Going beyond practice and performance is fundamental to the creative process. Through creative pedagogy, students are encouraged to engage with issues, unravel complex arguments and delve into historical and cultural contexts. Faculty feature heavily as collaborators and CFA’s creative groups also seek inspiration and build partnerships with the community and other arts organisations beyond the campus.
Artistic exploration
It is the spirit of exploration and a focus on the journey rather than fixed conclusions that define our various programmes and exhibitions.
As an arts centre within a university context, fostering the skills with which students and collaborators forge their own creative path is paramount. The development of ideas and the process through which they are interpreted, shared and translated into finished works is as important as the outcomes themselves.
Past Highlight
TL;DR (2019)
Exploring creative possibilities using movement creation and live electronic music, NUS Dance Synergy collaborated with NUS Electronic Music Lab in this production which explored our relationship with the media. From newspapers to the latest apps, how often do we pause for a moment and read between the lines?
Drawing inspiration from disparate sources strengthens participants’ ability to unpack and entertain alternative points of view and embrace ambiguity, while layering new meaning into each project. The conceptual flexibility that develops aids problem-solving and communication; skills that can be applied in any context.
Platforms such as the ExxonMobil Campus Concerts series support experimental and conceptually challenging performance works, allowing them space to develop and be presented in various contexts.
Past Highlight
The Muted Colours of Rochor (2016)
Following the announcement that the ageing Rochor HDB flats would be torn down to make way for new development, members of NUS Chinese Dance personally explored the local community. In addition to drawing inspiration from the worn facades of the buildings, the students interviewed residents and documented their stories. Their experiences of the space and connection with the community formed the basis of this elaborate dance performance.
At NUS Museum, the prep-room is a fluid, dialogic space which showcases how artists, curators and researchers collate and digest their ideas and resources. The resulting content may inform upcoming exhibitions or add to ongoing research. Audiences are encouraged to observe the exhibition-making process, engage with the subject matter and become involved in the development of a project.
Past Highlight
CONCRETE ISLAND (2016)
This project proposed to think of the city as less of a built environment, than a condition of movement, exchange and intensities. The project was dispersed into several formats at once beyond just the exhibition space: as a publication reader, an experimental reading programme, a bus tour, and a mobile cinema programme. Each iteration activated the growth of the project through an ongoing accumulation of materials, soliciting responses from audiences, and informing the participants’ conceptualisation of the presentation.
Past Highlight
Buaya: The Making of a Non-Myth Zine (2017)
In conjunction with the 2017 Summer Internship Programme, two curatorial interns were tasked with putting together a zine for the prep-room exhibition that attempted to uncover the animal’s eclipsed history in the region. Guided by Curator Siddharta Perez, the interns were given the freedom to craft the zine based on their interpretations of the prep-room project, exploring the various possibilities, questions and anxieties involved.
Critical thinking
Our schedule of major programmes is conceived to connect contemporary and relevant conceptual challenges to the wide variety of creative styles and genres present within the NUS community. Our academic partners have the opportunity to consider their research in new ways and through different eyes while student participants are given the opportunity to engage with concepts that are outside their chosen majors.
Past Highlight
CON$UMED (2014)
In this devised play from director Edith Podesta, each member of the cast researched the nature of Asian sweatshops and their contrast with modern consumer culture. Their findings informed each student’s character within the production, making the finished work a collage of researched perspectives.