Party Action People & SPORE Art Salon

Two things I should mention:

1) Party Action People is performing again at the TAPAC courtyard today at 6pm! Reprise of our original program, in case you missed it on Sunday.

2) SPORE Art Salon's happening again next Tuesday.

Happy National Day! Red and white flags are going up all over the island, but we Salonistas are staying decidedly international. This month’s awesome visual and performing arts lineup includes a Swiss experimental trombonist, a Filipino playwright and an American actor, as well as a host, a poet, a model and a short film, all from dear old Singapore. Come join the mish and mash of things and create conversations within. See you soon!

WHERE: BluJaz Cafe, 3rd Storey (12 Bali Lane)
WHEN: Tuesday 31 July 2012, 7:30PM onwards
FB Event Page : https://www.facebook.com/events/248696541900162/

----------------------------


FEATURED PERFORMING ARTISTS

HOST

DEBORAH EMMANUEL

www.deborahemmanuel.com

Deborah Emmanuel has been telling stories since she could talk. Her first story was that there was a microscopic pterodactyl living inside her ear, which when she was reading would not allow her to hear the dinner bell. Since then, she has used drama and creative writing to tell other stories which have reached out to many people. Her first time on stage was at age 4 in the kindergarten circus musical, in which she desperately wanted to be a ballerina, but was made to wear a hairy bear suit instead. Since then she has played several human acting roles, and appeared as an educational speaker and performance poet on many occasions. She believes in art as a tool for change and reform. She also knows that anyone can heal when they express themselves through art. Deborah will continue to write, perform and teach as long as she exists.

MODEL

TEH SU CHING

By night, Stella Chung is a flapper in mourning. By day, she's a writer, producer, and performer who answers to the name "Teh Su Ching".

POOJA (poet)

Pooja Nansi is a teacher and poet who believes in the power that speech and performance can lend to the written word. Her first collection of poetry "Stiletto Scars" was published in 2007 at the Singapore Writer's Festival. She has performed and conducted workshops in several educational institutes both locally and abroad such as Kuala Lumpur and London, with individuals of different ages to try and make poetry relevant to their lives. She has also participated in poetry projects such as "Speechless" with the British Council, where she worked in conjunction with poets from London, Ireland, Taiwan, The Phillipines, Malaysia and Vietnam and engaged in a month long tour of the UK to explore issues surrounding freedom of speech. She is most passionate about using poetry as a platform to raise awareness about issues close to her heart.

 INTOXICATED (stage play)
http://www.facebook.com/roofdeckprod
INTOXICATED is (mostly) a comedy about love and alcohol. Trish (EARL MALLARI) is a fun-loving girl who loves to party, but has a tendency to drink a little bit too much and get into all sorts of crazy shenanigans. On one such night, her good friend Jim (GARETH PROSSER) confronts her about her apparent alcoholism. Neither Trish nor Jim is prepared for the emotional rollercoaster that is to follow.
About INTOXICATED -
INTOXICATED is the second play to be staged by Roofdeck Productions at the SPORE Art Salon, following the successful staging of ALL I WANT during the 9th edition in August 2011. INTOXICATED is written and directed by Ren Robles, and stars Earl Mallari and Gareth Prosser. Jason Miller is Assistant Director for this production, with Ace Bigcas as Stage Manager.

FREDI SONDEREGGER (musician)
Bass trombonist Fredi Sonderegger was born and brought up in the small town of Herisau in the northeast of Switzerland. He has been a member of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra for over 10 years, while holding the post of coordinator of brass studies at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts and lecturer at the School of the Arts. As a soloist and clinician, he has traveled extensively throughout the South East Asia region, performing in China, Thailand, Jakarta, Taiwan, and Malaysia. He has also performed in Italy, France and Germany as well as USA. Groups he has played with include La Fenice, The Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, Concerto Vocale, Les Cornet Noir, GregLyon’s Omniform, the Jeremy Monteiro Big Band as well as the Brass Explosion Big Band. He has also had the opportunity to display sound installations and perform in ad hoc theater groups incorporating his music.
Fredi’s sound art has been exhibited in Singapore, Macau and Taiwan. He has also performed in ad hoc theater and in a staged solo venture. He will perform at the Jeju International Band festival in August 2012. Future projects include the making of a solo CD and tours to Australia and New Zealand.

 ----------------------------


FEATURED VISUAL ART

BLOTCH STUDIOS
https://www.facebook.com/blotchstudios
"Mother", 7min
This film is a tribute to all mothers of the world. There are times when we may not appreciate your presence, but we will always feel your absence. Although we may not agree on everything, we thank you for your unconditional, everlasting love and dedication, for bringing us into this world and for showing us what it means to be a selfless pillar of our families.



Two little notes: Party Action

About BLOTCH Studios -

 Blotch is new, nebulous, and constantly rediscovering itself; it is emerging, growing and always seeking new grounds to conquer. It cannot be defined, cannot be contained. It is a vision, a belief, an ideology. It is a reason to fight, for all of our dreams combined. It is a group of individuals but also one.
 
In 2012, founding members of randomINK decided to take a new direction and bring together a group of creatives passionate in their individual fields to form a creative collective. This cumulated into Blotch Studios. Many of us previously graduated from Hwa Chong Institution's Art Elective Programme (AEP). We envision Blotch Studios as a multi-disciplinary studio that has a focus on filmmaking. Our members also dabble in creative pursuits as diverse as graphic design, photography, animation and illustration, and we see this cross-pollination of ideas and influences across art mediums as a distinctive feature of our group.


----------------------------

IndigNation 2012!

