, August 1995
4 
“Pay more attention to the arts - President”, The Straits Times, 12 August 1995.
5 
There have been much already written about Josef Ng, so I will not deliberate here.
6 
Langenbach, Ray, “Looking Back at Brother Cane: Performance Art and State Performance”, 1995 Space, Spaces and Spacing, The Substation
Conference1995.The Substation Singapore 1996. P.132-147
7 
Langenbach, Ray, “Performing the Singapore State 1988 – 1995”, PhD thesis, Center for Cultural Research, University of Sydney. August
2003, Ch.7, p. 207-239
8 
http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/576
6 
C. J. W.-L. Wee, ‘Local Cultures and the “New Asia”: The State, Culture, and Capitalism in Southeast Asia.’ Institute of Southeast Asian Studies,
Singapore 2002.
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Future of Imagination 6
10 
C. J. W.-L. Wee, ‘Creating High Culture in the Globalized “Cultural Desert” of Singapore’, The Drama Review 47, no. 4 (Winter 2003):
84-97.
11 
C. J. W.-L. Wee, ‘Global Art, Globalised Art and ‘Belief’: The Singapore Biennale 2006’, CONTEMPORARY VISUAL ART+CULTURE Broadsheet
magazine, vol 35 no 4, Adelaide, South Australia.
12 
http://www.cacsa.org.au/archives/index_frames.html
7 
Sian E. Jay, “Ironic twist to Substation fund-raiser”, The Straits Times, 15 November 2000.
8 
Carlson, Marvin A.: Performance: A Critical Introduction, Routledge; 1999. p. 80
9 
Untitled funeral band performance by Ray Langenbach (Assisted by Lim Tzay Chuen), Venue: The Substation, Singapore, Event: Future of
Imagination 3, 13 April 2006. Chia Chuyia, Future of Imagination 5, Sculpture Square, Singapore, 2008 (Photo: FOI Archive)
10 
Satu Kali, MFX Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 6 to 9 April 2006.
11 
Based on email conversations with Ray Langenbach, 18 January to 10 February 2010.
12 
McEvilley, Thomas, The Triumph of Anti-Art: Conceptual and Performance Art in the Formation of Post-Modernism, McPherson & Co., 2005
p.351-352
13 
http://www.araiart.jp/
14 
“You Are No Good-tourist #6-“by Arai Shin-ichi, Venue: The Substation, Singapore, Event: Future of Imagination 3, 12 April 2006
15 
“Welcome To Singapure” by Herma Auguste Wittstock, Venue: TheatreWorks, Singapore, Event: Future of Imagination 4, 29 September,
2007
22 
http://www.hermaauguste.de/catalogue/art/welcome-to-singapure
16 
http://www.archiviofconz.org/

Adina Baron, Future of Imagination 5, Sculpture Square, Singapore, 2008 (Photo: FOI Archive) Cai Qing, Future of Imagination 5, Sculpture Square, Singapore, 2008 (Photo: FOI Archive)

8 9
 The Art of Engagement in Everyday Life
Interview with Amanda Heng by Kaimei Olsson Wang

Amanda Heng’s artist oeuvres span over twenty years and employ various mediums:
photography, multi-media, installation and performance. She is one of the key figures
in founding some of the most important artists collectives and networks in Singapore,
such as the Artists Village and Women in the Art. Most importantly, Amanda Heng
was one of the first to introduce feminist discourse into the Singapore art scene, and
has been consistently arousing awareness of women’s rights, gender equality and
other feminist issues. As part of her art practice, Heng organizes events, forums and
exhibitions that engage both the artists’ society and people in local communities. She
believes contemporary art concerns are rooted in society and should be connected
with people from the ground. Starting from personal experience, Heng’s search for
her own identity would involve psychological, ethic, historical, linguistic and aesthetic
aspects of the society in change. Amanda Heng’s works are indeed all about the art
Future of Imagination 6

Future of Imagination 6
of engagement.

Kaimei Olsson Wang (KOW): Your art works and projects always contain distinct social
engagement and political statements. Being a feminist artist in Singapore where
traditional Chinese values hybridize with post-colonial modernity, your works addressed
many important issues, from gender equality, historical perspectives to personal and
national identities. How is it being a feminist artist in Singapore?

Amanda Heng (AH): Women’s right, gender difference and identity politics are important
issues for me. I grew up in a traditional patriarchal Chinese culture and experienced
the different treatments toward the female and male members in the family structure.
Women in my mother’s generation have lived their lives under the Confucius dogma
where a woman’s social and family statuses are not defined by her own ability, but
decided by her relation to the male members in the institutions of family and marriage.
The famous Confucius prescribed that a woman has to be obedient to her father at
home. After marriage, she is required to be obedient to her husband and eventually
to her own son. It became very clear to me when my mother lost her status as the”
first lady “ in the family. I saw how the relatives changed their attitude towards her
immediately after my father’s death. There were urgent questions for me to ask: Who
am I? What does it mean to be a woman? What role does women play in society and
who decide? What is gender difference? Who do I look to, to understand and how do
I articulate these issues? I found the space and the language for articulation in my
art practice.

I was born after the World War II and my quest for the answers on the identity politics
coincided with the nation building campaigns and the modernization processes in this
new multiracial and multicultural country. Ethnicity was downplayed and English was
made the common language for business and economy. I realized the complexity in
the identity discourse. My work articulates the complexity and changes, the impact
it has on the society, on my life and the lives of many others in this country. My
first performance works,’ S/he’, addresses such gender difference and identity crisis,
especially when my Chinese cultural background clashes with Western values. Worthy Tour Co (S) Pte Ltd
City Hall, Singapore Biennale 2006
(Photo: Amanda Heng)
It was hard working as a woman artist in the paternal and patriarchal society in Let’s Chat
Singapore when I first started practicing in the 80s. I had to work really hard to be Helutrans Art Space, Curating Lab, Singapore Art Show, 2009
(Photo: Amanda Heng)

10 11

Future of Imagination 6
‘singirl’ online project
Valentine Willie Fine Art, The Air-conditioned Recession: A Singapore Survey3, 2009
(Photo: Amanda Heng)
taken seriously. Only few women artists were recognized in the art scene in those days. Even women curators and
directors in the art institutions generally did not believe that women artists can make good works and that their views
are important. There was no feminist study in the art colleges and most women students were taking art as a hobby
rather than learning to express themselves.
It is even more difficult for a woman artist working with a feminist perspective or employing feminist strategies in her
practice. Feminism is still an issue that many people in this country don’t want to deal with. In fact many women and
particularly women artists, do not want to be associated with feminism because it is perceived to be political. Even
though there are now feminist study in the universities and art colleges but the discussions remain confined to the
campus. There are still no monographs on women artists produced from a feminist perspective. And no serious research
and materials on women art history and feminism addressing issues in local context, and to provide a theoretical context
for the feminist art practice here. It is difficult to practice with no supporting network of women and feminist artists, art
historians and critiques in Singapore.
KOW: Do you see women’s status improving and changing in society with time?
AH: A lot of changes have happened in the last twenty-two years. Women’s position in society seems to have improved,
but this is a superficial assumption. We claimed with pride that women in Singapore are given equal opportunities for
education and employment, but shouldn’t women be born with the same right as an individual like the men? The fact
that women have to be given equal right to education showed the inequality in the system. Besides, providing women
equal right to education doesn’t necessary mean the society respect the rights of the women, the pragmatic government
knew the values of the educated labor force in the women population for the development of the economy. There are
other agendas and such policies don’t touch the root of the problem. Women have to be aware themselves and initiate
changes. There are still difference in salary scales for male and female in the employment and women are the first in
lines for retrenchments during recession. During the 1997 economic crisis, businesses in beauty and slim industries
were striving because worried and anxious women still believe it is the look that helps them gain confidence and
seek employment, not their ability. My performance piece “Let’s walk” made comments on some of the issues when I
performed with a high-heeled shoe in my mouth. These beliefs are deep rooted in the patriarchal culture and there are
12
still many psychological barriers to be dealt with in day-to-day experience.
In the art scene today, it is still natural to think of the male artists first in the selections of artists for exhibitions, public
forums, awards or commission works. Women artists are always the after thought. They are the token. When Telok
Kurau Studios was ready for housing the visual artists, I was the only woman artist given a studio space. I asked how
the selection was done and was told that there were not many female artists around. I did not believe that and started
an archive for the women artists. It holds portfolios and information of 40 women artists. This was how Women In The
Arts, Singapore (WITAS) started.1 Together with some women artists from WITAS, we organized ‘Witalk’ and created a
platform in my studio for a series of public talks for local and international women artists.
KOW: Yes, many of your works not only involve people from the artworld; you have engaged people that are not often
seen in the art crowd to work together with you. The process of art making also express your desire for communication
and understanding. Like ‘Another woman’ that you executed together with your mother over two-year’s duration. Why
did you involve your mother in your art project?
AH: My mother couldn’t understand why did I have to give up my regular job to do art. How could I explain to my mother
what is art? My mother speaks only in Teochew dialect and I know little vocabulary in Teochew. I couldn’t make her
understand the importance for me to have my expression in my own language. So I thought the best way was to get
her involve in my artwork.
Future of Imagination 6
The idea came about when she asked me to take a headshot of her, a custom for the Chinese elderly who wish to be
prepared for the dawning reality of death. We made that portrait of my mother together and I took the opportunity to
continue taking other photographs with her and making objects together. I had the idea of using photographs and the
clothes we wore in my artwork. When I was in the school, my peers always admire my well-pressed uniforms. My mother
has a way of handling the clothes by using starch. The process looks primitive today but it was an innovative way to have
well-pressed uniforms. I liked to incorporate that creative process in the work. So we started the process from cooking
the starch using tapioca flour. Socked the clothes in water and the starch. Then I had to wear the wet clothes and stood
under the sun for hours for the clothes to dry. When the clothes were dried my mother had to remove the clothes from
my body and we got the clothes with my body forms. We completed the whole process together. So when I made the
photographs and put the clothes together, my mother understood the idea instantly.
KOW: The photograph of you and your mother sitting at the dinner table, doing household works and eventually holding
hands together and standing naked in front of each other. There must be many touching moments to break the boundary
of mother and daughter relationship in cultural and social contexts. How did you managed to make your mother stand
naked in front of the camera?
AH: It did not come naturally, but there was precisely a strong need to do so. There was always a distance in our
relations even though we live under the same roof. To make photographs with her without clothes is a metaphor. It’s like
talking face-to-face and opening up to each other. I wanted to do it deliberately and physically in a visual language. I
see my mother as a person, an individual woman, not just her role as a mother. By taking away our clothes, we are two
women finding our connections.
Mother and I rarely touch each other. It is not a common practice in our Chinese culture to have bodily touch. Even when
my mother gets older and needs help, she would feel uneasy when I hold her hand to go across the streets. She would
try to withdraw her hand from mine. Engaging my mother in the whole process of making the photographs and body
forms, allows her to understand my desire for closer contact and connection. So when I hugged my mother, I wanted her
to feel the connection and she understood it. I wanted to say that we are two human beings hugging each other and it
is all right to do so. It was the most moving moment.
KOW: How did this process of working with your mother in your art influence you?
AH: I learned there are meanings and wisdom in the mundane and everyday life and they formed the significant sources
of ideas in my art practice.
13
 I learn to appreciate the hidden strength in my mother. She had no education and worked all her life taking care of
others. From very young age she looked after her siblings when her parents worked in the farm. She survived the
cruelties of the Japanese War. After her marriage, she took care of my father’s parents and his siblings, as it was my
father’s duty as the first son in the extended family. She also raised nine children of her own with little support, as life
was difficult after the war. When all Chinese dialects were barred in the name of nation building, she lost her forms of
communication, entertainment and mobility. She always showed strength in her quiet way and persisted in life despite
the difficult time.
I was inspired how she makes the best of the very little things she had in life and find simple pleasure in living. Knowing
my mother becomes a necessary process of finding my own identity and values. It made me understand that the many
things I enjoyed and took for granted today, were made available for me because of the sacrifices and hard works
contributed by her and her generation. I feel the need to listen to their stories. They were never taught in schools. I
learned that memory and history have to be re-addressed critically, especially in the forming of new beliefs and values
in our contemporary living.
KOW: If ‘Another Woman’ is about your concern to yourself and the person closest to you, in your other works, like ‘Let’s
chat’, you have expanded you engagement to people you don’t know. Why are those people living in the HDB houses
so important to you?
AH: The center of my works is always about people, relationships and communications. It starts with me questioning
Future of Imagination 6
100 Singirls to participate in the National Day Parade on 9th August, when Singapore celebrates
its independence day.
Singirl has also been exhibited in installation, prints and as objects. She has first performed in the
theatre production ‘ A woman on the tree in the hill ’, directed by Ivan Heng of Wild Rice Theatre
Company in 2000. And she was also the appointed air- hostess in another art project, the travel
agency called ’Worthy Tour Co (S) Pte Ltd ‘, that leads viewers to a discovery tour to some of the
Singapore artifacts that were relocated overseas. The installation performance was presented at
the inaugural Singapore Biennale in 2006.
Notes:
Kaimei Olsson Wang was born in Inner Mongolia, China, studied in Beijing and lived in Europe for many years before she relocated herself in
Singapore three years ago. With her unique transcultural background, she has been working extensively with cultural exchange writing and translating
several books on culture, art and children’s literature. She obtained her MA on contemporary art at the Sotheby’s Institute of Art in Singapore
recently. She writes artist reviews for SYCA – Singapore Young Contemporary Artists and contributes art writings to art magazines in Singapore,
Sweden and China.
1 
WITAS was started in February 2000. http://www.witas.org/
2 
www.singirl.net
3 
The Air Conditioned Recession: A Singapore Survey, 05 Aug – 30 Aug 2009, Valentine Willie Fine Art Singapore http://www.vwfa.net/sg/
exhibitionDetail.php?eid=113

