Future Of Imagination 9 is… wait for it…

SINGAPORE — I have to say, watching someone slowly and methodically turn into a literal newspaperman can be rather compelling.

That’s what Taiwanese performance artist Watan Wuma did at the opening night of Future Of Imagination 9 yesterday.

This time around, the homegrown performance art fest is focusing on durational performances ranging from two to six hours each. It runs until Sunday over at Post-Museum’s former (and much-missed) spot at 107 Rowell Road in Little India, and every day, a few performances are set to take place simultaneously.

For anyone who slogged until the end of that 50-hour non-stop performance by Nikhil Chopra at SIFA a couple of weeks ago, this should be a breeze. But if you’re used to half-hour-ish performances, like in previous FOIs or RITES events, I think this’ll prove rather interesting. Whether you want to catch bits and pieces of all, or choose one and stick with it till the end, it’s really all up to you, said fest artistic director Jason Lim.

Greedy person that I am, I tried to opt for the first option. Singapore performance art collective SPAM was doing something with buckets of water, soap, and other objects, and they were still just slowly getting into the groove when I went upstairs to check out Wuma.

Then I promptly got sucked into his fascinating transformation.

Sorry, SPAM folks, I couldn’t take my eyes off Wuma as he was crumpling newspapers and throwing them around, before proceeding to stick these onto his body (later on getting some help from the audience). Eventually, he looked like, in the dimly lit room, a kind of huge, disheveled Komondor dog (the one on Beck’s Odelay album cover) standing up. Or a monochrome Madame Trash Heap from Fraggle Rock.

I liked how he stuck to basically one material/metaphor and ran away with it — literally. Mr Newspaperman then went down and ran out on the street — and everyone followed, clicking away at this strange sight. Like newspaper paparazzi. Woot.

Anyways, FOI9 should prove interesting (when has it not been?), the idea of stretching/expanding/filling time and how we choose to approach a performance. Do we embrace, imagine or impose a narrative to something that lends itself easily to that? Do we experience performances as, moving from one to the other, fragments of images and moments that overlap? And, erm, when do we take a pee break?

FOI9 just started and there’s, ahem, plenty of time to catch the artists. You’ve got visiting ones from overseas but I’d like to give a shout-out to the Singapore ones: Ezzam Rahman and Daniela Beltrani will be doing their respective pieces tonight (Sept 5) and Natasha Wei will have hers tomorrow (Sept 6). Noor Effendy Ibrahim was slated to perform on Sunday (Sept 7) but will not be performing anymore.

Tonight’s and Sunday’s performances start at 7pm while Saturday’s will begin at 1pm (because you’ve got three international artists doing six-hour performances!).

There’s also going to be a forum on durational performance on Sunday, 2pm, at the National Library. For more information, visit http://foi.sg/.

And by the way, I think there are some catalogues of previous FOI and FOI-related shows available at the venue. You should try to check out the one on a 2012 exhibition at Chan Hampe Gallery titled Reliquarium, which gives an insight into some performance art relics and the stories behind them.

And, hey, if you’re up for it, there’s also an ongoing exhibition at Objectifs that’s quite similar by sheer coincidence. Titled Notes On Performance, it’s also showing relics and performance art-related objects and documentation.