[DROP-IN ACTIVITY] CREATE: A Fan of Natasha

Time: 6PM – 9PM

Venue: The Engine Room, Level 1

Beat the heat by designing your very own paper fan inspired by Natasha!

[DROP-IN ACTIVITY] CREATE: My Chiming Creature

Time: 6PM – 9PM

Venue: The Engine Room, Level 1

Create your own creatures inspired by Haegue Yang’s sculptures, The Hybrid Intermediates – Flourishing Electrophorus Duo!

[LIFESTYLE] The Night Shift by Balestier Market Collective

Time: 6PM – 9PM

Venue: Container Bay, Level 1

Presented by Balestier Market Collective, The Night Shift is a pop-up bar featuring local brands, drinks and bites by the Container Bay.

[PHOTO] Say 'Natasha'! Photobooth

Time: 6PM – 9PM

Capture your time here at SAM at our Natasha photobooth.

[TOURS] Singapore Biennale Highlights by Nida Ghouse

Time: 7PM – 7.45PM

Venue: Meet at reception on Level 1

Explore selected works in the Singapore Biennale with Co-Artistic Director, Nida Ghouse.

[ARTWORK ACTIVATION] Wayang Spaceship by Ming Wong

Time: 7.15PM – 7.45PM

Venue: Container Bay, Level 1

Travel through a time portal on the Wayang Spaceship by artist Ming Wong as it opens after museum hours, allowing you to commune with this solitary anti-hero of Cantonese opera, displaced across time, gender and space: from the edge of the coast to urban metropolis, ritual stage to the silver screen, Pearl River Delta to the cosmic ocean.

[MUSIC] There is a whale inside my synthesiser by Aya Metwalli

Time: 8PM

Venue: Container Bay, Level 1

In this performance, Aya Metwalli will be singing along with the LYRA-8; the unique organismic analogue synthesizer designed by Vlad Kreimer. “Organismic” means that LYRA uses some principles that lie in the base of living organisms. The way how LYRA’s modules interact between each other, and the behaviour of the instrument resembles a live conversation. It’s wrapped up in an intriguing and possibly believable story about its origins in the Soviet whale communication experiments of the 1960’s. In an attempt to find a common language, Metwalli will tune the machine to an Arabic maqam, unleash the sounds of the beast and react to it with her own raw voice. It is an improvisation where the artist performs an ego death live, exhibiting full surrender to the drawn-out drones, distorted whale calls, metallic harshness and dissonances of her synthesizer.

[READING] subTEXT x SAM: Anything but Natasha

Time: 8PM – 9PM

Venue: SAM Office, Level 3

Following January’s subTEXT inspired by the seventh edition of the Singapore Biennale (SB2022) and its theme of “Natasha”, this edition of subTEXT in March marks the closing of SB2022 at SAM. In the face of fresh rhythms and reflections on inclusivity, we welcome three poets from the anthology New Singapore Poetries (Gaudy Boy, 2022) and one of the editors involved with Brown is Redacted: Reflecting on Race in Singapore (Ethos Books, 2022).

About the moderator

Yong Shu Hoong has authored seven poetry collections, including Frottage (2005) and The Viewing Party (2013), which both won the Singapore Literature Prize, and Anatomy of a Wave (2022). He is one of the four co-authors of The Adopted: Stories from Angkor (2015) and Lost Bodies: Poems Between Portugal and Home (2016).

About subTEXT

Organised by Yong Shu Hoong, subTEXT is a long-running literary reading series that took place regularly from 2001 to 2008 at different venues. It is now organised on an ad-hoc basis. This iteration of subTEXT is co-organised by SAM and Yong Shu Hoong.

Note:

Seats are limited on a first-come-first serve basis.

[MUSIC] Alicia DC, Mary Sue x Farizi, and rhyu

Time: 9PM – 9.45PM

Venue: Container Bay, Level 1

Featuring four artists that represent some of the best local music that Singapore has to offer: Alicia DC, Mary Sue x Farizi, and rhyu. Look forward to a captivating night of music re-discover ways of seeing and relating to the world with Natasha.

The artistes are represented by Panik Records, an independent production house based in Singapore, committed to supporting up-and-coming artists in Singapore’s music scene.

[ACCESS] SB Highlights Tour with Sign Language Interpretation

Time: 11AM – 12PM

Venue: Meet at reception on Level 1

Free, by registration

What’s in a name? And why is the Singapore Biennale 2022 named Natasha?

Find out on this tour for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing community, led by a SAM docent together with our friendly Deaf facilitators! Singapore Sign Language interpretation by Equal Dreams will be provided.

After the tour, make your own “chiming creatures” inspired by artist Haegue Yang’s unique sculptures.

Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing individuals’ friends and families are welcome to sign up to explore the museum in this guided experience as well. Limited slots available, so sign up soon!

