Back To Main Menu

1 – 2 August 2024  |  NAFA Campus 3, Studio Theatre and Online

ARTS & DESIGN PRACTICE RESEARCH EXCHANGE
PRECARIOUS ART: HOW DO WE MAKE ART IN A WORLD ON FIRE?

The Arts & Design Practice Research Exchange (ADPRex) is Southeast Asia’s first annual conference dedicated to practice research. ADPRex positions Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA), University of the Arts Singapore as the leading centre of arts and design practice research in this region, where artists and thinkers come together to share ideas and insights at the apex of arts and design practice and innovative thinking. This year, ADPRex is delighted to be partnering with NAFA’s Southeast Asian Arts Forum.

ADPRex 2024, ‘Precarious Art: How Do We Make Art in a World on Fire?’, will be in a hybrid format—both in person and online. The past two decades have been characterised by worldwide states of disruption. We have seen financial instability, international conflicts, democracy in crisis, culture wars, the rise of populism, a global pandemic, and the deepening climate emergency. In the face of such events, artmaking can feel insignificant, and artists may struggle to use their art to respond to and interrogate such events. Mirroring global events on a personal level, artists often experience financial and emotional instability in their own personal lives, again providing obstacles to creation. The concepts of ‘precariousness’ and ‘precarity’ speak to this moment, where there is uncertainty and insecurity responding to global disruptions and localised instability in work, sexuality, and gender identity.

At ADPRex this year, artists and researchers come together to discuss the ways in which they respond to, explore, and offer insights into precarity, precariousness, and vulnerability through their artmaking and research. They will explore how imagination and hope can play a part in an investigation of these issues through practice research.

REGISTRATION CONFERENCE SCHEDULE | 01 AUG (THU)
Time @ Studio Theatre @ Multi-purpose Hall
9.30am Registration -
10.30am Opening address
Professor Kwok Kian Woon
-
10.40am Keynote
Research Impact from the Studio: A Designer Practitioner’s Perspective
Professor Jeanne Tan
-
12.00pm Lunch -
1.00pm Panel 1: Art and Place
Chair: Ms Joyce Teo

Redistributive Art
Dr Teck Heng Tan

Why Performance Art?
Dr Adrian Tan

#WaterlooStKakis: Navigating Precarity through Care and Informal Creative Clustering in Singapore.
Assistant Professor Hoe Su Fern

*Presenting in person
Panel 2: Global Asias
Chair: Dr Felipe Cervera

Disorienting Visions: Ai Weiwei’s Rohingya as Cinéma Vérité
Professor Sean Metzger

Southeast Asian Performing Arts at the UCLA World Music Center: Preservation and Community Engagement
Professor Helen Rees

Precarity, Abundance, and Eco-Social Vibrancy: Filipinx and Filipinx Diasporic Artists Discuss Art-making in the post-COVID-19 Pandemic Era
Associate Professor Lucy Burns

*Presenting online
2.30pm Tea Break (Studio Theatre Lobby) -
3.00pm Panel 3: Pandemic Precarity and Care
Chair: Ms Kimberly Shen

Journeys of a Laundry Mountain
Dr Lana Locke

Sharing Temporal Vulnerabilities through Thoughtful Reciprocity: Embracing Radical Self-Care Listening Encounters in Professional Caregiver Contexts
Ms Rachel Ann Coleman

Making Art in a time of lockdown
Professor Paul Coldwell

*Presenting in person and online
Panel 4: Crafting the Body
Chair: Ms Ye Shufang

Exploring the narratives and representation of Saudi Arabian women: A Practice-Based investigation through Folk Dance and discontinued Ceremony in Taif City
Ms Hend Althibiti

Through the Lens of Netherness: Embodying Female Pain and Precarity in Performance
Ms Kate March

Fleeing with the Hijacked Vehicle
Ms Charlotte Yao

*Presenting online
4.30pm Tea Break (Studio Theatre Lobby) -
5.00pm Panel 5: Precarious Performance
Chair: Dr Felipe Cervera

Choreoluminosity: Balancing Fire in the Circus Ring
Dr Michelle Man

Gen Z and the Unsilent Mode: Precarities, Perspectives & Performance Making
Mr Kelvin Wong

Exhibitions and Performances in Georgia 1985–95: Collective Art Practices and the Strategies for Addressing Political Turbulence
Ms Vija Skangale

Narrative Impasse and Non-intervals: New Affective Dramaturgies of Precarity?
Mr Tim Cowbury

