Exhibitions

LEA New Media Exhibition: Interview with Kai Syng Tan

Posted by on

 

LEA New Media Exhibition
Re-Drawing Boundaries
Focus On: Kai Syng Tan
Curator: Jeremy Hight
Senior Curators: Lanfranco Aceti and Christiane Paul
LEA Editorial Assistant: Ebru Surek

Kai Syng Tan collects influences into ventures not only belonging to the genre of ‘locative media’, but also performance, essay/diary, collaborative digital (and non-digital) storytelling. Re-Drawing Boundaries online exhibition presents the artworks including her virtual avatar Kaidie that explore digital realities as well as ask important questions about the construction of identity. In the interview, she refers herself as the personal pronoun “we” which also embraces Kaidie as a product-manifestation of and response to the technological conditions of today.

Kai Syng Tan‘s work has been shown in more than 45 cities (Guangzhou Triennale, Biennale of Sydney, ICA London, House of World Cultures, Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival). Kai Syng has won several awards (SFIFF merit video award, Young Artist Award, Most Promising Young Artist Award aged 18), residencies (NIFCA, Japan Foundation) and grants. She is an advisor in a panel at the Media Development Authority of Singapore. For 7 years she was also a digital arts consultant and film lecturer, and ran a Video Art degree programme in an art university. Trained in Tokyo (MA in Imaging Science and Arts, Excellence Award, Distinctions, Musashino Art University), Chicago (School of Art Institute) and London (BA in Fine Art, 1st class Honors, Slade School of Fine Art) on full scholarships, Kai Syng’s interdisciplinary work (performance, cine-essay, installation, text et al) examines the notion of ‘reality.’ In one of her previous lives, she had done this by viewing the world through a self-reflexive video camera of a restless tourist/traveler and had been named ‘one of Singapore’s foremost video artists’ Her large-scale permanent public commission can also be seen at the Bras Basah MRT Station (from 19:29 hours daily) in the Arts and Heritage District of Singapore.

Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA),  ISSN No: 1071-4391
LEA International Curatoriate:
Lanfranco Aceti & Christiane Paul (Senior Curators), Jeremy Hight (New Media Curator), Vince Dziekan (Digital Media Curator)


3.0, 2.0, 1.0! Ready, Get Set, Go! Run For (Y)Our Lives!, 2010, Kai Syng Tan. All images and video material are the copyright of the artist and cannot be used or altered in any way without the express consent of the artist

LEA New Media Exhibition: Interview with Kai Syng Tan

Lanfranco Aceti is known for his social activism and extensive career as artist, curator, and academic. He is a research affiliate and visiting professor at ACT @ Massachusetts Institute of Technology and director of the Arts Administration Program at Boston University. He is also the Editor in Chief of the Leonardo Electronic Almanac, The MIT Press. He has exhibited numerous personal projects including Car Park, a public performance in the UK at the John Hansard Gallery; Who The People?, an installation artwork acquired in its entirety by the Chetham’s Library and Museum in Manchester; Sowing and Reaping, installation artworks acquired in their entirety by the National Museum of Contemporary Art of Cyprus; and Hope Coming On, a site-specific choral performance he designed for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, with the collaboration of the Boston Children’s Chorus, and realized in front of Turner’s Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On). In 2017, Aceti prepared a series of new artworks for an exhibition entitled Shimmer and curated by Irini Papadimitriou (V&A) at the Tobazi Mansion in Hydra, a new large choral performance titled Accursed for the Thessaloniki Biennial in Greece; and Knock, Knock, Knocking a public space installation in the Mediterranean Garden Pavilion of the New Sea Waterfront of Thessaloniki.