AT SG

AT SG 2024

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23 Aug – 7 Sep 2024

Immerse yourself in Singapore’s rich history with All Things Singapore (AT SG)! As night falls, visit the National Library and National Archives of Singapore to relive and reimagine our vibrant heritage. Enjoy art installations and exciting programmes that showcase the role of the arts, entertainment and games in shaping our communities’ creative expression and social interaction. Celebrate Singapore’s stories and experience the magic of childhood, play and creativity while creating unforgettable memories.

AT SG 2024 is held in collaboration with the Singapore Night Festival.

About AT SG:

AT SG advocates All Things Singapore, inviting you to discover and engage with our island’s history and stories. Explore Singapore across various topics and touchpoints through fresh perspectives and gain insights from the content and collections at the NLB. Join our talks, tours, hands-on sessions, displays and more! This programme series contributes towards NLB’s role as Singapore Storytellers, which aims to nurture a stronger appreciation of the Singapore experience by eliciting curiosity and wonder, while shaping an understanding of Singapore’s heritage and identity in the process.

To explore last year’s edition, please visit: AT SG 2023.

  • [Installation] Opera in Motion: A Dynamic Tribute to Chinese Opera

    Opera in motion

    Opera in Motion: A Dynamic Tribute to Chinese Opera 剧里箱

    23 Aug – 7 Sep 2024
    7.30 pm – 12 am
    Courtyard, National Design Centre

    About the installation:

    “Opera in Motion: A Dynamic Tribute to Chinese Opera” celebrates the heritage of Chinese opera (wayang) at the National Design Centre, formerly home to The Chinese Opera Institute. This interactive installation features a tricycle stacked with tarpaulin-covered boxes, inviting visitors to interact with a zoetrope showcasing the movements of opera performers. Pedaling on the tricycle activates a mesmerising light projection of an illustrated Chinese opera scene onto the centre’s walls. Ambient melodies and festive lighting complete the immersive experience.

    Drawing inspiration from the lively Chinese street operas that have thrived since 1842, this work is also a nod to wayang’s historical presence in Singapore as evidenced by a noise complaint by Bugis Street and Victoria Street residents in the 1890s. Blending tradition with modern innovation, “Opera in Motion” offers a captivating journey through the world of Chinese opera.

    This artwork is co-presented by the National Library Board and National Heritage Board. NLB hopes to inspire the discovery of hidden stories and facets of Singapore’s past from the collections of the National Library and the National Archives of Singapore.

    About the artist:

    “Opera in Motion” was conceptualised by artists Ezekiel Wong, Hoo Jian Li, Lim Jia Ren and Ron Tu. Through a unique blend of art, lighting, interactive technologies and motion, the artists have created a work that honours the rich heritage of Chinese opera, while also pushing the envelope of artistic expression to offer visitors an immersive and unforgettable experience.

    Behind the work:

    Hainanese opera stage
    A Hainanese opera stage in the 1980s.  

    Courtesy of National Archives of Singapore. 

     

    Striped tarpaulin sheets are commonly used as canopies for opera theatres. This installation borrows aesthetic elements from Chinese street opera theatres by repurposing tarpaulin sheets as coverings for the boxes loaded on the tricycle. Inside the boxes are zoetropes that, when spun, present captivating animated Chinese opera performances. This interactive element allows visitors to witness the beauty and grandeur of Chinese opera in a unique and engaging way. String lights are another common feature in street opera theatres and are similarly hung around the installation to create a vibrant and authentic atmosphere reminiscent of street performances.

    Adding a modern twist to the installation is the overloaded cargo tricycle that moves goods from place to place. Cargo tricycles are a familiar sight in many bustling Asian cities and symbolise the movement and resilience of cultural traditions as they are transported through time and space. The installation mimics the chaotic yet harmonious arrangement of goods on these cargo tricycles, creating a dynamic and visually striking homage to both the art of Chinese opera and the spirit of its enduring legacy.

    In the installation, visitors can listen to audio excerpts from three Teochew opera classics: Hibiscus Flower Fairy (芙蓉仙子), The Legend of Madame White Snake (白蛇传), and The Spirit in the Firewood Shed (柴房会). These selections are drawn from the audio recording “Wayang Wayang: Flower Fairy, Snake Spirit, and Ghost in Teochew Opera”, which includes a commentary. Based on the commentary, the artists identified three distinct themes—love, conflict and comedy—represented in the respective performances. These themes were then distilled into three zoetropes, accompanied by music that fills the installation to create an immersive experience.

