soft/WALL/studs

13/08/2021

Aspirations and Exasperations
https://softwallstuds.space/Aspirations-and-Exasperations

Aspirations and Exasperations is an interview project that began in early 2021 to consolidate the mixed feelings of working in the ‘creative economy’ during times of neoliberal crisis ordinary, increasingly saddled by socio-political, ecological, and epidemiological tipping points. In this process of co-research, interviewees were encouraged to conduct their own interviews with colleagues in the cultural sphere. Snippets from a sprawling web of conversations with art workers are published on our website, touching on themes including but not limited to precarity, digitalization, and government grants.

Having moved out of our space earlier this year with the end of our lease, we’re now presenting our final programmes online as we bring soft/WALL/studs to a close, both as a collaborative project and space. We’re truly thankful for the support we’ve received over the years, as we move ahead in each of our individual capacities.

💼📊

Precariats Undoing Bu****it Labour In Cultural Spheres (PUBLICS) is a research initiative examining, articulating, and building support networks against conditions of precarity entrenched within ‘creative economies’. Aspirations and Exasperations is a facet of this research initiative, alongside a study of art workers’ sleep habits.

This project is part of Beyond Repair by soft/WALL/studs, commissioned under Proposals for Novel Ways of Being, an initiative by National Gallery Singapore and Singapore Art Museum.

[Image descriptions:

1. Black words on a beige background, containing the titles of interviews from the project. The first reads: “On working with puppets in a pandemic”. Various website icons drawn in colour pencil hover in front of the text.

2. In a similar style, the next interview title reads: “On becoming weary and wary of exhibitions”

3. “On not being able to feel each other breathing on Zoom”

4. A blank beige background with an icon across it, drawn in colour pencil. Fuzzily pencilled in red is the phrase “Relief measures to support the arts and culture sector”.]

12/08/2021

Aspirations and Exasperations
https://softwallstuds.space/Aspirations-and-Exasperations

Aspirations and Exasperations is an interview project that began in early 2021 to consolidate the mixed feelings of working in the ‘creative economy’ during times of neoliberal crisis ordinary, increasingly saddled by socio-political, ecological, and epidemiological tipping points. Snippets from a sprawling web of conversations with art workers are published on our website, touching on themes including but not limited to precarity, digitalization, and government grants.

Having moved out of our space earlier this year with the end of our lease, we’re now presenting our final programmes online as we bring soft/WALL/studs to a close, both as a collaborative project and space. We’re truly thankful for the support we’ve received over the years, as we move ahead in each of our individual capacities.

💼📊

Precariats Undoing Bu****it Labour In Cultural Spheres (PUBLICS) is a research initiative examining, articulating, and building support networks against conditions of precarity entrenched within ‘creative economies’. Aspirations and Exasperations is a facet of this research initiative, alongside a study of art workers’ sleep habits.

This project is part of Beyond Repair by soft/WALL/studs, commissioned under Proposals for Novel Ways of Being, an initiative by National Gallery Singapore and Singapore Art Museum.

[Image descriptions:

1. Black words on a beige background, reading “An ongoing interview project to consolidate the mixed feelings of working in the ‘creative economy’…”. Various website icons drawn in colour pencil hover in front of the text.

2. In a similar style, the text continues “… during times of neoliberal crisis ordinary.”

3. In a similar style are the titles of some interviews: “On being used to being underpaid”

4. “On state bureaucracy forgetting care work”

5. “On self-exploitation for art magic”

6. A blank beige background with icons across it, drawn in colour pencil. The most prominent at the centre is the phrase “SELF-EMPLOYED PERSON” fuzzily pencilled in red.]

06/07/2021

What and whose terms of “the future” are we engaging? How might writing counter or parallel other forms of writing, such as the technocratic inscription of policy making and futures projection? Might it involve a detour to the archival, the residue, the unmourned, the reparative?

