TeamBrack9 – 20 Jan 2023
Venue: Marketplace @ North Spine, NTU
Address: 76 Nanyang Dr, Singapore 637331
Introduction
In social forms of art, social interaction and participatory aspects of the practice are essential. Socially engaged art practice offers the opportunity to identify the structures underlying complex systems in contemporary society, allowing artists to intervene through artistic and social means creatively and effectively. In this field, we recognise that an artist’s value does not reside solely in the outcomes of what they produce but in new knowledge and methods that they learn in the process of making.
However, much of the process is often obscured or challenging to document. By learning and discovering aesthetic strategies and documentation methods which make the process visible and meaningful to audiences, socially engaged artists expand current photography literacy.
Using photography and lens-based media, 13 students from the Socially Engaged Photography Module at NTU School of Art, Design and Media, showcase their research processes of collaborating with participants from various social contexts in this inaugural exhibition. Their projects explore a myriad of compelling topics such as, caregiving, ageing, environmental conservation, animal rights, gender equity and rejuvenating spaces. Students seek to engage with and apply current discussions of collaboration, participation, authorship, documentation, and responsibility in their projects.
Participating Students: Chan Jiong Hao, Chen Min Jien, Evelyn Chong Jia Ling, He Jingni, Mikaylah Lepua, Liu Aoyang, Marie Alicia Kwan Ka-mei, Justin Neo Geng Yao, Eunice Oh Zhi Yi, Rebecca Lim Zhao Chu, Sim Siew Png, Joy Tang Chen-xi, Yuki Tiew Hiew Foo
Course Instructor: Alecia Neo Designer: FACTORY
Special Thanks: Student Affairs Office, Dr Oh Soon Hwa
Powered by: CoLab4Good, NTU School of Art, Design & Media
#MyULife #NTUsg #photographyforgood
Featured Programmes (Free)
*Registration required
Artist Talk by Lin Shiyun, Founder and Executive Director of 3Pumpkins
11 January 2023 (12.00 pm to 2.00 pm)
Venue: Global Lounge (located next to the stage opposite Boost Juice)
Sign up: https://wis.ntu.edu.sg/pls/webexe88/REGISTER_NTU.REGISTER?EVENT_ID=OA22121923520614
Dimensions of Care in Working with Community
Working with communities is centred around care for humans, identifying and embracing the individuals and their group dynamics. How do artists find the balance between two often contradictory forces in participatory art projects: an organic process that is respectful of the real challenges and growth of the participants, and an output-driven process which is required for an artwork to manifest?
Based on the experience of working with 12 families for the participatory photography project “This Is What We Eat at Home” (TIWWEAH), lead artist and producer Lin Shiyun will share the complex dimensions of care that artists need to take into consideration when conceptualising and executing a community project.
Speaker Bio
Shiyun is the founder and executive director of 3Pumpkins, a socially-engaged arts organisation that connects the realms of place-making, participatory arts, and integrated community care. Since 2016, Shiyun has conducted extensive practice research to discover the lived realities of children from less privileged backgrounds. She firmly believes in collaborative, dialogic and relational work in strengthening human connection. Shiyun’s multi-disciplinary practice is fully embodied in Tak Takut Kids Club, a community children and youth centre serving the families of Boon Lay.
3Pumpkins website: www.3pumpkins.co
TIWWEAH microsite: https://www.3pumpkins.co/this-is-what-we-eat-at-home
Participatory Art Workshop by artist Kei Franklin
18 Jan 2023 (12.00 pm to 2.00 pm)
Venue: Athena Room (located next to the North Spine food court, level 2)
Sign up: https://wis.ntu.edu.sg/pls/webexe88/REGISTER_NTU.REGISTER?EVENT_ID=OA22122013144871
Artist Bio
Kei Franklin is a facilitator, coach, organiser, and artist. Central to her practice is the belief that the power dynamics that sustain broad systems of injustice are reflected in our relational lives. Any meaningful change, therefore, must involve intervention in the inter- and intra-personal realm.
Kei’s creative practice takes on various forms – from performance to music to the written word. In her creative work Kei is currently exploring: the plurality of truth in the context of conflict; the futile quest for purity in a compromised world ; humour as a tool for resistance; and the conditions that nurture political conscientisation. She does her best to involve food whenever possible. Kei is a co-lead and editor-in-chief of Brack, a Singapore-based art collective and platform for socially-engaged art.
Kei’s coaching practice is informed by her training in both ontological coaching and somatic modalities like systemic embodied coaching, Family Constellations and Social Presencing Theatre. She invites clients to engage with their intuitive and embodied knowledge as she supports them to put their own wisdom into action. She is a graduate from the Academy of Coaching Excellence and is an Associate Certified Coach, accredited by the International Coaching Federation.
Kei grew up in a lively family in the mountains of Taos, New Mexico (USA) where she is currently building a straw-bale timber frame house from the ground up with her brothers. She spent three years in Eswatini, and called Singapore home from 2013 to 2020. She was a scholar at the Waterford Kamhlaba United World College of Southern Africa, and graduated as part of the inaugural class of Yale-NUS College in Singapore.
Kei is embedded in and sustained by a web of kin who are usually located in Singapore, the UK, Eswatini, and various parts of the USA. All that she does emerges from processes of dialogue with friends.
Workshop Synopsis
In this workshop, participants will be invited to engage with multiple ways of knowing as a means of deepening their sense of connection (to themselves, to each other, and to their artwork).
They will learn to engage not only their intellectual and emotional knowledge but also their embodied and intuitive knowledge. They will learn how to ask their bodies questions and how to listen for the answers. They will gain a deeper appreciation for the clarity and strength of their intuitive voice. Participants will leave the workshop with a deeper experiential understanding of their capacity to know — in ways that might surprise them.
During the workshop, each participant will be supported to gain deeper clarity and insight about a question/challenge that they are currently facing in relation to their creative practice.
In advance of the workshop, you are encouraged to reflect on a question/challenge that feels alive for you and that you would like to bring. During the workshop, we will support one another to discover ways to integrate our embodied and intuitive wisdom in order to each move forward with more clarity and ease.
The workshop will draw upon somatic modalities like systemic embodied coaching, Family Constellations, and Theatre of the Oppressed. It will be participatory and active.
Details: Wear clothes that you can move comfortably in. Bring something to write with / on.
