Re-presentations gathers various artists and cultural practitioners, including those we’ve collaborated on in our past programmes, in a curated showcase or event. Accompanying the event documentation is a running list of annotations detailing various processes or previous collaborations.
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In Suspension
In Suspension is a three-day virtual symposium broadcast organised by Hothouse and streamed live on www.h0t.house from 21–23 January 2022.
In a convening of artists and non-artists from various places of practice, In Suspension switches between keynote lectures, panel discussions, performances, and screenings. The symposium dwells on suspended spaces of delay in the wake of a global pandemic, viewing these stoppages and hiatuses as potentially transformative, seeking to uncover signs of vitality, persistence, and adaptable living conditions within the arts. Interested in notions of the ‘arts ecology’, each day focuses on conditions that affect artistic practice on multiple levels—as part of a family, as an individual, and living within a community, reflected through the themes of GESTATIONS, DORMANCY, and SUBSTRATES.
The symposium includes contributions from keynote speaker Dr Irina Aristarkhova, keynote speaker and moderator Dr Marc Glöde, moderators Bernice Lee and Daisuke Takeya, convener Anmari Van Nieuwenhove, and symposium participants Alexander Koch, Andreas Ribbung, Chan Sze-Wei, Cheryl Capelli, Emelie Chhangur, Faye Lim, ila & bani haykal, Jun Jie “JJ” Ng, Dr June Yap, Kemi & Niko, Lim Kok Boon, Live Creatives Show (Zhiyi Cao & Chong Lii), Norberto Roldan, Post-Museum (Woon Tien Wei), Sookoon Ang, Susie Wong, Thomas Ragnar, and Dr Wang Ruobing & Chen Sai Hua Kuan.
The In Suspension post-event publication (ISBN: 9789811843457) was first released in April 2022 for sale at the Singapore Art Book Fair. Documenting the contributions from all speakers and presenters, it further features an introduction from Johann Yamin and Marcus Yee's article Singapore: Art Ecologies in the Making.
DAY 01: GESTATIONS
GESTATIONS poses the question of parenting to a diverse group of practitioners who are also parents, listening to their experiences of nurturing their children and their own creative practices in a productivist environment. Panellists include mothers, grandmothers, and couples in the arts from multiple disciplines, convening in a much-needed discussion.
2.00–3.30pm <Minding and Making in Matrescence and Motherhood>
Performance videos by: Bernice Lee with Faye Lim
3.30–6.00pm <Panel 01: How has parenting shifted the way that you think about the practices of the future?>
Moderated by: Bernice Lee
Panellists: Faye Lim, Kemi & Niko, Susie Wong
Convened by: Anmari Van Nieuwenhove
6.00–8.00pm <Panel 02: How has parenting shifted the way that you think about the practices of the future?>
Moderated by: Bernice Lee
Panellists: Chan Sze-Wei, ila & bani haykal, Dr Wang Ruobing & Chen Sai Hua Kuan
Convened by: Anmari Van Nieuwenhove
8.00–9.00pm <Mothering the Future>
Keynote speech by: Dr Irina Aristarkhova
Bernice Lee, Wo Bu Hui Zuo Ren 我不会做人 / I won’t be human, 2021, Video, 12 min 30 sec. Still courtesy of the artist.
Minding and Making in Matrescence and Motherhood
Performance videos by: Bernice Lee with Faye Lim
Bernice Lee shares a collection of material from her ongoing practice that delves into the entanglements between making art and living life. In the midst of playing with her new role as mother, she has also been diving into and amassing personal dance histories, alongside examining NuWa the Mother Goddess from Chinese mythology. Her friend and long-time collaborator, Faye Lim, shares a project made during the pandemic, contemplating the intertwining of her and her son’s art-making. Since 2011, Bernice Lee and Faye Lim have been in conversation as artists (and later on, as parents), and together in 2018 they started Derring-Do Dance, an arts company specialising in movement, improvisation, and performance, and bringing their Rolypoly Family and Body Smarts Through Movement Arts programmes to communities.
Panel 01: How has parenting shifted the way that you think about the practices of the future?
Moderated by: Bernice Lee
Panellists: Faye Lim, Kemi & Niko, Susie Wong
Convened by: Anmari Van Nieuwenhove
In the two panel discussions for the day, artists bring their roles as parents (and grandparent) to the discussion. We consider how they navigate three basic human activities—caring, playing, and working—and seek to rethink art practices of the future. If the pandemic has forced humans and societies to “slow down” and recalibrate our ways of living, can we conceive of this as a period of gestation? How have artists dealt with processes of gestation in their artistic practices and lives? What are the emotional states in a gestational period? What could be birthed at the end of this period, co-existing with new life in the midst of a highly-transmissible new virus?