Future of Imagination 6
who I am, how do relate to my environment and to the people in this environment? ‘Let’s chat ’ is about communication.
It addresses the way of living we have lost in Singapore. When I was growing up, most people live in villages and we
always did things together, like plucking bean sprouts. Our living environment was open and spacious. And we were
used to having neighbours drop by anytime to chat and gossip. Sometime they brought food, shared their problems and
exchanged news and information. When we moved from the village to the HDB flats, my mother lost all the connections
she had in the village. It was a drastic change for her.

When I started making work with my mother, I noticed she would meet with some women folks at the void deck of my
block every morning after her round of market. They would have tea, chat and share their chores like the old days. I was
fascinated how mother re-established her social-network in the strange and new environment, how she was determined
to seek continuity and meaning in life through the simple and mundane activities. This touches me tremendously. I
learned to appreciate and respect the need to repeat the conventional, the past and memories, in order to live and to
find the pleasure of living.

‘Let’s chat’ is partly nostalgic. The image of women folks in the neighbourhood meet and chat at the void deck, reminded
me of things we used to do together in the old days. The work presented was a 7 days event at The Substation. I set
up a space with tables, chairs and lots of beans sprouts, and invited viewers to have tea together, to chat and pluck
beans sprouts. The work had also traveled overseas and staged in different spaces including shopping malls and real
wet markets. The idea was to make a space for experiencing the old everyday activities in an urban context. By bringing Fabien Montmartin, Future of Imagination 5, Sculpture Square, Singapore, 2008 (Photo: FOI Archive)
art into the real life situations, I urged for a rethink about changes we made in the name of progress and some of the
values we hold today.

KOW: So you use installation, performance, networking and events to engage art into life and also use art to address
and comment on different social issues. What project are you working on now?

AH: I have started an on-line art project called ‘Singirl’ and it was exhibited at the Valentine Willie Gallery last year.2
Singirl refers to the Singapore girls, the world famous air stewardesses of the Singapore Airlines. Singapore Airlines
was founded after Singapore’s separation from Malaysia. The Singapore girl’s image was designed by the French
image designer, Pierre Balmain. He presented an image of a gentle, smiling and mystery Singapore girl in her exotic
sarong kebaya from the tropical island in Asia. And the Singapore girl has become the well-known marketing image for
Singapore ever since. I made an intervention by putting on the signature sarong kebaya designed for the Singapore girl,
and took the persona of the Singapore girl in my work. It has since been developed into an on going project to make
enquiries on the many issues of representation, gender politics, colonization and identity. The ‘Singirl ’on-line project
calls for women of all age, races, colors and sizes to join the Singirl community with the aim of forming a contingent of
Dariusz Fodczuk, Future of Imagination 5, Sculpture Square, Singapore, 2008 (Photo: FOI Archive)

