Identitas | Film Screening

Date: Wed, 7-March-2012
Time: 6pm
Venue: NUS MUSEUM


Admission is free. Please register at museum@nus.edu.sg or call 6516 8429 / 6516 8817


* Film is in Bahasa Indonesia with English subtitles. There will be a short talk prior to the   
 screening.

Identitas (Indonesia, 2009): the story about a rather bizarre relationship between Adam (Tio Pakusadewo), a frustrated worker at the hospital’s morgue, and a nameless young woman (Leoni Vitria hartanti) whose father is hospitalized, depicted against the backdrop of poverty, corruption and despair. It is the story of powerlessness of nameless citizens against the machinations and progress of an equally nameless and insensitive state. Humanity seems to be lost and death the only ‘easy’ way out of such a situation.

THE FILM SCREENING SERIES features a selection of research-inspired film screenings at the NUS Museum. This series is done in collaboration with a module on Topics in Malay Narrative Art Forms. Malay films from Indonesia, Malaysia as well as Singapore from the 1950s onwards will be shown. Spanning different genres, the themes include historical narrative and political context, modernity, identity, gender, racial tolerance and violence, and religion.

Companionable Objects, Companionable Conscience: Reflections on Sunaryo's Titik Nadir

Watch the entire talk here:

Date: 30 March 2012, Friday
Time: 4pm
Venue: NUS MUSEUM

Admission free. To register email: museum@nus.edu.sg or call 6516 8817 / 8429

Although this is increasingly a time of transnational solidarities, an unwavering commitment to or concern about the nation has been a longstanding and primary factor in the shaping of art works and biographical art writing in Indonesia.  This talk explores the summons of the nation in the making of “companionable objects” and a “companionable conscience” in Indonesia’s artworld.  I focus in particular on an installation presented by the acclaimed Indonesian artist, Sunaryo, a 1998 work called Titik Nadir (“The Low Point”), put together as Soeharto’s regime fell apart.  The evocative objects and iconoclastic gestures that made up Titik Nadir in some ways subverted or exceeded the “conscionable” and oblige us to reflect on what may be spent or lost in aligning one’s heart and art with the nation and a national art public.

Chairperson: Prof. Prasenjit Duara, Asia Research Institute & Office of Research, Humanities and Social Sciences Research, National University of Singapore. 

From Shanghai to Jalan Sultan by Kay Ngee Tan, 8-March-2012, 6.30pm, NUS MUSEUM

Talk by Kay Ngee Tan, Singaporean Architect, Author and Lead Architect for Singapore Pavilion at Shanghai World Expo 2010

Admission is free. To register email: museum@nus.edu.sg or call

6516 8817 / 8429

This talk will introduce recent work of Kay Ngee Tan Architects, which spans across different cities as well as vastly different cultures.

Speaker:

Tan Kay Ngee is an award-winning architect. He graduated from the Architectural Association, London in 1984 and was the prize winner of the RIBA Students Competition in 1985 as well as the London Royal Academy Young Designer Award in 1987.Selected as one of the “581 World Architects” by Ma Gallery Tokyo in 1996, projects of the office include: the Commune by the Great Wall in Beijing which won the Venice Biennale Silver Award in 2002, the Singapore Management University, and the Singapore Pavilion of Shanghai Expo 2010.The office work was showcased in the Singapore Pavilion at 2004 Venice Biennale, and the 2007 Singapore Season in Beijing. The office won the Japan Design Award for the Kinokuniya Bookstore, Sapporo in 2006, and the Singapore President’s Design Award for Page One Bookstore at Vivocity in 2007.

Event Recap | Filipiniana: Collecting Culture in the Philippines by Patrick D. Flores

WATCH THE QNA HERE:

Filipiniana: Collecting Culture in the Philippines
By Fiona Tan
Year 4, History Major

The second presenter of the Curating Nation series, Professor Patrick Flores, gave an enlightening presentation on the history of art collecting and nation-building in the Philippines. Exploring individual collectors such as Jorge Vargas, Fernando Zobel, and Arturo Luz, Flores traces the different ways the nation was curated in line with the socio-political changes.

Event Recap | Reflections on SUSURMASA

WATCH THE ENTIRE TALK HERE:

Event Recap | Down the Grand Canal

WATCH THE ENTIRE TALK HERE:

Down the Grand Canal
By Fiona Tan

Year 4, History Major

The fourth installment of the Curating Nation Talk Series brings us back to home, with June Yap providing both a broad overview of the Venice Biennales and Singapore’s participation, as well as her personal insights and reflections of her involvement curating Ho Tzu Nyen’s The Cloud of Knowing at the 54^th Venice Biennale in 2011.

