ROJAK 16: next Saturday night!

I'm hosting again!


It'll be on:

28th August 2010,
Saturday, 7pm
Blk 263,
Waterloo Centre,
Singapore 180263
1st storey void deck

ROJAK 15! I'm co-hosting.

Who: FARM
Where: Emily hill, 11 Upper WIlkie Road, Singapore 228120
When: 12.06.2010 Sat 08.00pm till 12.06.2010

It has been a long while since the last one. We have been busy the whole of last year and also spent some time moving to our new space. But now we are back with ROJAK 15!

It's happening on 12th June, Saturday, 8pm till late at a lovely shed on Emily Hill. Thank you to the good people at Emily Hill and sixdegrees for their cosy space for the night. You can see the shed in the poster, taken by Jeremy San! Thanks Jeremy :)

For directions and a better view of the space, you can download the poster here.

Kelvin Ang and Ng Yi-Sheng will join us once again as the hosts for the night.

Our presenters for the evening, in no particular order:
1. MINDWASABI, Design Strategy
2. Rage Goh, Poetry
3. Nataliette, Illustration
4. Natalie Lee, Graphic Design
5. Liao Jiekai, Film
6. Jeff Chouw, Photography
7. Brian Chia, Graphic Design
8. Dan Prichard, Film
9. Kenneth Chong, Architecture and Arts
10. Chan Mei Hsien, Fine Arts

(For the actual links, go to the original invite here.)

Bring drinks and beer to share for the beloved ROJAK dinghy!
It's all in the spirit of ROJAK sharing :)

See you there!

I'm going to Cambodia for Flying Circus Project, 6 to 14 December.

Serving as documenter again - so regular updates will be appearing on the Flying Circus Project Wordpress Blog. As soon as we're back, we'll do a SUPERINTENSE presentation on 16 Jan at 72:13 in Singapore. Here's the publicity:

TheatreWorks / 72-13 presents

Flying Circus Project Platform 03
SUPERINTENSE

Superintense: 16 January 2010

Airan Berg, Ashok Sukumaran, Eszter Salamon, Filiz Sizanli, Gurur Ertem, Hafiz Dhaou, Heman Chong, Hu Fang, Janez Jansa, Janez Jansa, Jecko Siompo, Manuel Pelmus, Mia Haugland Habib, Mustafa Kaplan, Nelisiwe Xaba, Shaina Anand, Tarek Atoui, Tim Etchells, Vlatka Horvat, Zulkifle Mahmod.


Superintense is a marathon of personal strategies of creativity in the urban context, in our worlds. From one morning to the next, all the FCP artists will have an hour each to present their work, their practice to themselves and a public audience. A table, a projector, a microphone, an audience; which can all be reconstructed into an open space – the same conditions are given to each artist. They are invited to share their practice with the audience; past work, present work, future work. It can take the form of a talk, a lecture-demonstration, a performance, slides, a video, a DJ session, a workshop, a discussion. Without a break, all the artists relentlessly articulate their practice, communicating an insight to the myriad ways of inhabiting, dissolving, thinking, making, living, destroying, rejuvenating. An actor, an audience, a shared space. Take a cigarette pause on the run.

Date: 16 January 2010
Time: 11am till late
Venue: 72-13 Mohamed Sultan Road
Admission: Free

Oh, and before I leave tomorrow morning, here's a map of where I've been so far:


visited 40 states (17.7%)
Create your own visited map of The World

So much of the world left to see!!!!

expo zéro by Musée de la Danse

I'm serving as the official documenter for this! It's on this Saturday and Sunday, 1-6pm, at 72-13/TheatreWorks. Drop by if you can!


TheatreWorks / 72-13 presents

Flying Circus Project Platform 01: expo zéro by Musée de la Danse

The first-ever dancing museum in Singapore hosted by the Flying Circus Project, expo zéro is a unique exhibition without objects conceived by acclaimed French choreographer, Boris Charmatz and Musée de la Danse.

expo zéro is only open on two days: 7 & 8 November at 72-13 between 1pm and 6pm.

An `exhibition' project with no photographs, no sculptures, no installations, no videos. Zero things, not one stable object. But artists, and areas occupied by gestures, projects, bodies, stories, dances which everyone will choose to imagine.

