T:>Digital Library 2022-2023
DIGITAL LECTURES
“I never use the term programmer as I would like to think you are a curator and I hope you can own your work, or your institution can embrace the reality of what you do.“
Dr. Ong Keng Sen
Curating No-Thing Lectures 1-4
Releasing 15 May 2022
Credits: 1 per lecture
Curating No-thing is the first thought leadership programme by an arts company. This series of lectures looked at activating one’s communities through art and rethinking our relationships with money and production. Originally held virtually in May 2020, Curating No-thing included a series of alternative training sessions and a shared space led by T:>Works’ Artistic Director, Dr. Ong Keng Sen for the Curators Academy. Beginning with lectures, the series culminated with consultations and clinics in June 2020.
PerForm Lecture: Inaugural Lecture with Shubigi Rao
Releasing 15 May 2022
Credits: 1
In this inaugural PerForm digital lecture hosted by Dr. Ong Keng Sen, Shubigi Rao discusses her practice as a writer, artist, and artist-curator for the 5th edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2021, and the overlaps and tensions between them. Shubigi discusses the connections between on-site artistic production and her work as an artist-curator, as well as the ways in which artistic strategies inform curatorial research. Drawing from her curatorial experiences in a pandemic-affected world, she examines the position of artist-curator within a potentially fraught biennale-model, and the forms of knowledge generation that could potentially be sustained through such curatorial research and practice.
Perform Digital Keynote Lecture by Ho Rui An,
From Crisis To Value*
Releasing 15 May 2022
Credits: 1
In this digital keynote From Crisis to Value*, our second PerForm fellow, artist and writer, Ho Rui An discusses his recent and ongoing bodies of work exploring the material networks and geopolitical imaginaries that have animated the regions of East and Southeast Asia. He guides us through his research trajectory, beginning with an investigation of the so-called Asian financial crisis of the late nineties, to the political economy of post-reform China, and to the impact of the pandemic and the new socio-economic realities it presents us with. Spanning the mediums of performance, film, and installation, Ho’s works variously examine the relationship between race and financial capitalism, the student as a figure of capitalist modernity and radical culture, the displacement of class politics by a discourse of anti-corruption amidst the systemic crises of late capitalism, and, most recently, the textile industry and its many afterlives within the Greater China region.
From Crisis to Value* is part of Ho Rui An’s two-part programme in 2021, including this lecture, and a video installation of Asia the Unmiraculous at 72-13, Singapore.
Perform Digital Keynote Lecture by Nurul Huda Rashid,
Image, Data, Actor: Unpacking Images of Muslim Women
Releasing 15 May 2022
Credits: 1
The third PerForm fellow, researcher-writer Nurul Huda Rashid, is currently pursuing her PhD in Cultural Studies. Her research focuses on images and narratives, visual and sentient bodies, feminisms, and the intersections between them. Her digital lecture, Image, Data, Actor: Unpacking Images of Muslim Women is moderated by T:>Works’ Artistic Director Dr. Ong Keng Sen.
The Muslim woman has been a consistent subject of representation across regimes of historical colonialism and Orientalism, in events such as the Arab Spring and post-9/11, and mediated widely via news and social media. These have included variegated representations from the odalisque to the ‘oppressed’ which have converged the identity of the Muslim woman to the single image and symbol of the hijab (veil). Spanning across different bodies of work, this lecture will introduce and plot Nurul’s photographic, annotative, and participatory research that have engaged with representations of Muslim women from the daguerreotype to data. These projects will be discussed alongside the medium of photography and the data shift, which transforms the self into data, rendering those in the margins as ‘absent data’. Through self-reflexive means and methods, the context of ‘absent data’ will become site for artistic explorations and aspire towards a recalibration of Muslim women identified via the role of the Muslim woman as ‘actor’ in rethinking processes of image-making.
DIGITAL PRODUCTIONS
KING (2020)
Jo Tan
Available 10 April to 14 May 2022
Credits: 2
KING, presented by T:>Works, centred on the theme of gender and body politics. It features a Singapore “OL” (office lady) who seemingly has it all – a stable job and a boyfriend who is about to propose. But one fateful office party, she crossdresses as a man, and her life transforms, revealing with satire and wit the accesses and limits of male privilege.
