Kent Chan – Five Stories on Heat

Five Stories on Heat by Kent Chan

SONIC ACTS BIENNIAL 2022

16 October 2022

Likeminds, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

‘Five Stories on Heat’ is a storytelling performance by Kent Chan that ruminates upon art's shared histories and futures with heat. The performance blends narratives of artmaking during the Vietnam War, Malayan and Hopi myths, with potential film plotlines and the first exhibition of Singaporean art in Europe. Like a mosaic, Chan’s storylines skip from East to West, from the past to the future. His work engages with the concept and representation of ‘the tropics’ in relation to colonialism, politics and identity, and highlights that ‘the tropics’ are not just solely defined by meteorology and geography, but also by Western narratives about aesthetic and cultural superiority.

Sonic Acts Biennial 2022 took place at various locations in Amsterdam, interweaving an exhibition, sound performances and discourse programme, accompanied by artist presentations, workshops, excursions and more. As a part of the Biennial programme, the Leaving Traces symposium opened up a forum in which to become attentive to pollution’s invisible, yet harmful touch. Actively rethinking our relation to the climate and our planetary legacies, an array of artists, researchers, curators, and scholars spoke of the many faces of toxicity – from fossil fuels to plastic, from nuclear energy to chemical pollutants. The gathering staged real stories and events of exposure, thinking about ‘leaving traces’ not just as the material act of spreading toxicity, but as art’s potential to reach out and act as a disruptive force in the world.

Find out more at https://sonicacts.com/archive/biennial2022 http://kentchan.info

Credit:

Curation & production: Sonic Acts

Recording: Engage! TV

Sound mastering: Monty Mouw

Design: Catalogtree

Sound logo: Roc Jiménez de Cisneros

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