Exquisite Monster 1 to 14 August 2022
ABOUT
Exquisite Monster is a reflexive, cross-disciplinary devising process using themes of conception and femaleness inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The project by this Singaporean collective is a process-driven devising method, beginning with the artists’ reflection of their own practice as creators which then expands to include invited audience’s experiences. Exquisite Monster is interested in the relationship between creator and creation across multiple and diverse perspectives. It is a generative space where individuals interrogate their personal creative practices and the vulnerability of being a creator, and collaborate on a working model that subverts the hierarchy of artistic power dynamics in group production. Furthermore, this project explores the effects of blurring the boundaries between personal and fictional stories to kaleidoscope their intersections into a collective narrative.By channeling bodies and digital technology as mediums for storytelling, the artists transform 136 Goethe Lab into an incubation space to destabilize the notion that a singular body is the unitary model that excludes all others in its vision. Exquisite Monster can take the form of a mixed-format participatory presentation in an open studio that encompasses elements of documentary-making, art-performance, and interviews to expose the anatomy of making.
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PUBLIC DAYS
Participatory SessionsExquisite Monster invites you to practise with the artists within the context of the themes they are working with at the 136 Goethe Lab. By combining formats of an open studio, workshops, and vignettes of performances, these participatory sessions encompass elements of documentary-making, art-performance, and interviews to expose the anatomy of making.
9 October, 5 to 6pm
15 October, 3 to 5pm
16 October 3 to 5pm
Limited slots available. Please email Valerie-Ann.Tan@goethe.de to inquire about or register for the participatory sessions.
Installation-in-process
The exhibition will be a spatial experience with a few elements placed within 136 Goethe Lab. In the main space, there will be an installation that is a composition of multiple props that the artists of Exquisite Monster have used during their co-devising process with and without participants. Scattered around the room are excerpts of text that draws from multiple readings and writings they have done throughout the lab. In the smaller room, there is a ‘conversation’ corner with two chairs that invite visitors to sit down and ask one of the artists any questions about the creative process. On the other side of the smaller room, there will be a TV on the other side of the room that plays (without audio) the documentation of the artists’ time in the lab. Throughout the space, a curated soundscape from recordings of the artists’ co-devising process can be heard in a loop. At any given time, visitors might encounter one of the artists moving through the space as they recall and perform memories of past co-devising exercises.
15 & 16 October, 5.30 to 10pm
Walk-in
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THE ARTISTS
Jo Ho is an artist working with digital and physical spaces that question the role of agency and creation in our increasingly automated world, where views of "machine as tool" and "machine as creator" are being challenged. Her recent work explores perceptions of digital media today and attempts to reveal the tangibility beneath digital works in today’s world of rapid content production.Thong Pei Qin is an independent Singaporean theatre director who is passionate about devising original works of critical social relevance. Her theatre-making encourages the staging of new writing, and rediscovering innovative forms of cross-disciplinary research and creations across the physical, visual, verbal, textual and technology.
Pat Toh is a corporeal artist working across theatre, dance and the live arts. She centers her artistic research on the body as site, resource and medium in order to expose its materiality and workings outside of the culturally imposed idea of the self.
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The Space
136 GOETHE LAB 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.HOT POT TALK is supported as part of the open call for 136 GOETHE LAB, which invited applicants to activate the space with a group proposal.