Solidarity With Nature
February 15–23, 2020
Block 6 Lock Road #01-09
Singapore 108934
NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore and the New Museum are pleased to announce participants and collaborators for the second edition of the NTU CCA Ideas Fest, IdeasCity Singapore, guest-curated by IdeasCity, taking place in Singapore and across Southeast Asia from February 15 to 23, 2020.
Building upon the NTU CCA Singapore’s research theme “Climates. Habitats. Environments.” and IdeasCity’s exploration of the role of art and culture beyond the walls of the museum, IdeasCity Singapore’s residency and public program will examine the urgency of solidarity structures in negating climate change and its impact on Southeast Asia and communities worldwide.
Twenty practitioners have been selected from an international open call for the residency program at the NTU CCA Singapore to develop independent research at the intersection of art and ecology. Throughout the residency, participants will engage in workshops and lectures presented by local artists, practitioners, and community leaders, including Heman Chong, Lynette Chua, Drama Box, Charles Lim, Zarina Muhammad, and Post-Museum, along with organizations such as New Naratif, The Projector, Singapore Community Radio, soft/WALLS/studs, and The Substation.
On February 22, 2020, IdeasCity Singapore will culminate in a free public program, Solidarity with Nature, at the NTU CCA Singapore. The program will speculate on connections between the built environment, the natural world, and social movements. The day’s events will cover topics and themes relating to food sovereignty, environmental justice, migration policy, and emerging technology through a series of conversations and debates by local and international participants, including Kunlé Adeyemi, Marwa Arsanios, Bakudapan, Angela Dimayuga, Kirsten Han, Vanessa Ho, Eleena Jamil, Rindon Johnson, Bouchra Khalili, Prasoon Kumar, Prem Krishnamurthy, Emeka Ogboh, Raqs Media Collective, Ho Rui An, Alfian Sa’at, Saskia Sassen, Audrey Tang, and David Teh.
Responding to the context of climate crisis, in which artists, activists, and scholars around the world are working today, IdeasCity Singapore will include a series of programs across Southeast Asia in collaboration with The Forest Curriculum and Nomina Nuda (Los Baños, Philippines), Malaysia Design Archive (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia), House of Natural Fiber (Yogyakarta, Indonesia), The Land (Chiang Mai, Thailand), Sàn Art (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam) and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (Boston, United States).
Facilitated by IdeasCity and workshopped at NTU CCA Singapore with an advisory council of Singaporean community members whose work exemplifies equitable practices, a community agreement was developed that details best practices for achieving an accountable, sustainable, and authentic collaboration in Singapore.
NTU CCA Ideas Fest 2020 is guest-curated by IdeasCity, New Museum, New York.
IdeasCity Singapore is conceived and organized by Vere van Gool with Gabe Gordon, Nicholas Liong, Gregory Ng Yong He, and Karen Wong at the New Museum, as well as Ute Meta Bauer, Karin Oen, Magdalena Magiera, Leong Min Yu Samantha, and Ze-Tian Lim at NTU CCA Singapore.
NTU CCA Ideas Fest is a platform to catalyze the critical exchange of ideas and encourage thinking outside the box. It is a bottom-up approach linking the artistic and the academic with community groups and grassroots initiatives. The pilot edition, Cities for People (2016–17), expanded on artistic interventions and engaged with contemporary issues such as air, water, food, environment, and social interaction in connection to artistic and cultural fields, academic research, and design applications. This second iteration in 2020 coincides with the exhibition The Posthuman City. Climates. Habitats. Environments (November 23, 2019–March 8, 2020) at NTU CCA Singapore.
About IdeasCity
IdeasCity is a collaborative, civic, and creative platform that starts from the premise that art and culture are essential to the future vitality of cities. This international initiative provides a forum for designers, artists, technologists, and policymakers to exchange ideas, identify challenges, propose solutions, and engage the public’s participation. The initiative was cofounded at the New Museum by Lisa Phillips, Toby Devan Lewis Director, and Karen Wong, Deputy Director. Previous international IdeasCity programs have taken place in Istanbul (2012), São Paulo (2013), Athens (2016), Arles (2017), and Toronto (2018).
About NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore
A leading international art institution, NTU CCA Singapore is a platform, host, and partner creating and driven by dynamic thinking in its three-fold constellation: Exhibitions, Residencies Programme, Research and Academic Education. A national research centre for contemporary art at Nanyang Technological University, the Centre focuses on Spaces of the Curatorial. It brings forth innovative and experimental forms of emergent artistic and curatorial practices that intersect with the present and histories of contemporary art embedded in social-political spheres with other fields of knowledge.
About Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
A research-intensive public university, NTU has 33,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students in the colleges of Engineering, Business, Science, and Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, and its Graduate College. NTU’s campus is frequently listed among the top 15 most beautiful university campuses in the world and has 57 Green Mark-certified (equivalent to LEED-certified) buildings. Besides its 200-ha lush green, residential campus in western Singapore, NTU has a second campus in the heart of Novena, Singapore’s medical district.
About New Museum
The New Museum is the only museum in New York City exclusively devoted to contemporary art. Founded in 1977, the New Museum is a center for exhibitions, information, and documentation about living artists from around the world. From its beginnings as a one-room office on Hudson Street to the inauguration of its first freestanding building on the Bowery designed by SANAA in 2007, the New Museum continues to be a place of experimentation and a hub of new art and new ideas.
