Hello from NUSM - August Programmes

A warm welcome to all freshmen and hello again to returning students of NUS! As a university museum, we facilitate teaching and learning on campus but we are more than just a space for module visits and research. We have over 6 exhibitions on display and an exciting line up of programmes for the semester such as talks, workshops, and a film series!

Find out more by following us on Instagram and Facebook pages found in the links at the bottom of this newsletter. See you around!

Workshops

[Workshop] prep-room DRILLS | Zine-Making Workshop on Gender

Date: Thursday, 11 August 2022
Time: 7pm - 8.30pm
Venue: NUS Museum
Free with registration
Registration link: https://prd-zineaug.eventbrite.sg/

Distilling the interventionist and revisionist gestures of the prep-room Yang tidak lupa, this programme unfolds in two parts: an inquiry-based tour of the prep-room, and a guided zine-making workshop. Through the programme, participants will have the opportunity to articulate and trace their personal resonances in relation to artistic depictions, social issues, and circulation of feminine bodies as subject matter. With guided prompts and readymade materials, the programme culminates in zine-making as a generative approach to pose critical questions and reflect on alternative narratives that reframe the social constructions of gendered identities.

[Workshop] Woodcuts of the Past: Printing Workshop

Date: Friday, 19 August 2022
Time: 7pm - 10pm
Venue: HERE! Arts Carnival 2022, Stephen Riady Centre, NUS
Free, no registration required

Join us as we revisit Singapore’s history of hawking alongside other trades of the past through this workshop by the NUS Museum! In this programme, participants will get a chance to explore the art of woodcut printing by creating and bringing home a set of prints. With guidance by artist-led mobile print studio SuperSegak, they will learn more about the techniques, materials, and labour involved in printmaking.

This programme is organised as part of HERE! Arts Carnival 2022

Talk at the NUS Baba House

[Around the Tok Panjang Chat] Writing the Nonyas

Date: Saturday, 13 August
Time: 2pm - 3pm
Venue: NUS Baba House
Free with registration
Registration link: https://bhtokpanjangchat_aug22.eventbrite.sg/

In this opening installation of the chat, we open up discussions relating to the representations of Straits Chinese women in local literary works. Join local writer Josephine Chia, and Vivian Lim, director of the Idea Co, as they discuss the intersections and divergences between lived experiences of Nonyas vis-a-vis their representations, as well as the historical settings that are often elicited in local works surrounding Straits Chinese women. Making references to Josephine’s own works, as well as other local works, the chat will also explore possibilities for future stories surrounding social lives and identity-making that are yet to be told.

Talk

[Online Seminar] Fantastic Art Master: Analysing the Art of an Online Global Sub-Culture

Speaker: Dr. Sharon Khalifa-Gueta (Research Fellow, Department of Art History, University of Haifa, Israel)
Date: Thursday, 18 August 2022
Time: 7pm – 8.30pm (GMT+8, Singapore) , 2pm – 3.30pm (GMT +3, Israel)
Venue: Online on Zoom
Free with registration
Registration link: https://fantasticartmaster.eventbrite.sg/

Despite its prominence in the gaming, literature, and tattooing industries, the artistic genre known as Fantastic Art (FA) has received uneven academic attention. While literature, film, and new media tend to engage with this genre actively, it remains absent from the discipline of art history, and institutions such as galleries, libraries, and museums. As such, the “Fantastic Art Master” project was conceived in 2020 at the University of Haifa to address this gap, in collaboration with the E-Lijah Lab, the Digital Humanities Department, the Information Systems Department at the University of Haifa, and the AI company tasq.ai. This talk seeks to delineate how art history can contribute to visual machine learning abilities through the “Fantastic Art Master” project which mobilises art history and AI to archive, map, tag, and analyse the FA genre.

Organised in collaboration with