No Discipline (SAM Design Fellowship)

How do we map what never settles? No Discipline is not a path but a spill, an overflowing, an eruption [!!!]—a breath that inhales every focus at once, neither one nor the other yet always becoming both and more. It does not stand still; it bends, it warps, it folds upon itself like a topology in flux, meaning twisting inside-out, dissolving categories as they are spoken. We speak a language that has no final form, a dialect woven from collisions and crossings, curiosity spilling into collaboration, logic unravelling into feeling, feeling structuring itself into new systems. The moment we think we’ve traced its edge, it extends beyond us [...]. A shape unfolding into another shape into another shape [!!!].

It gathers itself like a fruiting body—a clustering of difference, a mycelial pulse, each idea a cell, each practice a node, each articulation a flicker in a living lattice of thought. What holds together when everything moves? Gravity shifts, pulls, releases—an emergent whole that is always exceeding the sum of its parts. It is a body that mutates as it breathes, a field of motion that redraws itself with every step. To chase it is to change with it [...]. To grasp it is to let go [...]. To name it is to watch it slip into the yet-to-be-imagined [!!!].

—Prelude by Melvin Tan, Hothouse

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[The Emancipation of Dissonance] by Federico Ruberto (fXØ) [1/3]

1=First diagram: individual and collective ID

No one should take away another's autonomy or individuality in the name of the collective—and I’m making this statement because I believe in collectives and I believe the individual grows by transforming itself, through the collective. It is always, however, a matter of defining what the necessary limits are, the folding and fractal line separating the individual from the collective. The collective should not end up churning the individual autonomy and abiding to a cult of productivity. On critical and productive unproductivity, there are many references one can pick up: Unavowable Community by Maurice Blanchot (1983) >>> The Inoperative Community by Jean-Luc Nancy (1986) >>> The Coming Community by Giorgio Agamben (1990). The diagrams may help expose certain nodes pertaining to the individual/collective relation within a never to be taken for granted idea of community—so community is understood as a negotiated (emancipating) collectivity of (alienated) subjects. A morphology complicated with and by (w)holes, an archipelago of sorts, made of moments of contact but also of necessary long silences: staring at the horizon, for the sailor to decide to embark on a journey. Remember Gilles Grelet’s words in Theory of a Solitary Sailor: “[19.7] Lean on the abyss. Do not start from the world, even from its nullity as nihilism does, in order to detach yourself from the world. Inscribe the consistency of rebellion in the very void itself, in the very radical inconsistency to which the human holds, lose yourself in it—for otherwise the world will always have won by serving as a support for that which refuses it. And the abyss, it grows by devouring itself. It is a matter of working flush with the abyss. Of failing: of holding fast to the real, not yielding to reality.” Other references: Mattin, Social Dissonance / Negarestani, Where is the concept. See Kōjin Karatani in “Isonomia and the Origins of Philosophy,”, on mobile co-existence of the Ionian cities vs Athenian sedentary democracy.

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[The Emancipation of Dissonance] by Federico Ruberto (fXØ) [2/3]

2=The second diagram presents art as it gets pulled apart by two drives: cold xeno-rationalism and libidinal gothic materialism. Some diagrams are also about expanding the notion of archiving/archive, diagramming and “making (it) explicit,” making explicit, recognisable and negotiable the form-of-concepts (Negentropic Fields, Geometria Situ, Not Housed, Trace2). Projects are quasi-objects, relational hypercubes of a sort.

DoooooooooM
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[The Emancipation of Dissonance] by Federico Ruberto (fXØ) [3/3]

3=AUTONOMY AND IN-OPERATIVITY

There is a need for playing with form and theory, the form of concept, critically and creatively, as a “material.” Theory used not to legitimate the existence of a form, but to define through a craft, one’s own form-of-life. We need to keep letting the (angelic, but for some, demonic) destabilising yet emancipative function of a theory/practice made poetry, against its opposite, the productive function entering and banalising discourse everywhere, that is indeed necessary so that one could move past the caging, alienating predicaments of actuality. The demonic function should be promoted against the productive function, although we shall be dosing the former, which tends to move towards unbridled dissipation, fracture, fragmentation, disintegration. An author I find academic sympathy for, Andrew Culp, expressed his disdain for people encasing Deleuze as the author of “productive joy” (as many do). His book Dark Deleuze has two main lines of attack, the first against “connectivism” and the second against “productivism.” Regarding the first, Culp says that a “[…] the first step is to acknowledge that the unbridled optimism for connection has failed. Temporary autonomous zones have become special economic zones.” So “[…] instead of simply appreciating the forces that produce the World…” we should intervene to destroy them. Against productivism he says (rephrasing Deleuze) we should “distinguish concept creation from productivism, for the latter is ‘commercial professional training’ that aspires for thought only beneficial ‘from the viewpoint of universal capitalism (What is philosophy, pp14)’ . Maintaining such a distinction is difficult—in an age of compulsory happiness, it is easy for construction to be conflated with capitalist value, the empty promises of democracy, or just plain helpfulness.”

