After the arrival in Singapore on Saturday, the first day of exploring the city together with students of Lasalle was coined by Arts & Culture.

An oral examination of “A Journal of the Plague Year”, an exhibition organized by Cosmin Costinas and Inti Guerrero that was shown in Para Site.

By Kana Nishio and Boram Lee

The “end of the world” is a seemingly interminable topic at least, of course, until it happens. Environmental catastrophe and planetary apocalypse are subjects of enduring fascination and, as ethnographic studies show, human cultures have approached them in very different ways.

A conversation on becoming an artist, defining the topics and creating a narrative.

By Alicia, Marleen and Lulu. In the beginning of our working process the three of us were talking a lot about how we were experiencing Hong Kong while we were exploring it. And we all came to the agreement that there are so many contrasts in one city. We put down a whole list of it.

All pictures by Mathis Neuhaus

All pictures by Marleen Fitterer

Hong Kong has the highest density of restaurants in the world. There is one restaurant for every 300 people. But it imports most of the food, which leads to problems that should not be underestimated.

Hongkong is a troubled city. The people living here are confronted with manifold issues in regards to housing development, renting prices and subpar building stock. But still, there is beauty beneath.

(Voluntary) Labour of Love introduces work as prefigurative politics – facing the chimera of capitalism, hegemony and collusion. The short lecture will discuss how Hong Kong’s socio-political and environmental conditions can become catalysts towards ecological heterotopias and a more equitable society.

Stan Hok-Wui Wong will offer a brief introduction to Hongkong’s political history, the state and the socio-economic elite, the rise of the “real estate hegemony” in post-1997 Hong Kong and its (unintended) consequences.

We propose a day of thinking together through the exciting possibilities as well as the problems and challenges in both the terminology around as well as the practical aspects of dealing with ecologies in the Arts. 

By Black/White (Liana, Nadja, Shirley, Jion) Switzerland is famous internationally for its pure supply of drinking water.  A natural resource flowing from the alps, rivers and lakes, water surrounds the city of Zurich, Switzerland. Swiss water is reputed to be so pure that the fish cannot survive in it.

By Nature Lovers (Marleen, Ria, Jaime) https://youtu.be/JiXXhk0SYmUVideo can’t be loaded because JavaScript is disabled: Nature 3000+ (https://youtu.be/JiXXhk0SYmU) The newest Technology is changing our whole way of living. Apps on our smartphone help to handle our days, machines try to make our life easier. One of the newest inventions: Virtual Reality. Suddenly we are able to experience different places by using a special goggle. Besides a weird, dizzy feeling, an uncomfortable object on your head and a ridiculous way of looking.

Transculturality and transdisciplinarity as concepts or institutional strategies within the art field are to be tested in practice. How to speak of cultures, disciplines and practices, their crossing or interacting in the art field and beyond that? Departing from this initial question the lecture draws upon specific practices of transcultural collaboration and the challenge of working trans- and/or indisciplinare: in between but also throughout and beyond the disciplines.

Forest ecosystems exist since more than 300 million years and are nowadays faced with major changes, as for example biodiversity loss, aliens and climate changes. We dive in-situ in one of the most crucial ecosystems of our planet and review the impact of human activities.

In the slipstream of ecological debates the topic of landscape comes to the fore with a multilayered understanding including transdisciplinary and transcultural perspectives. Most human beings rely on a sense of place and carry images and perceptions of and values attached to landscapes or environments that were relevant for their identity building. Such spaces and ideas form the backdrop of socialization and individuation but also of landscape development. This talk focusses on landscape as a human attitude towards nature and on their manifold sources and histories.

Looking forward to a certain situation that is going to happen sometime soon, can be a stimulating experience. It raises anticipation, creates a buzz and makes you eager to get there. When said situation finally arrives and it goes another way, not like you expected, it can get delicate. Unfulfilled expectations can be a disillusioning thing. But also something to strive for. There you have it: a “two sides of the coin-situation” in the most fundamental sense. And since disappointment and negativity is written about sufficiently, the following examines the fertile potential of playing with expectations. Of not exactly knowing about all that is going to happen.