DISCIPLINE THE CITY: THE EXHIBITION
23 Aug-30 Nov 2017
The city wears you out. Constantly assaulted by ERP gantries, pavement studs, placebo buttons and open plazas that masquerade as public space, the citizen discerns just how expensive and exclusive the city can be. Everyone knows exactly where he/she should be. Discipline the City is a response to the question of control, access, and politics of space. Housed within a former power station, this exhibition is designed as an anti-building with misaligned spaces ranging from a failed museum, a punk- in-residence, to a bruising narrative of trapdoors in a dungeon. It is part proposal part elegy; most of all, it is a question that always leads back to you —who has the right to the city?
Discipline the City - The Exhibition reconfigures The Substation into a set of spaces that defy conventional use of the building. Within these spaces, the contents and sequence of the works presented encourage visitors to consider ideas of spatiality, proximity and architecture. This presentation is co-curated by Alan Oei, artistic director of The Substation, and Joshua Comaroff, a designer and assistant professor at Singapore University of Technology and Design. Discipline the City is not a survey of disciplinarian approaches. Except for Kuang-Yu Tsui’s urban interventions, most of the artists’ works do not directly engage the practice of spatial discipline. Precisely by apprehending the city at an angle, at a distance, these artists show us the limits of our imagination —that space ultimately is contingent.
The exhibition has both a permanent and rotating component. The latter will unfold in three acts.
Ongoing artists
CHEN SAI HUA KUAN
Something Nothing transforms a blank piece of A4 paper into a three dimensional figure-in-space encounter.
DEBBIE DING
A Brief History of the Trap Door explores the history of security and secrecy surrounding this strange spatial device.
STEVPHEN SHUKAITIS
Stop the City…Revisited brings together images and materials from the anarcho-punk based demonstrations of 1983–84.
KUANG-YU TSUI
Eighteen Copper Guardians in Shao-Lin Temple and Penetration. Through a series of three video works, Tsui creates urban interventions that highlight how absurd and inhospitable the city can be.
The Perceptive
The Penetrative
The Spontaneous
PERSUASIVE DESIGN AGENCY
This working office proposes solutions to design problems posed by the public. Visitors are invited to share a personal urban-challenge that needs solving.
Rotating artists
ACT I (23 Aug-24 Sept): Disciplinary design choreographs and limits human movement.
CALVIN CHUA
City of Cores reifies and multiples the service core as architectural motif.
JIEHUI AVERY CHEN
Playground/Wonderland/Utopia are works that re-examine the possibility of urban utopias.
KUANG-YU TSUI
A reminder to the inhabitants of Amsterdam about the environmental forces that loom large beyond the city.
Invisible City: Liverpool Top 9
The Shortcut to The Systematic Life: Superficial Life
Invisible City: Sea-level Leaker
CASE COMPETITION: (NOT THE) SINGAPORE VENICE PAVILION
A case competition for alternative reimaginations of the Singapore pavilion at the International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale.
Act II (4-22 Oct): Disciplinary design provides a channel for social and political ideology to exert control over space.
CHEN SAI HUA KUAN
Space Drawing No. 9, the line—the most basic geometric form of a drawing or a plan‚ is actualised as a sequence of physical movements in an empty warehouse.
PAT TOH
A Map of Scars, Bruises and Broken Bones is a psychogeographic exploration of the city through the body as site.
STEPHANIE JANE BURT
Two By Two They Disappeared. A labyrinth, with sinister undertones, explores the adventures of a young girl.
ACT III (1-26 Nov): Disciplinary design abstracts humans’ relationship to the city.
PAT TOH
A Map of Scars, Bruises and Broken Bones continues a psychogeographic exploration of the city through the body as site. This performance is remapped to the reconfigured space of ACT III.
LI XIE
BLOCK 108 is an interactive installation created in collaboration with 75 year-old neighbourhood nucle, Or Beng Kooi, last seen with his Tower of Toys in Yishun.
TAN PIN PIN
Once More, With Feeling charts a city in all of its contradictions, irony and minutiae. In a city that is constantly erasing itself, our memories become unanchored and suspect.
ACAB: All Curators are B____
Part performance, part attitude, and all punk—what else can you expect from a docent series that is a play on the oft-used slogan and anti-police acronym ACAB (All Cops are B )? From a new artistic director, to a schizo two-faced docent, to a quarreling pair of lovers, each punk tour is a unique portrait built upon their own stories. ACAB tours are devised in collaboration with theatre practitioner, Tan Liting.
Punk-In-Residence
A Manifesto for Space (Punk Spaces)
Through its 27 years of history, the arts centre has alternately granted and denied access to the punk and hardcore scene. Unable to resolve its politics and contradictions, the curators submit to the illogic of punk. Instead of the triumphalist museum, this is a museum of punk spaces—a story of failure, loss and defiance in the city. And in place of street-side and back alleys, punk-in-residence invites them to occupy prime real estate space to do whatever they want while surveilled by webcam. In the spiritual home of punks, this is the time of reckoning.
ANJINGSIAL
02.09—24.09.2017
Anjingsial is an angry, dazed and confused artist without a formal art education. In a bustling metropolis, he earns less than the median income, and suffers from bipolar disorder with ADHD.
AMIN AND MIMIE
04.10—22.10.2017
Amin and Mimie are husband and wife owners of Decline, an alternative ‘live’ venue. They have four beautiful and naughty children. Amin considers himself a scene kid since becoming a “skinhead” at 12 years of age. Mimie fell in love with the punk rock scene after being exposed to its music.
HAFIZ AND IZZAD
01.11—26.11.2017
Hafiz is the co-founder of Singapore’s first autonomous punk-run venue, BLACKHOLE 212. The space was shut down due to negative pressure from the state. He has toured internationally with local punk bands Daily Ritual, Lubricant, and Sial. Izzad Radzali Shah is a member of Singaporean punk bands, Daily Ritual and Sial.
