Singapore Archives · CLIMATES. HABITATS. ENVIRONMENTS.

The Current Convening #3 Tabu / Tapu – Who Owns the Ocean? marks the culmination of TBA21–Academy The Current’s first cycle of expeditions, bringing together The Current Fellows; thought leaders from diverse disciplines; local agencies and activist NGOs. Through discursive events including talanoa discussions, case studies, workshops, provocations, as well as performative events, Convening #3 shares with a wider public the research and challenges generated through the format of such expeditions. It focuses on the modalities of exchange, addresses environmental urgencies, raises questions regarding responsibilities and ownership, and discusses whether rights of nature can be equal to human rights. Environmental researchers, conservationists, anthropologists, and policymakers will share a platform that invites active and creative participation on how we can understand and effect the development to international law, policies, culture, and environmental education.

Coinciding with NTU CCA Singapore’s current exhibition The Oceanic, featuring contributions by TBA21–Academy The Current Fellows from the first cycle of expeditions (2015–17), Convening #3 marks the culmination of inquiries on the vessel Dardanella to the Pacific archipelagos of Trobriand Islands in Papua New Guinea; the Tuamotus in French Polynesia; and the Lau Island Group in Fiji.

The Current Convening #3 Tabu / Tapu – Who Owns the Ocean? has been conceived by Markus Reymann, Director of TBA21–Academy; Stefanie Hessler,Curator of TBA21–Academy; and Professor Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director of NTU CCA Singapore, and expedition leader of The Current’s first cycle.

Tang’s work reflects a deep concern for ecological crises and mass extinction, drawing influences from acoustic ecology, phenomenology, electronic, and experimental music. His practice involves capturing sonic emanations of non-human inhabitants and translating audible phenomena into visual experiences using a mix of analogue and digital technologies. The studio becomes a testing ground for immersive multisensorial installations that visualize and animate field recordings from various natural environments in Singapore. This process allows Tang to create alternative connections between humans and non-humans, challenging anthropocentric hierarchies and conventional understandings of nature. He experiments with new sound compositions and modes of listening, pushing the boundaries of conventional perception. Additionally, he explores drawing as a means of creating "visual scores" in response to his soundscapes, further expanding how he communicates his artistic concepts.

His immersive and reflexive experiences have been showcased in various international exhibitions and festivals, including the Busan Biennale, NTT InterCommunication Center in Tokyo, and the Singapore Biennale. Tang's artistic process is rooted in the exploration of human and nonhuman connectivity and offers a unique perspective on the urgency of listening to and understanding nature in the face of environmental challenges.

Residencies Rewired Session #1, 2021, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore

Presentation: Lêna Bùi (Vietnam) & Elizabeth Ang (Singapore) – “Kindred”
Coalescing research and materials gathered over the past months on botanical histories, flora, and fauna, as well as historical characteristics relating to their respective cities—Saigon and Singapore—Lêna and Elizabeth compose a short text collaboratively which unfolds narratives of growth and decay, cycles of development and reincarnation, and also evokes the diversity of the region.

Welcomed by Professor Simon Redfern, Dean of the College of Science and an active volcanologist, this symposium brings together scientists and academics across various disciplines in conversation with artists to encourage further exchanges and collaboration between scientific and artistic research and practice.

Professor Ute Meta Bauer, Principal Investigator of this project, will focus on the increasing engagement of artists in the climate crisis and other stresses that impact habitats and environments. Drawing from an expansive network of artists, Bauer relays the potential and impact of environmentally-engaged artistic practice to navigate the complexity of climate change. As an exploration of this inquiry, the Environmentally-Engaged Artistic Practices database will be launched during the symposium. The ambition for this online tool is to provide an entry point to connect artists, climate scientists, researchers and policymakers in similar regions of study or areas of expertise to develop transdisciplinary research methods.