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4=SILENCE. LOOK AT THE HORIZON.

My final words: “So it’s not a problem of getting people to express themselves but of providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don’t stop people expressing themselves but rather force them to express themselves; What a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, and ever rarer, thing that might be worth saying. What we’re plagued by these days isn’t any blocking of communication, but pointless statements. But what we call the meaning of a statement is its point. That’s the only definition of meaning, and it comes to the same thing as a statement’s novelty. You can listen to people for hours, but what’s the point?... That’s why arguments are such a strain, why there’s never any point arguing. You can’t just tell someone what they’re saying is pointless. So you tell them it’s wrong. But what someone says is never wrong, the problem isn’t that some things are wrong, but that they’re stupid or irrelevant. That they’ve already been said a thousand times. The notions of relevance, necessity, the point of something, are a thousand times more significant than the notion of truth. Not as substitutes for truth, but as the measure of the truth of what I’m saying. It’s the same in mathematics: Poincaré used to say that many mathematical theories are completely irrelevant, pointless; He didn’t say they were wrong—that wouldn’t have been so bad.” —Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations 1972-1990

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Tesseract

[Tesseract] by Teow Yue Han (IーM)

Borrowing from the tesseract, which was featured as a symbol of ever-evolving transformation of artistic production in Negentropic Fields, I’m intrigued to think about the actions and relations that orient Hothouse which are mapped here. Much of the ideas surrounding the shape-shifting dynamics of a collective and the 3 prongs of dialogue, discourse and documentation originated from the internal discussion and research with practitioners from the local art scene when Free of Charge Artshow (FOCA) , a previous collective that I was part of, was still active.

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Reverence of Dürehedron

[Reverence of Dürehedron] by Urich Lau (IーM)

The Truncated Triangular Trapezohedron

The polyhedron that features so prominently in Melencolia I occupies a privileged place in the histories of both art and geometry. Art historians and mathematicians have puzzled over the precise shape, debating whether it is a truncated triangular trapezohedron, a rhombohedron, or even possibly a precursor to the study of quasicrystals. In these histories, the polyhedron remains elusive, withdrawn and indifferent—it exudes melancholy.

The diagram appropriates the truncated triangular trapezohedron: a polygon with 10 vertices, each representing a description appropriated as pathways of “growth” and abstraction in the dichotomy of microcosm and macrocosm. On the idea of searching and researching the artistic methodology, in which the acts of collaboration, cooperation and coalition are quintessential as a working collective, albeit as a solo endeavour that is also a fundamental prerequisite for achieving the utmost development and outcome of work.

As pathways that exude from the core of the collective or collectivity transcend expectations and competency of the act and action of the individual artist, the working dynamics within the collective often exceed the (super)structure of what a “group” would represent. That is the trajectory of projects that deal with variable processes and intense nimbleness of the mind in adaptability and flexibility, in addition to the integrity of individual creativity.

As another metaphorical example of the (super)structure of the truncated triangular trapezohedron, the idea of the collective that supersedes the physical space and visualised projects, which would expand and explicate on the other relationships.

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Biosignatures

[Biosignatures] by Kae Yuan

As I was trekking up Kyanjin Ri today, I had an almost bird’s-eye view of the town of Kyanjin Gompa. High up but close enough to notice a few details, I recognise again the all-too-familiar amoeboid shape of a classical animal cell, this time, evident in the man-made structures of this little mountain settlement.

One of the first things we define is often the peri-/para-meter of what we’re trying to build. This can take the form of a wall. Looking at the village, I thought about the features and functions of a wall. Amongst others: (1) to keep things out, e.g. to demarcate private property; (2) to keep things in, e.g. livestock; or simply (3) to serve as a visual deterrent.

