OVERGROWTH: An Artist’s Workshop on Collective Imagination & Resistance
Registration: https://forms.gle/kxJQ1MMz5ayuV7nA7
Open to general public
Overgrowth is a one-day programme on speculative narrative, and collective imagination and resistance. Conceptualised by artist Priyageetha Dia as part of her artist residency with SMU Libraries, the programme includes a student project showcase from SMU-X’s Virtual Reality for Business, and a series of workshops led by artists and curators whose practice takes an interest in digitality and Southeast Asia.
Join us for a day of exploring, communing and eating—lunch and afternoon tea provided. This programme is also open to the general public.
Programme
MORNING SESSION
Artist in the classroom: Student project showcase from SMU-X’s Virtual Reality for Business
11:30AM - 11.35AM
Introduction by Priyageetha Dia, SMU Libraries Artist-in-Residence 2023
11:35AM - 12:15PM
Introduction and Presentation by Teoh Jin Sheng, SMU School of Computing and Information Systems 2021
12:15PM - 1PM
VR Walkthrough & Lunch
AFTERNOON SESSION
Workshop on collective imagination & resistance
1PM - 1:15PM
Introduction by Priyageetha Dia, SMU Libraries Artist-in-Residence 2023
1:15PM - 1:45PM
Possible Futures: Speculating as a Curatorial Method by Syaheedah Iskandar, Assistant Curator of Singapore Art Museum
1:45PM - 2PM
Break
2PM - 2:30PM
Exercises of the Image-as-Data: Automation, Augmentation, and Annotation by Nurul Huda Rashid, Researcher - Writer
2:30PM - 2:45PM
Break
2:45PM - 3:30PM
Moving Castle(s): Collective Communing and Steering in the Digital Age by TO NEW ENTITIES, Art and Creative Collective
3:30PM - 3:45PM
Break
3:45PM - 4:30PM
Discussion and Q&A accompanied by afternoon tea
AFTERNOON SESSION DETAILS
Syaheedah Iskandar | Possible Futures: Speculating as a Curatorial Method
What does it mean to challenge hegemonic perspectives, histories and narratives? How do we tell stories for the future? This session will expand on the potentialities of contemporary artistic practices from Southeast Asia, and how we may think about glossaries or terminologies for the collective future.
Syaheedah Iskandar is Assistant Curator at Singapore Art Museum. She works with vernacular ideas of seeing, thinking, and being. Drawing from Southeast Asia’s visual culture(s), she is interested in the entanglements between the unseen, the hypervisual, and their translations from material to new media practices. She holds a MA in History of Art and Archaeology from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.
Nurul Huda Rashid | Exercises of the Image-as-Data: Automation, Augmentation, and Annotation
In the advent of the data turn, images have become the image-as-data, circulated and correlated through new algorithmic logic in search engines. Images are consumed through a new visual ecology of ‘thumbnails’, which generate multiple images (and semantics) from each search keyword. It creates a new mode of image-as-data consumption for us as users. This workshop will introduce 3 exercises responding to Automation, Augmentation, and Annotation, each employing a distinct process in how the image-as-data is activated.
Nurul Huda Rashid is a researcher-writer currently completing her PhD. Her dissertation examines the algorithmic visuality of Muslim women images and is a continuation of her visual arts practice. Her practice engages with images and narratives, visual and sentient bodies, feminisms, and the intersections between them. These have been articulated through visual projects such as Women in War (2016-ongoing) and via art and photography workshops, focusing on issues of care in image-making. Nurul hopes to adopt a cat someday.
TO NEW ENTITIES | Moving Castle(s): Collective Communing and Steering in the Digital Age
From the ratha yatra (chariot festival) in India to the ngupruk parades of Bali, societies have across time, collectively steered monuments as rituals. Moving Castles is an updated methodology for collective communing and steering that advocates for collective agency and participation in modular and interoperable environments in the digital age. This workshop will introduce some of the key propositions of moving castles and exemplify how they can be co-created, managed, and collectively steered.
TO NEW ENTITIES is an art and creative collective that builds media worlds. They operate through curation, digital environment and exhibition making, digital and tech support for artists, film programming, the production of art, and more.
Most recently, they curated and organised ‘Crossroads’ (2022/4) the first digital billboard art festival in Singapore, and the exhibition ‘Contemporary Gestures’ (2022) representing Singapore on international platform The Upside Space. They were also selected for participation in the independent art book fair SPRINT Milano (2022/3) in Spazzio Maiocchi, Milan; the inaugural BoluevArt Festival, Art in Space, Dubai; and the Rockaway Art Festival, hosted by Rhizome and Do Not Research at The Locker Room, New York.