Catalogue > At random

This film is one part of a long-term engagement with Tanglin Halt, one of Singapore’s oldest social housing estates, which runs alongside a former railway track. The railway was owned by the Malaysian state until 2011, meaning that a ten-meter-wide zone of indeterminate-governance ran through the heart of Singapore for fifty years, playing host to a fecundity of more-than-human activities. Ornithologists have observed 105 species of birds in this patch. However, the land along the tracks is being repurposed as green corridor park through a new biotech and media hub. Once-famous modern housing blocks are being demolished and low-income residents relocated elsewhere. Unofficial tree shrines, community farms and gathering places have been cleared. Our repeated returns to this contested site aim to trace remaining fragments of calls, echoes, shadows memories and transformative encounters that still animate this zone, like shadows through leaves.

Lucy Davis (she/her) is a visual artist, art writer and founder, in 2009 of the collaborative, transdisciplinary Migrant Ecologies Projects.www.migrantecologies.org Davis/Migrant Ecologies work has been featured in numerous world festivals, biennales, museums and residency programmes, including: Oberhausen ISFF (2021); Reykjavik RIFF (2021); Singapore SGIFF (2021);The National Gallery of Singapore (2021); Singapore Art Museum (2020);Animistic Apparatus,Berwick BFMAF (2019);SeedCulturesSvalbard (2019); The Taipei Biennale (2018), Rockbund Shanghai/Fondazione Sandretto re Rebaudengo (2018), NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (2017); Taiwan International Video Art exhibition TIVA 5 (Oct 2016 – Jan 2017); M1 Singapore Fringe (Jan 2016); NUS Museum (June 2014 - Feb 2015); Singapore Art Museum (2014); National Museum of Singapore (2012-14); Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh Art/Science Festival (2013); International Symposium on Electronic Arts ISEA (USA, 2013); The Barbican (UK, 2013) and Prix COAL Awards (Paris, 2011).