Yeo Siew Hua (Filmmaker, Director) and Dr Marc Glöde (Assistant Professor, NTU School of Art, Design and Media)

Conceived during the month of the Hungry Ghost Festival in 2019, while large scale fires were consuming the forests of Indonesia, Yeo Siew Hua's 'An Invocation to the Earth' confronts climate collapse through the lense of pre-colonial folktales and animistic rituals. Through spoken spells and bodily entanglements, the video conjures up the fallen environmental defenders of a region ridden with ecological threats in the hope that their spirits will be reborn once again.

This recording is part of the two-day symposium, "Environmentally-Engaged Artistic Practices in South, Southeast Asia and the Pacific" held at NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, supported by the Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund Tier 1 Project (RG39/21) and led by Principal Investigator, Professor Ute Meta Bauer. This symposium was organised by Professor Ute Meta Bauer and Research Assistant Angela Ricasio Hoten, School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University Singapore with additional support from Eunice Lacaste, PhD Candidate at NTU ADM.

Som Supaparinya (Artist, Thailand), Dr Erich Wolff (Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Asian School of Environment and Earth Observatory of Singapore, NTU), Dr Stefan Huebner (Senior Research Fellow, Asia Research Institute, NUS), moderated by Laura Miotto (Associate Professor, NTU School of Art, Design and Media).

In this discussion, our panellists bring together insights from the disciplines of art, architecture, history and engineering towards the generative potentialities of varying strategies for climate adaptation for water-based communities, drawing both from the past and thinking toward speculative futures.

Nashin Mahtani (Peta Bencana and Climate Emergency Software Alliance, Indonesia), Dr Sang-Ho Yun (Director, Remote Sensing Lab, Earth Observatory of Singapore; Associate Professor, Asian School of the Environment and School of Electric and Electronic Engineering, NTU, Singapore), moderated by Eunice Lacaste (PhD Candidate, NTU ADM).

Previous collaborators Nashin Mahtani, and Dr Sang-Ho Yun, will discuss the applications of satellite technology for localised tracking of disasters through smartphones. Learn about their previous collaboration on disaster risk reduction in Indonesia and how they utilised technology to construct more equitable forms of climate risk response and adaptation to the region.

Nice Buenaventura (Artist, Philippines), Serina Abdul Rahman (Lecturer, Department of Southeast Asia Studies, NUS), moderated by Soh Kay Min (Research Associate, NTU ADM).

Filipina artist Nice Buenaventura and lecturer Serina Abdul Rahman discuss the value and importance of citizen-centered learning along the archipelago. Moderated by research associate, Soh Kay Min, the panel will discuss the ways that weather shapes community fishing practices and local knowledge and how these communities respond to changing weather through varied projects of counter-mapping.

Ang Song Nian (Artist, Lecturer at NTU ADM, Singapore), Zen Teh (Artist, Singapore), Dr Ching Jianhong (Assistant Professor, Duke-NUS), moderated by Angela Ricasio Hoten (Research Assistant, NTU ADM)

We bring together long-term collaborators, artist Zen Teh and scientist Dr Ching Jianhong alongside image-based artist and lecturer at the NTU School of Art, Design and Media, Ang Song Nian to discuss lens-based artistic practices and their application to data visualisation and scientific communication. Moderated by Angela Ricasio Hoten, research assistant on the Tier 1 grant, this panel will explore the ways that artistic practices enhance scientific enquiries, looking more precisely at how lens-based work can contribute to public discourse around topics such as haze. The panel will also discuss some of the challenges faced by artists and scientists to create distinctions between transdisciplinary, interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary vernacular.

Time reference (in video) = 0:00 - 1:41

Spectres is an artistic response to the notion of the Anthropocene. This new geological epoch is defined by humanity's radical effect on the Earth's equilibrium and the burgeoning number of species becoming extinct.

