ABOUT M1 SINGAPORE FRINGE FESTIVAL

The M1 Singapore Fringe Festival is an annual festival of theatre, dance, music, visual arts and mixed media created and presented by Singaporean and international artists. Themed differently each year, the Festival aims to bring the best of contemporary, cutting-edge and socially-engaged works to the Singapore audience.

The M1 Singapore Fringe Festival is set to be a creative centre, with a twin-purpose of innovation and discussion; a platform for meaningful and provocative art to engage our increasingly connected and complex world. 

The theme for M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2019 is Still Waters.

ABOUT STILL WATERS

For Fringe 2019, we have selected Still Waters, a seminal work by ground-breaking Australia-based Singaporean artist Suzann Victor. 

Suzann Victor’s site-responsive performance of Still Waters (Between Estrangement and Reconciliation) in 1998 dealt with issues pertaining to censorship, silencing, the abject and the difficulty in navigating between norms/the permitted and the alternative/estranged. 

For more information about Still Waters, please visit bit.do/M1SFF2019.

OPEN CALL FOR PROPOSALS

Water. Elemental. Vital for all life forms. It makes up most of the human body. In its purest form, water is colourless; yet despite looking transparent, water could well harbour contamination. It perpetually and unpredictably travels and transforms through its cycle. It rejuvenates, cleanses and refreshes, perhaps giving us a false sense of purity and security.

Water forms borders of protection, inviting invasion and defence. It saves us. And destroys us. We seek to conquer and control it, even though we know it can engulf us. We consume it. We try to conceal it in subterranean pipes and canals. Yet when it disappears down our drains, we forget about it. Even in its deepest tranquility, its potential to wreck chaos remains.

Still Waters poses an urgent question to us: what happens to art when it is carefully regulated and only lives in designated spaces? While the cultural conditions may seem different on the surface, more than 20 years after the ban on Performance Art, the questions and tensions—important ones acknowledged in Still Waters—not only remain, but have become ever more pertinent. 

In the physical and cultural context of Singapore at the time, Suzann’s work was highly charged with very specific questions about the politics of art, the body and public space in Singapore. But it is such a rich work that might invite a diversity of other investigations and responses about the fugitive, the abject; about estrangement and reconciliation in society, and about “the remaking of histories”.

We invite you to consider Suzann Victor’s work and its many ideas, layers and symbols, and respond to our call for proposals for Fringe 2019: Still Waters.  The Festival accepts proposals for both existing and new works from all disciplines that are related to the title and/or issues brought up in Still Waters.

For more information about Still Waters, please visit bit.do/M1SFF2019.