Of Wayang, Buangkok, and Bukit Brown: Photographing Heritage

Date: 23 February 2012, Thursday
Time: 7.00pm
Venue: NUS MUSEUM

Admission free. To register email:  museum@nus.edu.sg or call 6516 8817 / 8429

A Panel Discussion 

Speakers: Ken Cheong and Zann Huang

Event Recap | China, India and the Role of Art in the Asian Century

WATCH THE ENTIRE TALK HERE:

Diary of an NUS Museum Intern : Tan Yeeling

Note: Diary of an NUS Museum Intern is a series of blog posts written by our interns about their experiences during the course of their internships. Besides working hard and fast in their cubicles, our interns have travelled to Bandung and Malacca, organised symposiums, waded through tons of historical research and pitched in during exhibition installations. At NUS Museum, each internship is as different from the last. If you would like to become our next intern, visit our internship page for more information!

For the month of January, NUS Museum hosted 5 interns as part of Temasek Junior College's WOW! 2012 Attachment Programme where the students were given the opportunity to engage in real world situations and to provide insights or solutions. Each week, each student will take it in turns to blog about their experience and give us a little glimpse into their world.

Tan Yeeling rounds up the last of the blog posts from our interns from TJC.

Diary of an NUS Museum: Zhang Shihe

Note: Diary of an NUS Museum Intern is a series of blog posts written by our interns about their experiences during the course of their internships. Besides working hard and fast in their cubicles, our interns have travelled to Bandung and Malacca, organised symposiums, waded through tons of historical research and pitched in during exhibition installations. At NUS Museum, each internship is as different from the last. If you would like to become our next intern, visit our internship page for more information!

For the month of January, NUS Museum hosted 5 interns as part of Temasek Junior College's WOW! 2012 Attachment Programme where the students were given the opportunity to engage in real world situations and to provide insights or solutions. Each week, each student will take it in turns to blog about their experience and give us a little glimpse into their world.

Here, Zhang Shihe shares her experience over the past 4 weeks.

This is our last week in NUS museum. Looking back to see the whole journey that we have been gone through in the past one month is really a valuable as well as genuinely enjoyable experience. We have learnt a lot through different tasks assigned to us as well as the communication with people who work in NUS museum. We have not only learnt knowledge but life skills as well, which are very precious and very helpful for the rest of our lives. We had a good time here in NUS museum, not because it was easy but because it was challenging and eventful. We are so satisfied and proud to say that we have been progressed in NUS museum this month and did not waste this period of precious time.

Supergarden, Curating the Singapore Architecture Pavilion at the 11th Venice Biennale, 16 February 2012, 6.30pm, NUS Museum

A Talk by Peter Sim and Lilian Chee

Model of 2494, FARM & Kwodrent

Date: 16 February 2012, Thursday
Time: 6.30pm
Venue: NUS MUSEUM


Admission free. To register email: museum@nus.edu.sg or call 6516 8817 / 8429

As objects, buildings are often appropriated to embody national or statist identities. They are large, permanent, and habitually iconic.  They can be displayed like trophies. However, this kind of objectification undermines the complex processes and evolving nature of architecture as an increasingly cross disciplinary practice as opposed to an autonomous one.  In this respect, exhibiting architecture to reflect a national imagination is always tricky thing.  Traditionally this would be achieved through architectural models and drawings but such means may recount only one side of a more colourful, complicated and multifaceted story.

FARM, with Lilian Chee, were appointed as lead curator and designer of the Singapore Pavilion at the 11th Venice International Architecture Biennale 2008.  The pavilion, SUPERGARDEN, presented design culture in Singapore at a moment when architecture is actively redefining its aesthetic, professional and intellectual boundaries in relation to other design fields. 

THE FILM SCREENING SERIES | SAYANG SI BUTA

Film Still Sayang Si Buta

Date: Wednesday, 15 February 2012
Time: 6pm
Venue: NUS MUSEUM


Admission is free. Please register at museum@nus.edu.sg
or call 6516 8429 / 6516 8817
*(Film is in Malay)

PRINTS | prep-room

Lim Mu Hue, Those who are not involved view the matter clearer, 1966, Woodblock print on paper

Date: 8 Feb – 30 Jun 2012

Venue: NUS MUSEUM

Free Admission

A  space exploring the woodblock print medium as the subject and material for production, dissemination and consumption; Reproduction of prints by Choo Keng Kwang, Foo Chee San, Koeh Sia Yong, Lim Mu Hue, See Cheen Tee, Shui Tit Sing and Tan Tee Chee are made available for teaching and learning.  

THE FILM SCREENING SERIES | Singapura Dilanggar Todak

                                                                                                                   Film Stills by Shaw Organisation Pte Ltd


Date: Wednesday, 8 Feb 2012
Time: 6.30pm
Venue: NUS MUSEUM

The well-known legendary Malay tale of how the kingdom of Singapore came under deadly swordfish attacks, symbolizing the disintegration of the king’s rule. Singapura Dilanggar Todak was produced in 1962 by Omar Rojik for Shaw Brothers. There will be a short talk prior to the screening.