Mandala for Substation is an exhibition by Tang Mun Kit, inspired by the Substation’s uncertainty over its status, and the sense of loss in continuity from the original purpose of A Home for the Arts as expounded by founder Kuo Pao Kun.
Five Singaporeans who time-travel to 1942 with the Temporal Displacement Agency must
decide if the Fall of Singapore is a necessary evil to ensure the birth of a nation.
Selfish Boxes is an exhibition by Singaporean artist Lai Yu Tong presented at The Substation as part of his year long participation in the Associate Artist Programme 2020. The exhibition presents new works that contemplate car culture, death and art in the context of Singapore.
Shore Seekers world is a 360 degrees virtual reality experience by Ayer Ayer, Ernest Goh presented as part of Ayer Ayer’s year long participation in the Associate Artist Programme 2020/21. The virtual reality experience triples up as an artwork, game and educational experience for traversing the world of shore debris trash.
ShoreSeekers.World is a digital extension of the Shore Debris Table artwork created by Ayer Ayer Project in 2019.
As a homage to The Substation, The Last Chapter is a final act of solidarity and creative collaboration before the curtains go down. A returning and gathering of artists from different generations led by Lim Chin Huat, explore and re-discover the nooks and crannies, characters, works and memories that are housed in The Substation.
In the world of IsLand Bar, meet your host who will serve a signature cocktail, a political concoction of island histories and realities. IsLand Bar brings together voices from different places, practices to share their micro context within global interactions. Through an immersive situational performance, you are invited to drink and re-think about the origins of cultural and social identities; the notion of home, displacement and care through an activation of your senses.
Digi Art-Jam is a “cutting-edge” sandbox for digital exhibition & art making curated by AAP Artist-Curator, Lee Sze Chin.
This sandbox is presented part of The Substation Programme, Associate Artist Programme and supported by National Arts Council’s Digital Presentation Grant.
In this performance double bill, Sonia Kwek and Tan Weiying are unlearning and exploring alternative lessons for women to own their deepest erotic desires. These two female solo pieces dig into women stereotypes and break down the virtues that women have been told to uphold.
Since the late 1800s, the medical profession has diagnosed people who expressed little interest in sex with ‘sexual coldness’, or ‘sexual anaesthesia’. parthenogenesis: is one woman’s quest for an orgasm – despite not wanting it like the rest. She isn’t healthy. She isn’t well. She isn’t right. That's what we all say. Contrary to popular belief, she isn’t alone.
In this new collaboration, mythical maestros NADA and dynamic dance duo ScRach Marcs will traverse movement and sound in an exploration of Singapore’s club culture of the past. Responding to their individual practices, street dance and 60s–80s Malay pop, this performance is a reimagining of a lost cultural era brought to the contemporary stage.
Bringing together a working group consisting of migrant workers, artists and activists, the Migrant Workers Community Museum is an attempt to create a temporary museum at The Substation featuring artefacts contributed by members of the migrant worker community in Singapore.
Dive into the stories of gentrification, language theft, racist policies and the resulting displacement of identities in Singapore as Subhas Nair introduces his sophomore album, Tabula Rasa (pronounced tak boleh rasa). The conceptual album looks at erasure in the city and interrogates the power play in writing of our narratives, and what the tablet remembers.
An ongoing, collaborative project developed by Kristian-Marc James Paul and Mysara Aljaru, this performance-lecture explores Brown narratives in Singapore, specifically Brown social mobility and masculinity. It is based on Kristian and Mysara’s research and workshops that were organised as part of The Substation’s artist residency programme, Concerned Citizens Programme (2019-2020) and the lived experiences of both artists and contributors of the project.
Year 2030. The world is a slightly different place than we knew it to be. It looks and feels much the same, but runs differently. The pandemic in 2020 changed the way the world operates. Research and development are at the forefront, and technology has made many advancements. One day, a Professor is found dead, and his assistant is questioned…
A woman tells a story of loneliness under a lone tree, until a man enters and begins to dance, uninhibitedly. Waltz of the Flower by Caroline Chin is inspired by Samuel Beckett’s Footfalls and Waiting for Godot, as well as Zeami Motokiyo’s The Damask Drum, touching on themes of loneliness, memories, and longing. This work was originally conceived in 2018 as a final year individual project under the Intercultural Theatre Institute.
