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YAM AT SAM
YAM AT SAM is a programming collaboration between Singapore Art Museum and artists Mark Chua and Lam Li Shuen of the artist-run analogue film lab Film Nerve. The collective will present a series of live performances, hands-on workshops and regional screenings focused on analogue photochemical experimentation and expanded cinema.
The project takes the taro (yam) plant as a central thematic motif, drawing parallels between the physical medium of analogue film and plant growth—both being slow, organic processes shaped by light, time and collective labour. Embracing an incubation model, the series emphasizes open experimentation, shared artistic labour and community-constructed knowledge.
About the Artists
Mark Chua (b. 1992) and Lam Li Shuen (b. 1996) are a filmmaker-artist duo based in Singapore, working across film, expanded cinema performance and installation. Their practice explores the intersections of histories, materialities and existential anxieties through speculative fiction and multimedia stagings.
They are the founders of artist-run film lab Film Nerve, focused on handmade film experimentation as well as resource and knowledge sharing.
Chua and Lam regularly present 16mm expanded cinema performances using self-modified 16mm projectors retrofitted with microcontroller systems. They have performed at international platforms including Berlinale Forum Expanded (Germany), EXiS (South Korea), EX!T (Taiwan), Videoex (Switzerland), and Painting With Light (Singapore). They also release music as the art rock duo ARE.
Their films have been screened at major international festivals, including the International Film Festival Rotterdam (2023, 2024), New Directors/New Films (2023) presented by MoMA and Film at Lincoln Center, BFI London Film Festival (2021), and Clermont-Ferrand (2026).
*Programmes may be subject to change without prior notice. Information accurate at time of publishing.
Upcoming Programmes
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[Performance] Born of the Yam
Born of the Yam
Date: Fri, 28 Aug
Time: 8pm - 9pm
Venue: Level 1, The Engine Room
Ticketed: $10
BORN OF THE YAM is an expanded cinema performance presented as a techno-mythological ritual of light and sound. Performed with multiple modified 16mm projectors and DIY machinery, 16mm film loops combining hand-processed and inkjet-printed sequences weave together fragmented visions from a mythic 11th century island, isolated in time. The images draw from an imagined mythology – recurring across the artists’ Unending Island project – centred around the birth of a demigod from a yam.
Between elation and fear, the demigod figure is gradually manifested through visions formed from yam eco-developer and vegetal interventions, fusing with 3D-rendered virtual island-scapes. BORN OF THE YAM evokes the performativity of ritualism and idolization, to reflect on their surfacing in our modern political landscape. The event becomes a kind of collective “bonfire” fanned by the flames of obsession and fantasy.
[Workshop] Hand-Processing 16mm with Eco-Developer Workshop 
Hand-Processing 16mm with Eco-Developer Workshop
Date: Sat, 29 Aug
Time: 2pm - 6pm
Venue: Level 1, The Engine Room
Ticketed: $50
This workshop introduces participants to the techniques and approaches of eco-processing 16mm film. Together, we will brew an eco-developer using foraged plants and learn how to hand-process 16mm film using a Lomo developing tank.
Participants will be guided through the complete hand-processing workflow: preparing the plant-based developer, practicing loading 16mm film into a Lomo tank, and learning the basics of the development process and recipes.
The workshop frames eco-processing as both a sustainable technique and a creative language, seeing it as a way to make moving images through local material while avoiding chemical-heavy workflows. With this workshop we aim to embrace the sensorial, ritual-like craft of brewing and developing. Focusing on creating with natural materials rather than aiming for perfection, we will explore how the film itself can become a site where moving images are formed by ecology and chance.