14 15
 A Nervous System
Interview with Ho Tzu Nyen by June Yap
Ho Tzu Nyen’s practice ranges across filmmaking, painting, performance and writing,
and investigates the forms, methods and languages of art; the relationship between
the still, the painted and the moving image; and the construction of history. His
films expose the apparatus of cinema by mixing varied genres from music video to
documentary, creating highly artificial sets, or by making cameras, crew and lighting a
key part of the action. In the recent Asia Pacific Triennale in Brisbane, Ho will produced
a new film, Zarathustra: A Film for Everyone and No One 2009 draws on the writings of
German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche — which explores the potential of humankind
to overcome their environment — as well as music Nietzsche inspired: ‘Thus Spoke
Zarathustra’ by Richard Strauss, famously used by Stanley Kubrick in his 1968 film
2001: A Space Odyssey.
June Yap (JY): Thinking about performance I recall a particular performance that I still
Future of Imagination 6
find pleasure in, Trisha Brown’s rather simple yet hypnotic work Accumulation (1971).
Performance may essentially be characterised by the use of the body, a particular
engaged relationship with audience or participants and ephemerality. What would be a
performance that has been particularly striking for you and what about it?
Ho Tzu Nyen (HTN): I think that the “live” performances that most fascinate me have
always been those characterised by a sense of “being, together”, in which both
performer and audience share an intensified experiencing of the passing of time, as
though drawing a single breath. I would describe these experiences as embodied,
trans-subjective and temporary, which I guess is a variation of your characterisation
of performance as involving the “use of the body”, “engaged relationship” and
“ephemerality”. For me the most memorable performances are those in which I am
simultaneously absorbed in the unfolding of the event, while feeling the thickness
and the finitude of my own body. When this happens, the relationship between the
performer and myself melts into a kind of nebulousness in which a new mind promises
to arise in the horizon, like a strange ritual, which I am tempted to say, is Dionysian
in the Nietzschean sense of the term. Finally, it is important that the performance
celebrates its temporary nature, and does not actually determine the coordinates of
the new mind that is to come, as opposed to ideological and religious indoctrination.
Something intense but empty – and I mean emptiness not in a negative and nihilistic
sense, but as potentiality.
A striking recent example is my experience of a “live” performance by the musicians,
Sunn O))), which I will describe as post-minimalist “heavy-metal.” Actually, their latest
album, Monoliths and Dimensions (2009) features a work by Richard Serra, so this
connection is quite real. I would say that their performances are extremely interesting
for me in a phenomenological way, particularly in relation to how we experience
sound. The extreme volume and low frequencies means that what they generate is no
longer music that one ‘listens’ to, but is a sound that the entire body experiences as
a giant trembling ear. By slowing down the rhythm of metal into a painful crawl, they
manage to intensify the density of the “metal” sound, while completely reconfiguring
my experience of time and duration. At the same time, the stage was shrouded in a
thick veil of fog, while the performers are wrapped in robes, hence eliminating the kind
of solitary ego-tripping that characterizes “metal” music of the 80s. In the meantime,
16
the set-up and the gestures plug both the performers and the audience into a kind of ritual, in which it is unclear what
exactly is the object of worship. I’m not sure if discussing this performance in a contemporary art context is relevant or
fair – but I had personally learnt so much from this experience, with regards to “live” presence, intensity, sound and the
relationship to human perception and the body.
JY: I think we’re meant to talk about performance and performativity specific to your work, but let’s start with some
broader issues about performance and then progress towards your own practice from there. Performance is associated
with the body, both that of the performer and those for it is performed, with all its quirks, superficialities, problems and
surprises. In Singapore, as in societies with similar desire for social control, the body and performance would appear
somewhat unruly and potentially subversive (not to say that other forms and medium are not potentially subversive as
well). Performance has had its own obstacles here with the media-fuelled controversy of the New Year’s Eve event of
1993 that we inevitably find ourselves returning to. A few issues emerge here: firstly about the body and social control;
secondly, performance in Singapore and the burden of its history; and performance discourse which FOI’s publication
is an attempt to contribute to.
HTN: James Joyce famously wrote that, “history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake,” and I would say
that the ‘controversy of 1993’ is like a bad wound that cannot heal. Its lasting damage is that it has been endlessly
and unimaginatively repeated in so performances that it has become a stale neurosis, while at the same time, it has
effectively circumscribed the imagination of commentators and writers on performance art in Singapore – everything
seems to circle it, hence suppressing the possibility of new directions and perspectives. This moment has become a
Future of Imagination 6
new master narrative.
I am not suggesting a kind of amnesia about the ‘controversy of 1993’, but it is important to place that moment
in perspective, and move on to new engagements and experimentations. At some level, I would even say that it is
impossible to forget that moment, because the same system of control from 1993 continues today to inscribe its laws
into our flesh and our nervous systems, though it does so with new techniques and disguises. Dealing with its present
manifestation is perhaps the best way that we can continue to engage with that ghost from 1993.
JY: Performance, especially in the case of performance art, is fraught with challenges - audience participation and
reaction, permissions (in the case of Singapore), interpretation and exhibition, not to mention the inadvertent or
unexpected accidents or incidences during the performance. The risk involved in performance is matched on the other
hand by its possibilities for direct social engagement. On the notion of risk, we’ll move on to your works, starting with The
King Lear Project (2008) your first large-scale theatre production that was a commission by the Singapore Arts Festival
and the Kunstenfestivaldesarts and presented at the National Flemish Theatre in Brussels and at the Drama Centre
in Singapore, and that is a clear case of performance, in this case theatrical, but in the work you have intentionally
incorporated unscripted performance into the production. Prior to The King Lear Project of course there was King Lear:
The Avoidance of Love (2007) that you developed for the Esplanade’s Sparks programme. How did these two projects
come about, how were they developed and how did they work, or did not?
HTN: One of the side-effects of the ‘controversy of 1993’ has been its framing of performance art in Singapore in a
limited, and potentially unhealthy way. Terms such as “audience participation”, “permissions”, “accidents” and “social
engagement” are the fall-out from ‘controversy of 1993’. And these terms can blind us from particularities, or from
dreaming of new experiments. To be honest, I seriously question if performance in Singapore does indeed possess
special possibilities for social engagement. It is inaccurate or simply unfair to project a martyr/messiah complex onto
performance art and artists simply because the form was once the object of persecution.
As for my own experiments in theatre making, they were borne out of my interest first and foremost in the texts of King
Lear attributed to Shakespeare. The King Lear Project (2008) an its prototype King Lear – The Avoidance of Love (2007)
were really attempts to put on stage the disembodied voices of critical essays written about King Lear. The other major
impetus I had was my own obsession with awkwardness, self-consciousness and theatricality, and some of these are
themes that the American philosopher Stanley Cavell have woven into his magnificent reading of King Lear in his essay
The Avoidance of Love: A Reading of King Lear. Finally, I was also very curious about the theatre scene in Singapore – in
terms of its key players – such as the actors and the crew, because what I have seen of Singaporean theatre was so
uninteresting, I wanted to find a way to engage with it, to find a way of perhaps understanding it from the inside, and
17
 hopefully to gain a better appreciation of its practice. Part of this process finding a way for the actors and the crew to
be as uncomfortable as I was, so that we can all start out ‘equal’, for this new adventure.
This is one of the reasons why the performance had large chunks of unscripted material - so that the actors cannot slide
into their usual modes on stage, and the resulting moments of awkwardness are for me, precious slices of realism. I
should perhaps also add that even the scripted parts were composed entirely of pastiches of various academic texts
on King Lear, and hence impossible for the actors to naturalise – they cannot slip into the usual actors formulas for
dramatising. In this way, the spoken language and the bodies of the actors are always in tension. It is like a montage
between text and flesh. To make things more interesting, we did three different performances over three days, so that
the crew and the cast cannot familiarise themselves. For me, it is only in the throes of awkwardness that a particular
sense of realism can emerge. The performances turned out to be interesting for me, though of course they offended
some people from the theatre scene who think they have some hold on how theatre should be like. Of course I recognise
that the performances were not perfect and should be open to critique, but I believe criticism first needs to perceive the
specific intentions of the work of art before it can proceed, and not blindly apply old – and tired, formulas.
JY: Performance is particularly amenable to media, not just in terms of historical documentation of the performance
itself, but in using media as part of its presentation and continuing discussion. Starting with the idea of documentation,
The Bohemian Rhapsody Project (2006) is arguably a documentation of an audition that becomes presented as a video
work. In a similar vein Zarathustra: A Film for Everyone and No One (2009) is also a ‘performative production,’ as process
of the final work is through the deliberate engagement with a student body as part of their academic curriculum. Aside
Future of Imagination 6
from the final work in video form, could you talk a bit about the larger performative framework you were attempting to
orchestrate?
HTN: A number of the projects I produce are perhaps performances that no longer go by that name, or form. The
Bohemian Rhapsody Project (2006) was really a full-blown theatrical production that disguised itself as an audition in
the former Supreme Courtroom, and orchestrated accordingly to the perspectives of 3 cameras so that it will eventually
exist as a film. The Bohemian Rhapsody Project was a kind of ritual, in which the process of the audition was meant
to double the legal proceedings that once unfolded in that space. The judgement of the Director and the effects on the
flesh of the audition participants, was a way to summon the ghosts of those put to death by our legal system in that
very place.
I would say that with each new work, I have become more interested in crafting the process of production to a point
where it becomes ritualistic in form. This is especially true of Zarathustra: A Film for Everyone and No One (2009). By
the way, thank you for the new catchphrase – ‘performative production’ which is a really succinct way of expressing
its spirit!
Basically what we tried to do was to start a new course in LASALLE College of the Arts, for students from film, acting,
musical theatre, visual arts and music to participate in. The text on which the project is based on is Nietzsche’s Thus
Spoke Zarathustra – A Book for All and None (1883-5), which is a slow and dense book – full of repetitions, passages
of unending tirades, and also punctuated by moments of beauty. It is clumsy, but it also possesses a form of grace that
only an imperfect animal is capable. As the curator Russell Storer describes, Zarathustra is a “beautiful disaster.” As
such it is a book that I feel very close to, not only in terms of its ideas, but also its form and its rhythm, which resonates
a lot with my own nervous system. The filmic adaptation is basically a wordless compression of Nietzsche’s narrative
into a dynamic physical drama of weight and lightness, slowness and speed, disease and health.
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra was also a book about pedagogy and its failures, so it seemed interesting for me to locate the
project entirely within the milieu of a school, in order that that its production process could double this aspect of the
narrative. This was also a way to engage with the art education system in Singapore, which I think has really not been
the most successful. The course was to be structured around a month of theoretical lessons, in which the main purpose
was to enable the students to understand the philosophical context of Zarathustra, and to spread Nietzschean ideas – a
process perhaps always doomed to failure. This would be followed by another month of workshops in which some of
my professional collaborators were invited to do exercises with the students. This would culminate in the film, which was
acted out by the students, and filmed with their help. Finally, students would also score the film. I would say that the
whole process of engaging with the institution – plagued by administrative and bureaucratic inefficiency was the most
18
trying part of the project, though we also met a number of staff and students whose enthusiasm gave us much relief
and hope. The school was a microcosm of the world, while I tried my best to play Zarathustra, though I think I was very
often little more than a buffoon – like the character in Zarathustra’s book known as Zarathustra’s Ape, who was a bad
double or imitation of Zarathustra, and who went around disseminating distortions of his teachings.
For me, one of the most interesting aspects of film and theatre making is that the process is always already a communal
one. However, in most Singaporean films, the filmmaking process is often subsumed to utilitarian anxieties, where
interns, volunteers and professionals alike are used only as means to create the finished product. So a project like
Zarathustra, or King Lear is meant as a way to slow down the process of production, and to open it up to discussion – so
that everyone involved understands where the project comes from, and can agree or disagree with the principles by
which it is made.
For the filmic adaptation of Zarathustra, I tried to make the actual process of filming as complicated as possible. It was
done in a single take, with hundreds of cues for the camera, the lights, the actors and the art department. Of course this
was done for an aesthetic purpose, but it was also meant in to unfold as a collective ritual – one that demanded intense
concentration from everyone on set at every moment of the shoot. The collective sense of “being, together”, at every
moment in time, as opposed to the mundane being together in space, is something of spiritual importance for me.
JY: As you have briefly touched upon, performance has also become an analytical framework for practices other than
performance art itself. In the case of your work, the performance of history and two works come to mind exploring
Future of Imagination 6
the idea of re-enactment: Utama - Every Name in History is I (2003) - about the legend of Sang Nila Utama, and 4
x 4: Episodes of Singapore Art (2005) attempting to chart a Singaporean art history from ‘pioneer’ Nanyang artist
Cheong Soo Pieng to contemporary post-conceptual art by Lim Tzay Cheun. How were these works different or relate to
performance and the investigation of performance for you?
HTN: I think that your question opens up the term ‘performance’ in a way that is useful and crucial. It brings to my mind
an interesting book by Peter Sloterdijk called Thinker on Stage: Nietzsche’s Materialism. Amongst other things, the book
foregrounds the dramaturgical dimensions of Nietzche’s modus operandi – which is precisely what made him so much
of an outsider, because he saw the field of discourse not as some eternal search for truth in the vacuum of “objectivity”,
but rather as a down and dirty battleground between active and reactive forces. Anyone who has read Nietzsche knows
the rhetorical force of his writings, as well as the profound power of his sarcasm, because for him, critique was not an
impersonal game between gentlemen. Behind every philosophical idea is a physiology, and the stakes of philosophy was
health and sickness, vitality and hatred of life. I would say that for me, the most productive dimension of thinking and
doing performances is that it encourages the perception of one’s playing field in a dramaturgical way. To attack an idea
or a set of discourse requires one to sense the underlying psychic investments, and also the kind of bad conscience that
is shielded from rational communication.
In relation to Utama and 4 x 4, I would say that both are really works in which I wanted to find a way to embody these
historical and art historical discourses, to give them flesh and blood, and then subject them to all the awkwardness,
the failings and also the grace of mortality. The very act of re-enacting these discourses as art frees them of any
expectations of truth-speaking. After all, to make art is essentially to subscribe to what Gilles Deleuze would call the
‘powers of the false’, for creation is essentially the production of the new, for which no criteria of evaluation yet exists –
hence the police test of the true and the false is irrelevant. Nevertheless, grim-faced historians, and academic labourers
often protect themselves against these works by labelling these works ‘playful’. Working with Utama, the pre-colonial
founder of Singapore, was essentially a way to intervene into the writing of national history, which is profoundly post-
Raffles and state oriented. But at the same time, one has to refute any possibility that Utama himself can become a solid
and stable point of origin for would-be essentialists and their political agendas. So the mode of operation for Utama
was dialectical and deconstructive at the same time – it needed to produce information that challenges the status quo
while destabilising itself at the same time.
I would say that my interest in ‘performative process’ for making films began with 4 x 4, which was made up of 4
short films that I made with working professionals from the media industry and disseminated on national television. At
the same time, it was an attempt to engage and disrupt patterns in art historiography that were already in formation
in Singapore – a place where these discourses are large institutionalised by organs of the state. The four films were
19
 perhaps not what you might call respectful interpretations of the four artworks that they revolved around. Instead they
appropriated the artworks from their authors, by pushing the interpretations of these works to a hallucinatory limit. And
finally, many of the formal strategies of 4 x 4 were constructed so that they can performatively intervene and subvert the
norms of reception for television programmes such as documentaries and life-style shows.
JY: More recently in EARTH [cinema] you worked with Japanese field recordist Yasuhiro Morinaga and Italian drone
guitarist Stefano Pilia in its presentation at the 66th Venice Film Festival (2009). The video itself is inspired by Darcy
Grimaldo Grigsby’s Extremities: Painting Empire in Post-Revolutionary France (2002) and is in a broad sense the
performance of painting, but then in the Venice performance this was dramatised in a different manner. Could you
speak of how EARTH came about and the development of that particular performance?
HTN: EARTH was first presented as part of a “live” show with The Observatory in Invisible Room, a commission for the
Singapore Arts Festival (2009). Subsequently, I made a soundtrack for it by sampling and distorting ‘hard rock’ songs
from my youth in a version called EARTH (((radio))), which was shown in the Singapore Art Show (2009). Following that,
I began working with Yasuhiro Morinaga and Stefano Pilia for EARTH [cinema], which is the same film accompanied
by a soundtrack made up of samplings of films from different time and places, from Hollywood to Bollywood. This is
the version that we eventually presented at the Venice Film Festival. Yasuhiro usually works with ‘recordings’ of spaces
without adding any distortions to the sound, though of course the very act of recording – the choice of microphones and
placement is always already a process of composition. Stefano is a guitarist who creates a very unique sound – almost
force-fields that have shape. Experiencing Yasuhiro and Stefano’s performance ‘live’ was a great and physical experience,
Future of Imagination 6
entirely different from the recorded soundtrack, which is always limited by the audio equipment and acoustics of the
site – so often inadequate in galleries and museums, entirely ill equipped to handle audio-visual works of art.
At a different level, I am just really curious about all the different stuff that these gifted musicians can create with the
same image track – it becomes a really educational process for me about all the ways in which the image can be
opened up by sound. As a film, EARTH, is similar to Zarathustra in that it is shot in a theatre, and is composed entirely
of long takes which average 12 minutes, with a large cast, and an immense amount of choreography and cues .
Zarathustra was much more mobile and fluid, and in many ways, is a testament to the magnificent athleticism of our
steadicam operator, Joel San Juan. For me, EARTH was an exercise in the amplification of small movements within
an atmosphere in which time has slowed down. Under these conditions, where a film is freed from the forward pull
of the narrative, perception can take on a hallucinatory intensity, and discover powers that are eroded in our age of
speed. In terms of its composition, EARTH was a ‘videographic’ remix of many 18th Century French paintings discussed
in Grigsby’s fascinating book. This process of re-assembling the paintings doubles what the paintings themselves
do to the human body, fragmenting them, penetrating them, and re-arranging them. But these eventually led me
to another of my obsessions – Caravaggio, one of the greatest re-assemblers of the human bodies, with his many
paintings of decapitation and penetration. Caravaggio’s paintings also inspired the harsh directional lighting scheme
of the film, which we employed as a way to further reconfigure bodies. In many ways, you are quite spot on in calling
it a “performance of painting”, as EARTH is indeed a fantasy of what happens when great figurative paintings, which
are so often compressions of narratives as a pregnant moment, is put back into the stream of time. The extreme
technical difficulty of shooting the film – having 50 actors in minimal movement, amidst rotting fish, with repetitions of
its seemingly endless long takes, was also a really hypnotic, and ritualistic experience.
JY: To end let’s move on to the work HERE (2009) that as a film deals with ambiguity and the attendant possibilities for
failure, awkwardness, anxieties, which we seem to have gradually been shifting towards, and which I think surfaced
not only within the film itself but I suspect also its reception. Like your earlier works there is an element of subverting
expectations for completion, clarity, and perhaps entertainment, in lieu of complication and complicity that defies the
sterility of an easy and familiar pedagogical approach.
HTN: I think a lot of the commentators on HERE simply projected their own criteria of what a filmic object should or
should not be. For example, there are the rather tiresome comments that the film was slow, and did not possess a
‘dynamic’ narrative, which is again, hard for me to answer, because slowness and sleepiness are sensations, like any
others – like pleasure, like titillation, worthy of being affirmed and expressed in art. HERE was for me, ultimately a direct
expression – in sound, image and rhythm, of my own sensations growing up and living in Singapore. It is a tone, more
than a narrative, and it was constructed to belong to no genre, to obey no cinematic laws, and to go precisely nowhere,
20
like a humid, sleepy and unending afternoon in Singapore, at once oppressive and comfortable.
Olivier Pere, the artistic director of The Directors’ Fortnight, who presented the film at Cannes
described it as a Unidentifiable Filmic Object. For me, I am inclined to call it an attempt to make a
kind of ambient film, the way Brian Eno conceives of his music for ‘airports’. But of course, many
critics of the film seem to read these qualities as weaknesses, as defects, or as lacks, based on
their own rather narrow expectations of what constitutes a film.
Perhaps HERE did not conform to many people’s expectations of what a film is, just as The King
Lear Project may not have be in sync with received ideas about theatre. But for me, films, theatre
or artworks that conform to expectations too easily are most often than not, highly uninteresting.
I should also add that subverting expectations was never the main reason for producing these
works. I just try to express myself as forcefully as possibly, and the nature of each of these projects
dictates their forms of expressions. Still, with HERE, and most of my other projects, I made some
new friends, and maybe alienated some old ones. So with every work, I realise that I’m not totally
alone, but also that alliances are never permanent. I guess this is all good and natural – things
just go their ways.
JY: So what do we learn here?
HTN: To be honest, I’m not sure. I guess we’ve tried to be as clear and honest about the intentions,
Future of Imagination 6
processes and reception of the work that I’ve done, in connection to an expanded notion of
‘performativity’. I wish I had something more productive and useful to say about performance
art specifically, but I’m afraid I don’t. This is because it no longer makes sense for me to engage
with a work of art specifically as a ‘performance’ anymore. For me, works of art are extensions
of the makers’ nervous systems. The great works of art are those that connect forcefully with
singular and unique nervous systems. Sometimes, there are nervous systems that are out of sync
with a particular milieu, at a particular time. It doesn’t mean that they are any less valid, nor do
they deserve special attention just because they are so. But as an artist, I think it is important
to preserve your own nervous system, rather than to be concerned about synchronization with
your milieu. Perhaps the syncing will never happen. Perhaps the syncing will take place in the
future…
Notes:
June Yap is an independent curator and writer based in Singapore. She studied Art History a while back, then got caught up with organising
exhibitions, here, there and elsewhere, and has been trying to get back to research ever since. Fairly recent exhibitions MATAHATI For Your Pleasure
(Galeri Petronas, Malaysia), Bound for Glory: Wong Hoy Cheong (NUS Museum, Singapore), Paradies ist Anderswo (ifa Galleries, Germany).
Gwendoline Robin, Future of Imagination 5, Sculpture Square, Singapore, 2008 (Photo: FOI Archive)
21
 A Very Expanded Notion of Culture
Interview with Woon Tien Wei by Lee Wen
Future of Imagination 6
Food #03, 2009
(Photo: Woon Tien Wei)
Woon Tien Wei and Jennifer Teo initiated and run Post-Museum, an independent
cultural and social space, which seeks to examine contemporary life, promote the
arts and connect people. 0pened in September 2007, it includes the Show Room
(exhibition space), Food #03 (contemporary vegetarian café), Back Room (multi-
purpose space), artists’ studios and offices. Food #03 is a Veg Place and an art project
started by a group of creative people interested to change the world and serves a
tasty contemporary vegetarian menu and a significant part of the profit goes to Post-
Museum.
Lee Wen (LW): It has been more than 2 years since you started Post-museum and
Food#3. I understand you see it more than that of running a gallery space and
restaurant, if i am not mistaken you see yourself as an artist and Post-museum and
Food#03 are your works of art, almost like a durational performance. How do you
reconcile that?
Woon Tien Wei (WTW): Just to clarify, Post-Museum is not my artwork. I see Post-
Museum as an entity which aims to create an independent cultural space to provide a
platform to work with different cultural producers to make art and culture relevant to
contemporary life in Singapore. So, I am just part of the Post-Museum team.
On the other hand, Food #03 is my artwork and it has the quality of a durational
performance but it is not a performance piece. The entity Food #03 is a work of art.
As you know, I don’t make art works in any particular medium. My works are usually
projects and I enjoy that process of working with different people and see what comes
out of that.
So there is not much for me to reconcile. Food #03 is an artwork and over the 2 years,
it has become much more than that. In a way, the artwork (Food #03) has taken a life
on it’s own and so it has taken different meanings and significance for all the different
people to experience the work. This is what I love about this piece.
22
LW: The artist Gordon Matta-Clark, who died in 1978 at age 35, loved to cook, and co-founded a restaurant in New York
So-Ho in 1971 but they gave in before 3 years was up probably finding it hard to balance utopian artistic ideals with real
business demands. How is your project related to Gordon Matta-Clark’s?
WTW: Food #03 is a development from Food #02, an artwork / performance created in 1999/2000 while I was
reading B.A. Hon. Visual Art in London. For Food #02, I performed by cooking meals for students and lecturers and while
the diners wait for their food, I discussed about art. Food #02 is part of a series of appropriation of artworks, which
fascinated me. In fact, I even made drawings of your yellow man journeys. It is a part of my appropriation series work.
So Clark’s Food was one of the pieces, I appropriated.
Basically, I have only seen a few photographs, brief mentions in essays and a short film about Clark’s Food project. So
there is not much information out there about Food but I am still drawn to it.
.
When we started planning for Post-Museum, I wanted to make a work for Post-Museum. So, I thought why not make
an artwork in the form of a cafe / bar/ restaurant which is a social-enterprise and can be a source of revenue for Post-
Museum (30% profits pledge).
It will be a hangout venue for like-minded individuals to mingle, platform for new & exciting ideas and a work of art.
So I revisited “Food #02” because I wanted to create a work, which can compliment Post-Museum and also deal with
Future of Imagination 6
some of the ideas, which I am interested in like: Social Entrepreneurship, food, environment, social media, independence
etc.
Now that Food #03 is realized, whenever, I chanced upon documentation of Clark’s Food, I feel a strange familiarity
and connection.
LW: There has been various artists run spaces in Singapore’s recent past, in what different or unique way or role does
Post-museum aspire to play or do you have any specific focus or directions you are steering towards? What are the main
obstacles you face and how do you cope?
WTW: Firstly, Post-Museum is not an artist run space. It is an independent cultural space where different cultural
producers present their programmes and projects. I am interested in a very expanded notion of culture and because of
that we work with people from many fields therefore it is not only art and art exhibitions.
Our activities cover many areas including Art, Design, Architecture and work by NGOs or Civil Society initiatives. Our
programmes include Local and International Exhibitions, Residency Programmes for Local and International Talents,
Talks by Local and International Talents, Workshops and Classes, Community Projects, Research and Publishing.
For me, I believe that art and culture is an important and relevant aspect of contemporary life and as Post-Museum we
really want to steer our programming, projects and initiatives towards that.
LW: Post-museum was initiated by the curatorial team formerly from p-10 (as stated in your website), has this changed
over time. How do you plan your programs? Do you have any plans for the future?
WTW: p-10 initiated Post-Museum and contributed with the planning and realization of the project. Since then, Jennifer
Teo runs and manages Post-Museum. While, I have been operating Food #03. Post-Museum comes from a very utopian
idea and that is to have an open independent space for a community of cultural producers from all fields to share this
space through presenting their programmes, share studios, etc.
So it is important for everyone who believes in that to share resources and responsibilities. Post-Museum is never about
us but a space to be shared with the community. I see myself more like a custodian of Post-Museum. So the plan is to
hand over Post-Museum to a new team who will be custodians of the place within 5 years.
LW: Besides being a vegetarian restaurant Food#03 had been the venue for various events as well. How did this come
23
 about and do you see it changing over time?
WTW: Food #03 has been a meeting point for various events. For example, it has been a venue for Green Drinks,
a monthly meet-up of Environmentalist. Also, it is a monthly meet up venue for SinQsa, Singapore Queer Straight
Alliance.
Really Really Free Market Fukuoka space and participants are informed of the following
guidelines:
1. Nothing is sold or exchanged within this space.
2. Public is encouraged to have a giving, sharing and caring heart.
3. Everyone is free to participate and participants should organise amongst themselves.

