A Weekend Affair

#aweekendmonthly

Re-presentation of works by selected artists showcased at the previous Weekend Affair event in 2019, as well as a presentation of the ongoing monthly sharing of readings titled, #aweekendmonthly. Since the initial conceptualisation of “the affair”, our research and studies have been shared publicly, as a way to get in touch with the general sentiments and understanding of the concerned. For every first weekend of the month, we share our thoughts on the readings of subjects in tandem to the agenda of A Weekend Affair.

Kin Chui and ila — Makin’ Makan A menu that takes the form of the Kueh as inspiration in imagining what politics can manifest in the aesthetic forms of food. Part experiment, part speculative fiction.

Pitchaya Ng — Who Moves and Who Doesn’t attempts to investigate the capability of smell and its relationship to bodies and societies, how smell orients us through lines of history and how it participates in the revolutionary act of becoming 'civilised’. The narratives in the performance is guided through lines of sociology of smell to group orientation negated by smell, smell as an invisible boundary that dissolves territory lines, how deodorisation is used as a method of colonisation, and the possibility of re-odorisation as a method of reterritorialising space or ground, and how smell can show itself as evidence of beings.

Zhiyi Cao — Flexier Than You Part video-screening, part collective-reading, an exercise in thinking through the labour and anxieties of ‘creatives’ amongst a population that believes being neoliberal is a personality. Taking the rise of co-working spaces as a point of departure, and through the voices of two thoroughly millennial figures, this project seeks to (dis)entangle the relations between creativity, competition and control.

Artist Caravan

Genetic Landscape
2020
zine/book

Presenting a sharing and preview about our current project, which is the first issue of Genetic Landscape zine/book, due to be published by June 2020.

Ayer Ayer Project

Shore Debris Table Malaya
2019
Repurposed wood, sand, shore debris, paperboard, cotton, indigo dye
10m(L) x 0.8(W) x 1.8m(H)

The installation is made from salvaged wooden floor planks from a storm-damaged fishing boat from Pontian,a fishing town on the west coast of Malaysia. Measuring almost 10m in length, it features the coastline of Malaysia carved into the recovered wooden planks. The work features shore debris and microplastics collected from the Malaysian peninsula and an oceanic flag designed by the artist. Participants are invited to remove microplastic fragments from amongst the shore debris. Modelled after a standing sushi bar, this participatory artwork confronts us with plastic pollution's effects on our oceanic environment, not only along our beaches but also how microplastics are entering our food.

BRACK

ROOM

Brack presents some traces of research-workshops conducted in the recent past. Built off an adaptation of the “ROOM” (a multi-sensory improvised collaborative storytelling experience for one or more participants at a time), the research-workshops explore questions integral to our interdisciplinary and collaborative practice. How do people come together to build a world? How do we work towards a singular vision while accommodating plural voices? How do we exercise choice, agency, surrender, and faith? This presentation offers snapshots of ideas germane to Brack’s broader interests for the Substation Associate Artist Programme: conducting research experiments that explore acts of gathering and hospitality amidst conflict and disruption. Our focus for the programme is to explore notions of collaborative play and co-creation which are not only constructive but also restorative and even potentially transformative, seeking common ground and relatedness beyond our individual interests. Alongside our experiments, we also plan to use this programme to critically reflect upon Brack's artistic methodology and praxis.

Chu Hao Pei

White Building Ordination (unrealised)
2017
Cut out photographs & monk’s robe, Single channel video & sound installation Dimensions variable, HD colour with sound, 3’44” Each monk's robe: 290cm X 190cm (4 pieces)

During an eight-week Pisaot residency with Sa Sa Art Projects, I researched on nature conservation practices in Cambodia. I met with some activists, environmental protection organizations as well as Buddhist monk groups who work on various environmental conservation projects. In particular, I am interested in the act of ordination — wrapping of monk’s robe — on trees as a religious and political gesture to save the forest, which has been practiced throughout Southeast and South Asia. Concerned with the confrontation and conflict between conservation and development, I explored with monk’s robe ordination and discussion on protecting the White Building’s community in light of the current residents-government negotiation on the building’s onsite redevelopment – The White Building is subject to a takeover plan by a Japanese company, with the support of the Cambodian government. White Building (originally known as the Municipal Apartments), which was part of the ambitious Bassac River Front cultural complex that lay on reclaimed land along the Bassac River. Designed by Cambodian architect Lu Ban Hap and Russian architect Vladimir Bodiansky, and inaugurated in 1963, the White Building comprised of 468 apartments, and was the first attempt to offer multi-storey modern urban lifestyle to lower- and middle-class Cambodians.

