Artist Statement: Mike HJ Chang

 

Black Pebble (2011)

 

Bench (2011)

 

Black Pebble (2011) and Bench (2011), are two separate pieces, but born out of the same vein in which the artist deals with issues of the dream in the context of human ergonomics. In the photography piece a black pebble is inserted under a mattress, depicting an uncomfortable sleeping situation. Black stones or gems have long been associated with magic or the dark arts, though in the work the sense of ritual is ambiguous, only the very mundane is presented.  The state of sleeping has the potential of being disrupted by the physical intrusion of a pebble, not unlike having a tiny rock in one’s shoe.

In the sculptural work, Bench, a slight physical change has occurred to a typical piece of furniture. The (un)combination of the slanted form and the rigid square-ness of the ceramic titles results in a disharmonious state. Similar to Black Pebble, the slightly out-of-ordinariness makes it hard to rule out that one is already in a dream.

Artist Statement: Chun Kai Qun

I Think I Can Keep My Faith In Man

I Think I Can Keep My Faith in Man relates to how dreamscapes are constructed as a physical reality in architecture, painting and film. With the advancement in technology, the world can be freely built from our wildest imagination, we can easily find a nostalgically themed café in a shopping mall, revisit the Jurassic age at an amusement park and be immersed in an epic magical world in true high-definition 3D. Our experience of the material world has become phantasmagoric like a dream (or perhaps a nightmare) in which disconnected scenes morph seamlessly from one to another. Unconsciously, we have adopted a stance of unquestioning indifference towards this confusion created by the constant blurring of reality with fiction in our environment. In this work, I have created a dioramic collage of disparate scenes and landscapes which merge into one another, and through the employment of different scales and proportions to induce alternating perceptions about the composition. There is an emphasis on faux painting techniques which are often used to fabricate the aged furniture in period interiors of now popular coffee-shop franchises (for examples, Toast Box and Killiney Kopitiam) in Singapore. There is also a reference to a pre-CGI cinematic technique used in Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon in which black sumi ink was used to intensify the rainstorm in the film. The work leads to the scrutiny of its manufacture and bring forth an inquisitive attention to the constructedness of our physical environment.

   

Artist Statement: Debbie Ding

 MAPS WITH/OUT BUILDINGS

MAPS WITH/OUT BUILDINGS is a hand-illustrated study of place, the map-making process and natural features as they are commonly represented in topographic maps.

During the years 2008-2010 I collected my dreams in the form of maps and layout plans. As dreams are highly visual, I felt that the only way to adequately document my dreams would be to draw maps of the spaces. At the time when I began this project I was inspired by Bill Hillier's theories on "space syntax", which suggested that the navigability of a space and its isovists (the field of view from any one point) had direct affect over social behaviour within those spaces. Since we spend about a third of our lives sleeping and presumably dreaming (whether or not we remember our dreams), I believe that the dream spaces we experience may also play a significant role in shaping our behaviour in waking life.

One day a friend noted that I hadn't drawn any maps without buildings in them. I realised this was because the only two places I had spent significant time living in (Singapore and London) were both modern, highly dense urban cities, and throughout my entire life I had only the most minimal contact with countrysides.

This is a work that will be produced as I travel through both the city and the countryside (London/Cornwall in UK, Berlin/North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany) - an exploration of the portrayal of place, through a study of maps which do not have any buildings in them. Perhaps by studying maps without buildings, and by envisioning or attempting to visualise landscapes devoid of buildings, one day I will have dreams without buildings in them.

For more information, see: MAPS WITH/OUT BUILDINGS

Artist Statement: Joo Choon Lin

I SAW You SING

I SAW You SING is a new revolution in structural crack repair. It is a dream saw able to repair any concrete cracks and fractures in walls. When the cracks are stabilized and cured, it leaves behind a permanent colourful mark. This saw will also sing you a song during the repair process. 