We organize mystery dinners where we bring interesting people from different fields so that they can network and meet
with other interesting people. I find that people from different fields don’t get much chance to get together in general.
I believe that it is important to have people dialogue and learn about each other and not just focus in their own area or
expertise.
Other than that, Food #03 initiated The Soup Kitchen Project where volunteers will cook and distribute food to the needy
around Little India area on our off days. That has been going on for a year now and the core team volunteers run the
project.
Through Really Really Free Market Fukuoka, we wanted to explore new alternatives to the existing
economy. It will be a celebration of the value of giving and sharing, as the participants meet others
who share those ideals and we ‘exhibit’ and show to the public there can be alternatives and “you
are not alone”. Our small utopia will remind people of community and bring some hope to the
current gloomy economic outlook.
Really Really Free Market Fukuoka was presented in FAAM and various outdoor venues through a
series of events, documentations and workshops.

In a way, Food #03 is like a P2P (Peer 2 Peer) machine. Kind of Facebook Groups materialized in the physical world. And
I think that is important. We can all show our beliefs by clicking on the cause apps, etc. But I think it is equally important
to meet face to face to make something physical.
LW: Your location is a notorious and sleazy corner of Singapore. Has there been any difficult incident or are there any
Future of Imagination 6
The Really Really Free Market is a global movement, which began as an anti-capitalist movement in
USA. Post-Museum started Really Really Free Market Singapore and has hosted it since February
2009. The experience was amazing as the project was very well received. But I am very happy
with it because the Really Really Free Market Fukuoka continues as the core team’s own project
and initiative after the Triennale.

