SIPF 2022: Enigmatic and entrancing

ON the second floor of Peace Centre (unit number #02-06), there is a nondescript room that resembles the waiting areas of clinics and offices. One takes a number, sits on one of its pristine white chairs, and waits to be called into another room. When that happens, one finds oneself face-to-face with a computer that narrates the politics and poetry of waiting, that space between anticipating and experiencing.

On a nearby shelf are several postcard-sized pictures of walls taken around Peace Centre. They show the cracks, patches, fissures and peeling paint on the building, all of which – as the computer tells us – are also metaphors of waiting. For it is not just living things that wait for things to happen or arrive, non-living things do the same too, even if they are unaware of it.

The site-specific installation titled Peace Agency is conceived by 3 artists, Geraldine Kang, Cynthia Delaney Suwito and Woong Soak Teng. The work is strange, hypnotic and unquantifiable. But if you embrace it whole-heartedly, it may prove to be a transportive experience – even a transformative one.

Peace Agency is just one of several enigmatic and entrancing works at this year’s Singapore International Photography Festival, running from now till Oct 30. Co-curated by Gwen Lee, John Tung and He Yining, this 8th edition takes more risks than most of its previous editions, rewarding the patient and attentive viewer in spades.  

At Peace Centre alone – one of the main festival venues – there are other surprising works such as Hawaii Nights (at unit #03-22). Here, photographer Aik Beng Chia is showcasing his series of photographs taken in Club Hawaii, one of the oldest nightclubs in Singapore. The unit has been decorated to simulate the club, from its woozy neon lights to its acute sense of forlornness. One feels as if one has entered some faded, forgotten dimension of a Wong Kar Wai film, which proves to be perfect for communing with the photographs.

At the other main festival venue at 37 Emerald Hill, a former school, there are similarly singular pleasures. On the playing field of the school, Lee has curated a selection of romantic photographs by Masato Seto of couples picnicking in Tokyo’s Yoyogi Park and Futakotamagawa Green Area. Each snapshot captures a raw and candid moment of a couple in their first flush of love, and each is as touching as it is tender.

Elsewhere at the same venue are Lisandro Suriel’s magic realist photos of Caribbean identity and mythology, Seok-Woo Song’s surreal photos of people assembled in strange formations, and South Ho Siu Nam’s mournful photos of Hong Kong with its protest messages on walls and buildings painted over and whitewashed by the government.

At the same venue, there is also a Virtual Reality experience designed by the artist Elise Morin. Visitors are fitted with a VR headset so they can enter a simulated environment of the real-life Red Forest which carries a high level of radioactivity following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The work provides just enough terra firma to keep you tethered to reality, while taking you further and deeper into the unknown.

This year’s Singapore International Photography Festival is sprawled across 7 other locations, including MRT stations, the Esplanade Tunnel and DECK. With the exceptionally mysterious quality of many works, one feels like a detective going from place to place, acquiring clues and piecing together the festival’s overarching vision. And though one may not be able to completely make sense of everything, the journey is filled satisfyingly with puzzles and enigma.

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For more information, visit sipf.sg