Projek Orang Asli is a continuation of artist Zai Kuning's interest in the subject of Austronesian and pre-Islamic arts and cultures in the Riau Archipelago region. Through the process of documenting the daily life, rituals, song and dance, traditional dress and folklore of the Orang Asli, Zai conceptualises and presents works within a range of visual art forms: photography, video documentation, writing and making notations.
A regular spoken word series organised by Stephanie Dogfoot, To Philippines With Linebreaks is the second of a two-part series that brings together 6 poets from Singapore and the Philippines. These poets will come together to premiere newly-created works that are a unique response to one another’s shared histories, shared borders and shared seas.
A mixed media installation by Chu Hao Pei, Withering Rice, Flourishing Sovereignty highlights a collection of rice farming practices and its interwoven relationship between rice and politics in Southeast Asia. A staple consumed in the region, rice has become more than a food product but a symbol embedded within our Southeast Asian cultures.
Those of us who grew up in the '80s and '90s would be familiar with flag erasers. Some of us may even have collected the range of rubber erasers with different flags printed on them. Eraser wrestling matches may be a thing of the past, but the world in the present is still caught up with complex geographical and political conflicts. If these conflicts between nations could be navigated and negotiated through an Eraser Wrestling Match, what kind of world would that be? After all, who is to say which nation is better than another?
we are not going back, we are coming around is a series of artistic endeavours which explores the role of the arts in a world that is rushing to repair itself and postures a new direction our society could move towards in the wake of this pandemic. This exhibition attempts to document the ongoing development of some of the projects while offering a preview of some of the upcoming projects.
Eden is a name synonymous with paradise or a place of perfection. But what are the underlying realities beneath this facade of utopia? In these times of crisis, E:Den 依：窩 exposes the hidden ‘den’, where waste is discharged and disposed of. It invites participants to see beyond the repulsive and repugnant, and instead question how waste also acts as seeds for potentialities and possibilities.
Wake is an exhibition which creates a constant and immersive experience throughout The Substation, without the restriction of a singular space. Visitors are invited to explore various parts of The Substation's to view artworks created by students from Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts.
Blackboard Schemes is an art exhibition that uses experimental coursework to engage artists of Fertile Art Refinery (FAR). Adopting a process-centred approach to artmaking, the exhibition features a series of works and documentation of works-in-progress by 30 artists that are created in challenges of connecting and collective exploration during the lockdown.
Immerse in an hour of con-text-ual chaos! Curated by Shaiful Risan, MEET & READ is a gritty imagination of what a literary event could look like. Rooted through the optics of punk rock, this intentionally-vaguely-described event presents a smattering of punk literature, old zines, books and original writings and even a few letters and cassette tape inserts; all of which are open to reading–either to yourself or aloud.
Room 0505 is a newly devised play that incorporates elements of Asian traditional forms in Kutiyattam and Beijing Opera and is a re-imagination of a different room from Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit. Together with co-creators, Lina Yu and Ramith Ramesh, The Substation is proud to present a work-in-progress presentation of Room 0505, which was originally scheduled to premiere at The Substation's annual SeptFest but was affected due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
For centuries, people in both Eastern and Western traditions have been producing relics and creating art as a way to narrate the hereafter. But what might life be after death? How do world religions address this reality? From Jakarta, Liza Markus of The Dung Beetle Project will host a panel discussion about this timeless topic. From Singapore, Oliver Lim and Vimal Kumar, will share their perspectives to see how inter-faith approaches might be able to help us think through the puzzles surrounding the great beyond.
Join art therapists-artists Lee Sze-Chin, Ng Jue Ann and Karen Koh as they introduce the art of life journals (using an origami book format) to capture PLD’s journey of living with dementia. Learn about how this documentation method helps to preserve memories, document the present, and express hopes and wishes for the future.
Technology has taken over communication. Zoom parties are becoming the rave. Humans are locked down in their own homes. But are we more connected than ever? Or is human connection somehow...lost? Curated by Shaiful Risan of Prohibited Projects and Zerox Zine, Post Punk is an interactive chronicling of letters written and replied to him during the turn of the century.
How does ageing look like in the subculture community? Is there a space for the marginalised in society when they grow old? Join Shaiful Risan in a dialogue that looks at the possibilities of opening up spaces to age with dignity in non-conventional ways; for those who have always been unconventional and do not conform to a “normal” way of life.
In this online talk, artist and researcher Koh Nguang How looks backs at his contributions to the archive of The Substation and shares his reflections on a variety of images and events over the course of its history.
