TELL IT TO THE WALLS
16 JANUARY TO 23 FEBRUARY 2023
ABOUT
What if the walls really had ears? And in turn, what if these walls could then speak? What happens when an artist creates a space for people to tell their stories? And what happens when listeners agree to support each other as witnesses to the stories being told?
TELL IT TO THE WALLS is a community storytelling performance art experience, developed through workshops, processes, performance, and installation conceptualised by Kamini Ramachandran. The project activates 136 GOETHE LAB as a space for participants and visitors to ‘speak to the walls’. This notion of telling, listening, collecting, and retelling stories will be explored in different ways and through multiple story circles and events held at the lab.
One of Kamini’s signature stories is ‘Tell it to the Walls’ – a traditional folktale from South India with universal themes. The story focuses on the supportive, respectful, and loving act of listening to another speak. When we find ourselves without engaged listeners, our ‘untold’ narratives and emotions remain contained within us (both physically and metaphorically), leading to an imbalance that seeks an outlet so we can recalibrate ourselves. As an experimental process and art experience, TELL IT TO THE WALLS becomes a progressive discovering of how ‘walls’—interior or physical, can be activated—whether softened, collapsed, bolstered, or perhaps reinforced, through the material means of installation, lighting, and spatial design to support the act of community storytelling and listening. Over time, these ‘walls’ will become embedded with the community’s stories, and finally, re-presented and retold by Kamini.
THE ARTIST & COLLABORATORS
Kamini Ramachandran is an oral tradition practitioner who is also a teaching artist and creative producer. Stories and the act of storytelling build community and provide us with ways of being ourselves, and the means to understand others. TELL IT TO THE WALLS is Kamini’s exploration of installations and storytelling as performance art.
For TELL IT TO THE WALLS Kamini collaborates with Razi Razak and Victor Emmanuel in exploring installations to support spoken stories.
TERMS OF REFERENCE
To facilitate a safe and open space for sharing, each session will begin with group briefings on permission to photograph/record/document; identification and anonymity; confidentiality and sharing of information.
To fully engage with the installation and to experience TELL IT TO THE WALLS as the artist intended, we request that all participants enter the installation space without using their devices.
We request that participants are mindful of respecting our cultural and religious diversity when speaking.
There will be notetaking and audio-visual recordings during the session for Kamini’s research and internal archival purposes as part of her 136 Goethe Lab residency.
Selected participants may be asked for consent and permission to share their images/audio-visual clips on social media and/or other platforms.
THE SPACE
136 GOETHE LAB is a new project space at the Goethe-Institut Singapore. Housed in the former library and reading room, the space is intended as a response to the need for physical spaces for the arts, and an ongoing conversation with the public and arts community in Singapore.
TELL IT TO THE WALLS is supported as part of the open call for 136 GOETHE LAB, which invited applicants to activate the space with a group proposal.
IGs
@kaministoryteller
@tellittothewalls