Lecture Series on Arts, Cultures, Policies & Educational Practices #6
Listening to Performances of Difference: Negotiating Multiplicity with Dialogic Empathy / Sounding out Matters of the Nation through Visual Arts Education: Pedagogical Cues from Singapore Contemporary Artists
Speakers: Assoc. Prof. Charlene Rajendran and Prof. Chee-Hoo Lum (Singapore)
Moderation: Nicklas Hoffmann and Emma Göttgens
Charlene Rajendran is a theatre educator, dramaturg and practitioner who is currently Assistant Professor at the National Institute of Education at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. She is Co-Director of the Asian Dramaturgs’ Network (ADN) and Lead Editor of the ADN Re/View. Her research interests include issues of identity in multicultural contexts, dramaturgy, play-based pedagogy and arts leadership.
Listening to Performances of Difference: Negotiating Multiplicity with Dialogic Empathy
The presentation will draw from the experience of five established Singapore theatre practitioners, Alvin Tan, Alfian Sa’at, Haresh Sharma, Kok Heng Leun and Ong Keng Sen, whose artistic works negotiate issues of cultural diversity and create spaces for audiences to encounter alternative perspectives that reconfigure normative notions of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Attending to questions of inter-cultural conflict and the struggle to deal with prejudice, their collaborative and experimental approaches to theatre provide potent examples of inclusive and critical options for rethinking cultural identity.
Chee-Hoo Lum is associate professor of music education with the Visual and Performing Academic Group at the National Institute of Education (NIE) at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is the coordinator of the NIE Centre for Arts Research in Education (CARE), an initiative of the UNESCO UNITWIN programme ‘Arts Education Research for Cultural Diversity and Sustainable Development’. Chee-Hoo’s research interests include issues towards identity, cultural diversity and multiculturalism, technology and globalization in music education; children’s musical cultures; creativity and improvisation; and elementary music methods.
Sounding out Matters of the Nation through Visual Arts Education: Pedagogical Cues from Singapore Contemporary Artists
This presentation offers critical perspectives of young Singapore contemporary artists in the articulation of their relationship with the nation state through their creative works and processes. The ambiguous and self-censoring ways with which artists articulate their opinions and speak about their works point to the layered and oftentimes subversive ways with which narratives of difference are weaved into the artistic outcomes as they negotiate and comment on state mechanisms. Pedagogical implications drawn from the works of these contemporary artists are suggested for working with primary and secondary school students within the visual art classroom to encourage a more critical approach towards sounding out matters of the nation.
photo: courtesy of the speakers