Malaysian theatremaker Jo Kukathas is ready to collaborate with British multidisciplinary artist Tai Shani on the web paintings The Neon Hieroglyph, which focuses on an unlikely protagonist – the ergot, a fungus discovered on frequent grains that has been linked to mass hallucinations throughout Europe.
The 60-minute trippy filmic efficiency is a part of the upcoming the Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA), organised by Arts House Limited and commissioned by Singapore’s National Arts Council.
With the title The Anatomy of Performance – Ritual, this 12 months’s competition (May 20 to June 5) options new commissioned works by a mixture of native and worldwide artists.
The Neon Hieroglyph, ticketed, will play from May 27-29 at Singapore’s Pasir Panjang Power Station.
It’s been practically a 12 months since Kukathas final appeared in a dramatic function on a KL theatre stage (final 12 months’s How To Be Alone workshop manufacturing). She returns to the Singapore arts scene (the place she is equally well-known) to lend her voice to the hallucinatory world of The Neon Hieroglyph because the narrator.
“The show is beautifully languorous and hypnotic. There is a calm acceptance of the mystery and capacity of the female mind. We are still exploring, of course.
“But the text itself is such a mystery. For myself, I’m enjoying the act of trying to unravel it and I’m just seeing so many things in it. I just like Tai’s writing, I like its form. It’s highly poetic,” mentioned Kukathas latest a digital media occasion.
Shani, who co-won Britain’s Turner Prize in 2019, will current her first on-line paintings on the Singapore International Festival of Arts. Photo: Tai Shani
“The text shifts between many stories of hallucinogens and hallucinatory states. This piece is about plagues and physical and mental afflictions and what it does to our minds and bodies and sense of self not in a negative way, but in a way that makes you explore the nature of reality,” she continued.
Impossible locations
Shani weaves a sequence of psychedelic vignettes round ergot that embody a historic narrative between fantasy and actuality, together with references to a steady 450-year outbreak of ergot poisoning in Alicudi, certainly one of seven islands that make up Italy’s Aeolian islands.
With scenes set in “impossible places”, The Neon Hieroglyph segues from the mobile to the planetary, from ice cream sundaes to Palaeolithic caves, dancing plagues to communist witches, as Shani rolls out her delicate commentaries on altered states, communality and speculative futures.
“Why ergot? I have always been interested in counter cultural histories and also, I usually work on a very big body of work that spans a few years.
“So, I was trying to find something that will have a lot of scope in it and different kinds of narrative information that I can go into. And ergot provided me with that,” mentioned Shani, who co-won Britain’s Turner Prize in 2019, on the identical digital occasion.
For the Turner Prize in Britain, Shani mirrored on the intersection between historic occasions, science fiction and mythology in her set up model of DC Semiramis. The undertaking took inspiration from The Book Of The City Of Ladies by French medieval writer Christine de Pisan, which depicted an allegorical metropolis inhabited by legendary, imaginary and actual ladies from the previous, current and future.
For Shani, feminine otherness is the proper totality, and she or he creates photos that subvert patriarchal narratives with violent, erotic and fantastical imagery.
“This piece The Neon Hieroglyph is looking at whether psychedelic experiences of unity and togetherness can be used as a tool to facilitate reaching an egalitarian future,” she added.
The movie sequence The Neon Hieroglyph was commissioned and produced by Manchester International Festival. The undertaking can also be commissioned by The British Art Show, and is developed in collaboration with Serpentine’s Back to Earth undertaking.