Panel 02: How has parenting shifted the way that you think about the practices of the future?
Moderated by: Bernice Lee
Panellists: Chan Sze-Wei, ila & bani haykal, Dr Wang Ruobing & Chen Sai Hua Kuan
Convened by: Anmari Van Nieuwenhove
In the two panel discussions for the day, artists bring their roles as parents (and grandparent) to the discussion. We consider how they navigate three basic human activities—caring, playing, and working—and seek to rethink art practices of the future. If the pandemic has forced humans and societies to “slow down” and recalibrate our ways of living, can we conceive of this as a period of gestation? How have artists dealt with processes of gestation in their artistic practices and lives? What are the emotional states in a gestational period? What could be birthed at the end of this period, co-existing with new life in the midst of a highly-transmissible new virus?
subRosa, SmartMom sensate dress, 1999.
Mothering the Future
Keynote speech by: Dr Irina Aristarkhova
In this lecture, Irina Aristarkhova will present her vision of mothering the future, where technology and embodiment will figure through her exploration of hospitality and aesthetics (taking from her most recent book Arrested Welcome: Hospitality in Contemporary Art). In addition to hospitality, and building on her previous work in technology and culture, Aristarkhova will consider various futures of cultural and embodied reproduction, discussing where concepts of the post-human and biotechnological embodiment are taking us. Her key examples will come from well known cyber feminist art works and new creative projects in art and design futures.
DAY 02: DORMANCY
DORMANCY provides perspectives from practising individuals and those who have moved on from the arts due to personal or professional commitments. These acute and tangential observations provide an opportunity to review and rehabilitate inhospitable artistic conditions.
2.00–3.00pm <Stepping Out>
Keynote speech by: Dr Marc Glöde
3.00–5.00pm <Panel 03: Finding aesthetic possibilities in and outside of art>
Moderated by: Dr Marc Glöde
Panellists: Cheryl Capelli, Jun Jie "JJ" Ng
Convened by: Anmari Van Nieuwenhove
5.00–6.00pm
<The Backside>
Confessionals by artists: Zhiyi Cao and Chong Lii with Anmari Van Nieuwenhove
6.00–7.00pm <Living for Art: Extended Cuts>
Documentary by artist, filmmaker: Sookoon Ang
7.00–9.00pm <Panel 04: Stepping Out: Finding oneself in and outside of art>
Moderated by: Dr Marc Glöde
Panellists: Alexander Koch, Lim Kok Boon
Convened by: Anmari Van Nieuwenhove
Stepping Out
Keynote speech by: Dr Marc Glöde
When we think about the arts and how we see and experience them in a wider cultural field, one is required to acknowledge the increasing impact of what can be subsumed under neo-liberal globalisation. By this, I mean a revival of free market economic policies combined with its rapid diffusion around the world. This dynamic has had for a long time, and continues to have, profound socio-structural and cultural consequences that significantly impact the arts. The intensified commercialisation and increase of rigid hierarchies have created on one hand an exponential growth of the arts into a full blown industry beyond anything it has ever been. On the other hand, a structure has evolved that seems to be a radical contradiction to ideas of experimentation, criticality and any non-capitalist form of organization which had been crucial elements of the arts in the past.
Therefore, in this segment of DORMANCY, we will take a closer look at the impact of this development (the commercialisation and market dynamics in relation to the arts) by asking: how has this created realities that have led to an exhausting situation that an increasing number of contributors to the art field experience as a form of burn-out? This situation creates a phenomenon that is hardly discussed or even addressed in the art field itself: exiting the arts. Stepping out of the arts as a consequence of these developments is a radical gesture. While it is something that does happen continuously, it indicates a variety of severe changes in the art field and industry that are worth looking at.
Panel 03: Finding aesthetic possibilities in and outside of art
Moderated by: Dr Marc Glöde
Panellists: Cheryl Capelli, Jun Jie "JJ" Ng
Convened by: Anmari Van Nieuwenhove
In this panel, we bring together Jun Jie “JJ” Ng and Cheryl Capelli who once practised as artists. The discussion will look into their personal journey and considerations of how they look at life after art.
Live Creatives Show (Zhiyi Cao and Chong Lii), The Backside, 2022. Graphic courtesy of the artists.
