The Arts 2015: OPEN - SIFA

This is part one of a two-part series on the arts events I was fortunate enough to attend this year. 

The OPEN, is the the prelude to the Singapore International Festival of the Arts (SIFA), both of which I had never attended before. OPEN stands for Open, Participate, Engage, Negotiate (as shown below), which works as a "public engagement initiative", so the tickets and passes were relatively cheaper than the main SIFA events. We got ourselves the concession passes and got right down to flexing our artsy brain muscles. First stop, Tanjong Pagar Railway Station!

We were there for 15 stations, part historical building tour, part augmented reality (AR) and audio art installation fest. I'm always up for going to mainstream-hipster places, except upping the pretentiousness factor by attending arts events there. 

The first and second AR "stations" were outside. We were confused for a good 5 minutes about where the third station was. Turns out, it was inside the building. Wow, what a foreign concept.

I'm a huge fan of technology so I'm always thrilled when Art and Tech collide to provide new experiences. Granted, apps glitch and consume power, but the interactive aspect makes exploring and "decoding" art unique too. 

The use of technology is in itself performative too. I loved the rustic feeling of the afternoon sunlight streaming into the musky room as I listened to the stories of life in the past on my hand held computer.

The Love Story part of the tour was so sweet and unexpected; it left Sarah and I squealing at the excited auntie relating how she and her husband met and fell in love at the station.

Actually got nothing inside there.

A mandatory shot for the gram. 

But in all fairness, it was a good place for the accidental pretty camera shot, complete with lens flare.

We then rode down to The Projector, Singapore's independent cinema that "showcases indie, foreign, cult favourites, classics, arthouse, horror, local flicks, retrospectives and special themed nights." We caught two films as part of OPEN, Johanna and Battles.

I really enjoyed Johanna (and if it comes back you should go catch it). We were caught off-guard because we had conveniently overlooked the part that said it was a Hungarian Opera. HAHA Nevertheless, it was an hour plus of the unnerving retelling of the Joan of Arc story, and the singing did little to detract us from enjoying the film. If anything, it accentuated the drama of the (really twisted) story-line, and we left the cinema flustered and breathless at the strange tale of a morphine addict who recovers and cures terminally ill patients with her body. I'm no film expert, but I love catching events and films with Sarah because we always review our experience, so we were soon raving about the ~chiaroscuro~ effects and the dramatic effect of a chorus of little children (hah that should tell you something about how unsettling the film was). 

Battles was different, and a little more inaccessible because it was almost like a silent video montage for the first half... and a series of random sequences that tell more about a mood than a plot. In this case, they were little sequences about war and its effects across Europe, no overwhelmingly battered landscapes or blood and gore, just things like... a man in a suit dusting earth from old war relics, gunpower falling into a bag, explosions happening in a contained facility. Or a female commander shouting at a few clumsy unsoldierly figures, then sitting in a car with her male companion, eating chips and watching the wind howl at the trees.

I always laugh at the fact that I can't say something about obscure art without sounding pretentious, not because I can conjure up strange existential theories, but because I merely notice little indiscrepancies and parallels that move me in ways that I cannot always articulate -- very modern art feels: JUST FEEL IT. I could probably come up with an answer to: What does it all mean? How is it shown? if I really had to, but in the laziest, most cop-out way that is unbecoming of a Singaporean, it would suffice to say that, sometimes, you should just let art move you. 

The Projector has such a great vibe.

very egg slut feels

I visited Deck for the first time for The Price of Neglect by Lu Guang, a photo exhibition about the Aids Village in China, and the impact of industrialisation on the Chinese landscape and people. Again, a very moving display of works that captured very strong emotions, especially those of the aids victims. I remember fondly photographs of old men raising their shirts and/or resting on a table, but revealing how the disease was eating up their bodies. There was also this photograph taken of a vast landscape dotted with black "mounds" that, upon closer inspection, turned out to be massive craters in the ruined earth. The best part was probably feeling the air-con blast in the sterile shipping container gallery as I stared at photographs depicting ruination. I love ironic situations.

No photos for SIFA, because I attended plays that you know, don't exactly allow for those. I didn't plan on going at first, because the tickets were expensive, but in the spur of the moment I got Dhiraj to enter the Straits Times contest with me to take a selfie to win tickets to the plays they were featuring. We ended up winning a pair of tickets each to Six Characters In Search of an Author and Dementia!!!!!!