Our monthly LGBT Pride Festival is back! And this year, we have a logo!

We also have a theme: looking back at our heritage. It's not reflected in all our events, but it is in some. Click on the link to see the calendar properly:

Specific timings for each of our events is listed here. I've curated two events this time. Come come come.
 Gaily Ever After: Our Very Own Fairy Tales
Date: Fri 17 August
Time: 8pm
Venue: BooksActually, 9 Yong Siak Street
Sit down for an evening of storytelling with four queer Singaporean writers, each bearing a fairy tale with a gay twist. Featuring Ng Yi-Sheng, Cyril Wong, Tania de Rozario and Anila Angin.

ContraDiction 8: Our Very Own Literature
Date: Sat 25 August
Time: 7:30pm
Venue: The Reading Room, 21 Tanjong Pagar Road #04-01 (old MOX bar)
Our annual queer literary evening is back, with a new focus! Listen to some of Singapore's oldest works of queer literature from the 1980s, as well as works by our youngest writers from the 2010s. Featuring Ovidia Yu, Joel Tan, NUS Poet-in-Residence Jay Bernard and many more.

Lit Up Singapore 2012 and the Party Action People

I'd like to take the opportunity to plug yet another literary event I'm involved in:

It's a youth literary arts festival organised by Word Forward, Singapore's main performance poetry group. It's running from Sun 22 to Sun 29 July at Telok Ayer Performing Arts Centre (TAPAC), the soon-to-be-demolished building at 182 Cecil Street  Singapore 069547. 

The website's at http://litup.sg, and the Facebook page is here. We're also non-profit, so we're raising funds via a Rockethub page. There'll be shows, workshops, exhibitions, bazaars. Come come come.

Self-servingly, I'd like to promote the two Lit Up events that I'm performing in, namely:

1) Lit Up Singapore 2012 Launch

 TAPAC Courtyard, 4:30-7pm, Sun 22 July

Besides being a wonderful place to mingle, this is where we'll be debuting the Party Action People, a spoken word troupe made up of Marc Nair, Lee Jing Yan, Nabilah Husna, Deborah Emmanuel, Zuni Chong, Abel Koh, Charlene Shepherdson and myself. (Our bit is only half an hour long, and it'll come on around 5pm.)

2) National Poetry Slam

TAPAC Courtyard, 7-9pm, Sun 29 July

Hopefully I'm gonna compete at this year's slam - mostly because Marc's told us he wants to have a good, strong show to close off the festival. Must create three new poems; will inevitably be beaten hollow by someone else.

If you're in Singapore, hope you can come!

PinkDot 2012!

I actually changed my flight from the USA to make sure I could attend this. Manned the IndigNation booth and then helped to clean up rubbish afterwards.

My sister came too - parents couldn't be convinced, but my mum did lend my sister a pink T-shirt.

June texts!

Did a lot of reading overseas, as you can see!

*FICTION*
+Lily Yulianti Farid’s “Family Room”
=Shehan Karunatilaka's “The Legend of Pradeep Mathew”

*DRAMA*
=“Theater of Memory: The Plays of Kalidasa”
+George Bernard Shaw’s “The Doctors’ Dilemma”
+Lynn Nottage’s “Ruined”

*NON-FICTION*
+Jonathan Haidt's "The Happiness Hypothesis"
+Felipe Fernández-Armesto’s “The Americas: A Hemispheric History”
+Aung San Suu Kyi’s “Letters from Burma”

*SCRIPTURE*
+Penguin Great Ideas' “Writings from the Zen Masters”

*GRAPHIC TEXTS*
+Lisa Sankar-Zhu’s “The Emperor, His Bride and the Dragon Robe”

*FILMS*
Barry Sonnenfeld's “Men In Black III”

*PERFORMANCES*
+TheatreWorks’s “Lear Dreaming”
+Marion D’Cruz’s “Gostan Forward”
=The Merchant Family's “Taj Express”
+I Theatre’s “Our Island”
+“Clybourne Park”
=“Newsical”
+“Shear Madness”

*EXHIBITIONS*
+URA’s “Singapore City Gallery”
+Peter Chen's "Perspectives from the Ideal City"
=The National Museum of Women in the Arts’s permanent collection, "Royalists to Romantics", "25 x 25: Artists’ Books", "Women Silversmiths" and "Mamacita Linda"
=Sister Mary Corita King's "R(ad)ical Love"
+The National Museum of the American Indian’s permanent collection, "A Song for the Horse Nation" and "Best in the World: Native Athletes in the Olympics"
+The US Botanic Garden's permanent collection and "Savage Gardens: The Real and Imaginary World of Carnivorous Plants"
+The Hirshorn Museum's permanent collection and "Suprasensorial: Experiments in Light, Color and Space"
+Ai Wei Wei's "Circle of Animals: Zodiac Heads"
The Sackler Museum of Asian Art’s “Feast Your Eyes: A Taste for Luxury in Ancient Iran", Perspectives: Ai Wei Wei”, “Masters of Mercy: Buddha's Amazing Disciples”, "Xu Bing: Monkeys Grasping for the Moon"
The National Museum of African Art’s +“African Mosaic: Celebrating a Decade of Collecting", ="Africa Cosmos: Stellar Arts", +"Lalla Essaydi: Revisions"
The National Museum of American Art’s +permanent collection, ="African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era, and Beyond " and +"The Art of Video Games"
+The National Portrait Gallery’s permanent exhibition and "Portraiture Now: Asian American Portraits of Encounter"
+John F. Kennedy Museum and Library’s permanent exhibition
=Boston Tea Party Museum’s permanent exhibition