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YAM AT SAM
YAM AT SAM is a programming collaboration between Singapore Art Museum and artists Mark Chua and Lam Li Shuen of the artist-run analogue film lab Film Nerve. The collective will present a series of live performances, hands-on workshops and regional screenings focused on analogue photochemical experimentation and expanded cinema.
The project takes the taro (yam) plant as a central thematic motif, drawing parallels between the physical medium of analogue film and plant growth—both being slow, organic processes shaped by light, time and collective labour. Embracing an incubation model, the series emphasizes open experimentation, shared artistic labour and community-constructed knowledge.
YAM AT SAM is conceptualized with three strands: Clusters, Rhizomes and Orh Nee Screening Nights.
Clusters presents expanded cinema performances by local and regional artists that extend the language of moving images beyond fixed screens and traditional boundaries of cinema, using projection, performance, sound and physical space. This strand draws from the roots of live analogue film projection, steeped in DIY ethos and grassroots initiatives.
Rhizhomes presents workshops that introduce handmade analogue filmmaking and techniques, in collaboration with guests from regional artist-run film labs and collectives. With this strand, knowledge-sharing and community-building are conceptualized with the horizontality and multiplicity of rhizomatic structures, where learning is open and non-hierarchical.
Orh Nee Screening Nights presents special screening programmes of films and moving image works, largely never shown in Singapore before, made with analogue film and photochemical processes. The programmes include works by contemporary artists and newly restored prints. This strand is conceptualized around the celebratory dish Orh Nee, as a celebration and communing around moving image works hand-made through the labour and care of working with film material.
About Film Nerve
Mark Chua (b. 1992) and Lam Li Shuen (b. 1996) are a filmmaker-artist duo based in Singapore, working across film, expanded cinema performance and installation. Their practice explores the intersections of histories, materialities and existential anxieties through speculative fiction and multimedia stagings.
They are the founders of artist-run film lab Film Nerve, focused on handmade film experimentation as well as resource and knowledge sharing.
Chua and Lam regularly present 16mm expanded cinema performances using self-modified 16mm projectors retrofitted with microcontroller systems. They have performed at international platforms including Berlinale Forum Expanded (Germany), EXiS (South Korea), EX!T (Taiwan), Videoex (Switzerland), and Painting With Light (Singapore). They also release music as the art rock duo ARE.
Their films have been screened at major international festivals, including the International Film Festival Rotterdam (2023, 2024), New Directors/New Films (2023) presented by MoMA and Film at Lincoln Center, BFI London Film Festival (2021), and Clermont-Ferrand (2026).
*Programmes may be subject to change without prior notice. Information accurate at time of publishing.
Upcoming Programmes
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[Performance] Born of the Yam
Born of the Yam
Date: Fri, 28 Aug
Time: 8pm - 9pm
Venue: Level 3, The Cage (#03-09)
Ticketed: $10
BORN OF THE YAM is an expanded cinema performance presented as a techno-mythological ritual of light and sound. Performed with multiple modified 16mm projectors and DIY machinery, 16mm film loops combining hand-processed and inkjet-printed sequences weave together fragmented visions from a mythic 11th century island, isolated in time. The images draw from an imagined mythology – recurring across the artists’ Unending Island project – centred around the birth of a demigod from a yam.
Between elation and fear, the demigod figure is gradually manifested through visions formed from yam eco-developer and vegetal interventions, fusing with 3D-rendered virtual island-scapes. BORN OF THE YAM evokes the performativity of ritualism and idolization, to reflect on their surfacing in our modern political landscape. The event becomes a kind of collective “bonfire” fanned by the flames of obsession and fantasy.
[Workshop] Hand-Processing 16mm with Eco-Developer Workshop
Hand-Processing 16mm with Eco-Developer Workshop
Date: Sat, 29 Aug
Time: 2pm - 6pm
Venue: Level 3, The Main Deck (#03-07)
Ticketed: $50
This workshop introduces participants to the techniques and approaches of eco-processing 16mm film. Together, we will brew an eco-developer using foraged plants and learn how to hand-process 16mm film using a Lomo developing tank.
Participants will be guided through the complete hand-processing workflow: preparing the plant-based developer, practicing loading 16mm film into a Lomo tank, and learning the basics of the development process and recipes.
The workshop frames eco-processing as both a sustainable technique and a creative language, seeing it as a way to make moving images through local material while avoiding chemical-heavy workflows. With this workshop we aim to embrace the sensorial, ritual-like craft of brewing and developing. Focusing on creating with natural materials rather than aiming for perfection, we will explore how the film itself can become a site where moving images are formed by ecology and chance.
[Workshop] Shooting on Super 8 workshop by Lih Ocampo (Experimental Society of the Philippines)
Shooting on Super 8 workshop by Lih Ocampo (Experimental Society of the Philippines)
Date: Sat, 12 Sep
Time: 2pm - 6pm
Venue: Level 1, The Engine Room
Ticketed: $50
An introductory, hands-on workshop for anyone curious about shooting on Super 8 film. Participants will learn the basics of using a Super 8 camera, including selecting film stocks, loading film, understanding camera controls to exposure, focusing and practical shooting techniques, tips on processing and scanning film and other useful resources. The workshop will also cover simple camera care and maintenance.