Dementia was delayed for an hour because of technical problems which was a bother, but when we watch the play, we realised just why it ran into the problems. The set was massive! A two story high hospital with the upper level as a toilet, with a toilet bowl, a shower from which water flowed, and another from which "blood" flowed!? What????!!!! They also used tiny body cameras on stage to magnify certain acts or do close-ups. There was a moment in which the curtains fell completely and the next five to ten minutes of the performance was filmed and screened on the curtains. 

Incorporating elements of comedy and melodrama, Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó and his Proton Theatre group have crafted a visceral performance that will unnerve and prompt you to think about the endgame of human life. Fluidly crossing borders between film and theatre, Mundruczó is presently the Hungarian artist to watch after winning the Un Certain Regard prize at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.

In post-socialist Hungary, a world-famous psychiatric hospital – unable to survive the march of capitalism – is on the brink of being shut down. The building is dilapidated and its garden overgrown with weeds. Only a handful of patients are left vegetating on the fourth floor, abandoned in the empire of amnesia. Nevertheless, they, and the friendly doctor and nurse who care for them, are delighted to make your acquaintance. Since you are visiting, would you be willing to make a small financial contribution to save the hospital?

Welcome to the world of Dementia, in which Mundruczó uses a heady mix of music, dark humour and fantastic décor to bring spectators face to face with the difficult moral questions which we, the able-bodied, would prefer to ignore. What benefit can society ever hope to reap from prolonging the lives of mental patients? What is the point of helping those who are suffering – specifically those who are not even cognisant of their own state – and numbing them even further with modern medicine?

In Dementia, you decide.

Can I get a hell yeah for the great opportunity to watch this production?! Yes, I was blown away by the spectacle: song and dance with instruments, "committing suicide" on stage, biting an ear off, slicing a tongue off (and reattaching it), actual boobies and dicks flopping about on stage; it was such a carnival, a mad and totally unique experience to die for. Definitely worth the one hour delay, and a stroke of good fortune to have gotten it free!

Six Characters was a little more tame but also terribly dark and seductive. The meta-theatrical play was an absurdist piece that questioned the nature and the relationship of the author, director, actor, and character. I was left puzzled and confused at the end of the play, but as with a lot of decoding literary texts, I've learnt that sometimes ambiguity and confusion is all part and parcel of the message LOL.

Thoughtful and chaotic, real and imagined, spiritual and metaphysical, Six Characters In Search Of An Author asks fascinating questions about the ever-shifting relationships between authors, characters, actors and audiences. This dynamic, startling and emotional production from one of the most famous theatres in France makes its Asian premiere with a big bang.

A dysfunctional family of six bursts into a rehearsal at a theatre with a curious claim: they are characters who have abandoned their author and are looking for someone who can complete their story. Intrigued, the director agrees to help.

Along the way, everyone’s roles come into question. The characters yearn to perform their own stories. The actors become spectators. The director dreams of being the author. Even we, as audience members, find ourselves peeking into a rehearsal room and pondering what is real and what is fictional.

Painting a literary limbo in which fiction and reality overlap, Six Characters In Search Of An Author is one of Pirandello’s most enduring works. Its absurdist approach to playwriting wondrously illustrates the “bold and brilliant renovation of drama and the stage” that won Pirandello the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934.

Breathing fresh life into Pirandello’s seminal 1921 play, director Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota and Théâtre de la Ville explore the identity crisis at the heart of theatre – indeed, at the heart of all existence – in a production that has entertained and unsettled audiences in Paris, New York and London.

Sounds great right? I must check out the text because it imparted some great wisdom on the nature of performance and theatre. I was really incredibly lucky to win the tickets (life hack: contests like these are fairly easy to win ;)), and I did get lucky a second time around for the Singapore Writers' Fest too (up on the next post).

I'm really bummed that I unintentionally and very casually survived five months without updating this site, because I feel so backdated talking about these then-hip events hahaha. Oh well, it's still worth documenting the experiences, especially if I ever feel too lazy for them, because then I'll remember what a great thrill I had this time around. And now that I'm finally on Facebook, I can catch up with these festivals even more easily than ever! I'm very grateful that I have friends who can come along with me and have productive discourses on the things we watch, and not be afraid to share their thoughts or interpretation of performances too! There's just so much to learn from performances and performance goers alike (I can only wish that Vincent was interested too :-(). AAAh, feeling quite fulfilled about my art adventures this year, and I can't wait to share more! See you in the next post!