March 2023 Programmes At The Singapore Biennale



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Families can look forward to an array of programmes, such as artwork activations, performances, food rituals, talks and workshops.

Singapore Biennale 2022 (SB2022)

In its last two weeks, the Singapore Biennale 2022 (SB2022) is inviting families and the community at large a final opportunity to catch it across 13 locations, including SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark; No. 22 Orchard Road, as part of the Temasek shophouse extension; Tampines Regional Library; and the Southern Islands.

Here's taking a closer look at what you and your family can look forward to at the SB2022 this March:

March 2023 Programmes At SB2022

The Pachamanca food ritual by Åsa Sonjasdotter and Daniela Zambrano

Venue: Various locations
Date: 10 to 12 Mar 2023
Time: Various timings

In the context of the biennale, potatoes are elements of maternal shelter, vessels of migratory stories and global movement. The action of Papitas Tarpuycha –Earthing Potatoes starts with the re-learning and recognition of practices based by the place of origin, the mother Earth. The action brings voices together for the generation of new forms of connection and transformation. The action of Papitas Tarpuycha – Earthing Potatoes is composed of interventions in public space, from a sculptural installation to actions that will be open to public participation in the region of Huánuco, Peru, the region of Scania, Sweden, at the Pasir Panjang Wholesale Centre in Singapore, a sweet potato garden in Singapore, and with contributions from Java, Indonesia.

  • Gathering vegetables for the Pachamanca (with wholesale second generation agent Mr Kenny Chua from Good 1 Farmers’ Market)

Venue: Pasir Panjang Wholesale Centre, 1 Wholesale Centre, Singapore 110001
Date: 10 Mar 2023
Time: 8 to 9pm
Fee: Register here

  • Gathering sweet potato leaves to the Pachamanca (with edible garden designer Ee Peng, researcher and curator Gatari Surya Kusuma, artists Daniela Edith Zambrano Almidon and Åsa Sonjasdotter)

Venue: Wah Son Engineering Pte Ltd, 1 Seletar Aerospace Heights, Singapore 797547
Date: 11 Mar 2023
Time: 10.30am to 12pm 
Fee: Register here

  • Pachamanca Food Action

Venue: Lazarus Island
Date: 12 Mar 2023
Time: 11.30am to 1pm
Fee: Register here

Building Nina bell F. House Museum: Why and how to build this home?

Venue: Online
Date:
10 Mar 2023
Time: 5pm to 7pm
Fee: Register here

SB2022 invites families to a presentation of Nina bell F. House Museum, where artist Annette Krauss and researcher Nuraini Juliastuti will lay the conceptual ground for the questions, learnings and doings that are guiding the Nina bell F. House Museum. This session will be moderated by Co-Artistic Director, Binna Choi.

Nina bell F. as a collective figure first appeared at the Site for Unlearning: Art Organization (2013). A long-term collaboration between artist Annette Krauss and the Casco team, the collaboration centres on institutional habits that are practised in the commons. The project explored the relationship between an art institution's vision with its cultural production and day-to-day workings that inform administrative and managerial ethos. Out of a discussion about collective authorship and shared admiration for the artistic, Black, feminist, and political engagements of Nina Simone, bell hooks, and Silvia Federici, Nina bell F. (pronouns she/they) manifested. This spirit lives on and the unlearning research became a core reference point for Casco's Unlearning Centre. In this presentation, Krauss will elaborate on the theoretical and artistic underpinnings of unlearning, drawing from her research around Sites for Unlearning on the material, artistic and political dimensions of unlearning processes.

Nuraini Juliastuti will help understand the archiving practice of creative institutions as a living heritage, drawing from her ongoing research project on Commons Museums (ICI Berlin Press, 2023). She will discuss the significance of a growing platform to gather archives of independent cultural institutions from multiple contexts and elaborate on the infrastructural aspect of archiving.