Evoking a dystopian future where the wildlife of this island has all but vanished, Spectres is an immersive environment haunted by the remnants of sounds that once inhabited Singapore. This work takes the form of an audio-visual installation derived from Tang's archive of field recordings from local natural habitats. These deceased sonorities have been brought back to life and re-animated using digital imaging and sound visualisation techniques. However, the ethereal images and sounds that emerge from this process no longer resemble the creatures from which they originated. They have metamorphosed into a myriad of phantasmagoric forms and disfigured expressions, embodying a sonorous vision of a desolate horizon. In confronting the spectre of extinction, we are invited to reconnect with that which remains in the present and imagine alternative paths towards the future. By day, Spectres is an audio-visual installation exploring the spectre of extinction. By night, it transforms into a performance space, Spectres LIVE, where local musicians respond to the thematic threads within the work through improvisational and experimental dialogues.

_{Cover image credits: Zai Tang, Spectres & Spectres, 2017. 72-13, Singapore. Image credits The KYT Studio.}

Time reference (in video) = 2:59 - 4:06

Escape Velocity I takes the form of a soundscape composition accompanied by a visual score and stems from the artist's interest in interspecies communication as well as from his refusal of the capitalist politics of speed. The field recordings were made between 2013 and 2016 in Singapore, at Bukit Brown Cemetry, MacRitchie Reservoir, and the Rail Corridor, three areas whose thriving biodiversity is threatened by the uncompromising needs of urban transformation. Bird songs and wildlife calls have been augmented and slowed down, rendering the unique characteristics of their sonorous expressions more easily perceivable to the human ear. The composition has been pressed on to a dubplate record resting on a turntable to be played by the audience. With each play, the dubplate wears down and the sounds within the grooves gradually disappear over the course of the exhibition.

_{Cover image credit: Zai Tang, Escape Velocity I, 2018. MOCA Yinchuan, China. Image credits MOCA Yinchuan.}

Escape Velocity II is an experiment in bringing the ethereal voices of the Singaporean wild to life through animation and sound visualisation. Featuring a composition of slowed down field recordings from Bukit Brown, MacRitchie and the Rail Corridor, this synaesthetic installation was originally set within the concrete belly of West Coast Highway.

The visual element of the piece originates from scans of Zai Tang's hand drawn visual score from Escape Velocity I (2018), created in response to the sensuous qualities of creatures recorded in each locale. Building upon past audio-visual creations with artists and animator Simon Ball, their collaborative process is centred on experimentation between the senses; searching for ways to embody sonorous beings and the soundscapes in which they dwell through a visual choreography of animated forms, spaces and architectures. Situating itself in opposition to the momentum of modernity and anthropocentrism, Escape Velocity II is an experiential exploration of attunement to the other we call Nature; an attempt to bridge the gap between human and nonhuman worlds.

To preview the full-length version please contact email@zaitang.com

_{Cover image credit: Zai Tang, Escape Velocity II, 2018. West Coast Highway, Singapore. Image credits Tucky's Photography.}

Escape Velocity III is an installation situated within the tensions between nature as a thing-in-itself (before we project our human ideas on it) and nature as it is constructed by the state and through capital.

The work utilises field recordings made in the forests and parks near to the Mandai Rejuvenation Project area. This 7-year re-development of existing wildlife habitats aims to create a complete eco-tourist destination which integrates with the Singapore Zoo, Night and River Safaris. Whilst the 'rejuvenation' positions itself in terms of sustainability and re-connection with nature, it nonetheless contains inherent contradictions because of its human-centric perspective; the many creatures and the delicate ecologies embedded within the area have been displaced and impacted. So, rather than close the distance between the human and the nonhuman, it recreates it through its anthropocentrism.

On one side of the installation space a turntable plays a dubplate record containing slowed down and largely unedited recordings of various birds. On the other side another turntable spins and underneath it there is a computer running a custom-coded software, which listens to the dubplate record. At regular intervals the dubplate is sampled, re-sequenced and played back according to a central compositional logic. The original sounds, now augmented, are set into a machine-like motion and reconstituted into the rhythm of Singapore, a city in a garden.

Accompanying this sonic dialogue are two visual scores, each rendered in different media and created as a response to each side of the conflicting soundscape.