A wall or border can also be a site of exchange. In the first lessons of cell biology, we learn and understand different types of cell membrane transport between the extracellular fluid and the cytoplasm —these are the mundane yet essential processes occurring at a humanly imperceptible level that maintain both activity and life. Sometimes passive or active, other times facilitated or even requiring additional energy input. There are many strategies to cross this membrane and border.

How permeable and porous can we really allow our membranes to be, as an individual within a collective, acting as one, three and six? We negotiate.

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Shapes Shift

[Shapes Shift] by Melvin Tan

This map is conceived as a field study of the Hothouse collective—designed to resemble an archaeological site, it approaches artistic collaboration as a terrain to be unearthed, inferred and connected through the observable patterns of artistic labour and exchange.

In the absence of a blueprint, the ways we live and work can be traced in each shape, line and weight—mapping the people, practices, spaces and partnerships that form and reform over time. Through this process of excavation, it reveals where individuals might have gathered, worked and shaped ideas together, allowing us to witness how collective practice unfolds—at once intentional and organic.

The illustrated motifs—occupations, builds, gatherings, and everyday tools—anchor the map in reality while signalling that this is more than a record of different projects. It is a speculative unearthing of a half-rooted house: a way to read into how artistic collectivity takes shape, transforms its spaces, sustains its cycles and evolves both within and beyond ourselves.

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The Collective and the Grid

[The Collective and the Grid] by Eva Castro

To refute the universal grid is to me, to resist forms of control to flatten thought, to normalise forms of creativity, of evolving thought through creative thinking. The grid appears as a form of spatial control: to quantify and to operate efficiently, killing differences, abnormalities and chaos within the spatio-temporal, intellectual territory. It is perhaps because of this that the diagrams I have drawn all have as a starting point a super-structure; the orthogonal grid as a homogenising condition and it is within it, rather than out of it, that the seed of collectivities gets initiated as necessity to counterpose, as obligation to rethink and recreate our current modes of being within it, attempting to generate the possibility of other organisational tissues and other futures.

The [ideal] collective should be one that shares above all the urgent need of enabling emancipation through every single act—regardless of scale. The collective [I am thinking of] is one whose members echo values of generosity, solidarity, union and independence in equal measure, informing new relations, re-forming inside out itself.

The said collective should be one that not only politely accepts differences but also celebrates them to build into itself the growth of evolving otherness within it, moving from the [absolute] known to a common unknown, building belonging through daily adventures in search of that sublime sense of the infinite.

Archipelagos are able to diffract, they create diversity and expansiveness, they are spaces of relation that recognize all the infinite details of the real. Being in harmony with the world through archipelagos means inhabiting this diffraction, while still rallying coastlines and joining horizons. They open us to a sea of wandering: to ambiguity, to fragility, to drifting, which is not the same as futility.

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No Discipline

Re-presentation #4 •

SAM Fellowship ,

On Interlocution by Harry Burke

The methodology for my contribution as an Interlocuteur was rooted in formal analysis. Formal analysis—one of the essential tools in my work as an art critic and art historian—involves looking closely at the formal elements of artworks and making observations that are used as evidence to construct an argument. In January of this year, I spent time at Hothouse’s studio reviewing the group’s activities since its founding in 2020. Based on this research, I developed a presentation that was shared in the public program “No Discipline” at the studio in March. The presentation is in the process of being edited into an essay.

While formal analysis is an important tool in my toolbox, it is not the only one. I seek to interweave social, political, and historical considerations with the formal analysis of artworks. Hothouse’s work interests me because it is rooted in an expanded understanding of form: the collective’s projects tend to be highly interdisciplinary and relational in nature and frequently challenge the parameters of the structure or platform that they are situated within. In my capacity as an Interlocuteur, I aim to contextualise this approach. I do so art historically, by looking back to the utopian experiments of the Bolshevik avant-garde in the years after Russia’s October Revolution, and geographically, by exploring some of the continuities (and discontinuities) shared among other collectives in maritime Southeast Asia—here, I specifically focus on Indonesia, the subject of my doctoral research. Merging these different lenses, I turn to Leon Trotsky’s concept of the “fellow traveller” as a means through which to make sense of collective work in the archipelago today.

