“The references that artists use to inform their work are widely varied: these can be a song, a film, a novel, a fashion image, a building in their neighbourhood, a childhood memory and sometimes a combination of two or more of them. The possibilities and permutations are endless. Five Southeast Asian artists, Robert Zhao Renhui […]
“At an event last week, about 30 adults came together to present a community dance. Some of them were women and men in their 70s and had never danced in public before. The excitement on their faces, the joy in the gait as they took their positions and the sheer bliss they exuded while moving
Let’s Talk About Ageism and Dance [Singapore] Read More »
By Chan Sze-Wei (945 words, 9-minute read) “There are so many taboos and judgements around our bodies and the politics they carry. Let’s take the leap to talk and dance about tough questions. Let’s be unashamed. Walang hiya.” Over two weeks this February in Manila and Singapore, a group of dancers came together to look
Dancing Unashamed: ¡Walang Hiya! Read More »
“The theme of the exhibition is as intriguing as Cambodia itself: a land in which events of the past 50 years continue to weigh on people, even those far too young to have witnessed them. “Cambodia: Looking Back on the Future,” opening today in the U.S., will feature the works of 11 artists as well
Major Exhibition Takes Contemporary Cambodian Art to US [Cambodia] Read More »
“Twenty-five years ago I joined a team from the Japan Foundation on a tour of Isan to meet and talk to molam artists, as part of a project on Lao music in the region. We met up with the then-president of the Molam Association, National Artist Kane Dalao, and his two female molam partners, Boonpeng
Mesmerising molam [Thailand, Laos] Read More »
Photography By Zane Gan, text by Sean Ghazi Photographer Zane Gan tracks Sean Ghazi, who plays George in Wild Rice’s La Cage Aux Folles, capturing the camaraderie, rituals and water bottles that keep the show going on. The hit musical, directed by Glen Goei, runs until 13 May 2017. Making the rounds before the
Photo Essay: Backstage Pass to Wild Rice’s “La Cage Aux Folles” Read More »
Duration: 25 min “When we want to talk about tradition and contemporary … I see it as a kind of a recalibration, a relocation of form in this time and this space. Watching Raka and her group, to my eye, it was very difficult to say here is where tradition stops and here is where
Podcast 13: Classical and Contemporary Indian Dance Read More »
Surviving the Japanese Occupation: War and its Legacies, Former Ford Factory, open all week To mark – not commemorate – the 75th anniversary of the fall of Singapore, there’ll be an exhibition set in the Old Ford Factory, which was where the British surrendered to the Japanese forces on February 15, 1942. Spread across four
8 – 14 May 2017: Singapore Read More »
“From its headwaters in the Tibetan plateau, the Mekong River flows past six countries for over 4,000 kilometers to the South China Sea—but its journey is unquiet. Since the 1990s, the river has been punctuated by a string of Chinese hydropower dams, with dozens more in the works. Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam are also
Review: Oh Soon-Hwa’s “Coastal Regions (Delta)” at The Private Museum [Singapore] Read More »
“The violence meted out against people for their religious, political, and ethnic affiliations, often signaled by clothing and the symbols they wear, provides a lens through which to see abuses of power. All over the world, clothing and symbols can take on protective, threatening, or dangerous meanings. As happens in the West, discrimination against Muslims also occurs in Thailand and
Top Picks in Jakarta, Bandung and Yogyakarta from 8 – 14 May 2017 JAKARTA Europe on Screen 2017 @ Kineforum, 8 – 14 May 2017, Kineforum, Jakarta Europe on Screen 2017 continues with screenings of 33 films at Kineforum between 8 – 14 May 2017. Europe on Screen is an annual festival where
8 – 14 May 2017: Indonesia Read More »
“Neatly stashed away in an HDB flat somewhere in the western part of Singapore are a folded black robe, newspaper cuttings, tiles with splashes of red dye, and strands of pubic hair. These are all that remains of Josef Ng’s Brother Cane, one of the most controversial performances in Singapore’s contemporary art history. “Yes, everything
‘Brother Cane is part of me’: Josef Ng [Singapore] Read More »
“Ahead of Museum MACAN’s (Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara) slated opening in November 2017, we sat down with Aaron Seeto, director of the museum, to find out what’s planned for Indonesia’s first museum dedicated entirely to international modern and contemporary art. MACAN will officially be launching later this year, in November, and
Aaron Seeto and the Importance of Art Education [Indonesia] Read More »
“Kathy Foley, curator of Malay Theatre: Intangible Cultural Heritage and Islam, boasts decades of experience studying the art and theater of Indonesia and Southeast Asia. A trained performer in the art of wayang, traditional Indonesian mask and puppetry, Foley holds the distinction of being one of the first non-Indonesians to be invited to the prestigious
Prayer, Puppetry, and Politics: The World of Malay Performance Art [SEA] Read More »
By Philip Jablon (650 words, 7-minute read) Over the past 20 or so years, Thailand’s movie exhibition industry – that is, the collection of businesses and activities involved in the commercial showing of films – has experienced sweeping change on multiple levels. The adoption of new technologies working in tandem with changes in movie consumption
Thailand’s Last Movie Billboard Painters Read More »