    Providing more insight into wayang are photos on the tricycle itself. Selected from the collections of the National Archives of Singapore, these images capture the golden era of Chinese opera.


    Sources:


    Find out more:

    Check out these resources to learn more about Chinese opera in Singapore.

  • [Installation] Main-main Aje: Suatu Filem 

    Main-main Aje

    Main-main Aje: Suatu Filem

    23 Aug – 7 Sep 2024
    10 am – 9 pm  
    Promenade, Level 7, National Library Building  

    About the Artwork:

    “Main-main Aje” is a dance film that captures the meditative expressions of freestyle dance and vestiges of enculturated movement forms. It explores the close affinities of play and expression, memory and future-making, ritualised and improvised movements, joyful exuberance and taciturn control of the body. The dance artists in the film incorporate various traditional dance and movement forms, drawing from the coordinated movement of dikir barat choral groups, inang, silat and maglalatik, which are fused with hands performance, vogue fem and contemporary dance.

    Veering away from the strictures of choreography, the dances are the outcome of artistic trust between the artist-director and the dance artists and are experiments in dance-making and movement direction. “Main-Main Aje: Suatu Filem” is an invitation and invocation to view performance not just as a persembahan [presentation] of virtuosity or the deployed embodiment of a unitary artistic vision, but a permainan [playing], which offers novel recombinants for both personal and cultural stories to be told. 

    About the Artist-Director:

    Shayus Sharif is an artist, researcher and performer. Her interests include institutional critique, ludic and parodic interventions, anthropologies of and from the margins, vernacular and musicking cultures, movement studies and artistic expressions interrogating gender and culture and global circulations of subcultural formation. Shayus is one of the recipients of the 2024 National Library Creative Residency.

    Behind the work:

    “Main-main aje: Suatu Filem” is a dance film that is inspired by Shayus Sharif’s family history, memories of being surrounded by Malay traditional performing arts, her current movement practice and interest in Singapore’s dance culture. The film also draws speculative links between various traditional performing arts and the youth street dance cultures of Singapore’s present. 

    The film is informed by Shayus’ encounters with materials such as Evolving Synergies: Celebrating Dance in Singapore (edited by Stephanie Burridge, Caren, Cariño), oral interview recordings (with Neila Sathyalingam, Som Mohamed Said, Angela Pui-Yin Liong), ephemera documenting Bharatanatyam dance performances and events in Singapore, and Berita Harian newspaper reports on the explosion of the Twist as a dance craze and efforts to fuse the Twist and traditional dance forms.

    In thinking through what it means to perform in the Southeast Asian context, the film presents how the playful and performative coexist intimately in the expressive modes of dance-making. By melding traditional dance forms and freestyle street styles, the dance artists also contemplate their cultural, gender and artistic identities. The film is presented as an installation that references 1960s and 1970s Singapore shophouses, drawing parallels to a period of incipient social, cultural and political change. 

    Extending the themes of play and freestyle dance, the project is activated by the performance a Singaporean hip-hop rapper and singer-songwriter, Martin Spacely, together with a crew of dancers in “Games of Groove”. A public workshop “Pose and Waack Only!” offers the public an opportunity to learn basic and beginner-friendly steps in the styles of Waacking and Old Way Voguing, led by prominent figures in the local dance scene.

    Find out more:

    Check out these resources to learn more about the development of dance in Singapore.

    • Publications:

    About the National Library Creative Residency Programme: 

    The National Library Creative Residency is a programme that invites creatives from different artistic disciplines to draw inspiration from the National Library Board's collections, to reimagine or reinterpret its materials in ways that provide fresh perspectives and make them more engaging to a wider community of users. 

  • [Installation] Re:Play AT SG – Timeless Fun Through Childhood Games 

    Re:Play AT SG

    Re:Play AT SG – Timeless Fun Through Childhood Games 

    23 Aug – 7 Sep 2024
    10 am – 9 pm (23/24/30/31 Aug & 6/7 Sep: 10 am – 11 pm) 
    Atrium, Level 3, National Archives Building 

     

    Step back in time and enjoy Singapore’s traditional games! Relive your childhood memories with classic favourites such as pick-up sticks, five stones and goli (marbles). Perfect for families and friends, this event promises fun, laughter and a celebration of our rich cultural heritage.  

  • Programmes

    AT SG 2024

     

    Don’t miss our diverse range of programmes including art performances, live mural painting, talks, workshops, film screenings, a poetry slam and more! 

    For details and to register, visit go.gov.sg/atsg2024.