With writing sessions taking place last year from September to December 2020, the Futures Writing Research Unit now manifests as a web-based compilation that brings together text and visual work on ideas of the future: examining futures that are valued and unvalued; engaging forms of timeliness, value and valuation, care and (dis)repair. This interactive hypertext documentation of our sessions is playable online at https://softwallstuds.space/futures.

⚗️⚗️⚗️

Organised by Huiying Ng, Shawn Chua, Johann Yamin, and Luca Lum from soft/WALL/studs in collaboration with Adeline Seah.

Participants: Chia Pei Zhi, Darin Lobo, Hallam Stevens, Melissa De Silva, Michelle Lai, Mixæl Laufer, Quek Yu Han, Saad Chinoy, and Stylianos Makrogkikas.

Play the hypertext piece at https://softwallstuds.space/futures

⚗️⚗️⚗️

Futures Writing Research Unit is an initiative under soft/WALL/studs’ Beyond Repair, part of National Gallery Singapore and Singapore Art Museum’s Proposals for Novel Ways of Being.

Typeface: Basteleur by Keussel (Velvetyne Type Foundry)

[Image Description: The title “Futures Writing Research Unit” below an alchemical symbol for silver, all glowing magenta against a dark background of phyllosphere microorganisms.]

05/07/2021

🦠 Futures Writing Research Unit
🦠 Play the hypertext piece at https://softwallstuds.space/futures

Futures Writing Research Unit was a process-oriented writing group organised by soft/WALL/studs from September to December 2020, carving out time and space for shared and overlapping areas of interest around futurities.

Meeting in virtual or physical space, the unit provided a structure for artists and scientists to engage more fully with their, and each others’ creative processes, relating ongoing projects to exercises, prompts, collaborative writing, and readings.

Writings and notes shared among participants during these sessions have been woven together as a mycelial hypertext compilation, playable online at https://softwallstuds.space/futures.

🦠🦠🦠

With excerpts from texts by Hallam Stevens, Huiying Ng, Luca Lum, Melissa De Silva, and Shawn Chua.

Participants of the sessions have included Chia Pei Zhi, Darin Lobo, Hallam Stevens, Melissa De Silva, Michelle Lai, Mixæl Laufer, Quek Yu Han, Saad Chinoy, and Stylianos Makrogkikas. Organised by soft/WALL/studs (Huiying Ng, Shawn Chua, Johann Yamin, and Luca Lum) in collaboration with Adeline Seah.

🦠🦠🦠

Futures Writing Research Unit is an initiative under soft/WALL/studs’ Beyond Repair, part of National Gallery Singapore and Singapore Art Museum’s Proposals for Novel Ways of Being.

[Image description: Screenshot of a webpage with ASCII art of a mushroom releasing spores, against a black to dark magenta gradient background. Below the mushroom is the word “Begin”.]

23/06/2021

🧼 We’re doing a clean-up at soft/WALL/studs!
🧼 List of giveaway/pay-as-you-wish items from s/W/s: https://tinyurl.com/swslelong

This weekend, we are giving away appliances, furniture, tools, kitchenware, audio equipment, and tchotchkes from the space at a pay-as-you-wish amount.

View the list of items at the link above, chope items and register a timing in advance to collect from s/W/s this coming weekend! (26-27 June 2021, 1-5pm)

🧸 Free plushies for those who come down to collect items 🧸 Timings are staggered and maximum 5 people will be allowed within the space at one time to ensure safe distancing.

[Image description: A silver torso of a male mannequin, lit by the warm glow of a lamp. Behind are shelves of books and a monstera plant.]

31/05/2021

soft/WALL/docs: Land/Landless concluded yesterday, thank you all for catching the screenings! We'd also like to extend our thanks to the filmmakers for sharing their films. To round off the series, read a short reflection essay by Huiying Ng “The visible heat of lands on fire” at https://softwallstuds.space/Docs-essay!

“There is something in a connection with land that the (increasingly) legally landless hold, that people who live in capital centres do not possess, have lost, or are now rediscovering. These films speak to the possibility of rediscovery, wonder, and the strength of a connection with land that goes beyond mere utility.”