There is no magic wand that can help the cultural institutions to work smoothly and force the audience to flock to theatres with just one touch. The cultural sector of Vietnam needs decades to mature and develop. The development of a country is measured not only by the number of luxury cars, the skyscrapers, shopping
The cultural sector and the 4Ps [Vietnam] Read More »
By Akanksha Raja (870 words, 8-minute read) Every Brilliant Thing is a (primarily) one-person monologue of an unnamed narrator (Andrew Marko) coming to terms with his mother’s depression and suicidal tendencies. His effort to reconcile with his mother’s instability takes the form of a numbered list devised at the age of 6 – after her
Review of “Every Brilliant Thing” by Bhumi Collective Read More »
By Yue Jie (870 words, 7-minute read) Spoiler alert! If you’ve not watched the movie yet, go see it before reading on. Few films deal with animals as a central character, and even fewer have an elephant as its protagonist. In Pop Aye, the feature debut of Singaporean film director Kirsten Tan, an elephant called
Review of “POP AYE”: A Soul Journey Read More »
“At the Malasimbo music and arts festival, there are 5,000 people of about 30 different nationalities. There are Europeans, Americans, Canadians, Japanese, among many others, and like them, I am a foreigner here. I am Filipino yet I do not belong to the community of Puerto Galera nor have I been to the other municipalities
The music festival that wants you to care about cultural preservation [Philippines] Read More »
CHAOS MEMO YELLOWING, directed by Chan Tze-Woon, 4 MAY, 7:30pm, National Museum of Singapore In 2014, an umbrella movement took place in Hong Kong, where young people led the ups and downs of the movement, the occupation of streets by civilians, and the fight against democracy in the way of civil disobedience. “Where there is a
1 – 7 May 2017: Singapore Read More »
Top Picks in Jakarta, Bandung and Yogyakarta from 1 – 7 May 2017 JAKARTA Unit Produksi Berita, Now – 17 May 2017, Dia.lo.gue artspace, Jakarta In this exhibition, Nindito Adipurnomo aims to return to the subjective old way of appreciating arts. The process involved 10 friends of Dia.lo.gue with various professional backgrounds. Nindito
1 – 7 May 2017: Indonesia Read More »
“When I heard Phnom Penh wasn’t a walking city, I bought a good pair of shoes. The evidence on my feet at the day’s end—after dodging motorbikes, piles of trash, street meat smoke, tuktuk offers—was par for the course. The joy of moving at my own pace offset the challenges, but could not have prepared
Phnom Penh’s White Building [Cambodia] Read More »
“From storytelling to stage plays, feature films to fusion music, the works of Singapore’s Indian artists are taking a multi-faceted diaspora story to global audiences. Sixty years after she left India, Mrs Santha Bhaskar travelled back to her Motherland in 2015 to choreograph a dance commissioned by the Singapore International Festival of Arts. As part
An Indian Renaissance [Singapore] Read More »
“Chiang Mai archivist and musician Victoria Vorreiter published a book on tribal music, Songs Of Memory: Traditional Music Of The Golden Triangle, in 2009. Since then she has been busy travelling, researching and recording music from the tribal peoples of the mountains, and for the past six years her focus has been on Hmong music,
Sounds of the Hmong [Thailand] Read More »
By Chan Sze-Wei (1150 words, 10-minute read) This was one of those rare occasions where I realise that I’m watching an important work of art. A discovery, a risk, a breakthrough, that will influence my aesthetic and many others’ for years to come. I unfortunately did not see Pallavi and Space, the 2016 first instalment
“Pallavi in Time” by CHOWK: Seductive Virtuosity Read More »
“If you’ve ever taken a class on Philippine history, you’d know about the Battle of Manila — but perhaps not well enough. While you might picture a day of fighting that led to the liberation of Manila in World War II, in truth, the battle lasted the duration of February 3, 1945 to March 3,
Remembering the brutal battle that changed Manila forever [Philippines] Read More »
Recently, I caught Loo Zihan’s second iteration of With/Out at Esplanade Studio Theatre. Zihan’s work is an artistic reconstruction and reimagining of The Necessary Stage’s 1999 play, Completely With/Out Character, based on the life of Paddy Chew, the first Singaporean to go public with his HIV status. Completely With/Out Character is a deeply significant work
Completely With: Remembering Paddy Chew, Reflecting on Loo Zihan Read More »
“They could have been staging Shakespeare. Instead, this year’s batch of theater students from the Philippine High School for the Arts, aged 12 to 18, take on the difficult task of protest in a post-truth world. “A lot of our students [were] troubled and they don’t know what to believe in,” explained their directing and
A new generation finds its voice in protest theater [Philippines] Read More »
Top Picks in Jakarta, Bali and Yogyakarta from 24 – 30 April 2017 JAKARTA About A Woman, 25 April 2017, 7 PM, Goethehaus, Jakarta Goethe Institut Jakarta’s Art House Cinema screens Teddy Soeriaatmadja’s film titled About A Woman. The film is a story of two strangers that are made to live under one
24 – 30 April 2017: Indonesia Read More »
Of Fear & Faith: An Original Showcase of Short Plays, 29-30 Apr, Haque Centre of Acting and Creativity Haque Centre of Acting and Creativity introduces their very first Devised Theatre Collaborative Showcase: Of Fear & Faith. Multiple stories intertwine to become one story of people, living and dying, tested by the implacable nature of life. It’s a
24 – 30 April 2017: Singapore Read More »