Future of Imagination 6
interesting stories you like to share?
Notes:
1 
“Live and Let Live: Creators of Tomorrow”, The 4th Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (& various locations), Sep. 5 ~
WTW: We are at the edge of an old red light district. But that’s just one aspect of it. Rowell Road is full of characters and Nov. 23, 2009.
they come from all different walks of life. I really like that. This is the only cultural space that serves so many different
types of people. I like this potential and reaching a wider spectrum of audiences. So the ‘Rowellians’ (people around
Rowell) include the ‘syndicate’, which runs the red-light operations, HDB residents (Singaporean and PRs), the working
ladies (various nationalities), migrant worker community, tourists...We are in smack in the middle of this! When I say all
kinds of people visit our exhibitions, it is true. From what I observe, Rowellians love colourful painting and installations.

There are too many stories and short of giving a dramatic one which happens only once since our existence. I much
prefer to document every thing that happens at Post-Museum and Food #03. But for this interview, I will list some things
that happened. 1 fight, 1 petty quarrel over who broke a table, which involved the police, 1 auntie who gave me 2 garlic
wrapped with red paper for good fortune and comes with 4-D tips....

I am working on comics and songs to document these stories and characters. Or you can check it out online: http://
food03.blogspot.com/ or http://www.food03.sg where it will be published later this year.

Lastly, everyday sure got drama. I would invite everyone to visit us and join the drama. Especially if you are good actor or
dancer and most importantly, you believe in having an independent cultural space on Rowell Road and in Singapore.

LW: You were invited to participate in the Fourth Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale1 last September. What did you present
there and how was the experience there?

WTW: Jennifer Teo and myself presented a project as Post-Museum and it was a project called Really Really Free Market
Fukuoka: Heart to Heart

Basically, we worked with Post-Museum supporting team (Tabihito Fujihara, Geirei Kim, Nane Koituska, Rika Kojima,
Minna Matumoto, Akiyo Nakamura, Mami Uramoto with Geikou Festival representatives, guided by Prof. Keiyo Fujihara)
and the local community in Fukuoka.

The project was to organize the Fukuoka Really Really Free Market during Fukuoka Triennale 2009. The Really Really
Free Market Fukuoka project will see us carve out spaces / zones where a utopian marketplace based on an alternative
gift economy will be created.

Fukuoka Really Really Free Market: Heart to Heart, 2009

(Photo: Post-Museum)
24 25
 Some Notes On Collective Performance
by Jonas Stampe
In these notes on collective performance I would like to outline what I see as some of its basic compositional
characteristics. First I would like to exclude from this subject any virtual collective performance, realized
through simultaneous connections over the internet, since we are here addressing a physical presence.
This is also the case with a video presenting a number of people and towards which a performance artist
interacts. The first would in my opinion rather be categorized as net art, and the second a performance
realized by an individual artist.
A collective performance have per se to involve the physical presence of more than one person, and maybe
the most usual performance is that of two people realizing the work as a duo. But a collective performance
can of course include many more people. Which is the case for instance with Black Market International as
well as with the Estonian group Non-Grata.
Future of Imagination 6
performance realized by an individual artist. However, it usually involves an interaction, although simplified. Of course,
this doesn’t mean that it is not efficient, but it can’t go beyond the notion of what I would describe as an ”apprehended
image” in the reception of the perceiver, i.e. an image or images that the viewer can control visually. I believe that
the same goes for a performance realized by three people. i.e. that the viewer receives a number of images in an
hierarchic discursive way where you can read the work, as a series of images, a sequence, or for that matter as three
distinct actions. Actions or images, simultaneous or not, but which you can apprehend as a viewer. The interaction is by
necessity less complex in its structure than a performance created by eleven or fifteen artists or for that matter thirty. To
apprehend a collective performance, is however not only a question about the number of people participating, but also
of their function and role, of the structure of their action, and of their interaction and how the performance is set up in
space, frontal, encircled or open.
Function
The role or the function of the persons participating in a collective performance can be the conceiver and creator of
his or her own actions, or one who is instructed what to do, or a participating member of the audience who follows the
pre-conditions set by the artist. We can say that these are the three basic roles of people being a part in a collective
performance.
The first is usually made up of artists, like Black Market International or Non-Grata. Where all the participants are artists,
belong to a collective, usually knowing each other and creating their actions freely. This kind of collective performance
can of course involve different degrees of independence, i.e. from following a semi-scenographic script to one of

Future of Imagination 6
If the number of participants in a collective performance naturally is of crucial importance, so is the role
complete spontaneous independence.
of the person involved in the work. It could be as a creator of his or her own actions, or a person who is
instructed by the conceiver how to proceed in the work and what actions to realize, or as a member of
The second could be exemplified by Yves Klein’s famous work Anthropométries de l’Epoque bleue, which took place in
the audience participating in the work through instructions and/or dialogue and without whom the work
March 1960 at the Galerie Internationale d’art contemporain in Paris where he used through instruction nude female
wouldn’t exist.
participants as ”living brushes” to paint on canvas.1 A different example could be Richard Martel’s work ”Déambulation”
which he performed at our festival Infr’Action Séte in 2008, amongst other places. The people participating in these
Another significant characteristic in a collective performance is that of the action and its image, it can
particular collective performances were instructed what to do, and how to do it. There can be even in theses cases an
be a ”static” or a semi-static action, a sequence of actions, or a multitude of simultaneous actions. The
improvisational part, despite the instructions. But it is in no way based on an artistic improvisation, or with an artistic
importance here is what kind of structural image is produced: static, sequenced or simultaneous.
intention.
A fourth fundamental quality in a collective performance concerns the character of the action between
The third example of a collective performance is distinguished by the participation of one or several members of the
the people involved in a collective performance, i.e. the degree of interaction or non-interaction between
audience (here largely defined from by-passers to those paying a ticket) being a part of the work. A historic example is
the persons.
Piero Manzoni’s Consumazione dell’arte dinamica del pubblico divorare l’arte, which he realized in June 1960, where
the artist boils eggs, marks them with his fingerprint, and gives it to the audience to eat, or for that matter not to eat.2
And of course, a crucial compositional part is how the space is used, i.e. if the set up is frontal or if it is
a realized in an encircled or even in an open space, in relation to the audience. Encircled meaning that
There might be a mix of these kinds of roles of the participants in a collective performance, usually, however, they follow
the audience can walk around the work, and open signifying that they are integrated in space with those
one of these three basic functional characteristics.
realizing it.
Interaction
We can so distinguish five basic qualities in the composition of a collective performance work, i.e. the
A collective performance work do in most cases, but doesn’t have to, engage in an interaction between the participants
number of participants, their role, the structure of the action, the degree of interaction between the
in one way or another. Whether the actions are independent or separated from each other, the audience will always
participants and if the performance is realized in a frontal, encircled or open space. All these parameters
associate the actions or the images created in a collective performance. The question here is what kind of interaction
could be said to constitute the fundamental parts in the compositional structure of a collective work of
the participants, artists or not, are engaged in. An “unhierarchical” interaction or a hierarchical, free and spontaneous or
performance art.
an instructed, an inclusive or an exclusive, a separated or an integrated one. The procedure of the interaction and how
it is realized is much significant in regards to how the viewer apprehends and finally experiences it.
Beside these compositional parts in the structure of a collective performance, there are, of course, other
qualities, which has to be taken into account in the analysis of the work. Like, the used objects, materials,
Structure of Action
media, gestures, concepts, not to mention historical references, reproduction of own, or re-enactment of
I would like to divide the structure of the action in a collective performance into the following categories, ”static” or semi-
other artists, works.
static, sequenced actions, and a multitude of simultaneous actions. What concerns the first two they are also used in
individual performances. Where the ”static” action can be described as being either repeated or durational, close to that
Number
of a still image. The sequenced actions could be described as a hierarchic series of actions being realized by the artists,
In most performances involving two persons there is a dialogue, visual, verbal, emotional or other. It has
with a start and an end. Like a film or a text, with one action being followed by another, in dialogue or independently in
to be a dialogue since there are two persons, whether one is silent and the other is speaking or, one is
regard to the other person(s) in the collective.
moving and the other is not. It can be rehearsed, or semi-rehearsed, it might also be based on complete
spontaneity. But it is always a dialogue with a rather simple formal composition. Much like that of a

26 27
 The notion of a multitude of simultaneous actions, sequenced or static, implies however, a certain number of participants.
In the sense that the viewer cannot only see one, two or three actions or sequences of actions, but a multitude. A number
of static or sequenced actions or interactions that the spectator cannot fully apprehend or visually ”control” what he is
looking at.
Space
The use of space in a collective performance is of fundamental importance. Either using a frontal, an encircled or
an open space, the artists’ action may not change, but the perceivers experience is completely different. To create a
collective performance in a frontal space conditions the viewer to be more or less static. Compared to the use of a frontal
space, an encircled or an open space is more likely to incite the viewer to move, to walk around, i.e. not being static,
standing or sitting. The movement or non-movement of the viewer in experiencing a collective performance work is in
this way directly related to the use of space, and central to how it is experienced.
Notes:
1 
The first of this work was carried out on June 6 1958, in the publisher Robert Godet’s apartment at a dinner with some of his New Realist
friends like the critic Pierre Restany who also coined the term.
2 
Piero Manzoni realized this one-to-one performance on June 21 1960, where the participants had the choice to either eat or not eat the
egg with Manzoni’s thumbprint.
3 
I have seen several performances by the Black Market International and to experience the collective in a frontal space like at the festival
Asiatopia in December 2008, is in my opinion very different from that of an encircled space like at the Trouble festival in Bruxelles in 2006.
4 
I specifically here refer to the live art work Noun – Furan languge performance by La Fura dels Baus, performed in La Grande Halle de la
Villette in Paris, October 15 1990.
5 
Isidore Isou. Fondements pour la transformation intégrale du théâtre, Isidore Isou, 1952. Isou speaks here about a “polylogue à l’implique”
which in English could be translated as a “tacit pylologue”, i.e. an uninterrupted suite of autonomous and dense formulas, sufficient in
themselves. Although Isou uses this term, in reference to theater and in opposition to its traditional “dialogue of reply”, this notion can in my
opinion be used in relation to the actions and the structure of actions of the Black Market International.

The compositional structure of for instance Black Market International performances, which I have experienced in both a
frontal space and in an encircled space, functions better in the latter than in the former.3 The images or actions realized
in a frontal set up are less efficient, than when you as a viewer is able to walk around the work, or as in the work of
Non-Grata or for that matter the Spanish theater group La Fura dels Baus where the audience moves around amidst
the artists and their actions.4

It creates what I would like to call a “tacit polylogue” of actions to use a notion from the Lettrist poet and theoretician
Future of Imagination 6

Future of Imagination 6
Isidore Isou.5 Or maybe rather a spatial “tacit polylogue”, where the independent actions in an encircled or open space
give the viewer a sense of loosing himself, loosing his control of what is perceived and understood. Where in fact
the audience no longer can assimilate or apprehend what is perceived, through a logical intelligence. But where the
multitude of images and its interactions forces him or her to use an emotional intelligence to be able to apprehend the
work. Of course, without any controlled perception.

What is so remarkable when you see a collective performance where more than, let’s say 6 people interact spontaneously,
is that there is no hierarchical sequence of images, the hierarchical discourse is lost. You can’t see or read the work as
a sequence of images like in video art, where the artist can direct your vision in a hierarchical order and thus manipulate
your perception. You are free in an encircled space to walk around the work, or in an open space to stand in the middle
or inside the work.