A tasty gathering with Nina bell and friends

Venue: Level 3, Singapore Art Museum at Tanjong Pagar Distripark
Date: 15 Mar 2023
Time: 7pm to 10pm
Fee: Register here

Donghwan Kam, Sophia Park and Ying Que will be joined by Asia Art Archive and KUNCI Study Forum and Collective to host a tasteful gathering with Nina bell and friends. Families are invited to a gathering where they will be served dumplings with soy sauce, in particular the one that has been fermented during Singapore Biennale 2022 named Natasha at various locations by Kam and many other human and non-human collaborators. Kam’s fermentation process has been an important metaphor for understanding the workings of the archive presented in the Nina bell F. House Museum. Taking cues from intuitive ways of cooking without a fixed recipe and the joys of mixing “ingredients”, fermentation can take place with a lens of understanding diverse archival practices. A Taste of Nina bell F. House Museum will prepare the workshop participants for the Nina spirit.

Nina Copy Shop, Archival Contamination and Companionship

Venue: Level 5, Singapore Art Museum at Tanjong Pagar Distripark
Date: 16 Mar 2023
Time: 11am to 6pm
Fee: Register here

Nina bell F. and friends invite you to exchange knowledge and experiences about community archiving practices. They will facilitate a conversation to explore questions posed for the Nina bell F. House Museum. Archiving practices contain a diversity of values and principles dependent on questioning what matters or what is worth collecting. Various forms of documentation narrate the discrepancy between state-based archiving institutions and independent archival initiatives. In the Nina bell F. House Museum archival practices consider ways of being and knowing in common, whereby fragility, fragmentation and fermentation are embraced. Here, archives as incomplete as they are, can serve as the glue and structure for relationality. An important question arises, what kind of spaces, practices, perspectives and resources do independent art and cultural organizations need to be sustainable?

Families are invited to bring materials from their personal or community archives to feed imaginations about independent forms of archiving practice as well as institutional building. The harvest of these discussions will become the base of an informal, hand-made publication-companion, to be put together, copied and bound on the spot to be distributed further beyond the room.

Here and There

Venue: Sentosa Cove Village
Date: 17 Mar 2023
Time: 2pm to 7pm
Fee: Register here 

Taking place at Sentosa Cove Village alongside the site-responsive installation KÄȘPUKA [for “Natasha”], this three-part public programme, here and there, is conceived of by a group of friends and frequent collaborators. The programme begins with a weaving workshop, Māka Puke, Bookmark, and is led by members of KEANAHALA, an OÊ»ahu-based community-oriented weaving initiative of PuÊ»uhonua Society, a Honolulu not-for-profit arts and cultures organization. Families will work closely with one another in order to weave their own lauhala (pandanus leaf) bookmarks.

Following this hands-on activity, writer Wong Binghao will moderate a panel discussion, Of Islands and Intersections, between artist Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick, curator Fang-Tze Hsu, and educator George Radics. The discussion will depart from the personal and professional experiences of the speakers and will dive into some of the overlapping and diverging archipelagic realities of Okinawa, the Philippines, GuĂ„han, HawaiÊ»i, and Singapore. To close out the evening, poet Richard Hamasaki will offer a reading, Afterlives, The Radical Possibilities of Friendship, that interweaves a selection of his poems with those of Wayne Kaumualii Westlake (1947–1984) a fellow poet and beloved friend. Come as you are, leave when you want to—here and there is casual, eclectic, free and open to all.

  • Māka Puke, Bookmark, 2pm to 4pm
  • Of Islands, An Intersectional Discussion, 4pm to 6pm
  • Afterlives, The Radical Possibilities of Friendship, 6pm to 7pm

subTEXT x SAM: Anything but Natasha

Venue: Level 3, Singapore Art Museum at Tanjong Pagar Distripark
Date: 17 Mar 2023
Time: 8pm to 9pm
Fee: Register here 

Following January’s subTEXT inspired by SB2022 and its naming of Natasha, this edition of subTEXT in March marks the closing of SB2022 at SAM. In the face of fresh rhythms and reflections on inclusivity, we welcome three poets from the anthology New Singapore Poetries (Gaudy Boy, 2022) and one of the editors involved with Brown is Redacted: Reflecting on Race in Singapore (Ethos Books, 2022).