In the process spirit of the Flying Circus Project (FCP) conceived by Ong Keng Sen, expo zéro is a kind of 'think tank' through analysis, description, performance, movements and ideas which each guide-artist will develop with the audience. This comes at a timely occasion as Singapore has no dancehouse (tanzhaus, dansens hus, centre chorégraphique national), a question which TheatreWorks / 72-13 is presently pondering.

expo zéro is headed by Boris Charmatz in collaboration with dancers-choreographers, François Chaignuad, Mette Ingvartsen and actor-director Yves-Noël Genod. In Singapore, it collaborates with Asian artists, architects, theorists of FCP 2010 like Padmini Chettur, Heman Chong, Torrance Goh of FARM, Donna Miranda, Joavien Ng and Ong Keng Sen.
For all bios, please go to www.theatreworks.org.sg / www.72-13.com

Visitors will experience these individuals' visions, subjective and utopian, of what a dancing museum can be.

Join us and be part of expo zéro now!

EVENT INFORMATION

Flying Circus Project Platform 01
expo zéro by Musée de la Danse

Date: 7 & 8 November 2009
Musée hours: 1pm – 6pm daily
Venue: 72-13 Mohamed Sultan Road
Admission: Free

Please call 6737-7213 or email tworks@singnet.com.sg to register your attendance.

For more information:

www.theatreworks.org.sg
www.72-13.com

I'll be doing a presentation on my musical "Georgette" next Saturday, 3 October, 2:30 to 4:45pm

Drop by!

THE PATRIARCH ALWAYS PAYS at the Arts House at 4pm Sat 8 August

... is the title of the commedia dell'arte inspired play that I've devised with four other writer/performers as part of the DramaBox Blanc Space collaborative playwriting programme, under the guidance of American playwright Joan Holden.



It's a makeshift presentation using texts we wrote over the weekend, so it won't be stellar, but it'll be fun. It's a comedy set in old Suzhou about organ transplants! I play the faithful servant Ah Lek, based on Arlecchino.

Once again, it's on:

Sat 8 August, 4pm
The Hall @ The Arts House (i.e. the small building with the Vietnamese restaurant, next to the Arts House proper)
Price: FREE


The writers/performers are:

Chris Lee
Verena Tay
Peggy Ferroa
Jacklyn Kuah
Ng Yi-Sheng

Poet X Poet X Photos!

That's me squirming while Prof Lee read my early adolescent juvenilia. I eventually retaliated by performing "Prospect of a Drowning" in Singlish.

Ooh, did I mention we had an audience?


They stuck around for two hours - some of them standing! - while we gabbed about each other's poetry (with brief anecdotal excursions about our personal lives, and those of others, for which I sincerely apologise). Very good response, according to Kenny: someone said it was the best Singapore lit event s/he'd been to in a long time.


This was thanks in no small part to our moderator, Gwee Li Sui. (Edwin Thumboo also interjected a fair number of times. He's being hidden by the stack of plastic cups.)

And really, it was a gorgeous place to have the event:


Photos courtesy of Alvin Pang.

While we're at it, why not some photos from the Life! Theatre Awards? Here's Wong Chee Wai/Ng Tze Wei getting his Best Set Design for "The Last Temptation of Stamford Raffles".



And here's the crowd: (from left to right: Brian Gothong Tan, members of ZingO Drum Group, Fran Borgia, Elizabeth Tan, K Rajagopal):


And our (unnervingly precocious) entertainment:


Now that they've scaled it back to a nominees-only ceremony, it's unlikely that I'll be invited back next year. Ah well, I've decided to concentrate on books rather than drama this year, and there's a price for every venture. (More on that in a later post.)

Now to file my taxes.

“Poet x Poet” series

Session No. 1: Lee Tzu Pheng x Ng Yi-Sheng
Moderated by Dr. Gwee Li Sui

P O E T R Y D I A L O G U E

Date // 3 April, Friday
Time // 7 pm
Venue // BooksActually (No. 5 Ann Siang Road. T / 6221 1170)

Poet x Poet is a dialogue session where two well-known poets are invited to read and critique each other's works. This is a first in Singapore where poets from different generations and practice engage in intellectual critical dialogue regarding their craft. The audience is welcome to pose any questions and/or participate in the dialogue. Moderated by Dr. Gwee Li Sui. Organized by BooksActually.