Fellow Travellers in the Archipelago
This presentation explores historical precedents for understanding the multifaceted work of art collectives in Southeast Asia. It begins by revisiting the Russian avant-garde and examining how Bolshevik ideas inspired new approaches to education and criticism in the years after the October Revolution of 1917, with a specific focus on the activities of Marc Chagall (1887–1985) and Leon Trotsky (1879–1940). The legacy of this experimental, utopian moment is linked to Southeast Asia through an analysis of the communist sanggar, or artist studios, that formed in the two decades following Indonesia’s revolutionary declaration of independence in 1945, and their influence on contemporary collectives. Connecting these historical trajectories, Trotsky’s concept of the “fellow traveller” is revisited as a means through which to make sense of collective work in the archipelago today, with close attention given to Singaporean initiative Hothouse’s (est. 2020) multidisciplinary output.

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On Interlocution by Ethel Pang

My Scope as an Interlocuteur
In sum, my role as an Interlocuteur was to deal with the “micro” and relational reflection of the people that make up Hothouse. I facilitated a process of joint sense-making that was live, dynamic and process-driven.

My practice involves moving fluidly between intrapersonal (the internal reflections of each member) and interpersonal dynamics (the interactions, relationships, threads and fractures between members). This scope naturally extends to an exploration of the collective’s emergent dynamics—the intangible, atmospheric aspects that make Hothouse Hothouse. Therefore, with the collective members, I engaged in a nuanced exploration of their collective dynamics and journeyed with each individual through a process of reflection.

The way that I have interpreted the Interlocuteur role was one that serves as a bridge, navigating and interpreting internal signs, relational dynamics and the collective’s broader cultural and creative meanings.

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My Methodology as an Interlocuteur

My methodological approach was dialogic and reflective, structured over a period of approximately 2.5 months. This included:

Facilitating moderated group dialogues that intentionally surfaced and addressed internal issues, explored collaborative possibilities and envisioned collective futures.

Conducting individual in-depth conversations, either in person or via Zoom, lasting 1 to 1.5 hours each. Conversations focused on personal narratives of involvement with Hothouse, individual stakes and investments, relational dynamics, and future aspirations for the collective.

Utilising discursive analysis tools, particularly leveraging ChatGPT and Miro boards, to process conversation notes and transcripts, creating individual member profiles and thematic mappings of collective dynamics.

Conducting a closed-door feedback session with the collective to transparently share findings, reflections, recommendations and pertinent abstracted questions emerging from my research.

In conclusion, my interlocution was not merely (sociological, anthropological) research, but an active, live mode of intervention. My primary intention was always ultimately to benefit the collective through this process of careful navigation and intentional reflection, and to support the continued existence and thriving of Hothouse as a collective.

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A Semionautean Task

Prologue: On Navigating an Archipelago
As typical of most collectives, Hothouse can truly be described as an assemblage: a patchwork coming-together of practitioners with overlapping, adjacent, or wholly distinctive identities. Their interests coagulate into the transdisciplinary, experimental art projects they are known for, but what was obvious and salient to me from the get-go is how much each of its key members stands as islands of their own.

This is why I would describe Hothouse using the conceit of an archipelago. On one hand, this is a nod to our geographical situatedness within Southeast Asia. But archipelagic thinking also speaks to the nature of collectivity itself: a gathering of proximate yet sovereign bodies, connected by visible bridges and invisible tides. Building on the metaphor Federico used in conversations, the islands are uncollapsible entities of shifting shorelines and ambiguous borders. Running between them are undercurrents of personal agendas, shared histories and, at times, tensions. Within this archipelago, there are no fixed states. Disconnection and (re)connection happen continually between its composite fragments.

As one of their interlocuteurs, my research focus was on the “micro,” relational dynamics of the collective. My self-defined role in this project was to draw out, build upon and recontextualise these dynamics for its members as well as a wider public. This involved a journey of joint, live sense-making: I was essentially an outsider invited in to take a peek behind the curtains, to witness and in some cases intervene in the relational entanglements and internal processes.

Borrowing a term introduced to me by Yue Han, I further define my interlocution to be one akin to a “semionaut.” A term coined by Nicolas Bourriaud, semionaut combines “semios” (sign) and “nautos” (navigation), and refers to a person who works with existing signs, symbols and cultural materials to assemble new meanings and experiences. These dynamics between the islands of Hothouse were already present when I entered in January 2025. In my semionautean journey, I sought to illuminate these emergent patterns within the group for Hothouse themselves. Ostensibly, the semionaut also performs the role of navigator. In the two months or so I spent engaging deeply with the collective, I believe the process itself was already a journey of travelling and arrival.