This tour is suitable for participants aged 6 and up; Children must be accompanied by an adult. For enquiries, please email [email protected].

[DROP-IN ACTIVITY] CREATE: My Chiming Creature

Time: 1PM – 5PM, 6PM – 9PM

Venue: The Engine Room, Level 1

Create your very own chiming creature inspired by Haegue Yang’s sculptures, The Hybrid Intermediates – Flourishing Electrophorus Duo!

[DROP-IN ACTIVITY] CREATE: A Fan of Natasha

Time: 1PM – 5PM, 6PM – 9PM

Beat the heat by designing your very own paper fan inspired by Natasha!

[PHOTO] Say 'Natasha'! Photobooth

Time: 1PM – 5PM, 6PM – 9PM

Strike a pose and capture memories of you and your friends at SAM.

[TALK] Imagining… Child’s Play by Malaeb and Superhero Me

Time: 1PM – 2PM

Venue: SAM Office, Level 3

Free, by registration

How can play and creative impulse be moulded into forms of social good? How the different forms of play can be adapted based on the community's wants and needs? This panel brings together the minds behind three community-facing initiatives whose practices aim to encourage and excite the imagination in children and their families. Join Jordan collective, Malaeb, and Singapore-based inclusive arts collective, Superhero Me, as they reflect on their motivations, experiences, and challenges in developing socially purposeful programmes, while retaining the novelty of imagination in their causes.

[Tour] Docent Tour

Time: 2PM – 3PM

Venue: Meet at Reception on Level 1

Let our docents take you on a journey to get to know Natasha.

[WORKSHOP] The Sensing Salon: Reading with Echo II

Time: 2PM – 4PM

Venue: Meet at Level 5 Galleries

Free, by registration

At Natasha, they will host a two-day Sensing Salon programme where they will introduce a first version of a new reading tool they are in the process of creating: the Echo Tarot deck. The deck takes the poems of African American-Japanese poet Ai Ogawa as a starting point to produce a new vision for the tarot, one that speculates on nonviolent as well as generous and generative ways of living on this planet.

On the first day, they will discuss their approach to reading and introduce the basic structure of the Tarot and the traditional interpretations of each card. On the second day, they will introduce the Echo Tarot Deck, its process and development, and will use a preliminary deck to perform a collective reading with the participants. Participation to both days of the Sensing Salon is preferred, especially if you are unfamiliar with Tarot.

About the artists

The Sensing Salon is a studio practice, conceived by Valentina Desideri and Denise Ferreira da Silva, which expands the image of art beyond objects, events and discourse to include the healing arts. By facilitating collaborative studying and experimenting with different practices and tools for divination (e.g. Tarot and Astrology) and healing (e.g. Reiki and Political Therapy), the Sensing Salon fosters a form of sociality that attends to our deeply implicated existence. Together they perform individual and group sessions of Poethical Readings where they use different reading tools, layering them to image and discuss the questions brought forward by the participants.

Note:

- By attending this programme, you consent to being photographed, filmed and/or video-recorded. These materials may be used by SAM for museum and biennale-related publicity purposes only.
- This programme is by registration only. Only registered participants are allowed to attend.
- Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis.
- For the enjoyment of participants, the programme will start promptly at the time stated. Please arrive early or at least 10 minutes before the start of the programme.
- We reserve the right to cancel or rearrange the organised event.

[WORKSHOP] Voice in the Dark: Writing Characters Into Life by Nabilah Said

Venue: Level 3

Free, by registration

What worlds can you write into existence? Create your own unique characters inspired by works in the Singapore Art Museum in this workshop led by playwright Nabilah Said. This workshop is ideal for those new to playwriting.

Voice in the Dark: Writing Characters Into Life by Nabilah Said is part of the programming for Singapore Biennale 2022, titled Natasha. In this workshop, participants will:
• Find dramatic stories inspired by the works found in the Singapore Biennale
• Create characters with distinct voices and write a monologue/dialogue
• Share their works and get feedback

About Nabilah Said

Nabilah Said is a Singapore-based playwright, editor and artist who works with text as material. She has presented original plays with Singapore theatre companies Teater Ekamatra, The Necessary Stage and T:<Works, as well as independent creatives in Singapore. Her play ANGKAT: A Definitive, Alternative, Reclaimed Narrative of a Native (2019) won Best Original Script at the 2020 Life Theatre Awards. Her play Inside Voices (2019) won the Outstanding New Work award at VAULT Festival, London, and was published by Nick Hern Books. She is currently under commission by Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne, Australia. Nabilah is the founder of playwright collective Main Tulis Group and theatre collective Rupa co.lab. Nabilah is currently the editorial lead of Kontinentalist, and also an educator, essayist and poet.

