About this Event
NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore presents Propositions for Planetary Attunement, featuring Artists-in-Residence Ng Hui Hsien, The Observatory, and Zarina Muhammad in collaboration with the NTU Earth Observatory of Singapore.
What happens when artists and scientists find common ground in shared concerns and collective care for ecological complexities? Emerging from a year-long exchange between the artists and the researchers from the NTU Earth Observatory of Singapore, the programme explores the generative potential of interdisciplinary encounters, experimenting with the composition of scientific knowledge into artistic gestures of ecological witnessing, listening, and becoming.
These explorations manifest in three acts that metabolise scientific evidence, ancestral knowledges, and other-than-human perspectives. Drifting between geosciences and creative processes, each artist offers a unique proposition that merges measurements and musings, interlacing the empirical with the embodied, science with speculation, facts with signals.
Complementing the artistic propositions is a selection of research materials from the NTU Earth Observatory of Singapore created to offer a glimpse into the scientific data and phenomena that informed the artists’ inquiries. Together, these acts chart a non-linear journey to the threshold of our profound unknowing of the invisible forces that shape the planet, inviting us to cultivate deeper forms of attention and attunement to the Earth.
PROGRAMME
7.00pm | Welcome
Ute Meta Bauer, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore
7.10pm | Overture
Anna Lovecchio, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore
7.20pm | Performance Lecture
Resonance
The Observatory
The planet moves and vibrates in rhythms often too deep, too slow, or too vast to be captured by the human ear. If Earth is a sonorous yet silent being, what wavelengths thread its silence? The Observatory interrogates geological forces and the ways Earth signals before change takes form. In a sonic excavation of the hidden registers of the planet, they follow frequencies that exist beyond our perception across deep time and the sonic sensing of animals and machines.
8.00pm | Screening
Ways of a Mountain
Ng Hui Hsien
This short film contemplates an active volcanic terrain as a living presence—an entity shaped by forces both geological and spiritual. Guided by a score of meditative reflections, the camera wanders along the geologic contours of the land, capturing the fixity of mineral textures and the transience of water flows, light shifts, and human life. Through a poetic synthesis of empirical observation, scientific knowledge, and ancestral cosmologies, the volcanic mountain emerges not as a static object, but as a dynamic participant in planetary becoming.
8.30pm | Intermission
Planetary Archives
Display of a selection of research materials from the NTU Earth Observatory of Singapore.
9.00pm | Overture
Lauriane Chardot, NTU Earth Observatory of Singapore
9.10pm | Performance
Observing Omens Drawn by Lightning
A Ritual and Performance Constellation Drifting Across Southeast Asian Waters and the Indian Ocean (Singapore iteration).
Zarina Muhammad
With: Prashant Somosundram, Hafiz Rashid, Ruby Jayaseelan, Firdaus Sani, Asnida Daud, Eswandy Sarip
Arising from a multi-year and multi-sensory entanglement of ecological witnessing, earth-marine sciences and traditional knowledge around microatolls, shipwrecks, storms, and submerged coastlines, the performance unfolds in two movements: a polyphonic flow of voices and mythic narratives that turn multiple forms of knowledge into ritual storytelling, followed by a live-scored moving image essay. Featuring handcrafted masks co-created with master carvers in Bali, the performance unfolds as a drift towards the invisible ecologies, submerged histories, and fluid thresholds of the waters around us.
ABOUT STAR Residencies STAR Residencies (Science, Technology, Art & Research) is a pioneering initiative by the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, designed to foster meaningful cross-pollination between artistic and academic research. By embedding artists within world-class research institutes at Nanyang Technological University, the programme creates a unique site for exchange between creative practitioners and academic researchers.
Terms and Conditions:
- This event offers General Admission tickets, with free seating in order of arrival. Please note that some seats might have reduced visibility.
- Doors open 20 minutes before the start of the event. All patrons must be checked in 10 minutes prior to showtime. Late arrival may result in your seat being released to standby guests without eligibility for a refund.
- Please note that there will be videography and photography during this event. By attending this event, you consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your photograph, voice, likeness, and image by NTU CCA Singapore in any publication or broadcast of this event for publicity, educational, archival, or marketing purposes, without compensation.
- This event is suitable for ages 16 and above. NTU CCA Singapore reserves the right to refuse admission if patrons are found to be below the requisite age. There will be no refunds or compensation for non-admission
Image: Morning fog at the outer caldera of Mount Batur. Image by Ng Hui Hsien.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Esplanade Annexe Studio, 1 Esplanade Drive, Singapore, Singapore
SGD 10.00
