SESSION 01: MUSIC

Time: 12.30pm–1.30pm

Performance
bani haykal

Screening
GOULD (2009–2013), 2min

Conversation
bani haykal
Soon Kim
Tomoyuki Arai
Ho Tzu Nyen (moderator)

This session is broadly centred around a discussion of the sonic composition in Ho Tzu Nyen's T for Time (2023), bringing together the artists and collaborators who had worked on the newly commissioned work. It opens with a live performance by bani haykal, along with a screening of the short film GOULD (2009-2013) named so after the famed pianist Glenn Gould.  

SESSION 02: TIME

Time: 2pm–3pm

Performance
Soon Kim

Screening
NEWTON (2009), 4min

Conversation
Jan Mrázek
Dr Meng Yusong
Lalit Kumar Ganesh
Kenneth Tay (moderator)

This session takes as its point of reference the heterogeneous screens and timepieces in Ho Tzu Nyen's T for Time: Timepieces (2023), loosely gathering practitioners each with a different relationship to time. It opens with a live performance by Soon Kim from the earlier session, along with a screening of the short film NEWTON (2007) named so after the famed scientist Isaac Newton.  

SESSION 03: CINEMA 

Time: 3pm–4pm

Screening
The Bohemian Rhapsody Project(2006), 7min

Conversation
Hsu Chia-Wei
Ho Tzu Nyen
Hsu Fang-Tze (interpreter)

This session brings together artists Ho Tzu Nyen and Hsu Chia-Wei as friends and collaborators to talk about the place of cinema and time in their respective practices. It opens with a screening of The Bohemian Rhapsody Project (2006), a cinematic adaptation of the iconic song by the rock-band Queen.  

bani haykal

As an artist and musician, bani haykal experiments with text + music. He considers music as material and his projects revolve around human-machine intimacies. He has presented his works as installations, poetry, and performances.

bani worked on the script for T for Time.

Soon Kim

Soon Kim started playing the saxophone at 15 and moved to New York in 1987. While living in Harlem, he associated with numerous renowned jazz musicians, notably Ornette Coleman, from whom he took lessons and learnt Harmolodic theory. Kim has remained active, releasing albums, forming trios/quartets, and performing music that is a unique combination of Ornette's teaching and his own ideas.

Soon Kim performed on the saxophone for T for Time.

Tomoyuki Arai

Tomoyuki Arai was the director of Sound Live Tokyo (2014 - 2016), the programme officer of TPAM (now YPAM – Yokohama International Performing Arts Meeting) since 2017. He was the dramaturge for Ho Tzu Nyen’s Hotel Aporia (2019) and Voice of Void (2021).

Tomo worked on the audio for T for Time.

Ho Tzu Nyen

Drawing from historical events, documentary footage, art history, music videos, and mythical stories, Ho Tzu Nyen’s (b.1976) films and video installations investigate the construction of history, myths and the plurality of identities. Since 2012, Ho’s The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia has framed many of his projects and installations. Ho is one of the most internationally recognised contemporary artists from Singapore, having represented the Singapore Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011).

Jan Mrázek

Jan Mrázek is associate professor in the Department of Southeast Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore and the founding director of the Singa Nglaras Gamelan Ensemble. Mrázek is the author of Phenomenology of a Puppet Theatre: Contemplations on the Art of Contemporary Javanese Wayang Kulit.

Dr Meng Yusong

Dr Meng Yusong joined the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) in 2009, where he is currently a Senior Principal Scientist I and Deputy Head of Electromagnetics and Time Metrology Cluster at A*STAR’s National Metrology Centre.

Lalit Kumar Ganesh

Lalit Kumar is best known for a progressive world music style, bringing together the sounds and concepts of traditional Tabla with world rhythms. He draws inspiration from Indian classical, Afro-Cuban, Afro-Peruvian and Flamenco to cultivate a performance and improvisational style that is constantly evolving.

Kenneth Tay

Kenneth Tay is an Assistant Curator at Singapore Art Museum. His research and writings range across media histories, global infrastructures and urban spaces, but he is broadly concerned with the mediation and performance of the "global". He is the author of The Sea is All Highway: Singapore and the Logistical Media of the Global Surface (Temporary Press, 2019). Previous curatorial projects include FLAT.SPACES (2018) and CONCRETE ISLAND (2016). He holds a MA in Media Studies from The New School, New York, which was made possible through the support of NAC Arts Scholarship (Postgraduate).

Hsu Chia-Wei

Hsu Chia-Wei (b. 1983, Taiwan) is an artist, filmmaker, and curator based in Taiwan whose work merges the language of contemporary art and film, often unveiling the complex production apparatus – cameras, camera cranes, lighting kits, microphones, etc. – employed in the filmmaking process. In his practice, Hsu unearths histories of the Cold War in Asia buried in precise geographical locations and brings them back to life through narrative and visual sequences that blend myth and reality, historical documentation and fictional developments. Fabricating a mythical narrative where stories, spirits, and machineries unfold on the same level, Hsu maintains a critical attitude toward the structure of film and often seeks to present his projects outside of museums and other contemporary art venues.

Ho Tzu Nyen and Hsu Chia-Wei were curators of the 2019 7th Asian Art Biennial at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts.

Hsu Fang-Tze

Hsu Fang-Tze is a curator at Singapore Art Museum (SAM), with previous experience as a lecturer in the Department of Communications and New Media at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Over the past decade, she has extended her expertise beyond academia, actively engaging as a curator, film programmer, and archivist. Her current research pursuits revolve around the nuanced exploration of sonic modernity, Cold War aesthetics, and the convergence of critical curation historiography with a decolonial pedagogical approach.