The Backside
Confessionals by artists: Zhiyi Cao and Chong Lii with Anmari Van Nieuwenhove
A tall lovechild amongst intercontinental reality TV genres, Live Creatives Show (LCS) is a baSTARd in parafactual edutainment. But that was yesteryear. That was BBS (before back side). Now, in silly goose grey, we present never-before-seen footage unveiling the crank jank wonk MindSpace of LCS’ puppypapi masters: kori natto & les chung.
Emo-Teaing, frollidrinking, roominating, moderating one another, then failing and tripping, the BackSide will be a draining experience for the casual thespian. Despite claims of intensity, this segment will be your bran-new whole-grain friend~ Chomp!
Sookoon Ang, Living For Art: Extended Cuts, 2022, still from segment featuring Susan Gloudemans. Courtesy of the filmmaker.
Living for Art: Extended Cuts
Documentary by artist, filmmaker: Sookoon Ang
Artist and director Sookoon Ang presents extended cuts of interviews from her debut film, Living for Art (2019). Living for Art: Extended Cuts offers a closer look at the perspectives of artists Nik Kosmas, Wang Du, Brody Condon, Tomoko Kawachi, and Rijksakademie Art Fund Director, Susan Gloudemans. Through these anecdotes gathered by Ang from all around the world, we hear the day-to-day economic realities faced by many contemporary artists.
Panel 04: Stepping Out: Finding oneself in and outside of art
Moderated by: Dr Marc Glöde
Panellists: Alexander Koch, Lim Kok Boon
Convened by: Anmari Van Nieuwenhove
In this panel, we bring together Alexander Koch and Lim Kok Boon who once practiced as artists. The discussion looks into their journeys as art practitioners and how they navigate the same field today in different modes.
DAY 03: SUBSTRATES
SUBSTRATES draws on and catalyses alternative ways of organising in and outside of the traditional museum complex, acknowledging the shifting dynamics of the global art world. Through the local and transnational initiatives that might have closed, re-structured or shape-shifted recently, we map the conditions that sustain and drive artistic activity.
2.00–5.00pm <The Wire: Cultural Podcast of the 21st Century - Episode #10>
Podcast by artist: Woon Tien Wei (Post-Museum)
with Anmari Van Nieuwenhove
5.00–6.30pm <VHS selections from Melbourne’s Living Museum of the West’s ‘Jobskills’ media archive>
Screening by artist: Thomas Ragnar
6.30–9.00pm <Panel 05: How do we renegotiate collectivity in this post-pandemic era?>
Moderated by: Daisuke Takeya
Panellists: Andreas Ribbung, Emelie Chhangur, Dr June Yap, Norberto Roldan
Convened by: Anmari Van Nieuwenhove
The Wire: Cultural Podcast of the 21st Century - Episode #10
Podcast by artist: Woon Tien Wei (Post-Museum) with Anmari Van Nieuwenhove
The Wire (2006–2007) was a podcast series initiated by Simon Petre and Woon Tien Wei (Post-Museum) that covered aspects of the cultural scene in Singapore. For IN SUSPENSION, Post-Museum reprises The Wire for a 2.5-hour episode featuring vignettes, dialogues, and vox pops. The live broadcast also includes question-and-answer sessions with Anmari Van Nieuwenhove.
Thomas Ragnar, VHS selections from Melbourne’s Living Museum of the West’s ‘Jobskills’ media archive, 2022, Video. Still courtesy of the artist.
VHS selections from Melbourne’s Living Museum of the West’s ‘Jobskills’ media archive
Screening by artist: Thomas Ragnar
Following the closure of several factories in Melbourne’s inner-western suburbs, unemployed persons provided labour in exchange for wages and 'Jobskills' training offered by the Living Museum of the West. Among other training programmes, some were trained in video production and broadcast journalism, partially constituting the material presented.
Made mostly of ambient scenographic imagery in the hope that this foregrounds the material conditions of the images themselves over their editorialised outcomes, this media represents a small insight into a larger history at the museum and their engagement with experimental models of welfare, remuneration, labour, art and media production and auto-historicism.
Panel 05: How do we renegotiate collectivity in this post-pandemic era?
Moderated by: Daisuke Takeya
Panellists: Andreas Ribbung, Emelie Chhangur, Dr June Yap, Norberto Roldan
Convened by: Anmari Van Nieuwenhove
In this panel, we bring together four speakers who play key roles in art projects and institutions. The discussion will look into how spaces for art were run before the pandemic, and how things are changing and adapting thereafter.