I come from Northern Italy, not too far from where Marco Polo started his journey East more than seven hundred years ago, but I now live in Singapore. I travelled there by plane with one big luggage and no immediate return ticket. In Europe my skin is white but gets tanned in summer months, in Asia when I stand in the sun I get ‘sunburnt’ instead. Language reveals a lot of cultural and historical biases.
Massimo Bottura is a Michelin star chef, his restaurant, featured on Chef’s table, Master of None and many other food and TV programmes, is Osteria Francescana in his hometown, Modena, a city in the centre of Italy where making pasta is considered an art. Bottura is married to Lara, an American woman he met when, in their 20s, they started working on the same day in the same New York restaurant. Lara eventually married the man but also a vision and then a restaurant. She was the one who introduced Massimo to art galleries and contemporary art exhibitions. Those encounters and ideas gradually made their way into dishes, inspired by Bottura’s childhood and traditional Italian family recipes transformed into new creations through conceptual twists often referencing works of contemporary art.
Adrian Piper è un’artista-filosofa. Lo si apprende dal suo enciclopedico sito web (www.adrianpiper.com), che rivela come la sua ricerca trovi espressione in tre differenti discipline: non solo l’arte e la filosofia, ma anche lo yoga. Nella pagina dedicata alle sue notizie biografiche sono raccolti diversi documenti: testi brevi o estesi, scritti, riscritti e aggiornati a distanza di anni; saggi in prima persona e compendi in terza, oltre alla pagina Wikipedia ricostruita personalmente dall’artista. Sul sito compaiono lettere inviate a redattori, editori e curatori nelle quali Piper prega di correggere informazioni scorrette e di non basarsi su considerazioni esterne all’opera d’arte.
Articolo commissionato da L’Officiel Art Italia e apparso sul N. 3 Aprile 2018
Lawrence Lek, Geomancer, 2017, CGI film, Commissioned for the Jerwood/FVU Awards 2017. © Lawrence Lek
Lawrence Lek’s CGI film Geomancer (2017), set in Singapore in the year 2065, tells the story of an environmental satellite that wishes to become an artist.
This interview explores Lek’s fascination for futuristic scenarios and the dangers embedded in automated labour. His vantage point between West and East provides a lens through which to consider economic and political knots that are affecting the world: from Brexit to AI.
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Jeremy Sharma’s exhibition at ICA Singapore has a vibrant pulse and operates as an orchestra. The instruments the Singaporean artist plays are his videos: in one of them there is a saxophonist who introduces a soulful vibe resonating in the entire gallery. Billy Wong, who played in the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, was befriended by Sharma as a street busker; in the video he performs his interpretation for a song composed for guitar, the new score Wong wrote can be found pinned on a wall in the gallery. Sharma films the musician playing at sunset by the windows of a room with a recognisable backdrop of Singapore HDB flats’ skyline. A paper contract next to it, reveals it is an office space rented only for the day of the filming.
Sto in un albergo nel caos sporco di Mong Kok, la mia camera e’ su un piano alto e mi pare di essere un’ eroina di un telefilm del giro del millennio tipo quello con Jessica Alba con il tatuaggio di riconoscimento a codice a barra sulla nuca. Se non sto attenta, mi e’ gia’ capitato di aprire la porta dell’armadio anziché quella della doccia, dato che sono uguali e adiacenti.
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e-publication designed by Studio Vanessa Ban© Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore 2018
Finding a title for this exhibition has been hard; there was for a moment The abstraction of the art object (2017–2065) but I am no Lucy Lippard and it sounded like I was setting out to write a treatise. Then there were Satellite dreams, Dancing satellite and a brief Star Wars reprise, The last satellite, until eventually the satellite was shut down.
Caterina Riva 2018
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