The Rubble Project

How does a space reveal the imprints of its past? How does its history inform the potential for its future? Examining the building of The Substation as a window into understanding both its past and future, The Rubble Project introduces a series of artistic interventions into the now obsolete box office. Incisions and intrusions into the space expose the contested histories embodied within its scars, marks and ruins, reactivating the box office as a site for alternative imaginings.

Photo by David Tan

SOIL
Lim Chin Huat and Tan Ngiap Heng

06 – 24 January 2017
The Substation Box Office

Co-created by photographer Tan Ngiap Heng and multi-disciplinary dance artist Lim Chin Huat, Soil weaves together live plants and multimedia projection into an eco-installation. Based on the Chinese mythology of《夸父追日》Kua Fu Zhui Ri, the work alludes both to The Substation as fertile grounds for the growth of artists.

Transforming the box office into a lush grotto of wild plants accompanied with multimedia projections of the mythology, the work tells the story of a giant whose noble endeavour in saving his village from the scorching sun results in his unfortunate death. In spite of this, his body becomes a source from which new life springs. The myth thus parallels the role of The Substation in the personal artistic journeys of both artists.

Opening Performance FIRE《野火》by Lim Chin Huat
6 January, 8pm, The Substation Theatre

Sharing Session with the artists and T. Sasitharan
14 January, 3pm to 5pm, The Substation Theatre

MURMURATION
Ong Kian Peng

11 August – 11 September 2016
The Substation Box Office

Long shuttered, the box office has fallen into obsolescence and neglect. Tracing the interior architectural features of the box office through a moving projection, the work reveals lines and corners, evoking a resuscitation of the dead space. 

"The installation is a direct response to my experience of the box office. Based on my initial interactions with the Substation in 2008, I've understood the space as ignored, suffocated and defunct. Working on the first iteration the Rubble Project gave me a chance to experience the space more intimately –through my sensing of the room's features and history of use, I wanted to express the idea of transformation and shifts to indicate forthcoming changes within the box office."