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Off-Script Act 1
Part 1 – Coded Objects – 5 April, 7-8PM
Part 2 – Representation – 12 April, 7-8.30PM
In tandem with NUS Museum projects prep-room: OPEN and Public Art: A Dossier, the NUS Museum presents Off-Script, a year-long film series that explores the agency of different publics in meaning-making when objects are viewed in unscripted ways.
In Act 1: Object(s) and Representation(s), the multiplicity of meanings beneath encounters with the ordinary and every day are brought to the forefront. The films explore various coding of objects when contextualised and re-contextualised through the lens of diverse practices. In doing so, each cinematic encounter brings to light the subjectivity of embodied experiences and their agency in shaping our understanding of these objects beyond their scripted ways. Reflective of the power dynamics undergirding the production of narratives, Act 1 also highlights communities of practice and their workarounds in reimagining and reframing the borders of meaning-making.
For more information about the film series, please head to: museum.nus.edu.sg/off-script
Part 1 – Coded Objects
Date: Wednesday, 5 April
Time: 7-8PM
The Impossibility of Knowing (2010) | PG13 | Dir. Tan Pin Pin
The Impossibility of Knowing was borne out of the humble realisation that there is no way one can know everything significant about Singapore. The documentary visits and film locations where crimes or accidents have taken place, long after the events have happened to find out if these places can transcend time to engender their own significance.
Buah Dasyat (Fantastic Fruits) (2022) | PG | Dir. Khairullah Rahim
Buah Dasyat (Fantastic Fruits) is an experimental short film capturing the veiled and coded lives of residents in Boon Lay, Singapore through enigmatic fruits acting as multifarious symbols for intersecting themes including everyday rituals, desire, social mobility and labour. Anchored by the voice of drag queen Luna Thicc, the fruits’ behaviour and habits become enmeshed with found footage, smartphone videos and kitsch popular culture imagery.
Objects for Thriving (2022) | PG | Dir. Ian Mun & Lilian Chee
Objects for Thriving deciphers the complexity of lived worlds in ordinary domestic objects. It focuses on the capacity of such domestic objects as affective mediators and repositories of experiences and events, where the setting for each object – within a domestic space -changes the nature of how these objects are perceived. As an instrument embodying histories (personal, social, cultural), they are ordinary forms of heritage which continue to evolve and to matter in the everyday. They are instruments for living, or what we term objects for thriving.
Home Economics with a Stubborn Bloom (2020) | PG | Dir. A Stubborn Bloom
A re-staging of instructional texts from Home Economics Textbooks used in the 1970s, outlining the correct manner for personal grooming, house-keeping, and entertaining. The film critiques the extreme performativity of femininity through gestures and costumes to a soundtrack of highly gendered phrases taken verbatim from the textbooks.
Part 2 – Representation
Date: Wednesday, 12 April
Time: 7-8.30PM
Sink (2009) | PG | Dir. Kirsten Tan
A sink sitting in the low tides. A boy playing by the beach. A chance meeting. Sink is a distilled exploration of innocence and experience; love and loss – an intimation of what might lie beyond.
In Time to Come (2017) | PG | Dir. Tan Pin Pin
Set in Singapore, IN TIME TO COME follows the ritualistic exhuming of an old state time capsule, and the compilation of another. As enigmatic remnants of life from 25 years ago emerge – a bottle of water from the Singapore River, a copy of Yellow Pages, a phone charger – today’s selection of items are carefully primed for future generations to decode. Interwoven are carefully composed shots of moments we rarely think to preserve: the in-between minutes of daily life spent waiting for things to happen, shot in locales as diverse as the lush jungle to a residential district infused with haze.
The Cabbage Statue (2021) | PG13 | Dir. Megan Lim
Posters of the famous Cabbage Statue of Ranau, Malaysia, are seen everywhere in Singapore. Swayed by the advertisements, Kelly convinces her less-than-enthusiastic best friend, Ruth, to take a trip across the Causeway to find it.