Arts

At first glance, Ruin Me looks set to be a decent horror flick with the interesting premise of a girl being brought into a camping trip that doubles as a haunted house, and has to make it out alive when things go awry. And of course, what could go wrong eventually went wrong. This is the debut feature film for director Preston DeFrancis and honestly, it isn’t perfect. But that’s fine, and there are certainly positive points about the film. For now, however, let’s not sugarcoat things. The film stars Marcienne Dywer in the leading role as Alex, a non-horror…

The sustainable light festival will be returning with its bicentennial edition from 28 January to 24 February 2019. With artists from 36 countries – including Singapore – presenting their artwork proposals based on the theme ‘Bridges of Time’ at next year’s festival, this edition will also mark the largest response ever to the call for artwork submissions. An artist impression of City Gazing Singapore by VOUW (Mingus Vogel and Justus Bruns) from The Netherlands for i Light Singapore 2019 Organiser of i Light Singapore and chief executive officer of Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), Mr Lim Eng Hwee, said: “This special…

Shirker (noun):Someone who avoids something, especially work (Cambridge English Dictionary). If you aren’t sure what the film is about, even after watching the trailer, you will not be alone. The mysterious trailer raises several questions while giving almost nothing away. Nevertheless, let me try and break it down for you. Premiering at the Singapore Film Society’s 60th anniversary event on 20 October and globally on Netflix on 26 October, Shirkers is a documentary by Singaporean-born film-maker Sandi Tan. The film chronicles the story of Sandi and her friends’ first movie-making experience back in 1992. The group filmed a Singapore-based indie…

Everybody wants to know what everyone else thinks about Crazy Rich Asians (CRA), particularly, if you’re Asian. Many commentators have already weighed in about how CRA is either a triumph of representation for the Asian community, or an opulent neo-colonial misrepresentation of the Singaporean, Asian, and Asian-American ethnic groups, and an actively discriminatory film. These are critical issues that deserve attention, but they ultimately grapple with the contexts that the film interacts with, and not the heart of the film itself. If we want to understand what the film means to the people who are watching it, then we should…

Indeed, no words in the vernacular can describe this great event… the Singapore Night Festival 2018 has returned. Our previous article covered some of the Singapore Night Festival’s Night Lights; this time, we bring to you the lowdown on the Festival Village, and what really stood out in this extravaganza. While the Singapore Night Festival has ended on 25 August, we reminiscence on some of the highlights that skirted the heart of Singapore’s town area. Late Night Texting brought some of our city’s brightest sparks in the theatre sphere at Centre 42, with a collection of over 30 plays by…

“X represents infinity, and my dream is to showcase most of these extraordinary artworks that embody this ‘X-factor’ so that the audience learns more than they think they see,” said Billy Mork, the founder and chief curator of X EDITION. Realising both his dreams and those of photography enthusiasts here in Singapore, the inaugural X EDITION art fair will showcase sculptures, installations, media art, and allow the general public to have an open dialogue with famed photographers such as Hokkaido-based contemporary artist and photographer Season Lao, New York-based fine-art photographer Stephen Schaub, and many more. An exposure from Billy Mork…

Having travelled across multiple American states and covering a distance of more than 6,000 kilometres along the China-North Korean border, the first Singaporean Nobel Peace Prize photographer, Sim Chi Yin, tells her compelling story through a series of photos of our time today on nuclear weapons. Titled “Most People Were Silent”, her solo exhibition juxtaposes nuclear sites in North Korea – the only country to test nuclear weapons in the 21st century – with the United States, the first country to have ever tested and used them. The front of the exhibition. Working with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear…

The Singapore Night Festival (SNF) 2018 returns with Bring On The Night, a nine-day long festival celebrating Singapore’s arts and heritage scene. The eleventh edition of this spectacular light festival sees the best of Singapore’s artists, with a range of exhibits that promise to dazzle and delight. Running from 17 to 25 August, this fiesta includes a melange of performances and programmes, as well as the much-anticipated Night Lights, one of the highlights of the festival. An extravaganza that encapsulates the pulse and vibrancy of the city’s arts scene, the famed Night Lights comprise a variety of interactive light installations…

What happens when two people find each other again after years apart, only to be torn by the impossibility of being together? The gripping premise sets the stage for local theatre collective Bound Theatre’s sixth original production, The Taste of Water. Founded in 2011, Bound Theatre aims to explore the contradictory tensions of the human condition through their works, and The Taste of Water will be the company’s first step in fleshing out the inner states of characters. Written by Teng Zi Ying, the play follows two long-time friends who fell for each other after being years apart. In this…

Conventional ways of thinking about art, science and engineering would typically lead us to conceive of them as separate, mutually exclusive realms. Dutch artist Theo Jansen, however, seamlessly straddles their boundaries with his world-famous sculptures and inorganic life – the Strandbeests. Conceptualised initially as a solution to global warming, the Strandbeests are synonymous with the iconic PVC pipes that they’re made of. The unique form of artificial life is birthed from an artistic application of engineering principles. The Strandbeests posses a looming grace especially when they’re seen in movement, walking in unique gaits reminiscent of real-life animal behaviour. Aided by…