During the session, participants will shoot a collective film together on Super 8, with results to be processed, scanned and shared as digital files after the workshop. No prior experience with analogue film is required.
As part of the workshop, participants will be entered into a lucky draw for a chance to win a free Super 8 camera and continue experimenting with the format after the session!
This programme is presented under the "Rhizomes" strand of YAM AT SAM (28 Aug 2026 – 31 Jan 2027), comprising workshops that introduce participants to various aspects of analogue handmade image-making - across shooting, processing, projection and cameraless techniques.
About the Artist
Lih Ocampo is a Manila-based experimental filmmaker and co-founder of the Experimental Society of the Philippines. Working primarily with Super 8 film and sound-driven forms, his work explores themes of memory, perception, and materiality. His films have been presented locally at the Forum for Super8 Cinema and Moving Image, and he was a finalist at the 35th Gawad Alternatibo. Internationally, his work has screened at the 2025 Moving On Asia Pacific Forum (Busan) and the 2024 DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Showcase.
About Experimental Society of the Philippines
Experimental Society of the Philippines (ESP), formed in 2023, is a collective of filmmakers and film enthusiasts passionate about experimental cinema. ESP holds screenings of experimental films not often shown in public, with a focus on programming works by up-and-coming filmmakers. It has mounted screenings in various venues while supporting many other exhibitions and screenings in experimental and art house cinemas, such as Voyage at the Asia Pacific Film Institute in 2024 and Rise in Sine Pop in 2023, and the Forum for Super 8 and the moving image at the Ateneo Art Gallery in 2023. The Experimental Society of the Philippines has also initiated an Asian filmmaking collective alongside artists in Cambodia, Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, and Myanmar.
[Screening Series] ORH NEE SCREENING NIGHTS: EXPERIMENTAL SOCIETY OF THE PHILIPPINES
ORH NEE SCREENING NIGHTS: EXPERIMENTAL SOCIETY OF THE PHILIPPINES
Date: Sat, 12 Sep
Time: 8pm - 9.30pm
Venue: Level 1, The Engine Room
Ticketed: $10
ORH NEE SCREENING NIGHTS: EXPERIMENTAL SOCIETY OF THE PHILIPPINES presents six moving image works by contemporary Filipino artists and filmmakers, made largely through Super 8 and other photochemical processes.
Across the programme, personal histories meet archival images, disappearing places and fragmented recollections. In I Feel Like A Stranger But I Know I Left Pieces of Myself Here, Furan Guillermo uses Super 8 to map a hometown through ordinary spaces and personal memory. Fragments by Rustom Pujado similarly draws from archival images of the 1960s and 70s, bringing photomontage and mixed media together into a fragmented encounter with memory and history. In (Thorns in My Chest) Mga Tinik sa Dibdib by Cha Roque, fleeting recollections surface like old photographs in an attempt to grasp people, histories and places before they disappear. In Form Study Five – Pt2., Caloy Soliongco combines Super 8, archival Super 8, cyanotype, 35mm stills and archival 120 film within a dreamlike journey through blindness, fear and remembering. Never Odd Or Even by Lih Ocampo follows a young woman caught in a recurring emotional cycle.
The works will be screened using a mix of digital and analogue projection, culminating in a live Super 8 performance of Familiar Strangers by Lih Ocampo—where the artist manually manipulates decaying footage of anonymous Japanese families in real time, turning the projection into a reflection on shared experiences of laughter, loss, and passing time.
The screening will be followed by an in-person discussion and Q&A with Lih Ocampo.
This programme is presented under the "Orh Nee Screening Nights" strand of YAM AT SAM (28 Aug 2026 – 31 Jan 2027), comprising special screening programmes of films and moving image works, largely never shown in Singapore before, made with analogue film and photochemical processes. The programmes include works by contemporary artists and newly restored prints.
About the Artist
Lih Ocampo is a Manila-based experimental filmmaker and co-founder of the Experimental Society of the Philippines. Working primarily with Super 8 film and sound-driven forms, his work explores themes of memory, perception, and materiality. His films have been presented locally at the Forum for Super8 Cinema and Moving Image, and he was a finalist at the 35th Gawad Alternatibo. Internationally, his work has screened at the 2025 Moving On Asia Pacific Forum (Busan) and the 2024 DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Showcase.
About Experimental Society of the Philippines
Experimental Society of the Philippines (ESP), formed in 2023, is a collective of filmmakers and film enthusiasts passionate about experimental cinema. ESP holds screenings of experimental films not often shown in public, with a focus on programming works by up-and-coming filmmakers. It has mounted screenings in various venues while supporting many other exhibitions and screenings in experimental and art house cinemas, such as Voyage at the Asia Pacific Film Institute in 2024 and Rise in Sine Pop in 2023, and the Forum for Super 8 and the moving image at the Ateneo Art Gallery in 2023. The Experimental Society of the Philippines has also initiated an Asian filmmaking collective alongside artists in Cambodia, Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, and Myanmar.