In this essay, I hope to share with a wider public a glimpse of what I encountered through the time spent journeying inward. This includes recurring questions around care, emotional labour, authorship, accountability and staying with the messier realities of collective-making. I hope that this window into the entangled and affective work of being-in-collective might serve as a resonant reflection for other practitioners—particularly for those navigating similarly ambivalent terrains within the arts and cultural fields in Singapore and Southeast Asia, where collectivising is increasingly heralded as an idealised practice, yet is rarely resourced with the time, care and institutional understanding it calls for.

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Fragment I: of Beginnings, Endings, and Continuities (part 1)

If the archipelago metaphor allows us to visualise Hothouse as a constellation of islands, it follows naturally that each island has its own story of emergence. One of the exercises we did involved the process of recollection, where each member traced how and why they first entered into the orbit of Hothouse.

From its founding members, I understand that the idea of Hothouse first emerged in 2018 and became a reality by the physical coming together of two existing entities: INTER—MISSION (Urich and Yue Han) and Currency Design (Melvin), when they began sharing a studio space in Aliwal Arts Centre towards the end of 2019. In that same period, INTER—MISSION, Currency Design and formAxioms had a taste of their first three-way collaboration in Negentropic Fields, a project initiated by INTER—MISSION. It took two years before formAxioms formally joined Hothouse as the third key entity in this collective-of-collectives. In March 2025, Hothouse commemorated their 5th anniversary with the theme of “5 years of no discipline.”

One way to characterise this collective’s founding is an act of pragmatism and happenstance. From Urich’s perspective, Hothouse began when the two original entities, INTER—MISSION and Currency, began sharing studio spaces and collaborating more closely. Even the formation of INTER—MISSION itself, as Urich recalls, emerged less from deliberate design and more from a natural synergy of creative collaboration between himself and Yue Han. The formalisation of INTER—MISSION felt “[...]Out of necessity, because we were being invited to a show in Taipei… It wasn’t even about building a collective on purpose.”

By contrast, his fellow founding members Melvin and Yue Han frame the beginnings of Hothouse differently: they emphasise a story of continuity, rather than coincidence. In his personal mapping of Hothouse, Yue Han draws a direct thread linking the spirit of his earlier collective, Free of Charge Artshow (FOCA), to the ethos he hopes Hothouse embodies today.

FOCA, active around 2013 to 2016, was a Singapore-based collective that activated independent spaces for creative mixers, bridging visual art and design. One of their notable projects includes CLOSURE held at Teban Gardens neighbourhood at their final stage of en-bloc, where they presented artworks that engaged poignantly with the city’s perpetual cycle of reconstruction.

From Melvin and Yue Han’s accounts, I understand that FOCA’s members and participating artists were driven by the desire to create their own platforms of open and bold experimentation—qualities they found lacking in existing formal institutions (which encompasses museums and educational institutions) and the broader arts ecosystem of the time. Ostensibly, they saw their role, then, as interventionist in nature––they were responding to perceived constraints by generating independent activities and practices imbibed with a distinctive counter-cultural playfulness and urgency.

Reflecting on FOCA’s early days, Melvin described fondly after-school meetings on campus grounds, sleepless nights spent installing exhibitions, and above all, an unrelenting, altruistic fervour that drove their efforts to platform emerging artists and generate spaces for independent discourse. It was in this crucible that Melvin and Yue Han cultivated their friendship, forged a collaborative relationship, and cultivated the ideological roots they continue to draw from today.

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Fragment I: of Beginnings, Endings, and Continuities (part 2)

It is important to note that within Hothouse, its members are no strangers to the processes of collectivising, particularly within the local arts context. Urich, for example, has also been part of formative groups such as The Artists Village and the Printmaking Society of Singapore. Yue Han, in particular, articulates a nostalgia and yearning for the kind of relational, community-driven spaces that are now rare in Singapore. In our conversation, he gestured to Post-Museum’s physical space as a site where “anybody can just come and hang out,” a porous, lived social architecture that allowed for serendipitous encounters and precipitated organic collaborations. He viewed the loss of their physical space at Rowell Rd as an emblematic one, alongside mainstays like The Substation.

