Field Notes & The Ecology of Chance recalls colonial Singapore—when native Ara trees (Ficus microcarpa in Malay) were intentionally recast as invasive weeds—and stages planting as an act of decolonial reclamation. Tini Aliman (b. 1980, Singapore) composes a live soundscape of amplified micro-sonic textures and ambient murmurs, attuning to rhythms of growth and collapse, amidst continuous erasure. Cristiana Cott Negoescu (b. 1991, Romania) undertakes a durational act: crawling across a plot, planting seedlings in gestures of chance and repetition. Numbers evoke lottery draws while referencing cultural rituals of prediction and probability. Movement and sound function as both motif and metaphor, gesture toward the human desire to forecast uncertainty through statistical chance and to extract order from randomness and divine pattern.

To plant is to nurture what refuses to be tamed. To plant is to rebel against forgetting.

Blasphematics bears witness to the effect of TOTAL-PLEASURE-SUITE by Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee (b. 1994, Singapore), placing matter above spirit, object above subject. The bodily gestures of Josh Tirados and Jack, and the soundscape by GODKORINE are activated by the installation’s non-human agents. Power structures collapse as performers surrender agency to the objects around them, allowing themselves to be the possessed rather than the possessor. Blasphematics is a practice of infraction and contamination; each movement becomes a small blasphemy, defying the hostile architecture of public infrastructure. Like calisthenics for the unruly, bodies learn new forms of movement through repetitive transgression. Blasphematics opens pathways to embodying pleasure as a portal, a glitch, a crack toward new instincts—ones that incite friction and thrive in the space between living and dead, human and machine.

What happens when bodies stop trying to animate the world, and instead allow themselves to be animated by it?

PRIMAL INSTINCT, staged by curatorial contributor Hothouse, presents three new outdoor installations within a reconceived grass field: Square Forest by Salad Dressing, Field Notes & The Ecology of Chance by Tini Aliman, and TOTAL-PLEASURE-SUITE by Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee.

Singapore Biennale 2025: pure intention is a SG60 Signature Event, commissioned by National Arts Council Singapore and organised by Singapore Art Museum.

Note from Hothouse: 

You are entering an unkempt grass field. Please take the necessary measures for mosquitoes, grass allergies, uneven ground, potential flooded areas, and the darkness. Camping stools are welcome. We begin promptly at sunset.