LEE TZU PHENG:
Lee Tzu Pheng was born (May 13, 1946) and educated in Singapore. She has a Ph.D in English from the University of Singapore from where she has recently retired as a Senior Lecturer in its English Department. She has four volumes of poems to her name; of these, the first three, Prospects of a Drowning(1980), Against the Next Wave, (1988) and The Brink of An Amen(1991) were winners of the National Book Development Council of Singapore (NBDCS) Award. Aside from literary studies, her other interests include children's literature and church work.

NG YI-SHENG:
Ng Yi-Sheng (b. 1980) is a Singaporean writer. He has published a collection of his poems entitled Last Boy (2006) and SQ21: Singapore Queers in the 21st Century (2006). He won the Singapore Literature Prize in English in 2008.

Life Styles: Theatre and Biography Across Cultures

I'm speaking at this Symposium at the National Museum on Friday afternoon!

Turns out we're getting a bigger space, so space won't be as limited as I thought. Thus I can advertise this with impunity.

I'm hosting ROJAK 13!

ROJAK 13: Interiors is happening on January 23rd, Friday 8pm at the National Museum (2nd level Concourse)


We have a wonderful lineup for the evening. The ROJAKers are:

1. Lin Weidong, Photography
2. Alecia Neo, Photography
3. Gilles Massot, Art
4. Maxine Chionh, Art
5. Donna Ong, Art
6. Mark Wee, Architecture & Interiors
7. Hans Tan, Industrial/Product Design
8. Larry Peh, Commercial/Industrial Design
9. Raihan Halim, Film
10. Benjamin Tan, Film

Rojak 13 is held in conjunction with Come-in, an exhibition of the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations (ifa) and presented by National Museum of Singapore and Goethe Institut Singapore.
See you all soon!

Seeking an Audience: A Symposium on Singapore Literature in English

Hey, I'm doing a 4:30pm panel, a 6:30pm reading and having a 5:30pm mini-singthru of "Georgette" at this event. It's co-organised by NLB and NTU.

Details from here. You've gotta be registered to attend the early events (and the deadline's passed), but everything's open from 5:30pm on.

5.30pm
Cocktail Reception at The POD, Level 16, National Library Building
* A musical performance produced by Stella Kon
* Reading by Ng Yi-Sheng and impromptu readings by others
* Readings by Joseph Prem Anand and Fam Wee Wei, from Bear Fruit (Creative Writing) Programme

The Symposium is being held in connection with the launch of Singapore Literature in English: an Annotated Bibliography compiled and edited by Prof. Koh Tai Ann in collaboration with the National Library.

Registration has closed on 24 October 2008 and all successful registrants have been notified. We regret that only confirmed registrants will be admitted. Thank you.

Performing at Supperclub tonight.

My first time. Experimental drag + Sprachstimme, 10-10.15pm.

ROJAK 12 @ Septfest

Forgot to advertise that I'm MCing for the following event today:

Dearest friends,
Come to ROJAK 12- The Place Issue!

It's happening this Sunday, 31 August, 3pm (Yes, our first afternoon ROJAK!) We are graciously hosted by The Substation. ROJAK 12 is part of The Substation's SeptFest 08 opening weekend. Thanks to the cool folks for inviting us and facilitating everything!

Our dear ROJAKers are:
1. Mintio, Photograhy
2. Eng Yee Peng, Film
3. Lawrence Abrahamson, Art
4. Ang Song Ming, Sound
5. Perception3, Photography & Film
6. Lim Shengen, Art
7. Jacen Tan, Film
8. Randy Chan, Architecture
9. Jing Quek, Photography
10. Laura Soon, Art

We'll also be featuring fellow ROJAKer Song Ming's new music project- "Hit Me Baby One More Time" throughout the event.
This 'tissue-chop!' invite is by Perception3
Our official ROJAK photographer is Shan Chia.

Bring on your friends, and drinks and beer to share for the ROJAK dinghy.
And come dressed casually...it's afterall a Sunday afternoon.
See you there :) ROJAK is FARM's quarterly sharing session featuring 10 local artists/designers and their works & processes. It is the place to find new local works and share ideas.
Submissions for ROJAK are always open!