_{Cover image credit: Zai Tang, Escape Velocity III, 2019. Gillman Barracks, Singapore. Image credits Singapore Art Museum.}

Created alongside Simon Ball, Escape Velocity IV is an animated visualisation of soundscape recordings made in the forests near to the Mandai Project in Singapore. The area this development is taking place in is undergoing transformation from a rich natural habitat into a 'complete nature destination', to be integrated with the existing zoo and safaris. Within the film, abstract visuals are choreographed in response to the sensuous sonorous character of the creatures that have been recorded, inviting the audience to tune-in to a deep listening experience. For Tang this gesture of listening deeply is a form of attunement which can help us develop more meaningful connections to our surroundings and close the gap between humans and the other we call nature.

To preview the full-length version please contact email@zaitang.com.

_{Cover image credit: Zai Tang, Escape Velocity IV, 2019. Gillman Barracks, Singapore. Image credits Singapore Art Museum.}

"What does it mean to listen to Nature in a time of ecological crisis?" asks Zai Tang. Escape Velocity V, the artist's latest surround sound installation, sets his local wildlife recordings in motion towards a darker horizon. This presentation builds upon Tang' longstanding exploration of sites threatened by urbanization and hyper-development. Here, in the artificial night of the gallery, voices of the Singaporean wild allude to the rhythms and dynamics of the city, conjuring sonic imaginaries that accelerate towards extinction. Visitors are invited to adjust their senses to dwell in darkness, making room for spectres of the creaturely and the non-human.

_{Cover image credit: Zai Tang, Escape Velocity V, 2021. National Gallery Singapore, Singapore. Image credits Singapore Art Museum.}

Zarina Muhammad, (b. 1982, Singapore) is a Singaporean artist, educator, and researcher whose practice is entwined with a critical re-examination of oral histories, ethnographic literature, and other historiographic accounts about Southeast Asia. Zarina Muhammad works at the intersections of performance, text, installation, ritual, sound, moving image, and participatory practice. She is interested in the broader contexts of eco-cultural and ecological histories, mythmaking, haunted historiographies, water cosmologies, and chthonic realms. She has been working on a long-term interdisciplinary project on Southeast Asia’s changing relationship with spectrality, ritual magic, polysensoriality, and the immaterial against the dynamics of global modernity, the social production of rationality, and transcultural knowledge exchanges. She currently lives and works in Singapore.

From the artist on her practice:

"One of my first departure points on capturing data from plants and biomusic stems from the idea of silence and the silenced. While I do not specifically aim to anthropomorphised, or to translate these data to a language that our human mind can comprehend, also not so much in the context of new age philosophy, my base practice as a sound engineer, seek to use technology to measure the galvanic conductance in living beings, a form of bio-electricty and transform that data into sound for deep listening, contemplation and understanding. This has a lot to do with my appreciation for silence and the silenced, and through this practice, I learn more about microphone techniques and keeping the plants in my front yard alive. The symbol of contemplation and deep soundlessness is something I value a lot in my sound practice. We are constantly murmuring, muttering, scheming or wondering to ourselves, comforting ourselves, in a perverse fashion with our own silent voices. Just like the concept of ‘Ma’, a ‘living pause’ in Noh theatre, I appreciate the idea of a negative space between the memory of a sound heard and the anticipation of the next sound. Leonard Cohen endearingly named himself Jikan, which means the silence in between two thoughts. It is meaningful to consider all the contextual questions framing the piece of music and seeing it as a form of ‘completed work’ or can I simply enjoy the music as it is. The idea of the role of the artist as having transformed over time and the role of the creator of objects and how it contributes to the perceived ‘value’ of the work. I just don’t think we should stop learning."

Ute Meta Bauer is an educator and curator in the field of contemporary art and also the Principal Investigator on the MOE Tier 1 Academic Research Grant "Environmentally-Engaged Artistic Practices in South, Southeast Asia and the Pacific" from which this database was created. Since 2013, she has been the Founding Director of NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore and a Professor in the School of Art, Design, and Media at Nanyang Technological University. Her decade long enquiry into the theme Climates.Habitats.Environments. draws on the rich cultural heritage of Asia and beyond to transcend disciplinary boundaries and linear histories to affirm the role of cultural production in the fight for environmental and social justice.