Deadmau5 Arrives in Saigon as the City’s Electronic Dance Music Scene Expands (via Saigoneer)
Thousands of dancing fans gathered before an enormous digital cube covered in screens displaying memes, video game cutscenes, clips of endorphin-addled cartoon cats and random flashings of screensaver-esque visualizations while synthesizer strings slithered across a thumping bassline punctuated with warped…
“Anticipation of One”: Futuristic Rituals of Sight and Sound
By Pow Jun Kai (588 words, 5-minute read) The artistic intention to merge histories and futures is almost always poised as a double-edged sword. One mounts the impossible task of adhering to an imaginary time that is not re-presentable; the…
“A Dream Under the Southern Bough – The Beginning”: Kun Opera for the Millennial Stage
By Jocelyn Chng (813 words, 5-minute read) A Festival Commission for the Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA) 2018, Toy Factory’s A Dream Under the Southern Bough – The Beginning is, as the title suggests, the first part of a…
Thai street artists send political messages against corruption and military rule with spray and stencils (via SCMP)
A growing number of Thai street artists are turning political and getting their anti-corruption messages across with spray paint. Most keep their identity secret for fear of reprisals from the authorities. South China Morning Post speaks with three artists. There…
How one artist is exploring his roots through vibrant, surreal artworks (via SEA Globe)
Hasanul Isyraf Idris is a Malaysian artist who works with a variety of different materials to present his often intricate and surreal ideas, inspired by his home country’s colourful history. Hasanul Isyraf Idris’s fourth solo feature with Richard Koh Fine…
“OCD Love” by L-E-V Dance Company: Mental Illness Plus Dance Equals Ballet and Horror
By Chan Sze-Wei (849 words, 5 minute read) L-E-V Dance company’s OCD Love is tightly choreographed and intense in its physicality, as might be expected from a choreographer issuing from years dancing, choreographing and directing for the iconic Batsheva Company…
Mayfly Docus: “Die Tomorrow” and “14 Apples” at SIFA’s “Singular Screens”
By Dan Koh (1,715 words, 15-minute read) At this year’s Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA), the two films from Southeast Asia are documentaries, or hybrid-documentaries—just like last year’s three, curiously. Despite the glaring gaps that remain in the funding,…
“Version 2020”: Dataran Merdeka Sebagai Tapak A̶r̶k̶e̶o̶l̶o̶g̶i̶ Ideologi Tentang Masa Depan
Oleh Fasyali Fadzly (1075 patah kata, 9-minit bacaan) Saya mengambil masa yang lama untuk menyiapkan tulisan mengenai teater Version 2020 yang diarahkan oleh Mark Teh. Ia sebuah teater yang memerlukan pengamatan yang tajam, pengetahuan yang luas dan pemahaman terhadap konteks…
In the Mood of Brian Gothong Tan: Lost Cinema at Institute of Contemporary Arts (via Invisible Flâneuse)
The woman in the cheongsam and upswept hairdo walks into the audience’s line of sight from behind a pillar, carrying a tiffin carrier. She poses, every gesture and expression countenanced to project drama and artifice, and many of her poses are…
Is Singapore losing its standing as the art hub of Southeast Asia? (via SEA Globe)
Despite the government’s desperate attempts to position Singapore as Southeast Asia’s arts hub, flagging figures at major shows and accusations of artificiality have put the city-state’s art scene under more scrutiny than ever Singapore has long tried to combat its…
…Sodade… at SIFA 2018
An enchanting French evening of aerial circus performed to live music. …Sodade… is a nostalgic ode to life, a fable of love and loss in the air as told by two musicians playing and singing on a unique circus structure…
“I am trying to say something true”: A Distant Intimacy
By Akanksha Raja (950 words, five minute read) Even before watching Michelle Tan’s monologue, I am trying to say something true, the title struck me: the sentence-case format portends a quiet sense of conversational intimacy, compared to the conventional, title-case…
“Railtrack Songmaps Roosting Post 1”: The Featherlight of Complexity
By Marcus Yee (970 words, 7-minute read) Tucked in Queenstown Residence Committee Centre is a heartfelt homage to Tanglin Halt and the nearby Rail Corridor, nexus of human and bird relationals, collected by Railtrack Songmaps Roosting Post 1. Conceived out…
This Rapper Is On a Mission to Empower Filipino Women (via Broadly)
Ruby Ibarra is a rapper you’ve probably heard, but haven’t heard of—at least not yet. The Filipina-American recently made the rounds in a nationwide Mastercard commercial that also featured musicians like SZA, Radkey, and Victoria Canal. Each artist performed their take…
One year of Filipina punk feminism and rebellion (via Dazed)