Visit ROJAK website for more details.

VISTA LAB 2.0: INTERFERENCE

Presented by TheatreWorks

A Process-Presentation by

Choy Ka Fai

In collaboration with

_Joavien Ng _ Mohd Fared Jainal,

_Patricia Toh _Ling Hock Siang

_Ng Yi-Sheng _Zulkifle Mahmod,

_Khoo Eng Tat _GraceTan/kwodrent,

_Lim Woan Wen _Torrance Goh/FARMWORK.

Date : 14-15 Dec 2007

Time : 8pm

Venue: 72-13

Admission: $5

For Reservations ring 6737 7213 or email : tworks@singnet.com.sg

**There will be a Q & A session after the presentations.

INTERFERENCE is about unwanted signals that disrupt or construct movements of nature. It is about the interventions of patterns in history, time, signal and noise.

INTERFERENCE explores the concept of listening to the noise of history: moments which are insignificant in our collective memory. This presentation researches our techniques of remembering and the recollections of irrelevant episodes of unrecorded history.

INTERFERENCE is a space as well as an organism. This mediated space functions as an interactive installation and a performance environment where moving bodies, electronic sounds, visual documents and light are interwoven into a constantly changing artefact of unhistorical events.

********

If history is signal, then time itself must be recognized as noise: an infinitely complex mess of data that resists interpretation.

Our project is therefore to listen to the noise of history, moments, which yield no discernible signal: the insignificant events.

Herein lies a paradox. As artists, as humans, we have a natural impulse to transmute chaos into art.

Is our goal then to reclaim the forgotten into the field of recorded time?

Or should we resist, in our representations of insignificant events, our instinct to render them significant?

********

Conceived and created by Choy Ka Fai, V.I.S.T.A Lab is a series of presentations

resulting from workshop and experiments with the 10 Singapore-based artist/designer across the wide spectrum of artistic discipline. This project is based on the central theme of re-looking at historical events that escapes our people’s memories, seemingly deemed insignificant in our invention of a vibrant, global city. We are interested in the lapses of our recent histories and the understanding of the past to imagine the future.

INTERFERENCE is the second of three presentations of V.I.S.T.A Lab Cycle 1; the third presentations will be held in February 2008.

**For more informations please visit

www.vistalabbers.blogspot.com

www.theatreworks.org.sg / www.72-13.com

Supported by

National Arts Council, Lee Foundation, Hong Leong Foundation,

72-13, Web-vision and Power98

With additional support by

Mixed Reality Lab, NUS

My moustache brings all the boys to the bar

I'm supposed to act as the first Chinese historiographer Sima Qian in V.I.S.T.A Lab 2.o: Interference. One of the orders from director Choy Ka Fai was that I would have to grow a beard.

I used to look like this:

DAY 0

DAY 2

DAY 4

DAY 5

DAY 7

DAY 8

DAY 9

Now, I look like this:

DAY 10

I think the ultimate intention is for me to look like this:

But then I went and checked a picture of Sima Qian on Wikipedia:


Basket! Of course he was hairless! He was a eunuch!

ROJAK 10: The Collaborative Edition

My art collective VISTA Lab is gonna be featured in the next edition of ROJAK this Saturday night:

Dear friends,

Welcome to ROJAK 10: The Collaborative Edition! (in conjunction with the Singapore Design Festival 2007 and the inaugural ArchiFest 2007)

Head down to the historic City Hall Building (Level 3: Chamber) this coming Saturday, 1 December at 8pm. The venue is kindly hosted by Singapore Institute of Architects.

This special edition of ROJAK will feature 5 works of a collaborative nature spanning the fields of architecture, product design, film, theatre, performance art and multimedia.

And they are Magical Spaces: Adib J, Yeo Jia-Jun, Rofan Teo, outofstock: Wendy Chua & Gabriel Tan, V.I.S.T.A. Lab: Ka Fai with various artists, Loo Zihan & Ruby Pan and syntfarm: Vladimir Todorovic & Andreas Schlegel.

The uber-cool invite artwork is by JUN from UFHO.

Like always, please bring drinks to share for the ROJAK dingy and spread the ROJAK sharing spirit :)

See you there! :)

Thanks for reading :)
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that grows systems for the Singaporean creative community.
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