Silke Schmickl at Summer School as School 2019
10 August, 2019, 19:00
Venue: Boxing Club
Summer School as School
5 - 21 August, 2019
Stacion - Center Contemporary Art Prishtina has the pleasure to announce the Film School Program: Artist film highlights from Singapore’s National Collection, curated by Silke Schmickl, part of the Public Program of Summer School as School 2019.
National Gallery Singapore holds the world’s largest museum collection of modern and contemporary art from Southeast Asia. The collection covers a wide spectrum of artistic responses to the region’s rich and tumultuous history since the 19th century, tracing how artists have continually negotiated the forms and meanings of art and critically engaged with Western modernity by drawing on local aesthetics and traditions. The 1960s in particular saw artists increasingly experimenting with new technologies and forming avant-garde collectives to address local realities, often with the objective of provoking socio-political change. The moving image, along with literary and performative art forms––with their fleeting nature and flexible presentations––were powerful tools in this endeavour.
These two film programmes present highlights from Singapore’s National Collection that exemplify how artists self-reflexively use the medium of video. The first programme focuses on how artists challenge official or latent state narratives to create dissenting histories. They also address the tension between ethnic, cultural and religious diversity in the region and rigid nationalistic aspirations. The second programme looks at Southeast Asia’s rapid economic and social transformation and the resultant rural/urban divide, leading to displacement and social alienation. The programmes feature works by some of Southeast Asia’s leading contemporary artists, including Ho Tzu Nyen, Charles Lim and Zai Kuning (Singapore); The Propeller Group and Tran Luong (Vietnam), FX Harsono and Melati Suryodarmo (Indonesia); amongst others.
List of films:
Tracey Moffatt and Gary Hillberg, Other, Australia, 7 min, colour, sound
Ho Tzu Nyen, Utama – Every Name in History is I, Singapore, 2003, 21 min 48 sec, colour, sound
Wong Hoy Cheong, Sook Ching – An Experimental Video on the Japanese Occupation, Malaysia, 1990, 27 min 42 sec, colour, sound
Tran Luong, Red Scarf / Welt, Vietnam, 2010, 2 min 51 sec, colour, sound
FX Harsono, Victims/ Destruction I, Indonesia, 1997, 6 min 28 sec, colour, sound
Zai Kuning, RIAU, Singapore, 2003, 29 min 45 sec, colour, sound
Melati Suryodarmo, Exergie – Butter Dance (Sao Paolo), Indonesia, 2000, 6 min 23 sec, colour, sound
Lee Wen, World Class society, Singapore, 1999, 4 min 10 sec, colour, sound
Thao Nguyen Phan, Tropical Siesta, Vietnam, 2017 13 min 42, colour, sound
The Propeller Group, Uh…, Vietnam/USA, 2007, 7 min, colour, sound
Chen Sai Hua Kuan, Space Drawing No. 5, Singapore, 2010, 1 min 3 sec, colour, sound
Charles Lim Yi Yong, All Lines Flow Out, Singapore, 2011, 21 min 45 sec, colour, sound
Silke Schmickl is a curator at National Gallery Singapore. She was previously curator at the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, a researcher at the German Art History Center in Paris and the co-founding director of Lowave, a Paris/Singapore based curatorial platform and publishing house. She has initiated and directed numerous art projects dedicated to emerging art scenes in the MiddleEast, Africa, India, Turkey and Singapore, and has curated exhibitions in partnership with museums and biennials in Singapore, Paris, Guangzhou, Beirut and Düsseldorf.
Recent exhibitions at National Gallery include Minimalism: Space. Light. Object and Rirkrit Tiravanija: untitled 2018 (the infinite dimensions of smallness).