Holding Space explores the lived experiences of Burmese immigrants in Singapore under the gaze of neighbours in public flats. With a focus on spatial arrangements and housing exteriors, the experimental film challenges the ways architects visualise and instrumentalise their ways of seeing, seeking to hold space for subjective experiences and the subtle yet persistent influences on our domestic interiors.
Twenty images of a camera running next to a chemical platform and capturing abstract light throught improvised gestures and asymmetrical motion
The Garden is an experimental work that describes the inner worlds of two sisters manifested through their connection with the garden outside their home. While mourning the passing of their close relative, the sisters encounter a man in the garden, evoking a sense of mortality in one and awakening the sensuality in another. The film was directed by Ong Ann Meng (better known as Meng Ong), who went on to win numerous awards for his short films at the Singapore International Film Festival between 1991 and 1993. His first feature, Miss Wonton (2001), won the FIPRESCI Prize at the Locarno International Film Festival.
Proximities focuses on the trope of the Malay Boy found in the works of Singaporean artist Cheong Soo Pieng (b. 1917-1983). It attempts to locate the Malay male in art history while unpacking underlying systems of power that have shaped and naturalised the understanding of difference.
TAMAN HUTAN Chapter Four: The Wound Response focuses on the rubber craze of the 20th century through both archival documentation of wages and an interview with Cek Anuan on his grandfather Rasimin who worked with English naturalist Henry Nicholas Ridley. Focusing on the Singapore Botanic Gardens as the site of interaction between colonists and labourers, the film reveals the wounds of those erased from colonial records but who remain inscribed within nature itself.
After the end of a relationship, a young Belgian woman remains alone in an isolated house and turns silence, repetition, and solitude into forms of existence and resistance to forgetting.
The Hypergaussian Wars is an AI-generated feature-length audiovisual work exploring algorithmic warfare, obsolete media and the transformation of images through repetition, saturation and collapse. Built from thousands of generated images, synthetic landscapes and references to 14th–16th century painting, the film stages a continuous conflict between historical visual culture and contemporary computational systems. Fragments of obsolete video games, ruined architectures, military simulations and post-human figures circulate through increasingly unstable environments. Rather than telling a linear story, the film operates as an image system in which visual excess progressively erodes meaning. The Hypergaussian Wars reflects on memory, obsolescence, artificial intelligence and the persistence of images after their original function has disappeared.
A comic study of 20th-century history, reconstructing the life of writer, creator and professional prisoner Tulse Luper. Born in 1911 Newport and last heard of in 1989, Luper’s life is pieced together from the evidence found in 92 suitcases scattered across the globe. In the first of three parts, we follow Luper through three distinct episodes: as a child during the First World War; as an explorer in Mormon Utah; and as a writer in Belgium during the rise of fascism.
Ocean was a girl and now just a paper head. Her brother reminisces the times they shared during their childhood, a sorry experience that birthed emotional scars.
An exiled magician finds an opportunity for revenge against his enemies muted when his daughter and the son of his chief enemy fall in love in this uniquely structured retelling of the 'The Tempest'.
After his mother's death, a young man edits the family's home videos to bring back her image. As he delves into the occult he begins to reveal the paradoxical magic of memories and cinema.
Writes Ando, "Oh! My Mother was the first work I made using a newly bought 16mm camera I had purchased with the writer Shuji Terayama in Paris. This piece was selected for the Oberhausen International Film Festival. In 1969, there were, of course, no video cameras like ones we see now, and color TVs were only found at broadcast television studios. I had just been employed at the TBS (Tokyo Broadcasting System), and I often snuck into the studios after hours to experiment with the equipment. Oh! My Mother was made using the feedback effect, which is produced by infinitely expanding the image by looping the video."
A woman on the run from the mob is reluctantly accepted in a small Colorado community in exchange for labor, but when a search visits the town, she learns that their support has a price.
Shot in black and white, Invisible merges performance art and personal documentary to reflect personal and shared experiences during the military coup. Set in an abandoned building where many young revolutionists sought refuge, the seemingly invisible experiences of displacement, loss, suffering and anger are made visible through words and subtle movements.
A young man performs 'pranayama' sitting against a bleak wall. We observe him through a frame that seems to be connected to him in some way. As we go on to witness the nature of the frame, will the images presented to us be able to convey his intentions, thoughts, and ultimately, his fate? This experimental feature film is comprised of 7 parts of black and white imagery with no sound at all.
'Afloat' is an experimental film that paints a portrait of Japanese performance artist: Ayumi Lanoire. The film opens as a telephone call between Ayumi and Person X, which meanders the audience through the various layers that make up her personas leading one to wonder whether she is in fact a myth or reality.
An experimental short film that follows a man who arrives home alone during the holidays after a long day of work. Finding himself consumed by his loneliness he looks for a way to escape.
Experimental short film with some old video8 about the passage of time and how we perceive Memories
X-hale
After concluding the now-legendary public access TV series, The Pain Factory, Michael Nine embarked on a new and more subversive public access endeavor: a collaboration with Scott Arford called Fuck TV. Whereas The Pain Factory predominantly revolved around experimental music performances, Fuck TV was a comprehensive and experiential audio-visual presentation. Aired to a passive and unsuspecting audience on San Francisco’s public access channel from 1997 to 1998, each episode of Fuck TV was dedicated to a specific topic, combining video collage and cut-up techniques set to a harsh electronic soundtrack. The resultant overload of processed imagery and visceral sound was unlike anything presented on television before or since. EPISODES: Yule Bible, Cults, Riots, Animals, Executions, Static, Media, Haterella (edited version), Self Annihilation Live, Electricity.