Features

Seelan Palay

Artist charged for illegal one-man procession from Hong Lim to Parliament House (via The Online Citizen)

Seelan Palay, a local artist, has been charged by the Attorney-General’s Chambers for participating in a public procession from Hong Lim Park to the National Gallery, and to the Parliament House on 1 October 2017. It is written in the charge sheet that the public procession is to publicise the cause of “the illegal detention

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A Singaporean Photographer’s Pursuit of Happiness in Bhutan (via New York Times Style Magazine Singapore)

“These are not the places we discussed, nor I wanted to go,” Singaporean photographer Billy Mork exclaimed in exasperation to his Bhutanese guide. Mork had just flown via the Royal Bhutan airline and landed at the taciturn kingdom’s Paro Airport. The guide picked him up and amiably brought him to take in some of the town’s famed tourist sites. Upon

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Nabilah Said

Making Our Own Centres (Of) Ourselves: Latiff Mohidin’s “Pago Pago (1960-1969)”

By Nabilah Said (2,220 words, 11-minute read) Had Malaysian artist-poet Latiff Mohidin been French, he might perhaps strongly identify with the idea of the flâneur. Coined by French poet Charles Baudelaire, the French word for someone who strolls in the city found cachet as a description of the artist-poet who drew inspiration from the city

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New Cambodian Artists

Modern dancers go toe-to-toe with Cambodian tradition (via the Christian Science Monitor)

Performing a dance in red stilettos is not allowed at Angkor Archaeological Park, but that’s not stopping Khun Sreynoch from working on it. As members of Cambodia’s first contemporary dance company, Ms. Sreynoch and her closest colleagues have known each other since they were children studying Cambodian classical dance, or Apsara. But in fusing old

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Indonesian Cinema

Beyond the Boxoffice: On the Cultural Relevance of Indonesian Cinema (via Cinema Poetica)

One might argue that we are entering the new golden era of Indonesian cinema. For the first time in the history of post-Reformation cinema, in two consecutive calendar years, the boxoffice top ten are fully dominated by films with more than one million viewers. In 2016 Anggy Umbara’s Warkop DKI Reborn: Jangkrik Boss! Part 1 took the pole position

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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 blurts distorted to the point of warbling. This overwhelming performance was all controlled by the

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ArtsEquatorRadar
Headache Stencil

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 are many ways to fight the establishment, and Headache Stencil does so with graffiti. The

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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 Art took place last week, showing at VOLTA art fair, New York. Titled Environment of

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Art Hub

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 reputation as a cultural desert. An influx of state funding in the past two decades

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Crispian Chan

“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 naming of theatre productions. The proclamation folds the struggle of confession with emotional vulnerability while

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Crispian Chan

Podcast 38: “Underclass《贱民》” Interview with Alvin Tan, Kok Heng Leun, and Teo You Yenn

Duration: 43 min The latest collaborative production between Singapore theatre companies Drama Box and The Necessary Stage is Underclass 《贱民》, which explores poverty, inequality and human dignity in Singapore. It runs from 16 May to 3 June 2018. In this podcast interview, Corrie Tan convenes Alvin Tan, artistic director of The Necessary Stage, Kok Heng Leun,

Podcast 38: “Underclass《贱民》” Interview with Alvin Tan, Kok Heng Leun, and Teo You Yenn Read More »

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Donna Ibarra

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 of the 1962 Bo Diddley song “You Can’t Judge a Book by the Cover.” For

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