For the Singaporean members (Urich, Yue Han and Melvin) who have remained active within the local arts and cultural scene, it seems there is a palpable, enduring sensitivity towards the ecosystem and their role in it. They acknowledge an all-too-familiar pattern: many of these initiatives, born from passion and necessity, have either become dormant, dissolved quietly or been absorbed into more institutionalised structures. Their reflections conveyed a concern for the health of the arts landscape and a personal ideological commitment to supporting independent, collaborative, generative spaces. In many ways, the impulse to create and sustain Hothouse can be read as part of this broader, emotionally and politically charged desire: to not only produce art, but to constantly cultivate spaces for experimentation, community and critical imagination within an increasingly professionalised and fragmented cultural terrain.

Embedded within these personal histories, we can start to surface and make sense of the differing expectations about what an art collective should serve. For Yue Han and Melvin, the spirit of altruistic, interventionist and experimental collectivism remains a central, animating force. As the collective evolved over time, especially with the integration of its newest members formAxioms, these foundational ideals sometimes find themselves in tension with newer pragmatics and shifting creative orientations.

The formalisation of formAxioms as part of Hothouse, a process which took two years from 2020 to 2022, is consistently cited as a pivotal inflection point that shifted the collective’s trajectory. Prior to their joining, Hothouse was largely framed as a platform: a curatorial-facilitative space where INTER—MISSION and Currency primarily invited external collaborators to exhibit, present or produce. As Eva articulated, “Before formAxioms, it used to be more of a curatorial backslash facilitator kind of a team… they were like cultural agents.” Following major projects like Negentropic Fields, the collective shifted its focus towards more internal creative production. Its activities began including more original, generated works, experimenting with XR/VR mediums and building immersive art experiences. As Federico observed, Hothouse pivoted in their growing interest to “not only facilitate a platform for others but [also] engage in our own practices.”

The entry of formAxioms also marked the evolution of broader paradigms and ideological currents. As practitioners originally based outside Singapore, Eva and Federico brought with them frames of references. Their investment in speculative technologies, immersive environments, and architectural world-building opened Hothouse to artistic languages less tethered to Singapore’s specific socio-political context, and more aligned with global currents in digital and expanded media arts. Eva herself acknowledged that from Negentropic Fields onwards, there was a growing aspiration to “connect almost anthropologically across various kinds of scales,” linking local and international practices.

In parallel, across the broader collective, there was also interest from Yue Han and Urich in particular to intentionally engage the international. Yue Han articulated a hope that Hothouse might one day become “one of the key spaces people think of when they think about the experimental scene in Singapore.” This is something which Urich echoed, expressing, “Whenever anyone from overseas or even locally want to look for artists or an art group that represents this amalgamation of collective, intermediate, mixed media practice… [I hope that] the first thing they see is Hothouse.”

For long-standing member Melvin, this evolution occasionally chafed against the original ideals of the open, altruistic, support of the local arts community approach that he and Yue Han championed in FOCA. Differences in expectations—around whether Hothouse's priority should be nurturing hyperlocal, relational communities or projecting outward—remained largely submerged, unspoken except during moments of heightened tension. It is only recently that these tensions have erupted into more open, direct confrontation between the members.

It is crucial to emphasise that these divergences are perceived bifurcations, not absolute divides. As Federico notes, the different modes of engagement reflect “different origin points, different ways of understanding forms of work, practice, boundaries... overlapping bridges.” Individuals move between registers, depending on context. Yet, because these differences are rarely explicitly surfaced, frictions accumulate silently. As Eva succinctly put it, “We put the clash under the table and we continue to work. But it reappears, oftentimes.”

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Fragment II: On Friction, Fellowship and the Work of Maintenance

What was immediately apparent to me in my first few engagements with Hothouse is how it is composed of mature, successful islands. All key members are practitioners well-anchored in their respective fields. In stark contrast to the formation of FOCA, which was a gathering of emerging practitioners seeking solidarity or mutual support in contrast to formal institutions, many of Hothouse’s core members are deeply embedded within different local tertiary institutions. Four out of five core members are faculty members, others run their own consultancies, and some of the members maintain extensive independent artistic practices.

This unique composition imparts a very different material condition to their collectivism. There does not seem to be an immediate economic precarity driving their coming-together; nor an urgent existential necessity that animates formations of collectives like FOCA. What I can surmise is that Hothouse’s collectivising instead arises from their desire to agentically and freely pursue their creative experimentation and fixations, which their primary professional roles may not readily accommodate. At the end of the day, they are also makers and entrepreneurs, and have in common the genuine, purist pleasure of creation.