Patterns of Perception: An Atypical Performative Intervention of Sensorial Accessibility

Venue: Level 1, Level 5, Singapore Art Museum at Tanjong Pagar Distripark
Date: 11 Mar 2023
Time: 2.30pm to 3.15pm (Register here); 4.30pm to 5.15pm (Register here)

In this 45-minute guided journey, experience the Singapore Biennale artworks through your senses—hearing, touch, taste, smell and sight—or in their absence. This multi-sensorial experience, which features sign language, audio description and ASMR, is underpinned by the “aesthetics of access,” an approach to artistic production in which accessibility considerations actively shape the final creation. Patterns of Perception is co-curated by Singapore Art Museum and Access Path founder and theatre-maker Grace Lee-Khoo, performer and musician Wheelsmith and ASMR artist Melinda Lauw (Whisperlodge).

This programme is recommended for ages 16 years and up. This is not a seated performance; the group will be moving about the galleries and other areas of Tanjong Pagar Distripark.

Malaeb Playtime!

Photo Credit: Superhero Me

Venue: Rainbow Centre 501 Margaret Drive
Date: 14 to 16 Mar 2023
Time: 9am to 12pm

What happens when you combine games, learning, and the cultures of Jordan and Singapore? Malaeb Playtime! In this three-day workshop, participants will learn all about fun-filled children’s games from Jordan and Singapore, as well as how to design, prototype, and build games of their own. This workshop is organised by Malaeb, a playlab from Jordan, and Superhero Me, a ground-up arts initiative from Singapore. The project is supported by Singapore Biennale 2022.

For more information, please contact enquiries@singaporebiennale.org.

There is a whale inside my synthesizer by Aya Metwalli

Venue: Container Bay, Rear Entrance of Singapore Art Museum at Tanjong Pagar Distripark
Date: 17 & 18 Mar 2023
Time: 8pm to 8.45pm

In this performance, Aya Metwalli will be singing along with the LYRA-8; the unique organismic analogue synthesizer designed by Vlad Kreimer. “Organismic” means that LYRA uses some principles that lie in the base of living organisms. The way how LYRA’s modules interact between each other, and the behaviour of the instrument resembles a live conversation. It’s wrapped up in an intriguing and possibly believable story about its origins in the Soviet whale communication experiments of the 1960’s. In an attempt to find a common language, Metwalli will tune the machine to an Arabic maqam, unleash the sounds of the beast and react to it with her own raw voice. It is an improvisation where the artist performs an ego death live, exhibiting full surrender to the drawn-out drones, distorted whale calls, metallic harshness and dissonances of her synthesizer.

Where is the Art? Paschal Daantos Berry and Lim Chye Hong

Venue: Level 3, Singapore Art Museum at Tanjong Pagar Distripark
Date: 18 Mar 2023
Time: 3pm
Fee: Registration link will be available here 

Learn the intricate details of process driven art and gain insight into how artistic, public and educational programmes have been conceived for biennales and festivals. Join Paschal Daantos Berry and Lim Chye Hong as they share experiences about programming for the needs of artists, participants, partners, and communities through interdisciplinary, crosscultural, collaborative and socially engaged processes.

The Sensing Salon: Reading with Echo

Venue: Level 5, Singapore Art Museum at Tanjong Pagar Distripark
Date: 18 to 19 Mar 2023
Time: 2pm to 4pm
Fee: Registration here

At Natasha, Valentina Desideri and Denise Ferreira da Silva will host a two-day Sensing Salon programme where they will introduce a first version of a new reading tool they are in the process of creating: the Echo Tarot deck. The deck takes the poems of African American-Japanese poet Ai Ogawa as a starting point to produce a new vision for the tarot, one that speculates on nonviolent as well as generous and generative ways of living on this planet.

