Event Postponed
Lecture-Performance: The Chronicles of Che Siti 99 Wed (28 Sep), 7:30pm
FB: https://www.facebook.com/events/1039428319485924/
In this lecture-performance we revisit in an attempt to peer into and form an inventory of its blind spots. The blind spots of subject positions, the blind spots of texts, of authorship, of history, of the gazes that make up history. The blind spots of exoticisation, fetishisation, romaticising, eroticising the other, the past, the unknown. The blind spots of cultural translations and archetypal representations of duality, gender, the chthonic, the animist, the abject, the body in pain and when shamed, desired, feared, revered and cursed.
About the SITIs:
* ila researches on lost languages and missing histories on the lion island and how these gaps result in fleeting identities. her interest stems from her inability to express herself fluently due to the result of the whitewashing of cultures, societal (and self-)censorship and how she is (un)consciously filling up the voids she experiences. ila is a visual performance artist in practice and works primarily with overhead projectors and analogue elements to create organic narratives within performative structures her works are personal explorations based on mistranslations, miscommunications and the discovery of her awkward self-expressions. she weaves imagined narratives with existing realities, with light as her medium of choice, and invisible communities as her point of interest.
* Wardah Mohamad graduated from Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in Illustration, 2011 and is currently pursuing her degree in Malay Language and Literature. Since then, she has worked with SoutheastAsian contemporary art galleries and collaborated with artists in their research on the subject of pre-colonial to post-independence Malay Archipelago. Presently, she is researching on the history of Singapore Malay Theatre for the National Library Board, Singapore, and intends to further investigate the construction and deconstruction of cultural identities in Southeast Asia. In between, she is at home listening to John Mayer or rapping to Kanye West.
* Zarina Muhammad is an independent researcher, curator and educator. She lectures on art history and cultural/contextual studies at Lasalle College of the Arts. She is also one of the editors of Body Boundaries, an anthology of women’s writing published by The Literary Centre, Singapore. Currently, Zarina is working on a multidisciplinary research project on cultural translations pertaining to ritual magic, Southeast Asian mythologies, animism and folk religion, mysticism and the cross/intercultural interpretations of witchcraft. She has presented her work in Indonesia, Cambodia, Japan, Hong Kong and Australia. At present, one of her key projects is to expand and develop a series of performances that aim to deconstruct and respond to the contested histories, texts and definitions pertaining to the intersections between witchcraft, magic, myth, ethno-medicine, religion, magic herbalism, sacred sites, monstrosity and the broader contexts of myth-making.
* Fariza is a multidisciplinary artist who works in a variety of media including but not limited to photography, film/video, poetry and illustration. Incorporating her background in the arts and law, her work often centralises on disability, ‘the other’ and the imbalanced social construct. She is fascinated with medieval punishment methods and the criminology of women as serial killers and vilified figures.
* “Marla Bendini” was created in 2007 as an amalgamation between art and life, to explore multiple liminal identities and fluidity in perspectives. Her multidisciplinary approach towards this amalgamation has become a signature form of hypervisibilty, using the existing politicized body as a catalyst and vehicle for further discourse. She seeks to both engage and disarm audiences and to bridge the present to what she envisions to be an inevitable trans/post-human condition. Her first self-titled exhibition Marla. (2008) was presented in a transsexual bar in Pattaya, Thailand. Sponsored by Fridae.com, Asia’s largest LGBT portal, she presented Conversations between father and son (2010), a multimedia installation-performance supported by The Substation Gallery, Singapore. Since then, she has been very active in Singapore’s queer and cultural scene, organising and participating in numerous group exhibitions and performance art festivals such as Future of Imagination and R.I.T.E.S. Her last solo exhibition I’m Nervous, presented by Grey Projects was organised in conjunction with the 10th edition of IndigNation, Singapore’s longest running LGBT festival. She has performed and exhibited in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Macau, Sweden, Spain and the United States of America.
* SHARMEEN/sifar has always been interested in many different systems, skills, ideas and modes of living. For the last 18 years they have actively sought to learn, understand & juxtapose these varied interests into their own patterns of understanding of the spaces beyond their body. They will continue seeking and merging what inspires them into new methods of communication in their body of works.