In this kind of collective performance there is not one image, but several simultaneous actions going on, and whether
they are interacting or not, they are always associated in the mind of the viewer. Since you just have to turn your head Cheng Guang Feng, Future of Imagination 5, Sculpture Square, Singapore, 2008 (Photo: FOI Archive)
and the images/actions you just saw a second earlier are associated with the new one, and so on. Or when you move
around the work, the perspective and the angles changes so that you all the time have new interactions of images. And
the fact that it is several simultaneous actions going on, the audience is never capable of getting a whole picture of all
of their associations, but is forced to let loose. To give up any will to understand or to analyze, and just start to feel the
images. It is at this moment that the logical intelligence has to surrender to the emotional.

I believe that the uniqueness of a collective performance of this kind, in an encircled or open space, and especially that
of Black Market International, is its compositional quality of incorporating the audience. Not in the work itself, but in
an energy of emotional qualitative and physical communication. Where the person experiencing the work, through the
loss of visual control and the logic to apprehend it, is forced to feel rather than think. To move rather than stand still, to
cry or laugh, rather than analyze. In this sense it also have a quality of timelessness, where the viewer’s notion of time
disappears. Like when painting a picture, or making a performance, entering a state of a total unconscious proximity
with his or her own emotions. The audience enters the realm of creation, not as participants, not as artists, but through
human “polylogue” communication through a multitude of visible actions.

It is at this point that the duration of the work becomes the crucial compositional element. How long time is needed for
the viewer to lose visual control, to let themselves loose from logical understanding, as to start to feel the actions and
images they experience? To enter a state of unconscious emotional proximity? It is a question that I ask myself, but to
Helmut Lemke, Future of Imagination 5, Sculpture Square, Singapore, 2008 (Photo: FOI Archive)
which I don’t have an answer.

28 29
 Alastair MacLennan (UK/Ireland) Amanda Heng (Singapore)

In 1997 Alastair MacLennan represented Ireland at the Born in 1951, lives and works in Singapore. A full-time practicing
Venice Biennale with inter-media work commemorating artist and cultural worker, Amanda Heng takes an inter-disciplinary
the names of all those who died as a result of the Political approach to her art practice. Her work deals with the clashing
Troubles in Northern Ireland from 1969 to date. During of Eastern and Western values, traditions and gender roles in
the 1970s and 1980s he made long, non-stop durational the context of the multi-cultural and fast changing society of
performances in Britain and America of up to 144 hours Singapore. Her recent work focuses on collaboration with people
each, usually neither eating nor sleeping throughout. in all fields [art and non-art], particularly people from different
Subject matter dealt with political, social, and cultural cultural and ethnic backgrounds. She believes it is the best way
Future of Imagination 6 – Artist Biographies

Future of Imagination 6 – Artist Biographies

malfunction. Since 1975 he has been based in Belfast to gain a better understanding of the differences and complexities
and was a founder member of Belfast’s Art and Research of multi-faceted relationships and interactions in the world.
Exchange. Since 1975 he has taught at the University Amanda has been actively involved in making art, participating
of Ulster and for 11 years ran the Postgraduate Fine in exchange programs and exhibitions since the 1980s. She
Art programme in Belfast. He is currently a Research has produced performances, collaborative interventions and
Professor in Fine Art and travels extensively in Eastern installations throughout Asia including major, galleries, festivals
and Western Europe, America, and Canada, presenting and artist-run projects in Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia,
actuations (his term for performance/installations). He Indonesia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, New Zealand and Australia. She
has been a member of Black Market International since has also exhibited work in Germany, America, United Kingdom,
1989. MacLennan is currently an Emeritus Professor of Austria, Poland, Cuba and Spain. As an important contemporary
Fine Art at the University of Ulster, Belfast, N. Ireland, UK, artists in Singapore and South East Asia, Amanda is also hugely
an Honorary Fellow of Dartington College of Arts, Devon, influential in the setting up, curating and producing of numerous
England, UK and an Honorary Associate of the National art projects, exhibitions and events including: ‘Women And Their
Review of Live Art, Glasgow, Scotland, UK. Arts’ [1991]; ‘The Space’ [1992]; ‘Part of The Whole’ [1994];
DONE NODE
‘Memories and Senses’ [1994]; ‘Artists Project’ [1994]; ‘Women Untitled
10th Open International Performance Art Festival, 798 Art Zone, Beijing, China About Women ‘1998; ‘The Friday Event’ [2000]; and ‘Exchange 05 Live Action Göteborg 09, Gothenburg, Sweden, 2009
(2005). Amanda also taught performance art and inter-disciplinary
practices in Universities and is currently supervising students in
MA program in LaSalle College of the Art in Singapore.

WARP WRAP Lets Walk

MIF (Manchester International Festival), Marina Abramovic Presents...Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester University, Manchester, England, UK Live Action + 2009, Vara, Västra Götaland, Sweden, 2009 (Photo: Peter Lind) 31
30
 Angie Seah (Singapore)
Born in 1979, anGie seah is a multi-disciplinary
artist based in Singapore. Since 1997, she
has been making drawings, performance art,
installations and clay sculptures . Art making
is a tool for anGie to understand the social
environment and responding to deal with the
everyday life of human conditions and in the
context of her autobiographical situations.
Future of Imagination 6 – Artist Biographies
Cutting through the white noise of daily lives, the
depths of mind, the unconscious; connecting
her with the basic emotions that make her
human. She had traveled and participated
in several performance art festivals locally in
Singapore and Internationally in Poland, The
Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Romania,
Germany, Italy, Korea and Japan.
In 2000, she was awarded an education
bursary from National Arts Council, graduated
from the Royal Melbourne Institute of
Technology’s Bachelor of Arts where she
majored in Painting; she also got a culture/
language scholarship to Berlin for 3 months
from the Goethe Institut in 2005. She has also
exhibited her works in South East Asia and
did a few artist residencies in Switzerland,
Romania and Indonesia.
Black Out
Future Of Imagination 5, Sculpture Square, Singapore, 2008 (Photo: Luo Junwei)
32
Boris Nieslony (Germany)
As a multidisciplinary artist, Boris Nieslony dedicated
himself to painting, photography, installation,
performance, intervention, Copy-art and art actions.
His work can be categorised as being along the lines
of European anti-formalism which, via Fluxus, goes
back to Situationist International, Dada. If, on the one
hand he feels concerned by historicism, on the other,
he puts on ephemeral performances based on the
Future of Imagination 6 – Artist Biographies
logic of very specific conceptual physical responses.
While Nieslony is also actively producing his own
work, from 1985, he initiated ASA-EUROPEAN, which
is focuses as an international project of services in
the Art of Performance, an extensive archival bank
of information dedicated to curation, organization
Koan, Daily Life Plot
and investigation in the field of performance art and Project PALA, Indonesia, 2008 (Photo: Boedi O-Tong)
time based art. It has helped managed and organized
various series of performance art conferences and
forums in various countries.
The Samurai Melanocholia
Samurai School in Matsushiro, Nagano City, Japan, 2009 (Photo: Hitomi)
A Feather Fell Down on Indonesia MA, Version XXXVI
Undisclosed Territory, 2008 (Photo: Monica Klingler) Da Dao Festival, Hong Kong, 2007 (Photo: Jesse Clockwork) 33
 Elvira Santamaría (Mexico)
Elvira Santamaría was born in 1967, Mexico. She
has evolved through a personal search by means
of many forms of action art through performance,
public interventions, process installations. Her
work currently focuses on intervention and
process art. Since 1991 she has presented
her performances at the Nippon International
Art Performance Festival, Japan, Rencontre
Future of Imagination 6 – Artist Biographies
International d’Art Performance, Québec,
Trans-Europe 2000, Hanover, National Review
of Live Art, Glasgow, and the Blurrr Biennial of
Performance Art, Israel, among others. She has
been a member of Black Market International
performance art “super-group” comprising artists
from various countries and cultural backgrounds
since 2000. Elvira Santamaría is interested in
spontaneous creation and believes that the
need for real human communication demands
freedom and spontaneity, far away from seeking
determinate answers. For her the Action artists
are inventing new relationships among others
and at the same time they are discovering and
reinventing themselves.
Carromaquia
Infr’Action Festival, Performance Götenborg, Sweden, 2009
34
Helge Meyer (Germany)
Born 1969 and lives in Woltwiesche, Germany,
studied fine art at the HBK Braunschweig and cultural
science at the University of Hildesheim, Germany
(diploma 1999). As a researcher Meyer is interested
in questions of pain, duo work, cooperation, and
the history of images. His PHD thesis focused on
Performance Art and Pain, at the Staatliche Akademie
der Bildenden KOnste, Stuttgart.
Future of Imagination 6 – Artist Biographies
Helge is also the Co-founder of System HM2T founded
in 1998. Before this year, Marco Teubner and Helge
Meyer worked solo in the fields of performance art,
music and installation. System HM2T showed their
duo-performances at different festivals all over the
world (for example: 2001: Exit Festival, Finland 2nd
Open Art Platform, China! Aozora Art Project, Japan;
2002: PIPAF 2 Saluhan, Philippines A.K.T.3, Czech
Republic). Since 2000 Teubner and Meyer associated
with the international meetings of Black Market
International (in Germany, Switzerland, 2000, Italy,
2001, Canada, 2002).
Wann…When
LOT theatre, Braunschweig, Germany, 2008
Taschlisch
Future Of Imagination 3, The Substation, Singapore, 2006 35
 Jacques van Poppel (The Netherlands)
Jacques van Poppel started his career as a performer in music. He was
playing electric violin in different (mainly experimental) music-groups
such as “Electric Paranoid Era”, “Lazarus” and “Blue Sound”.
Since 1981 Jacques van Poppel is knowledgeable through his years of
performing at various performance events and via his encounters with
various artists of differing backgrounds. In his performances, Van Poppel
creates a radical narrative based on working with ordinary objects and
Future of Imagination 6 – Artist Biographies
related to his “street-wise”, personal life and individuality. He would
invent a situation, which breaks preconceived assumptions of art, and
welcome an intimacy with the audience. Some unexpected things he
would do include putting up a tent in a gallery space or distribute cans
of beer or offer packets of tidbits to the audience as he worked with
other objects like toys, clothes and household appliances. He would use
these objects in an original way and create a collage of imaginative
interpretation and actions, which reclaims the infinite possibility of
performance art. Jacques van Poppel comes across as a natural
performance artist. His confidence with people reflects a genuine
humanity filled with openness, compassion and radical creativity.
Untitled (Rules)
Infr’Action, Sète, France, 2007 (Photo: Eliza Drzalowska)
36
Jason Lim (Singapore)
Jason Lim’s practice transverses ceramics,
sculpture and performance art and is regarded as
a maverick in the ceramics field, Lim has radically
shifted assumptions about ceramics as a discipline,
pushing its potential as a media in installation and
performance art. Lim’s performances often play on
boundaries of risky precarious situations, teasing
the audiences with a cheeky use of the materials
Future of Imagination 6 – Artist Biographies
and spaces. He has participated in various
international performance festivals and had taken
up residency programs in Japan, The Netherlands,
Australia and U.S.A. Lim was involved in initiating
“UTOPIA”, an alternative art gallery in 1996 and
was co-Artistic Director of Future of Imagination
2, in 2004. In 2005, he organized StopOver –
Singapore/Japan performance art meeting in
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Singapore. In 2007,
Lim presented his work in the Singapore Pavilion
for the 52nd Venice Biennale in the same year he
was awarded the Juror Prize in the 4th Ceramics
Biennale in Incheon, Korea. In the following year,
his work was shortlisted for the Grand Prize in the
Taiwan Ceramics Biennale 08.
Head of Trash
Live Action + 2009, Lidköping, Västra Götaland, Sweden, 2009 (Photo: Peter Lind)
Duet
Solo, Indonesia, 2009 (Photo: Jason Lim) 37
 Jeremy Hiah (Singapore) Juliana Yasin (Singapore)

