Sights and Sounds: Singapore
Sights and Sounds: Singapore features new work by Ho Tzu Nyen, Chulyarnnon Siriphol, Mahardika Yudha, and Charles Lim, selected by Patrick D. Flores.
Although I was invited to curate a selection of films and videos from Singapore, I found the constraint of national boundaries too restrictive. In Southeast Asia the connections and relationships among countries and cultural traditions are complex. To reflect this, I have selected works from Singapore, Indonesia, and Thailand.
These relationships are not always direct, but delicate, tangential: moments of near contact or close encounter. Films and videos from these three countries yield coordinates that structure the themes of origin and repetition, layer and flow, hierarchy and horizon. They take us to moments of epiphany and memory, charged with frenetic energy and yet contemplative, too.
A turning point in film and video in Southeast Asia occurred at the end of the Cold War: the moving image emerged as a medium for the rechanneling of a range of expressive forms (oral, visual, literary) in authoritarian political environments. Its animating impulse is less conceptual reflexivity than social urgency.
These artists offer means of reflecting on Southeast Asia, alluding to psychogeography, genealogies of conflict, and the basis of the creative drive in situations of discipline, defiance, confrontation, and self-consciousness. They reveal a keen interest in the poetics and politics of place and initiate us into the dense historical lifeworld of the region.
Patrick D. Flores
Curator
Patrick D. Flores (b. Iloilo City, 1969) is curator of the Vargas Museum in Manila and professor of art studies at the University of the Philippines, where he was department chair from 1997 to 2003. He is adjunct curator at the National Art Gallery, Singapore.
About Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video
This long-term series offers a rotating selection of vigorous film and video works by contemporary artists from around the world — with a particular emphasis on work being made outside western Europe and the United States.
Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video is a long-term presentation of new film and video works made in the sphere of the visual arts. The series offers a rotating selection of vigorous works by contemporary artists from around the world. It introduces New York audiences to the latest developments in filmmaking within the art context and underlines the Jewish Museum’s holistic and global approach to the understanding and presentation of art and culture.
Sights and Sounds takes advantage of the straightforward way film and video travel: shipped on discs or streamed online, these works provide an instant connection to new creative practices from even the most remote locations.
Twenty-five international curators have selected new film and video work from their respective regions of the world—ranging from Argentina to Vietnam, Nigeria to Romania, New Zealand to China, and many places in between. Their picks are screened for one month each in the museum’s media center, which has been turned into a miniature cinema for the occasion.
The works in Sights and Sounds touch on themes significant to both Jewish culture and universal human experience: spirituality, exile, language, conflict, family, humor, history. The series creates a broad network of artistic expression and curatorial perspectives that takes stock of what is happening in film and video art at this moment in time across the globe—with a particular emphasis on work being made outside western Europe and the United States.
Sights and Sounds will culminate with a selection of highlights from the series. One work from each country will be presented in the gallery from February 5, 2016 to June 30, 2016.
Jens Hoffmann
Deputy Director
Exhibitions and Public Programs
Installation view of Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video in the Goodkind Media Center. Photo by David Heald.
Exhibition highlights
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Ho Tzu Nyen, still from Newton, 2009, HD video, sound, 4 min, 26 sec. Artwork © Ho Tzu Nyen
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Chulyarnnon Siriphol, still from Planking, 2012, video, 3 min. Artwork © Chulyarnnon Siriphol
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Mahardika Yudha, still from Kapal Gersang (Empty Vessel), 2013, video, 12 min., 56 sec. Artwork © Mahardika Yudha
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Charles Lim, still from All the Lines Flow Out, 2011, HD video, sound, 21 min., 20 sec. Artwork © Charles Lim, provided by the artist and Future Perfect, Singapore