Recently, GRRRL GANG MANILA, a feminist collective inspired by DIY ethics and punk aesthetics, celebrated its first anniversary in the Philippine capital. A long discussion of women’s issues, a film screening, spoken word performances and art exhibitions, and then hours…
“Thick Beats for Good Girls” Keeps It 100
By Patricia Tobin (780 words, five-minute read) It is 2007 on a Thursday night, and I am at the old Phuture on Zion Road. “Smack that, all on the floor,” Akon’s hit single Smack That is booming from the club…
Many Lives in “A Good Death”
By Akanksha Raja (1,000 words, six-minute read) Four of the five productions from this year’s season of The Studios are commissioned works revolving around the theme of “Between Living and Dying”. Most of these are new, original monologues recounting deeply…
SIFA 2018: Walking death’s footsteps in Zelda Tatiana Ng’s “0600”
0600 is named for the time that executions are carried out. What makes an artist take on the polarising topic of the death penalty in Singapore? Zelda Tatiana Ng has been a fixture in the Singapore performing arts scene for…
Zai Kuning’s “Dapunta Hyang”: Homeward Bound From Venice
Dapunta Hyang: Transmission of Knowledge by Zai Kuning returns from its showing at the 2017 Venice Biennale for a month long exhibition at Theatreworks Singapore. The exhibition runs from 12 April through 13 May 2018. A series…
“Four Horse Road”: buried histories and blind spots
By Corrie Tan (2,400 words, 13-minute read) Four Horse Road is The Theatre Practice’s show pony of the year. It’s got a lot of performance buzzwords going for it – site-specific, interactive, multi-generational, multilingual – and promises an epic odyssey…
SIFA 2018: “OCD Love”‘s Dancing in the Face of Love
By Kathy Rowland (400 words, 3 minute read) “I asked her out six times in thirty seconds.” In 2013, a Youtube video by slam poet Neil Hilborn went viral. In the clip, Hilborn delivers an impassioned performance of OCD, a…
The Loud Echo of “In the Silence of Your Heart”
By Corrie Tan (1,160 words, six-minute read) The audio tours of spell#7 – the husband-wife duo of Kaylene Tan and Paul Rae – promise a variety of small adventures. In their previous work, they’ve invited us to move through several…
The Legacy of Kak Channthy, Cambodia’s Rock and Roll Heroine (via Saigoneer)
For many Cambodian music fans, March 20 was a heartbreaking day because Kak Channthy – the 38-year-old female vocal of the band The Cambodian Space Project – passed away in an accident in Phnom Penh. Founded in 2009, The Cambodian Space…
Dinh Q. Lê’s “Monuments and Memorials”: A Double Haunting
By Elaine Chiew (1,135 words, six-minute read) Spectral and iconic, Dinh Q. Lê’s first major solo exhibition in Singapore premieres his Monuments and Memorials series of works, created as artist-in-residence at STPI – Creative Workshop and Gallery. Born in 1968…
Citra Sasmita captures the Indonesian contemporary art spotlight (via Life As Art Asia)
The most significant display of contemporary art on the island during 2015 featured many of Bali’s finest artists exhibiting side-by-side with emerging talent. Violent Bali – Bali Art Intervention #1, opened at the Tony Raka Art Gallery, Ubud in November presenting eighty-five…
“Potong” by Teater Ekamatra: Of Kin and Skin
By Akanksha Raja (825 words, four-minute read) We’ve been seeing a variety of theatre revolving around dementia and its effects on families in Singapore over the past few years, such as Pangdemonium’s The Father, The Necessary Stage’s Don’t Forget to…
“Ngopi” by P7:1SMA: Stop and Smell the Coffee
By Chan Sze-Wei (1,110 words, six-minute read) Norhaizad Adam’s second full length work with his company P7:1SMA (say “prisma”) is set in another world. The audience steps through the door of the Drama Centre Black Box into an arena of…
Documentation, Restoration, and Repatriation? Reflections on a dance film screening for the ‘Bali 1928’ project (via New Mandala)
Bali 1928 is an ongoing international and interdisciplinary project established by American ethnomusicologist Edward Herbst in 2002 to “research, find, understand, document, explain, restore, re-release, and repatriate the first published recordings of music in Bali along with rare film footage and photographs of musicians…
The Curious Case of Hai Phong’s Nude Zodiac Sculptures (via Saigoneer)
An art installation in Hai Phong has become the butt of jokes online. You’ve probably seen them by now on your newsfeed: a set of 12 stone statues, each taking the form of one of Vietnam’s astrological sign animals. While…
Mai Khoi, ‘Vietnam’s Lady Gaga’, detained for eight hours in Hanoi after European tour (via SEA Globe)
Vietnamese singer and political activist Mai Khoi was detained for eight hours in a move that Human Rights Watch says points to intensified government efforts to stifle political opposition Vietnamese singer and pro-democracy activist Mai Khoi was detained for eight…