Back in 2012, a speeding red Ferrari sports car ran the red light at an intersection in Singapore and smashed into a taxi. The Ferrari driver was killed instantly, while the cab driver and his passenger died in hospital later.
As video footage of the accident went viral online, it sent ripples of shock and anger throughout the island republic. When it emerged that the driver of the Ferrari was an affluent financial investor who recently moved from mainland China, the outrage reached fever pitch, stoking anti-immigrant sentiments.
“The accident became a lens through which the local population came to read present social tensions in the country,” says Singaporean artist and writer Ho Rui An, 27, who was moved by the images of the 2012 incident to create his performance lecture Dash.
But for Ho, it was not the socio-political impact of the accident, or the horrific damage and loss of the tragedy, that struck a chord with him. Rather, it was the view of the third party – the passengers of the third vehicle who witnessed the collision, and from whom the dashcam footage originated – that left a strong impact.
“If not for a difference of a few seconds, the Ferrari would have ploughed into their car instead of the taxi. The car somehow managed to evade tragedy and move on, as the dashcam footage clearly showed,” he notes.
The image that captured the mobile subject’s forward rush into the horizon – after its narrow escape – became a point of departure for Ho to ponder the logic behind the “horizon scanning” approach underpinning the Singapore government’s foresight programmes in Dash, which he will perform at Kotak, Five Arts Centre, Taman Tun Dr Ismail in Kuala Lumpur on Sept 22 and 23.
Horizon scanning is the systematic investigation of information and trends to identify potential threats, risks, emerging issues and opportunities, which help the government to anticipate “surprise” and analyse whether it is adequately prepared for the future.
“In the performance, I use this moment to think through other recent incidents in Singapore that have been figured by the authorities as ‘accidents’, when in fact, they are the result of deeply entrenched structural problems.
“So what happens then when instead of quickly moving on, as we would in the face of an accident, we stop and confront the crisis that is unfolding right before our eyes?”
Ho is an artist who blurs the lines of art, performance cinema and theory, and he is known for his artistic approach to research and works that revolve around images.
He once told international contemporary art site Kaleidoscope that his talks can be seen as an extended exercise in cinephilia.
“Whenever I perform, I’m always beside a slideshow of images that I speak from, to and around.”
A lot of the concepts in his talks, meanwhile, are engineered by an encounter of word and image. He was quoted as saying: “So, effectively all my talks can be seen as projects in abstraction. But just because concepts are abstracts, it doesn’t mean they don’t have political effects. Concepts can work to create realities that never existed, which is why it’s pertinent to attend to the ways they are formed.”
Ho explains the idea of “materiality”, which he says is not about words, but rhythm.
“I try to push this movement as far as possible, so that nothing is allowed to settle.”
Dash was commissioned by Frontier Imaginaries for the group exhibition Frontier Imaginaries: The Life Of Lines held earlier this year at QUT Art Museum in Brisbane, Australia.
It comes to KL, after being presented in Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin and The Show Room, London this year.
Ho believes his live performance in KL will resonate with more adventurous Malaysians theatre-goers.
“This is a work about crises and our capacities to respond to them. As I understand, Malaysia, like Singapore, has its own ongoing set of crises and it does seem to me that in both countries, the state attempts to control the discourse of crisis, either by playing up tensions or modulating them, whichever is politically expedient. Just by looking at the role of the state itself, there are so many lines to be drawn between Singapore and Malaysia,” he concludes.
Dash will be showing at Kotak, Five Arts Centre, 27 and 27A Lorong Datuk Sulaiman 7, Taman Tun Dr Ismail in Kuala Lumpur on Sept 22 and 23. Showtime is 8.30pm. Entry is by donation of RM30/RM15 (students). Places are limited. Reserve your seats via email at fiveartscentre@gmail.com or call: 018-202 8827. FB: Five Arts Centre.
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