*Presenting in person and online
Panel 6: Environmental Precarity in Southeast Asia
Chair: Ms Angelynn Tan

Precarious Seeing: Artmaking as Practice of Care for More-than-visual Geographies
Dr Wong Zi Hao

Leave(s) to Remain
Assistant Professor Nanthana Boonla-or

Embracing Fluidity: Cultural Dialogues and Symbiosis in Contemporary Painting
Ms Kefan Bai

Collaborative Sustainability: Contemporary artistic practices engaging with coastal ecologies
Associate Professor Minna Valjakka

*Presenting in person and online
6.40pm End of Programme -
CONFERENCE SCHEDULE | 02 AUG (FRI)
Time @ Studio Theatre @ Multi-purpose Hall Southeast Asian Arts Forum
10.00am - - Opening Address
Dr Bridget Tracy Tan
10.15am - - Opening Performance
Sticky Rice Basket
Khao Niew Theatre
10.30am - - Presentation 1
Dark Was the Night
Taiki Sakpisit
10.45am - - Presentation 2
Making Material Personal: Sign of Strength in Precarious Times
Choy Chun Wei
11.00am Panel 7: Performative Precarity
Chair: Mr Andrew Mowatt

Looking Back, Imagining Tradition
Mr T. Sasitharan

“Timeless Chapters: Reimagining Precarity through The Sanctuary of Hope”
Dr Ang Gey Pin

Shifting Balance Inside Out: The Study of Precarity Intertwined with Life and Movement Found in a Rāmāyana Performance
Dr Siri Rama and Dr Janardhan Ghosh

*Presenting in person
Panel 8: Teaching as Practice Research in Arts Education
Chair: Ms Christabel Teng

Music Where Streams Merge: Challenges faced when designing curriculum and teaching Music to students whose access to musical education has not been equal.
Dr Patrick Olsen

Music and neurodiversity: Surfacing the improvisations of non-speaking autistic individuals
Assistant Professor Rachel Chen

Re-Imagining Practice: Supervising the Defining and Locating of Practice-Based Research Study in Art and Design for Doctoral Researchers
Mr Andrew Selby and Professor Paul Wells

*Presenting in person
Video on Demand Screenings

Post-Museum
Artistic Responses for Humanity: Exploring artful engagements with the Gaza–Israel conflict?

Lisa Ito-Tapang
Warm Bodies: Exhibition-Making as Protest Against Precarity

Nguyen Thi Thanh Mai
“Day by Day” Project

Benedict Yu Zhu Ye
VR Spirituality: Creating a Borderless Safe Space for Communal Healing

Aung Myat Htay
ARE WE IN A FAILED STATE? An Alternative Art Education System in Chaotic Myanmar
12.00pm Lunch (Campus 1, Southeast Asian Arts Forum) - -
1.30pm - - Presentation 3
A Note Beyond Nostalgia
Lê Giang
1.50pm - - Online Engagement Rooms @ UOB World + Tea Break

Treasures of Angkor
2.00pm Panel 9: Precarious Gaze
Chair: Dr Joyce Koh

Expanding Cinema
Mr Ong Kian-Peng

If we deeply look at what is being burned, we might care not to burn it
Mr Carlos Reyes

Gathering Almonds: Precarious Practice-Based Approaches to Memory
Ms Mireia Ludevid i Llop

*Presenting in person and online
Panel 10: Precarious Communities
Chair: Ms Georgette Yu

Using a collaborative photographic portraiture practice to explore the complex identities of transracial adoptees
Ms Tina Rowe

Utilising Unrestrained Wordless Illustration as a Tool in the Discussion of Child Exploitation
Mr Richard Johnson

Framing Resilience: Women and Precarious Communities in Documentary
Dr Lala Palupi Santyaputri

*Presenting online
2:40pm – 4pm
Dialogue Session

How can art and creative practices maintain and assert its relevance in such challenging times?

Choy Chun Wei, Taiki Sakpisit, Lê Giang, Lisa Ito-Tapang, Hoang Duong Cam, Aung Myat Htay

Moderator: Dr Bridget Tracy Tan
3.30pm Tea Break (Studio Theatre Lobby) - -
4.00pm Keynote
WritingDancing: Finding your voice in precarity
Professor Vida Midgelow
- 4:05-4:45pm
Roundtable Presentation
5.00pm Closing Statements - -
5.05pm Tea Reception and Farewell (Campus 1, Southeast Asian Arts Forum) - -
KEYNOTES & PANELS ADPRex 2023