IIAS Annual lecture 2008 - Trauma, Memory, Amnesia
30/10/2008 - 15:30
30 October 2008
15.30 - 18.00 hrs
IIAS Annual Lecture by Ong Keng Sen
Ong Keng Sen, cosmopolitan artistic director of TheatreWorks, Singapore, gives a public lecture on the way Asian societies are dealing with painful episodes in their recent past, illustrated with film material. Ong Keng Sen has directed artistic projects all over the world. He works with artists from the fields of theatre, music, dance, video, visual arts and documentary film.
Programme:
15.30 - 16.00 Coffee
16.00 - 16.10 Welcome by Prof. Max Sparreboom
16.10 - 17.15 Lecture by Ong Keng Sen
17.15 - 18.00 Reception
Venue: Auditorium Lutherse Kerk, Singel 411, Amsterdam
IIAS (International Institute for Asian Studies ) annual lectures are organised to bring together all those interested in Asia, including academics, students, politicians, business representatives and journalists. IIAS has offices in Leiden and Amsterdam.
This IIAS annual lecture is co-organised with the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation, Amsterdam, and is part of the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the Erasmus Prize (http://www.erasmusprijs.org/).
Information and registration: Heleen van der Minne, tel. 020-5253657 IIAS@fmg.uva.nl.
Ong Keng Sen
Artistic Director of TheatreWorks in Singapore, Ong Keng Sen is an active contributor to the evolution of an Asian identity and aesthetic for contemporary performance in the 21st century. Keng Sen studied intercultural performance with the Performance Studies Department at Tisch Schools of the Arts, New York University, and holds a law degree.
Since 2000, Keng Sen has worked hard to enhance the understanding of contemporary Asia in Europe and the shared histories of these two continents; build deeper dialogues between the different social-political creative contexts; and initiate more diverse artistic and cultural collaborations between Europe and Asia. He conceived and directed a new festival for the House of World Cultures, Berlin, focusing on process, conversations, artistic collaborations with artists from all over the world including Africa and South America. This has since taken root in the city, the In-Transit festival.
His belief in the juxtaposition of different art forms and cultural styles has helped him create his own epic performance style of directing. In 1994, Keng Sen conceptualised his most important work, The Flying Circus Project (FCP), a laboratory project that brings together traditional and contemporary Asian artists from the fields of theatre, music, dance, video, visual arts, documentary film and ritual. This has expanded to a meeting of Asian, European, American and Arab artists exploring individual creative strategies in contemporary art, cultural negotiation and the politics of interculturalism. These laboratories are not production-specific and instead value the process of artists being together in the spirit of debate and collaboration.
From this experience, Keng Sen has been invited to make many laboratories all over Europe and the US. One of the most inspiring was Connection Barents that took place at the border of Norway and Russia with numerous Scandinavian and Baltic artists from diverse disciplines.
Keng Sen initiated a new network for Asian artists to engage with each other in 1999, known as the Arts Network Asia (ANA). The ANA has held major regional Asian artist meetings in Shanghai (2000), Hanoi (2002), Singapore (2004) and Ho Chi Minh City (2007) as well as numerous artists workshops around Asia. Its aim is to assist young artists to research across borders in Asia.
As a theatre director, Keng Sen has directed many wonderful productions, often in collaboration with international artists, both traditional and contemporary. He is especially well known for his Asian Shakespeare Trilogy (Lear which premiered in Tokyo in 1997, arriving in Berlin's Theater der Welt in 1999; Desdemona which premiered in Adelaide, 2000; and Search:Hamlet. created site specific for Kronburg Castle, Denmark, 2002) and docu-performances (like The Continuum: Beyond the Killing Fields in 2001, Dutch premiere in Rotterdam Schouwburg in 2003; The Myths of Memory in Vienna Schauspielhaus 2003 and Sandakan Threnody in Melbourne Festival in 2004). He has also worked at the Lincoln Center New York; Tanzquartier Vienna; Goteborg Dance and Theatre Festival; Oslo Dansenshus; Zurich Theater Spektakel; Paris Center National de la Danse; Roma Europa Festival.
In the visual and digital arts, Keng Sen curated the Insomnia@ICA season of Indonesian, Thai and Singapore cutting edge young artists for London Institute of Contemporary Arts. He went onto curate a 3 month long programme about contemporary South East Asian art and urban societies, ‘Spaces and Shadows' in the House of World Cultures in Berlin (2005).
Having been recognised for his interdisciplinary approach to the arts, Ong's Flying Circus Project (Special Edition, Yokohama): The School of Politics, was presented at the Yokohama Triennale.
A Fulbright Scholar, Keng Sen was instrumental in starting the theatre studies course in the National University of Singapore. He has taught all over the world in places such as the New York University Asian Pacific and American Studies Programme/Institute and Dasarts in Amsterdam, where he was block mentor in Spring 2004. In addition, he serves on the International Council of The Asia Society of New York and has been the recipient of fellowships from the Japan Foundation, British Council, German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in Berlin and Asian Cultural Council (New York).
He is the first Singapore artist to have received both the Young Artist Award (1992) and the Cultural Medallion Award (2003) for Singapore.