On the first day, they will discuss their approach to reading and introduce the basic structure of the Tarot and the traditional interpretations of each card. On the second day, they will introduce the Echo Tarot Deck, its process and development, and will use a preliminary deck to perform a collective reading with the participants. Participation to both days of the Sensing Salon is preferred, especially if families are unfamiliar with Tarot. 

Activation of Haegue Yang’s The Hybrid Intermediates – Flourishing Electrophorus Duo (The Sonic Intermediate – Hairy Carbonous Dweller and The Randing Intermediate – Furless Uncolored Dweller)*

Photo Credits: Singapore Art Museum (unless otherwise stated)

Venue: Level 1, Gallery 1, Singapore Art Museum at Tanjong Pagar Distripark
Date: 11, 12, 18 & 19 Mar 2023
Time: 2pm & 4pm each day; no registration required

The sculptural dyad The Hybrid Intermediates – Flourishing Electrophorus Duo (2022) by artist Haegue Yang was conceived specially for the Singapore Biennale 2022. Poised on casters, each life-sized work features sculpted electrical outlets housed in “bodies,” which are topped with colourful gardens of plastic vegetables. These complex and self-insisting sculptures address the actual and metaphorical possibility of movement. Watch this dynamic pair come to life in this live activation.

Slideshow Party: a feminist sharing of art and other provocations

Photo Credit: Erika Tan

Venue: Level 3 Main Deck, Singapore Art Museum at Tanjong Pagar Distripark
Date: 19 Mar 2023
Time: 3pm to 6pm
Fee: Register here

“Natasha, you are not alone... Now meet the rest of us.”

Join curator Adele Tan, artist Erika Tan and invited guests for an afternoon of making present, visible and audible the experiences, networks and art practices of women practitioners in and from Singapore. Meet, share, make friends, swap notes, construct and deconstruct histories and futures in relation to feminist principles of reflexivity, participation, social action and self-determination; and openly discuss intersectionality, representation, tokenism, feminist frameworks and institutional responsibilities.

Though there is no shortage of women working in the arts in Singapore today, we still have cause to ask why there are no “great women artists” in this country to be reckoned with for major international platforms, global institutions and even our national collection. Their lack of representation reveals a need for more active, autonomous and accessible forms of documentation, and a more consistent pursuit of collective bodies of knowledge.

This Slideshow Party in Singapore is inspired by an “informal slide evening” organised as an “Open Space” Event for the Hayward Annual 78 in London. The groundbreaking 1978 event was curated by an all-women artist committee, including the Singapore sculptor and printmaker Kim Lim. Women artists were invited to share three slides on their artworks and the public was also invited.

Slideshow Party continues its legacy as a form of collective history making. Your participation and contributions are crucial to its success. Prior and during the event, you are invited to contribute content to an Online Platform, which will be displayed during the event and act as a repository of shared material, becoming a resource for future artists and researchers. Instructions for how to add material can be found on the platform. We are particularly interested in documentation of exhibitions, works and practitioners that prioritise Singapore women’s art histories.

Documentation of the event will be deposited with the Singapore Art Museum, the National Gallery Singapore and the artist Erika Tan as a historic record of the gathering.

SB2022 Tours

  • Kopi, Teh and Contemporary Art: Singapore Biennale 2022

Venue: Level 1, Level 5, and The Engine Room, Singapore Art Museum at Tanjong Pagar Distripark
Date: 16 Mar 2023
Time: 3.30pm to 5pm
Fee: Register here

Join the senior volunteers from RSVP Singapore as they take you on a journey of the 7th edition of Singapore Biennale 2022 named Natasha. Learn how the act of naming serves as a prompt for artists, collaborators, and audiences. As “fellow travellers” in the journey of Natasha, they have re-discovered ways of seeing and relating to the world through artistic imagination and research. Enjoy refreshments at the end of the tour with conversations and fun games!



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This article is prepared by

Leona Quek
Blessed with 3 handsome and loving boys in her life. Two of them call her Mommy, the other calls her Wifey. Every night, she wishes for an early bedtime, but misses her babies as soon as they sleep.

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