Ho Rui An (Singapore)
Horizon Scanners
Investigating the rise of speculative aesthetics as a practice of futurecraft in a post-securitization crisis era, the artist examined various futures and “horizon scanning” programmes run by the Singapore government, devised to anticipate “black swans” or rare, hard-to-predict events of great consequence. To quote one futurist, the new tools of futurecraft are no longer “maps” but “metaphors”. Accordingly, this marks a shift in the tools of governance from “big” data to the “small” storytelling workshop. So what are the stories we allow to tell ourselves? And what are the stories that still remain to be told?
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Ho Rui An’s participation in FIELD MEETING was supported by Asia Art Archive in America and National Art Council Singapore.
Ho Rui An, Horizon Scanners, 2016. Lecture Performance documentation FIELD MEETING: Thinking Practice, November 12th at Asia Society. Photo: Renata Carciofolo.
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Ho Rui An is an artist and writer working in the intersections of contemporary art, cinema, performance and theory. He writes, talks and thinks around images, with an interest in investigating their emergence, transmission and disappearance within contexts of globalism and governance. Working primarily across the mediums of lecture, essay and film, his recent research considers questions surrounding liberal hospitality, participatory democracy and speculative futures. He has presented projects at the 2nd Kochi-Muziris Biennale, TPAM Performing Arts Meeting in Yokohama, Serpentine Galleries (London), Hessel Museum of Art and CCS Bard Galleries (Annandale-on-Hudson), NUS Museum (Singapore), QUT Art Museum (Brisbane), LUMA/Westbau (Zürich), Para Site (Hong Kong) and Witte de With (Rotterdam). He is the Singapore desk editor for ArtAsiaPacific and has contributed to numerous publications.
DASH, Lecture & video installation with car seats and six synchronized screens, 2016. Installation view at “Frontier Imaginaries: The Live of Lines,” Photo Credit: Sam Cranstoun