It is ironic that a saw has become more significant as a tool being returned to its initial purpose of aiding construction, because in contemporary culture we often see the saw as a tool of violence, mutilation and destruction in horror-gore films such as SAW and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Instead, the saw has become a tool for creating peace and harmony. 

Through the process of make-believe and creating dream-like sequences, this video installation responds to the gaps between social classes in Singapore, using the saw as a symbol of expression to bridge social fragmentations.

Artist Statement: Yuzuru Maeda

(Zentai 46) on B

Our subconsciousness occupies ninety percent of our total psyche. Through our dreams, we make contact with this vast yet elusive side of ourselves, allowing us to discover that which is hidden in our daily life. I think that true inspiration evolves out of this close contact with the subconscious, and so this video work is a search to discover the other ninety percent of possibilities, residing deeper within.

Artist Statement: Bruce Quek

Incidental Traces^(2b)

Concerning dreams, a tale is often told of the philosopher Zhuangzhi, who once wondered if he had dreamt of being a butterfly, or if a butterfly had dreamt of being Zhuangzhi. It is in this in-between space that Incidental Traces(2b) might be found, at the point of transformation which resembles both an elusive veil and an iron curtain.

The edge of change is a point of confusion; when we wake, our memory slip-slides as it attempts to recall the fading fragments of a dream - chains of events which seemed perfectly sensible are rendered suspect: a memory, hard-won, or confabulation brought upon by the effort of memory itself? Likewise, the path from wakefulness to sleep disappears along the way, unless disrupted by sleep paralysis or other hypnagogic twitches.

Of course, these borders are not addressed only to themselves; dreams do not concern dreams alone. What if these patterns, found in the relationship between dreaming and waking, could be found in other binary relations?

Artist Statement: Zai Tang

Through the Mind’s Eye of a Needle

In recent years, I’ve obsessively documented all my dreams upon waking - through writing, drawing and voice recording. Through the Mind’s Eye of a Needle is a search for an alternative method of exploring the meanings of my dream material, by translating these experiences into a sonorous form. 

 

I wanted to remain flexible in my approach to dream interpretation, so I have adopted improvisational methods of playing my prepared vinyl records, field recordings and spoken dream recollections. When these elements amalgamate, I am able to plunge myself back into the memory of specific dream experiences and freely re-interpret them within a lucid moment of sound. This instinct driven approach better reflects the dynamic nature of the unconscious, and encourages playful responses to the immersive atmospheres, fragmented narratives and fluid morphologies of space and characters experienced within dreams.

Alongside my improvisation-lead composition, I have presented the prepared vinyl and other tools I used to improvise with. These interconnected sonorous objects are made visible to give a more holistic experience to the listener, acting both as a visual score to the final sound composition and a means of revealing my dream sonification process.

My process itself is more concerned with discovery than expression. Like the unraveling of a dream’s message through word association, one sonic encounter leads me to the next as I seek out something that feels meaningful in relation to the dream, then dig deeper.

Artist Statement: Mark Thia

Untitled 

Artist Statement: Mark Wong Wenwei & Elizabeth Lim

 I was Dreaming in the Past, and My Heart was Beating Fast

We have set up a chamber that revisits 1950s Singapore, a nascent society in pre-statehood, young but vibrant with an uncertain future ahead of it. This was an age of lofty ideals, a generation of dreamers that found themselves meeting head-on with repression, creating historical junctures of trauma at the birth of a nation. Can a dream go too far?

We attempt to access the dreams of a forgotten generation via a light and sound installation, transporting the audience into the physical act of dreaming. The chamber creates an immersive environment of recurrent sound and visual imagery unhinged from rational control. As a window into our unconsciousness, dreams are encodings of latent desires and fears. As the unconscious mind is unable to communicate through a verbal language, it relies on both universal and personal symbols and imagery to signal psychological states.

The title of the work highlights the vast differences between the ideals of the past and our present realities. While the activists of the 1950s were stirred by common purpose and dreamt as a community, the present generation is often said only to indulge in navel gazing and personal gratification. The work implicitly raises questions about the future and what our generation’s dreams are.