Born in 1972, Jeremy Hiah began his Born 1970 in Singapore, Juliana is a
involvement in the arts since 1993. His multi disciplinary artist who often works in
works mostly deal with social questions, collaborations with other artists or group
based on his personal experiences and initiatives performed at various performance
background. As a practicing artist Hiah festivals, locally and internationally since
widely explored different art media and 1989. She and Heru Hikayat curated
materials in painting, sculpture, installation, JAF’08 (Jatiwangi Art Festival), a community
performance and collaborations with based event in Jatiwangi organised by
Future of Imagination 6 – Artist Biographies

Future of Imagination 6 – Artist Biographies

different artists in different fields. Hiah has JATIWANGI ArtFACTORY. Local and foreign
presented his works in various countries art practitioners from various disciplines were
including Germany, Italy, Austria for UNSECO invited to stay with villagers from Jatiwangi
Artists In Residency Vienna, Hong Kong Art who played hosts. This guest-host relationship
Center, Vietnam Contemporary Art Center was the context for the bi-annual festival. She
Indonesia Australia, South Korea Thailand has been working closely with Jatiwangi Art
and China for exhibition festival and artists in Factory (JaF) and it’s community since 2008.
residency. He is also an active organizer and JaF is part of a roof-tile factory located in
member of The Artists Village and Sculpture the village of Jatisura situated in the north
Society Singapore. Former 2001 Vice coast of West Java, Indonesia. Juliana sees
President of The Artist Village and 2005 Vice herself now playing different roles; an artist,
President of Sculpture Society and doing art organizer, researcher, motivator focussing
workshop in Secondary, Junior College and on community based projects by JaF and
Polytechnic schools. He established and ran supporting its activities (workshops, events
Your MOTHER Gallery, an alternative living and discussions) to raise understanding, The Present (A Secret) (collaboration with Cassandra Shultz)
room art space since 2004. Hiah is the creativity and awareness to the people in the Exist in 08, Live Art Event, Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts, Brisbane, Australia, 2008
artistic director for Fetter-Field Performance community of Jatiwangi. She has also made (Photo: Richelle Spence)
Art Event 2006, 2007 and 2009. Jatiwangi her second home base.

Mr. One Cent (Money Suit)

Asiatopia, 10th Anniversary, Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, Thailand, 2008

Mr. One Cent Tali Timba (collaboration with Sigit Permana, Prabowo Setyadi and Jatiwangi Art Factory)
Asiatopia, Chiang Mai, Thailand, 2009 Solo Exhibition, Jatiwangi, Indonesia, 2009 (Photo: Prabowo Setyadi) 39
38
 Julie Andrée T (Canada)
Julie Andrée T.’s installations and
performance works have been shown in
Canada, U.S.A, South America, Asia and
Europe. For Julie Andrée T, practicing art
should be a reflection of daily life and the
dark ages we are presently in. Body and
space are the center of her research. She
uses the body as a space and vehicle
for metaphors and poetry. In 2005 she
Future of Imagination 6 – Artist Biographies
presented at Skol gallery (Montreal)
“Weather Report/Potentiels évoqués”
a series of installation-environment
exploring the human body in different
construct environment where weather,
architecture and sound co-existed. In
2007 she worked with the collective
PONI from Brussels as co-artistic-
director and created « Études d’un
phénomène ou l’invention d’un souvenir”
at Chambre Blanche (Quebec) where she
was artist in residence for 3 months.
This exhibition was an exploration of
the human fascination for weather and
natural disaster in the age of spectacle
and medias. Julie Andrée T. was in 2008-
2009 guest artist Faculty at the School
of museum of Fine Arts in Boston (USA)
where she was teaching performance
art.
Unexpected Thought
TRACE Gallery, Cardiff, 2002
40
Jürgen Fritz (Germany)
Born in 1958, lives and works in
Hildesheim. Jürgen Fritz has studied
theatre and the science of music. He has
worked as a theatre director, curator, and
actor, and since 1984 as a performance
artist. He has worked with Black Market
International since 1985. He has shown his
performances in all countries of Europe, the
Future of Imagination 6 – Artist Biographies
USA, Canada, Mexico, and Japan. He is co-
founder of the International Performance
Association. The work of Jürgen Fritz
is characterized by an interdisciplinary
concept, in which he connects elements
from music, photography, video, body
art, with performative installations and
productions of different kind.
His conceptual approach is characterized by
an impressive concentration and precision.
For which he uses simple materials such as
bamboo sticks, marbles creating inspiring
pictures and developing site specific
works.
Stockmann 071
Kunstverein Kassel, 2007 (Photo: Stefan Daub)
ROUGE
The Catshow, Cardiff, 2007
Mein Schweizer Messer
Kunstverein Kassel 2007, Performanceminiaturen 104 (Photo: Stefan Daub) 41
 Kai Lam (Singapore)
Kai Lam has proved an active innovator
since his artistic involvements in 1995.
Versatile and prolific skills in drawing,
painting, sculpture, mixed-media
installation and performance, Lam also
collaborate in theater productions and
co-organize art events. As President
of alternative art group, Artists Village
Future of Imagination 6 – Artist Biographies
he helped initiate “Artists Investigating
Monuments”, in 2000, presenting
installations and performances in various
public sites. This was later presented
again in Singapore Art Museum, 2004
and Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney
and House of World Culture, Berlin, 2005.
Lam shows leadership to involve others
in Singapore as well as international
arts community. Art-making to Kai Lam
is a tool for a better understanding of
the environment where he lives in and
an exploration of life and social human
conditions. His artworks are created as a
social commentary and creative response
to urban pluralistic society.
Mad Sin (Sex, Rock n Roll Without the Drugs)
Accion!Mad, Madrid, Spain, 2009
42
Fish Walk
Future Of Imagination 4, 72-13, TheatreWorks, Singapore, 2007
Lee Wen (Singapore)
Lee Wen’s performances and installations often
expose and question the ideologies and value
systems of individuals as well as social structures. His
work attempts to combine Southeast Asian contexts
with international currents in contemporary art. His
early practice was associated with The Artists Village,
an alternative art group in Singapore and later forged
a more individuated artistic career. Lee has been
Future of Imagination 6 – Artist Biographies
represented at the Busan Biennale (2004), the 3rd
Asia Pacific Triennial in Brisbane (1999), the Sexta
Bienal de La Habana, (1997), the Kwang Ju Biennial
(1995), the 4th Asian Art Show, Fukuoka (1994) Sea
Art Festival, Busan Biennale (S.Korea, 2004), National
Review of Live Art (Scotland, 2004 & 2005). In 2003
Lee initiated, with the support of the Artists Village, “The
Future of Imagination”, an international performance
art event that includes forum, documentation and
presentation of performance art in Singapore.
Since 1999 Lee has also worked with Black Market
International an innovative, groundbreaking, utopian
performance art collective comprising artists from
various countries and cultural backgrounds. In 2009
he initiated “R.I.T.E.S.” - Rooted In The Ephemeral
Speak, a platform and institutional framework to
present and support live art practices in Singapore.
Lee was awarded Singapore’s Cultural Medallion in The Rite of Spring
10th OPEN International Performance Art Festival, Beijing, China, 2009
2005. (Photo: Kai Lam)
More China Than You (我比你中国)
UP-ON First International Live Art Festival, Chengdu, Sichuan, China, 2008 (Photo: Kai Lam) 43
 Lynn Lu (Singapore) Marco Teubner (Germany)

Lynn Lu is an installation/performance artist Marco Teubner with Helge Meyer formed the
from Singapore. In her practice, the sentient group System HM2T in 1998 in Hildesheim,
body is seen as the main medium for perceiving Germany after meeting during their Cultural
and presenting (versus representing) meaning Studies at the University. The performance series
(versus message) through direct personal “perform” in 1999 was their first work together.
experience. Engaging vigorously with the present He has been associated in Black Market
reality of all that is here-and-now, the meaning International Meetings since 2000. Teubner
of her context-specific works often manifest reacts to the situation at the space to the time
Future of Imagination 6 – Artist Biographies

Future of Imagination 6 – Artist Biographies

in the resonant relationships created between of performance. He translates action in real time
herself and her audience, and between the into an image, and relates to the triad of action,
audience themselves. Trained at Carnegie Mellon image and body in order to find perfection in
University, San Francisco Art Institute, and École clarity.
Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (Paris),
she completed a doctoral program (A.B.D.) at
Musashino Art University (Tokyo) and is currently
concluding her Doctoral thesis at the University
of Newcastle in Australia. Lynn has received
numerous grants, awards and commissions from
the Singapore National Arts Council, Japanese
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Lee Foundation,
Ucross Foundation, and Carnegie Mellon
University. Since 1997, Lynn has exhibited and
performed extensively throughout Asia, Oceania,
Europe and the Americas. Lynn currently lectures
at Lasalle College of the Arts (Fine Arts) and
Nanyang Technological University (School of Art, An Idealized Moment When Everything is Simple and Secure
Schön, PhD thesis exhibition, GFAL, Musashino Art University, Tokyo, Japan, 2008
Design & Media).

A Guide To Life’s Turning Points 21 Gram For Heaven

Schön, 30 Jahre Künst in der Rathausgalerie, Rathausgalerie, Munich, Germany, 2009 Dzindzantun, Mexico, 2004 45
44
 Melati Suryodarmo (Indonesia) Myriam Laplante (Canada/Italy)

Melati Suryodarmo born 1969 in Surakarta Indonesia, Myriam Laplante is a Canadian artist living in Italy and
lives and works since 1994 in Braunschweig, Germany. started performing while she was a student at Ottawa
She is graduated in International Relations and Political University in the early seventies. She then concentrated
Sciences in Bandung, Indonesia before started her study on painting, installations and photography and started
at the Hochschule fuer Bildende Kuenste Braunschweig performing again in 1991, while continuing her “gallery”
with Anzu Furukawa (Butoh and choreography), Mara work. Her early performances were essentially self-
Mattuschka (time based) and Marina Abramovic portraits. By putting herself in the skin of circus side-
(performance art and Raum Konzept). She is graduated shows (bearded lady, dancing monkey), a crying ghost
Future of Imagination 6 – Artist Biographies

Future of Imagination 6 – Artist Biographies

in Fine Art, and finished her MFA in 2002 in Performance or a mutant mermaid, she deals with alienation and
Art. Melati Suryodarmo´s performances concern with the difficulty to communicate, the refusal to adapt to
cultural, social and political aspects, in which she society and the cynicism of the dominant sects. She re-
articulates through her psychological and physical body. stages the internal tension between desire and memory,
Her performances features elements physical presence power and submission. Her more recent installation
and visual art to talk about identity, energy, politics and and performance works are cynical replies triggered
relationships between the body and the environments by the absurdities of contemporary society and power-
surrounding it. The arrangement overtones to her dealing politics on every level. Her work in in the public
performances were simple but give the pieces an edgy collections of the Galleria Nazionale d’arte moderna
closeness to the audience. In her performances, she uses (Rome) and the Museo di Arte Contemporanea (Rome),
specific objects, which are abstracting her conceptual the Musée du Québec (Québec) and the National
thoughts but at the same time bringing the public into Museum of Photography (Ottawa).
the daily facts. Suryodarmo’s performance art works are Crying Ghost
Networking Performance Festival, Frankfurt, 1998 (Photo: Jürgen Fritz)
mostly a long durational performance art, but also a short
durational ones such the “Exergie-butter dance”.
Silent Trip
Frictioner Festival, Uppsala, Sweden, 2008 (Photo: Anna Berndtson)