Farhan Idris

TRIUNE
Videos, talk and discussion

I will develop three strands of art critique throughout the course of the programme, developing the work I have been doing the past half a year so:
(a) A critique of Eurocentric modes of viewing (‘Re-envisioning bodily the world anew’ via mandalas and its uses by Indian/ Nepali artists)
(b) Collective exhaustion in the arts (Can, Cannot, and Other Options: Communities of the Exhausted) (c.f. this is a project also involving another AAP participant, A Weekend Affair) (c) A critique of posthuman discourse in the arts (Inhuman Indecisions)

For the opening, I wish to have an exhibit: three videos of 5 minutes long each (for each strand) affixed to a wall (with headphones). These videos are interviews of what I feel is at stake when talking about these particular critiques. Underneath the videos will be texts (two paragraphs long) explaining what I will be doing in strands a, b and c. In addition, I will conduct a discussion and sharing session on my project TRIUNE, especially with the concept Can, Cannot, and Other Options: Communities of the Exhausted as a programme event during the opening weekend. This will be a discussion at the Substation involving myself and Joleen Loh (curator, National Gallery Singapore).

Fertile Art Refinery (FAR)

FARgmented Selves
2020
Mixed media installation
192cm x 108cm x 32cm

A collection of self-portraits of FAR artists. As a young collective, members box their art practice to orient their place in relation to other individuals within their creative community. The works construct a collective identity through fragments of the individual selves.

Come Home to Your Cat
Performance with installation by Veronyka Lau with Bernice Lee, Ranice Tay, Jireh Koh & Haylee Han (16 April)
Playing off Substation’s The Arts Come Home theme, Come Home to Your Cat is a participatory movement piece where performers and the audience respond to and interact with a giant cat (with or without a mask). A cat invokes feelings of compassion, care, comfort, kin, family, togetherness. It is hoped that a larger than life cat will inspire actions and movements amongst its performers and the audience that signal connectedness and camaraderie, creating a warm festive atmosphere.

Coming Home
Performance with installation by Eve Tan (30 April)
Materials: Cloth and wooden structure “House” (Size might change), photos and lights. The Substation was founded by Kuo Pao Kun in 1990. My journey with The Substation started from 1991 before my enrolment in NAFA. I was working at the Arts 2 (Gallery shop) and the box office. I will be sharing my journey as an artist with the audience.

Lai Yu Tong

Newspaper Paintings
2018 (ongoing)
Synthetic polymer paint on newspaper

The Newspaper Paintings series involves covering spreads of newspapers with layers of white paint that obscure large portions of each page, leaving only selected images floating precariously beside one another without text, captions, or dates. The series is heavily informed by photography — where selecting spreads of newspaper to paint on replaces the act of choosing subjects to photograph, painting around found images replaces the framing of an image through a viewfinder, and paint replaces the photographic frame.

Lee Sze-Chin

Virtually Home
A Silver Arts 2017 community arts project

A project that invited seniors to draw inspiration from their memories, experiences and personal stories of everyday Singapore to create their own digital tours and narratives.

Shaiful Risan

Snail Mail – Pasts Not Dead
1996-2000

Very intimate showcase and reading of snail mail received by curator Shaiful Risan, all from his early correspondences with international punk contacts through the old world form of letter writing between the period of 1996 to the early 2000s. Carefully selected; these 12 to 15 letters depict situational and casual conversations with punks, artists and other misfits from the world over.

Programme would include:
- dramatised readings of the letters – open-to-anyone reading of the actual letters
- sharing sessions