[R.I.T.E.S #05-2011]
Rooted In The Ephemeral Speak
presents
Mike HJ Chang
Marla Bendini
Noor Effendy Ibrahim
7.30pm, Friday, 19th August 2011
at Emily Hill, Whitehouse
11 Upper Wilkie Road, Singapore 228120
Venue link - http://www.emilyhill.org/
This event is by free admission, all donations are welcomed
More info - www.rootedintheephemeralspeak.com
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Artists' info:
Mike HJ Chang is a Taiwanese American working as an art educator and living in Singapore. He received his MFA from California Institute of the Arts with a MFA. He receive his B.A. from University of California, Los Angeles. Recently he exhibited at Goodmen Arts Centre Gallery, Post Museum and TickleArt in Singapore and at Dobaebacsa in Seoul. He runs a small art space in Singapore, called FOXRIVER. Chang is right now working on multi-discipline projects titled Is What and Night, a Circular Room. Chang’s performance based pieces are often biographical, drawn from personal experiences, but plays out by a pseudo-character in which he invents. In his last performance piece Vampire Lecture Series (2005-2008), he uses the character of a vampire as an analogy to photography: both are light sensitive, both desire something they can’t have, both spend a large amount of time inside a dark room.
Mike Chang’s “Upright Monologue” is a monologue performance based on the format of standup comedy show. The piece traces the evolution of homosapian, different types of society, and the language component that we often take for granted. A mixture of science, time travel, autobiography, and a slice of art humor. The monologue piece explores languages through different human times, from cave to our modern high raises: the subtlety of our languages is correlated to our living dwelling, architectures, and space design for our bodies. In the beginning of time our ancestors stood up on their two legs, from quadruped to bipedal, so they could get better view of the horizon (predator, food). What happens to our evolution with social media and comfortable computer chair? Perhaps the answers are in the words.
Marla Bendini lives and works in Singapore. The artist’s multi-displinary & highly personal works has become her signature, expressing ideas about transgenderism, gender binaries and the dysfunction of social and cultural structures, particularly with her personal physical body as an articulation tool. Born Ong Boon Kok, Bendini Junior in 1986, “Marla Bendini” was created in 2007, an ongoing process of the identity as the “art form”. Her first self-titled exhibition “Marla.” brought her to Pattaya, Thailand in 2008. 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. She is a founding member of the Sisters in Solidarity (SIS), an educational campaign that seeks to address, educate and take a stand against the stigma that transgender people in Singapore face in everyday life.
Marla’s performance, “Surrogate N°3”, is developed from Surrogate, a series of performance pieces that explores the relationship between art and the subjects, spearheaded with a focus on spontaneity in the interaction between performer(s), space and time. A bedsheet is a common motif in the performances- as a billboard in Surrogate N°1 and Noah’s Ark in Surrogate N°2.
Noor Effendy Ibrahim, living and working in Singapore, is a recipient of the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI) Singapore Foundation Culture Award 2007, He has served as a member of the Singapore National Arts Council Board from 2004 to 2006 (7th term), and currently sits as a Board Member of the Singapore Film Commission (2010-2012) and the Malay Heritage Foundation (2010-2011) At present moment, Effendy is the Artistic Director of The Substation, Singapore’s first independent contemporary art centre, Effendy has also served as the Artistic Director of Teater Ekamatra, a Singapore-based contemporary Malay Theatre company, from 2001-2006. An interdisciplinary artist, Effendy has created solo and ensemble art projects and performances in several countries, and has worked with Teater Kami, Teater Ekamatra, Teater Artistik, The Actors Studio (Malaysia), Cake Theatre, spell#7, Maya Dance Theatre, and Five Arts Centre (Malaysia), among other arts groups and collectives.
Effendy’s durational piece, “Dancing with the Ghost of My Child” is the first of a new series of physical rituals that the artist is researching on how the mind, heart and body reconcile personal and intimate notions of impossible needs and desires through visceral acts and habits. Through such rituals, it is hoped that the ghost of the impossible will be conceived to fill the painful void left behind by despair when the needs and desires of the person is not fulfilled.
Mike Chang’s “Upright Monologue” is a monologue performance based on the format of standup comedy show. The piece traces the evolution of homosapian, different types of society, and the language component that we often take for granted. A mixture of science, time travel, autobiography, and a slice of art humor. The monologue piece explores languages through different human times, from cave to our modern high raises: the subtlety of our languages is correlated to our living dwelling, architectures, and space design for our bodies. In the beginning of time our ancestors stood up on their two legs, from quadruped to bipedal, so they could get better view of the horizon (predator, food). What happens to our evolution with social media and comfortable computer chair? Perhaps the answers are in the words.
Marla Bendini lives and works in Singapore. The artist’s multi-displinary & highly personal works has become her signature, expressing ideas about transgenderism, gender binaries and the dysfunction of social and cultural structures, particularly with her personal physical body as an articulation tool. Born Ong Boon Kok, Bendini Junior in 1986, “Marla Bendini” was created in 2007, an ongoing process of the identity as the “art form”. Her first self-titled exhibition “Marla.” brought her to Pattaya, Thailand in 2008. 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. She is a founding member of the Sisters in Solidarity (SIS), an educational campaign that seeks to address, educate and take a stand against the stigma that transgender people in Singapore face in everyday life.
Marla’s performance, “Surrogate N°3”, is developed from Surrogate, a series of performance pieces that explores the relationship between art and the subjects, spearheaded with a focus on spontaneity in the interaction between performer(s), space and time. A bedsheet is a common motif in the performances- as a billboard in Surrogate N°1 and Noah’s Ark in Surrogate N°2.
Noor Effendy Ibrahim, living and working in Singapore, is a recipient of the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI) Singapore Foundation Culture Award 2007, He has served as a member of the Singapore National Arts Council Board from 2004 to 2006 (7th term), and currently sits as a Board Member of the Singapore Film Commission (2010-2012) and the Malay Heritage Foundation (2010-2011) At present moment, Effendy is the Artistic Director of The Substation, Singapore’s first independent contemporary art centre, Effendy has also served as the Artistic Director of Teater Ekamatra, a Singapore-based contemporary Malay Theatre company, from 2001-2006. An interdisciplinary artist, Effendy has created solo and ensemble art projects and performances in several countries, and has worked with Teater Kami, Teater Ekamatra, Teater Artistik, The Actors Studio (Malaysia), Cake Theatre, spell#7, Maya Dance Theatre, and Five Arts Centre (Malaysia), among other arts groups and collectives.
Effendy’s durational piece, “Dancing with the Ghost of My Child” is the first of a new series of physical rituals that the artist is researching on how the mind, heart and body reconcile personal and intimate notions of impossible needs and desires through visceral acts and habits. Through such rituals, it is hoped that the ghost of the impossible will be conceived to fill the painful void left behind by despair when the needs and desires of the person is not fulfilled.