UGO Mutant Mermaid

Between Sky and Sea II, Hergla Island, Norway, 2008 (Photo: Andrea Gestvang) Cluster Images, Werkeitz, 1996 (Photo: Jürgen Fritz) 47
46
 Norbert Klassen (Switzerland)
Born in 1941, lives and works in Bern. The grand seigneur
of the Swiss performance scene, Norbert Klassen, has
evolved an art of small actions with an experimental mix
taken from drama, play, spoken word, and performance
art. Klassen blends humour and serious issues in a
most poetic visual expression. The vocabularies of the
art world and its exchange systems is a recurring theme
in many of Klassen’s performances. Norbert Klassen
Future of Imagination 6 – Artist Biographies
has great respect for audiences - in their ability to be
selective, to retain visual and other information, and to
form their own conclusions. He sees his performances
(as well as his theatrical works) as being dialogues
with audiences. For Klassen, an audience is never a
mere convenience. Audiences are to be played with,
to be allowed to help shape a performance. He is not
a performer who is publicly withdrawing into some
extremely private interior or trauma. Besides teaching
acting and performance at the School for Experimental
Design in Zurich he has organized different performance
festivals, for example BONE in Bern. He is one of the
founders of the performance collective “Black Market
International”.
Untitled
Infr’Action, Sète, France, 2007 (Photo: Jürgen Fritz)
48
Roi Vaara (Finland)
Roi Vaara is one of the most internationally
recognized performance artist from
Scandinavia. He was born in Moss, Norway
1953 form Finnish parents. He studied in
the University of Art and Design, in Helsinki
1972-75 and in Jyväskylä University1976-
77. Since 1988, Vaara has performed in
artists’ collective Black Market International.
Future of Imagination 6 – Artist Biographies
He was awarded International Studio
Program to Küntlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin,
Germany 1997-98. He has presented
about 300 different performances, that has
taken place in more than 200 international
exhibititons/festivals in 36 countries. In
2001 Vaara organized EXIT Festival with
300 artists. Vaara received the State Prize
for Art from the Art Council of Finland in
2000 and Ars Fennica Prize from Henna Snow Business
and Pertti Niemistö Foundation in 2005. He Kuopio, Finland, 2008 (Photo: Naranja)
lives and works in Helsinki, Finland.
Untitled
IPAH Festival, 2007 (Photo: Jürgen Fritz)
Under the Surface, Food for Thought
Sukkerfabrik, Møn, Denmark, 2008 49
 Sabrina Koh (Singapore) Vichukorn Tangpaiboon (Thailand)

Sabrina Koh (born 1978, Singapore) graduated By observing situations and evidences of his social and political
with a MA in Contemporary Practice (2009) surroundings and environment, Vichukorn Tangpaiboon
from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts and constructs a kind of poetical actions in his performances.
is a recipient for Lee Foundation and Kuam Im Through the immediate space of emotions and logic he
Thong Hood Cho Temple (NAFA) scholarship. creates in his performance, the public can enter his world
She has performed in several art festivals in without touching it. His presence is an entity between both
Germany, Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore. physical and conceptual body. Vichukorn Tangpaiboon is a
Koh has become recognized for her works visual artist who has been focusing his works on performance
Future of Imagination 6 – Artist Biographies

Future of Imagination 6 – Artist Biographies

which explores the meditative questioning of art since the last ten years. He has been involved in various
paradox, especially the inherent contradictions social-political art actions and activities in Thailand. He
in society. A multi-disciplinarian concern has presented his works in various International events in
with concepts, Koh’s projects often centers Thailand and other countries
around the human body as an ergonomic tool
to existing sites/spaces as her main mode of
expression. Koh continues to develop a ‘merged
identity as both artist and interior designer, and
uses this as a basis of her work’, taking an
ambiguous artistic stance in order to create a
web of complex associations and questions for
the viewer. Through writing, performance and
installation, she aspires to discover a realm
beyond the conventional notion of answers.

The Questioning Room #03 (collaboration with Marienne Yang)

Asiatopia, 10th Anniversary, Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, Thailand, 2008

The Questioning Room #02 (collaboration with Marienne Yang) Across The line
Future Of Imagination 5, Sculpture Square, Singapore, 2008 Indonesia, 2009 51
50
 Zai Kuning (Singapore) Festival Programme

As an artist, Zai Kuning deliberately complicates convenient

categorization, employing a wide range of practices from Day 1, Wednesday, 7 April 2010 Day 4, Saturday,10 April 2010
video to poetry to theatre, dance, performance art, music Sculpture Square Singapore Art Museum, Auditorium
and installation art. In 1996 he formed Metabolic Theatre 7pm till late 2pm to 5pm
Laboratory (MTL) during his residency with The Substation,
Home for the Arts. MTL is a dance theatre group led by Live performances Forum discussion: Collective
Zai as director, performer and trainer. Its main objective performances
is to search for physical language and movement deeply 1) Jürgen Fritz (Germany) & Boris Nieslony

Future of Imagination 6 – Festival Programme

(Germany) Speakers: Jonas Stampe and open discussion
Future of Imagination 6 – Artist Biographies

rooted in the South East Asian rituals. Most memorable

productions of MTL are Prodigal songs, Remnant 2000, 2) Kai lam with participating artists of FOI6
Bluemonkish and No Alibi which toured Hong Kong and 3) Melati Suryodarmo (Indonesia)
Korea in 2000. MTL was disbanded 2001. He completed 4) Roi Vaara (Finland) Singapore art museum Courtyard
his short film “RIAU”, based on research on the lives of the 5) Lynn Lu 5pm to 6pm
orang laut (sea gypsies) in the Riau Archipelago and was 6) Norbert Klassen (Switzerland)
widely screened in many international film festivals like Live Performance
Rotterdam Film Festival and Busan Film Festival. In 2003
Zai initiated onistudio: a small flexible space (opposite 1) Tang dawu
substation which is supported by a Chinese karaoke bar) Day 2, Thursday, 8 April 2010
for performances, talk, exhibition and dialogue. Onistudio Sculpture Square Sculpture Square
motto is to ‘think small’. Onistudio lasted about 8 months. 7 pm till late 7.30pm till late
Recently Zai revived onistudio as event organizer. At the
moment onistudio focus mainly on sound art and musical Live Performances Live Performances
experimentation and punk culture.
1) Alastair MacLennan (UK/Ireland) 1) Jeremy Hiah
(Durational performance 7pm till late) 2) Vichukorn Tangpaiboon (Thailand)
2) Sabrina Koh 3) Myriam Laplante (Canada/Italy)
3) Jason lim 4) Jacques van Poppel (The Netherlands)
4) Julie Andrée T. (Canada) 5) Angie seah
5) zai kuning

Day 5, Sunday, 11 April 2010

Sculpture Square
2pm to 8pm
Day 3, Friday, 9 April 2010
Sculpture Square
FOI6 Presents:
7pm till late
Black Market International with guest
artists:
Live Performances
1) Melati Suryodarmo (Indonesia)
1) Juliana Yasin & Jatiwangi Art Factory (JAF)
(4 to 6pm Outdoors at East Coast Park, Green field next 2) Amanda Heng
to Carpark E2 / Food Village, Chartered Bus for max 50 3) Jason Lim
passengers Leave from Sculpture Square to ECP at 3pm) 4) Kai Lam
2) Boris Nieslony (Germany)
3) Lee Wen
4) Elvira Santamaría (Mexico) Closing party
5) System HM2T - Helge Meyer (Germany) &
Marco Teubner (Germany)
6) Amanda Heng

Untitled
Future of Imagination 5, Sculpture Square, 2008 53
52
 Artists links Supporters links

Alastair MacLennan FUTURE OF IMAGINATION

http://www.vads.ac.uk/collections/maclennan/ http://www.foi.sg/

Angie Seah National Arts Council

http://www.angiesimplicity.com http://www.nac.gov.sg

Boris Nieslony ARTSFUND

http://gallery.asa.de/borisnieslony/index.htm http://www.toteboard.gov.sg
http://www.asa.de
http://www.epi-zentrum.org
Sculpture Square Limited
Elvira Santamaría http://www.sculpturesq.com.sg
http://www.elvirasantamariaperformanceart.blogspot.com
Singapore Art Museum
Helge Meyer http://www.singaporeartmuseum.sg
Future of Imagination 6 – Links

Future of Imagination 6 – Links

http://www.performance-art-research.de
The Substation
Jacques van Poppel http://www.substation.org
http://fixcatalyst.wordpress.com/fix07-artists/jacques-van-poppel/
The Artists Village
Jason Lim
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/yourgallery/artist_profile//79424.html http://www.tav.org.sg

Jeremy Hiah Your Mother Gallery

http://www.tav.org.sg http://www.geocities.com/yourmothergallery/
http://www.geocities.com/yourmothergallery/
Singapore Contemporary Young Artists
Juliana Yasin http://www.contemporaryart.sg/
http://www.julianayasin.com/

Julie Andrée T The Canada Council for the Arts

http://www.tracegallery.org/artists/julie_andree_trembley/index.htm http://www.canadacouncil.ca/

Jürgen Fritz The Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia

http://www.fritz-performance.de
http://www.prohelvetia.pl/
Kai Lam
http://spunknoize.wordpress.com FRAME Finnish Fund for Art Exchange
http://www.geocities.com/op_out74 http://www.frame-fund.fi/
Lynn Lu
http://www.lynnlu.info/ Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec
http://www.calq.gouv.qc.ca/index_en.htm
Melati Suryodarmo
http://www.melatisuryodarmo.com/ INFR’ACTION
http://www.infraction.info/
Myriam Laplante
www.myriamlaplante.net
Jatiwangi Art Factory
Norbert Klassen http://jafresidencyprogram.blogspot.com/
http://www.kasselerkunstvereinsheim.de/english/august_en/klassen_en.html

Roi Vaara
http://www.arsfennica.fi/2005/vaara-en.html

Zai Kuning
http://www.onisstudio.blogspot.com

54 55
Future of Imagination 6
Future of Imagination 6
Alastair MacLennan (UK/Ireland)
Amanda Heng (Singapore)
Angie Seah (Singapore)
Boris Nieslony (Germany)
Elvira Santamaría (Mexico)
Helge Meyer (Germany)
Jacques van Poppel (The Netherlands)
Jason Lim (Singapore)
Jeremy Hiah (Singapore)
Juliana Yasin (Singapore)
Julie Andrée T. (Canada)
Jürgen Fritz (Germany)
Kai Lam (Singapore)
Lee Wen (Singapore)
Lynn Lu (Singapore)
Marco Teubner (Germany)
Melati Suryodarmo (Indonesia)
Myriam Laplante (Canada/Italy)
Norbert Klassen (Switzerland)
Roi Vaara (Finland)
Sabrina Koh (Singapore)
Vichukorn Tangpaiboon (Thailand)
Zai Kuning (Singapore)