“It’s not just nationalism, or patriotism, or a military, or an army one fights for.”

29/05/2021

🌊Best viewed on your desktop using Google Chrome🌊

Pulau Something is an online peer-to-peer study involving a group of around twenty cultural workers from across Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Taiwan, organised as a collaboration between soft/WALL/studs and No Man’s Land「數位荒原」 群島資料庫 Nusantara Archive.

Unfolding during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic from July to October 2020, the study emerged as a contingent mode of cultivating cross-border solidarities over digital platforms, involving a series of self-organised projects spanning online sharings, speculative archives, recipe swaps, sound-based workshops, and gaming livestreams.

𝒞ℴ𝓁𝓁𝒶𝒷ℴ𝓇𝒶𝓉ℴ𝓇𝓈
• Esther Lu 呂岱如 • Irwan Ahmett and Tita Salina • Lo Shih Tung 羅仕東 • Luca Lum • Norah Lea • Okui Lala • Rikey Tenn Bun-ki 鄭文琦 • Shawn Chua • Sheryl Cheung 張欣 • Siddharta Perez • Syaheedah Iskandar • Tan Zi Hao •

𝒪𝓇ℊ𝒶𝓃𝒾𝓈𝒾𝓃ℊ 𝓉ℯ𝒶𝓂
• Div • ila • Johann Yamin • Kamiliah Bahdar • Marcus Yee • Nurul Huda Rashid •

Pulau Something is an online peer-to-peer study involving a group of twenty cultural workers from across Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Taiwan. This study has involved us experimenting with ways of cultivating cross-border solidarities over digital platforms through a series of...

26/05/2021

Kavich Neang’s LAST NIGHT I SAW YOU SMILING (2019, Cambodia/France) available online for viewers in Singapore till 30 May. Part of soft/WALL/docs :: Land/Landless online screening programme.

21/05/2021

The five documentaries from the online screening programme soft/WALL/docs :: Land/Landless are now available for viewing.

All films are only available to viewers in Singapore, except The Tree Remembers which is also available to viewers in Malaysia.

soft/WALL/docs: Online screening programme 21 May - 30 May 2021 Land/Landless is a selection of documentaries from Southeast Asia and beyond, each...

20/05/2021

Malaysia-born, Taiwan-based filmmaker Lau Kek-Huat returns with a story of the Malayan Peninsula—exploring the Orang Asli’s dwindling rights and the 1969 racial riots.

📽 5/5: 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑻𝒓𝒆𝒆 𝑹𝒆𝒎𝒆𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓𝒔 (還有一些樹)
dir. Lau Kek-Huat / Taiwan, Malaysia / 2019 / 89 min / Bahasa Melayu, English, Chinese, Orang Asli

🌴🌴🌴

Part of soft/WALL/docs :: Land/Landless, an online screening of five documentaries from Southeast Asia and beyond. 📺

19/05/2021

For over 50 years, a civil war has waged between the Shan, Burma’s largest ethnic minority group, and the Burmese military. As a small child, Jai Sang Lod, his family, and many other Shan families fled to a Shan State Army (SSA) governed village sitting between the borders of Burma and Northern Thailand. Living in a disputed land, undefined as a state, Sang Lod and his family were stuck in the village without any ID or passport.

As the village authority, the SSA ordered mandatory military training for all young men. Leaving his family behind, Jai Sang Lod must learn to be a soldier with a lifetime duty to fight for Shan sovereignty and liberation from the Burmese military.

Under the burning sun, the training officer lectures 100 young men on manhood and patriotism. Sang Lod trains alongside his comrades, with each command slowly moulding these boys from their peaceful young selves to rifle-wielding uniformed men.

🎥 4/5: 𝑺𝒐𝒊𝒍 𝑾𝒊𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝑳𝒂𝒏𝒅
dir. Nontawat Numbenchapol / Thailand / 2019 / 80 min / Shan, Thai

More deets at soft/WALL/docs :: Land/Landless. A screening link will be provided on Friday 21 May, and will be available till 30 May. 👀📺