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What connections and insights can we gain from studying our relationships to the seas and islands?
Our new masterclass series currents is looking to support 10 participants with emerging art practices from diverse disciplinary backgrounds, and help them develop meaningful relationships with the contexts in which they work.
Held over two weeks in July (23 July to 15 August), participants will explore our connections to the seas and islands through recent expressions of art, heritage, and the environment under the mentorship of NUS Museum’s Creative Fellow Charles Lim and the NUS Museum team. Participants will engage in four masterclasses facilitated by university collaborators and academics A/P Hamzah Muzaini and Wong Zi Hao, and multidisciplinary artists ila and Marvin Tang. These masterclasses will also be accompanied by a boat excursion along the western coastline of Singapore with guest practitioners in visual cultures and cultural geographers.
Alongside these sessions, participants will get to develop a proposed work – image, video, object, sound or text-based installations that coincide with their interest or academic background – and present their works-in-progress and research as a prep-room display in the NUS Museum. Their work should intersect with the masterclass’ subject: the sea as an infrastructure of governance, representations of seascapes, and identities of island cultures.
Application closes on 4 Jul.
Find out more or apply now at https://bit.ly/nusm_currents
1. swell:
seas, peoples and islands
Tuesday, 23 July 2024
2pm – 5pm
Hamzah Muzaini (PhD) , Associate Professor, Department of Southeast Asian Studies
Charles Lim, Artist
Siddharta Perez, Senior Curator, NUS Museum
Ye Thu, Programmer, NUS Museum
This introductory session delves into how state narratives may be complicated through oral histories and cultural memory. Taking from general topic of island reconstruction, the lecture from A/P Hamzah Muzaini expounds on communal, contemporary histories overshadowed by events of extraction and relocation. Singapore’s identity as an island nation is reconsidered through the ways policies and planning influence societies over time.
2. horizon:
boat excursion
Thursday, 25 July 2024
8am – 1pm (tentatively)
Charles Lim
The boat tour starts along the West Coast and sails towards the Northern Coast. Along the way, the boat will cruise past Jurong Island and Pulau Sarimbun, a small island off the north-western coast. This boat tour aims to equip participants with first-hand encounters with Singapore’s sea infrastructure and the stories around the maintenance of the island-nation identity.
3. ebb:
embodied knowledges, memory and representation
Tuesday, 30 July 2024
2pm – 5pm
Marvin Tang, Artist
ila, Artist
Stemming from Marvin and ila’s art practices, this is a linguistic-centred artist talk and workshop on how participants might engage “subject matter” or informants in their work. How do we begin to understand knowledge that is embodied, and how does it relate to other recorded sources (periodicals, ambivalent documentations from the past, etc)?
From video and image to performance art, this session delves into various modes of representation that artists employ: how do you represent what is subtle but persisting, forgotten/remembered, silenced/spoken, embodied/disembodied? This session serves as an incubation space for participants to question their artistic mediums and how they might develop and change depending on the subject.
4. coast:
governance and its infrastructures + interim review
Friday, 2 August 2024
2pm – 5pm
Wong Zi Hao (PhD), Artist
Charles Lim
Siddharta Perez
Ye Thu
This session gives shape to the experience of being out at sea. It is an exploration of coastal histories and the ongoing active resistance that circumnavigates the infrastructures of Singapore’s governance as an island nation. The workshop headed by Zi Hao charts the navigation from visuality to tactility, expanding the notion of charting into an embodied one.
5. currents:
prep-room install + final review
Friday, 8 Aug 2024
2pm – 5pm
Charles Lim
Siddharta Perez
Ye Thu
In this last session, the participants will present the works they have produced during the course of the masterclass. The works produced are introductions to their art practices – as impulses to expand on their original works with an innate immediacy demanded from a short month of masterclasses and seeing and making. This session also serves as an interim review for the participants to present their works-in-progress to Charles, Sidd and Ye Thu before the final prep-room production and installation.
6. prep-room: currents opening and presentation
Thursday, 15 Aug 2024
3pm – 4.30pm
FAQs
Will participants receive a dedicated space to work during the masterclass period?
Yes. The NX3 space within the Museum will be accessible to participants of currents for the duration of the masterclass series until 7 August 2024. Usage of NX3 follows the Museum’s opening hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 10am – 6pm.
Is there a particular site, coastline or the sea that we will focus on?
The masterclass series focuses on the sea as an infrastructure of governance, representation of landscape and identification of island cultures in Singapore’s context. While there is no specific site, the proposed work has to fit within the aforementioned context.
Will there be any checkpoints where facilitators/ mentors will check/have conversations about my respective projects?
While there are no specific checkpoints in the masterclass other than the final review, the mentors will make themselves available for informal conversations about your work throughout the masterclass period. The facilitators will also make themselves available for conversation at their discretion.
What mediums can I work with?
Any medium that falls under the categories of image, video, object, sound or text is acceptable. Please email Ye Thu at yethu@nus.edu.sg to check if you are unsure.
Are there any eligibility criteria?
1. You have to be based in Singapore for the duration of the masterclass period (16 July to 8 August 2024).
2. Your proposed work must fall under the categories of image, video, object, sound or text.
3. currents is intended for participants with emerging art practices with research and discursive experience. Applicants will be evaluated based on the potential for the masterclasses to contribute to the development of their art practice.