[YOUTH INSIGHTS] Ciel Balansag Calma on Algahest by Pratchaya Phinthong

Time: 2.30PM & 4.30PM

Venue: Meet at reception on Level 1

Join Ciel, Winner of the Articulation Prize Singapore 2023, as they share their insights into Algahest by Pratchaya Phinthong, a work featured in the Singapore Biennale 2022.

[TALK] Where is the Art? featuring Paschal Daantos Berry and Lim Chye Hong

Time: 3PM – 4PM

Venue: SAM Office, Level 3

Free, by registration

Learn the intricate details of process driven art and gain insight into how artistic, public and educational programmes have been conceived for biennales and festivals. Join Paschal and Chye as they share experiences about programming for the needs of artists, participants, partners, and communities through interdisciplinary, cross cultural, collaborative and socially engaged processes.

[TOUR] Singapore Biennale Highlights of Korean Artists by Maya West

Time: 4PM – 5PM

Venue: Level 1 and Level 5 Galleries

Explore the Korean highlights for Singapore Biennale with writer and translator, Maya West, who has worked directly and indirectly with selected Korean artists and collaborators for Natasha.

[LIFESTYLE] The Night Shift by Balestier Market Collective

Time: 6PM – 9PM

Venue: Container Bay, Level 1

Presented by Balestier Market Collective, The Night Shift is a pop-up bar featuring local brands, drinks and bites by the Container Bay.

[TOURS] Singapore Biennale Highlights by Binna Choi

Time: 7PM – 7.45PM

Venue: Meet at Reception on Level 1

Explore selected works in the Singapore Biennale with Co-Artistic Director, Binna Choi.

[ARTWORK ACTIVATION] Wayang Spaceship by Ming Wong

Time: 7.15PM – 7.45PM

Venue: Container Bay, Level 1

Travel through a time portal on the Wayang Spaceship by artist Ming Wong as it opens after museum hours, allowing you to commune with this solitary anti-hero of Cantonese opera, displaced across time, gender and space: from the edge of the coast to urban metropolis, ritual stage to the silver screen, Pearl River Delta to the cosmic ocean.

[MUSIC] There is a whale inside my synthesiser by Aya Metwalli

Time: 8PM

Venue: Container Bay, Level 1

In this performance, Aya Metwalli will be singing along with the LYRA-8; the unique organismic analogue synthesizer designed by Vlad Kreimer. “Organismic” means that LYRA uses some principles that lie in the base of living organisms. The way how LYRA’s modules interact between each other, and the behaviour of the instrument resembles a live conversation. It’s wrapped up in an intriguing and possibly believable story about its origins in the Soviet whale communication experiments of the 1960’s. In an attempt to find a common language, Metwalli will tune the machine to an Arabic maqam, unleash the sounds of the beast and react to it with her own raw voice. It is an improvisation where the artist performs an ego death live, exhibiting full surrender to the drawn-out drones, distorted whale calls, metallic harshness and dissonances of her synthesizer.

[MUSIC] Alicia DC, Aisyah Aziz, and Mary Sue x Farizi

Time: 9PM – 9.45PM

Venue: Container Bay, Level 1

Featuring four artists that represent some of the best local music that Singapore has to offer: Alicia DC, Aisyah Aziz, and Mary Sue x Farizi. Look forward to a captivating night of music and re-discover ways of seeing and relating to the world with Natasha.

The artistes are represented by Panik Records, an independent production house based in Singapore, committed to supporting up-and-coming artists in Singapore’s music scene.

[DROP-IN ACTIVITY] CREATE: My Chiming Creature

Time: 1PM – 5PM

Venue: The Engine Room, Level 1

Create your very own chiming creature inspired by Haegue Yang’s sculptures, The Hybrid Intermediates – Flourishing Electrophorus Duo!

[DROP-IN ACTIVITY] CREATE: A Fan of Natasha

Time: 1PM – 5PM

Beat the heat by designing your very own paper fan inspired by Natasha!

[PERFORMANCE LECTURE] Slideshow Party –A women's evening of Sharing art and other provocations with Erika Tan and Adele Tan

Time: 3PM – 6PM

Venue: The Main Deck, Level 3

Free, by registration

“Natasha, you are not alone… Now meet the rest of us.”

Join curator Adele Tan, artist Erika Tan and invited guests for an afternoon of making present, visible and audible the experiences, networks and art practices of women practitioners in and from Singapore. Meet, share, make friends, swap notes, construct and deconstruct histories and futures in relation to feminist principles of reflexivity, participation, social action and self-determination; and openly discuss intersectionality, representation, tokenism, feminist frameworks and institutional responsibilities.

Though there is no shortage of women working in the arts in Singapore today, we still have cause to ask why there are no “great women artists” in this country to be reckoned with for major international platforms, global institutions and even our national collection? Their lack of representation reveals a need for more active, autonomous and accessible forms of documentation, and a more consistent pursuit of collective bodies of knowledge.