KING, written and performed by Jo Tan, was first developed under Checkpoint Theatre, with dramaturgy by Huzir Sulaiman. Festival of Women N.O.W. Artistic Director Noorlinah Mohamed saw the potential of turning KING into a performance on a digital platform, thereby circumventing the challenges of a lock-down during the pandemic. The livestreamed performance was directed by Jasmine Ng. In 2022, KING received five nominations from the Straits Times Life Theatre Awards and won two awards for Best Actress and Best Original Script.
Credits:
Written and Performed by – JO TAN
Directed by – JASMINE NG
Artistic Director, Festival of Women N.O.W. – NOORLINAH MOHAMED
Technical Direction by – HANAFI HAFFIDZ
Stage Management by – SAMANTHA CHIA
Sound Design by – RAYMOND GOEI
Technical Management by – ARTFACTORY
Camera Operation by – CAI RUI RONG | JAZLYN SONG | RANJENEE K.
Projection Operation by – SHAHFEEQ MOHAMED
The Swimming Pool Library (2021)
Brian Gothong Tan
Available 10 April to 31 May 2022
Credits: 2
Reflecting an unconventional rite of passage where society’s labels of gender and sexuality may not necessarily apply, The Swimming Pool Library by acclaimed visual artist Brian Gothong Tan, is an immersive, multi-sensorial production that looks at the relevance of society’s definitions of masculinity, and explores how feminine traits such as tenderness, kindness and vulnerability can also be part of masculine identity.
The Swimming Pool Library by Brian Gothong Tan is part of Tan’s artistic atelier within T:>Atelier. It consisted of a live performance, exhibition and series of engagement talks by artists and LGBTQ+ activists. The exhibition was split into various chapters that mark milestones in a rite of passage, reflected through the director’s intimate, surreal lens. Paper sketches, paintings, 3D printed sculptures, 3D film photography and DIY books evoke memories of a boy trying to make sense of who he is, and where life will take him. Complementing this was a live performance specially choreographed for the camera and performed in-situ at 72-13, while simultaneously live-cast over the internet. In 2022, The Swimming Pool Library received three nominations from the Straits Times Life Theatre Awards, including Best Set, Best Lighting and Best Costume.
Credits:
Director – BRIAN GOTHONG TAN
Associate Producer – JAMES J. TAY
Stage Manager – Justina Khoo
Lighting Designer & Technical Manager – Andy Lim
Sound Designer – BOON
Asst. to Brian / Set Coordinator – M. Nurfadhli Jasni
Costume Designer – Theresa Chan
Live-cast Editor – Eric Lee
Camera Director – Teh Yee Sheng
Asst. Stage Manager – Christopher Ong
Lighting Operator – Yafiq Harrax Bin Mohamed Yunos
Multimedia Operator – Raziatie Bte Razmi
Sound Operator – Mohamed Mirza Shah Bin Mohamed Iqbal
Production Crew – Jed Lim
Wardrobe – Janette Audrey Chee Min
Publicity / Marketing Design – Howie Kim
Cast (in alphabetical order) – Azizul ‘Izzy’ Mahathir (a.k.a Vanda Miss Joaquim) | Irfan Kasban | Karen Tan | Lian Sutton | Ronald Goh | Umi Kalthum Bte Ismail
Texts:
Poems performed from “Exhale: An Anthology of Queer Singapore Voices”
“Self portrait as river as town plan as stumbling as seen on google earth” – Stephanie Chan
“Bargaining with the Patriarch with apologies to Deniz Kandiyoti” – Carissa Cheow
“Beautiful Boxer” – Andy Winter
“Everyone Said It Would Feel Sacred When It Happened” – Stephanie Chan
“Health Cock Up” – Ad Maulod
“Thirst” – Rodrigo Dela Peña, Jr
“Girls” – Irie Aman
“An X-Rated Ode” – Nikhil Mahapatra
“Ode to Happy Together” – Paul Jerusalem
“83” – Irfan Kasban
“I watch the student actors perform Angels in America the day after I am diagnosed positive” – Andrew Sutherland
Extracts from “Various Gangsters” – Spell#7
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