For its members, Hothouse is a practice space beyond the demands of academic labour, consultancy work, or individual practices. They are animated not by profit nor by institutional validation, but by the intrinsic desire to create, experiment, and produce new and meaningful work. Perhaps also, Hothouse provides a crucial ground for venturing into new terrains they could not explore alone––pushing the boundaries of their individual practices and elevating their work to the next professional (world) stage.

Crucially, as a group, they also have an intensely production-driven momentum towards generating work that is avant-garde and boundary-pushing, which can be quite demanding, as in the case of large-scale conceptual projects like Negentropic Fields. In the time I spent with the collective, I observed that most of their energies were predominantly channelled towards conceptualising, developing and launching. The velocity of production often eclipses and leaves no room for the awkward, messier work that all human groups require: the never-ending, sometimes tedious labour of tending to relationships.

As the collective aspires towards broader international visibility and more ambitious creative projects, its next horizon may not (only) be scaling its artistic ambitions but also attending to the neglected element of “soft infrastructure.” Said Eva, in our one-on-one conversations:

I don't feel good when there is a huge fight and we are disrespectful towards each other, and there is no conclusion, no kind of apologies... We just keep going. To me, that is like the description of a toxic relationship.

Before any projection [towards the future of Hothouse] comes about, I think some of these things need to kind of be discoursed and dealt with... We should amend our internal relationships, understand that we do hurt each other, and why we hurt each other. Otherwise, it just continues to happen and repeats and repeats.

I think that at the heart of any collective lies a simple, perennial practice of coming together and building a fellowship. Between fellows, there needs to be shared goodwill, nourished by faith and upheld through active, ongoing trust. Even for a collective consisting of mature, well-developed sovereign lands, coherence is not a given. It needs to be patiently coaxed into being. As members who care about sustaining the health of our collectives and ground-up spaces, we must dedicate ourselves to the humbling task of constantly making and remaking our connections: stitching across fractures, bridging differences, and cultivating new common ground.

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Epilogue: On Staying with the Work

In this reflection, I offer you only a snapshot: a brief, specific moment in space and time, in the continual unfolding of collective life. Hothouse, like any living entity, like many other groups that come before and will come after, resists neat summary. My role as “semionautean” Interlocuteur was never to fully capture the holism of the collective. Translation is an imperfect, creative and necessarily subjective act; it is more akin to navigating while already at sea.

This was not a straightforward thing. To embark on this intense relational work is to dredge up and illuminate festering wounds, to ask people to confront not only each other, but also themselves. For this, I hold a lot of gratitude for Hothouse’s commitment to stay at the table and surface difficult emotions when it would have been easier to keep mum or leave.

Therefore, if I could offer a final meditation in this essay, it would be on the theme of continuation. To stay with the work is not a given, especially when seasons change, contemporaries drift, and relational frictions accumulate. In Singapore’s art ecosystem, where collectives often rise and dissolve, spaces for independent, self-sustained collectivities remain rare. Amidst this landscape, the act of remaining active and robust––amidst all its imperfections and tensions––can be seen as its own kind of intervention.

That this occurred within the context of the SAM Design Research Fellowship is significant. This process provided the collective an opportunity to dedicate time and resources to turn inwards, to consciously attend to the relational dynamics in ways that have perhaps been more neglected. In a field where success is often measured by outputs and exhibitions, there are few opportunities and even fewer incentives to turn inward to examine the delicate fabric of relational life within a collective. This begs the question of whether the provision of such structures for intentional introspection, possibly offered by institutional structures or otherwise, might improve the health of the arts ecosystem at large.

Finally, rather than closing with a conclusion, I offer instead questions that surfaced during the course of the journey. Perhaps these are worth holding open, not only for Hothouse but for anyone who aims to engage in the rewarding, difficult work of collectivity:

What does it mean to build a space that allows for difference, without collapsing under it?

How do we remain open to transformation, while still holding on to the spirit that first brought us together?

What kind of logistical and emotional infrastructures are needed to sustain collective life over time?

How do we attend to the invisible work—the small negotiations, the tiny acts of repair—that keep a collective breathing?

The waters and shorelines will continue to shift. The bridges we have today may need to be rebuilt tomorrow. And so the work continues––stubbornly, imperfectly, alive.

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