This Slideshow Party in Singapore is inspired by an “informal slide evening” organised as an “Open Space” Event for the Hayward Annual 78 in London. The groundbreaking 1978 event was curated by an all-women artist committee, including the Singapore sculptor and printmaker Kim Lim. Women artists were invited to share three slides on their artworks and the public was also invited.

Slideshow Party continues its legacy as a form of collective history making. Your participation and contributions are crucial to its success. Prior and during the event, you are invited to contribute content to an Online Platform, which will be displayed during the event and act as a repository of shared material, becoming a resource for future artists and researchers. Instructions for how to add material can be found on the platform. We are particularly interested in documentation of exhibitions, works and practitioners that prioritise Singapore women’s art histories.

Documentation of the event will be deposited with the Singapore Art Museum, the National Gallery Singapore and the artist Erika Tan as a historic record of the gathering.

About the Slideshow Party

Slideshow Party: a feminist sharing of art and other provocations is commissioned as part of Singapore Biennale 2022 named Natasha, organised by the Singapore Art Museum. The Biennale is commissioned by the National Arts Council, Singapore and supported by the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth, Singapore.

About the artists

Erika Tan (b. 1967) is an artist and curator whose work is primarily research-led and manifests itself in multiple formats such as moving image, publications, curatorial and participatory projects. This practice emerges from her interests in anthropology and the moving image, that also inform her work. She works with archival artifacts, exhibition histories, received narratives, contested heritage, subjugated voices and the transnational movement of ideas, people and objects. Appointed to the Stanley Picker Fellowships at Kingston University in 2018, she is Course Leader of the MA in Fine Art, Reader in Contemporary Art Practice in Central Saint Martins and an Associate Researcher in the Decolonising Art Institute, UAL (London). Tan’s most recent research has focused on the postcolonial and transnational; her future projects point towards the digitisation of collective cultural memory and cloud architecture through the prism of ruins, hauntings, and mnemonic collapse.

Adele Tan studied English Literature at the National University of Singapore and received her MA and PhD in Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. She is Senior Curator at National Gallery Singapore, overseeing the post-1970s collection and displays, as well as contemporary commissions for the museum. Her research focuses on modern and contemporary art in Southeast Asia and China, with a special interest in performative practices and new media.

Note:

- By attending this programme, you consent to being photographed, filmed and/or video-recorded. These materials may be used by SAM for museum and biennale-related publicity purposes only.
- This programme is by registration only.
- Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis.
- For the enjoyment of participants, the programme will start promptly at the time stated. Please arrive early or at least 10 minutes before the start of the programme.
- We reserve the right to cancel or rearrange the organised event.

[Tour] Docent Tour

Time: 2PM–3PM

Venue: Meet at Level 1 Reception

Join our docents as they take you on a journey to get to know Natasha.

[WORKSHOP] The Sensing Salon: Reading with Echo II

Time: 2PM – 4PM

Venue: Meet at Level 5 Galleries

Free, by registration

At Natasha, they will host a two-day Sensing Salon programme where they will introduce a first version of a new reading tool they are in the process of creating: the Echo Tarot deck. The deck takes the poems of African American-Japanese poet Ai Ogawa as a starting point to produce a new vision for the tarot, one that speculates on nonviolent as well as generous and generative ways of living on this planet.

On the first day, they will discuss their approach to reading and introduce the basic structure of the Tarot and the traditional interpretations of each card. On the second day, they will introduce the Echo Tarot Deck, its process and development, and will use a preliminary deck to perform a collective reading with the participants. Participation to both days of the Sensing Salon is preferred, especially if you are unfamiliar with Tarot.

About the artists

The Sensing Salon is a studio practice, conceived by Valentina Desideri and Denise Ferreira da Silva, which expands the image of art beyond objects, events and discourse to include the healing arts. By facilitating collaborative studying and experimenting with different practices and tools for divination (e.g. Tarot and Astrology) and healing (e.g. Reiki and Political Therapy), the Sensing Salon fosters a form of sociality that attends to our deeply implicated existence. Together they perform individual and group sessions of Poethical Readings where they use different reading tools, layering them to image and discuss the questions brought forward by the participants.

Note:

- By attending this programme, you consent to being photographed, filmed and/or video-recorded. These materials may be used by SAM for museum and biennale-related publicity purposes only.
- This programme is by registration only. Only registered participants are allowed to attend.
- Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis.
- For the enjoyment of participants, the programme will start promptly at the time stated. Please arrive early or at least 10 minutes before the start of the programme.
- We reserve the right to cancel or rearrange the organised event.

[TOURS] Singapore Biennale Highlights by Ala Younis

Time: 4PM – 4.45PM

Venue: Meet at Level 1 Reception

Explore selected works in the Singapore Biennale with Co-Artistic Director, Ala Younis.