Radical Imaginations – New Eden Opening Symposium

The opening symposium of New Eden: Science Fiction Mythologies Transformed invited attendees to envision speculative futures and inhabit new worlds informed by Asian mythologies and science fiction.

Following opening remarks contributed by Honor Harger (Vice President, Attractions and ArtScience Museum), Gail Chin (Exhibition Producer, ArtScience Museum), Joel Chin (Supervisor, Art Handling and Logistics) and Jerome Chee (Curator, Moving Image and Emerging Media) gave a joint presentation on the exhibition-making and curatorial narratives of New Eden. Through the collection of artefacts on loan from Asian Civilisations Museum, Darryl Lim (Assistant Curator, Asian Civilisations Museum) offered insights into perspectives of Asian spiritual philosophies.

The first panel of talks, New Worlds, looked into speculative futures and suggested there are more ways we can walk through the world. Chok Si Xuan (Singapore sculptor and installation-based artist) explored cybernetic systems, the hybridity of machines, and nature within speculative futures in her artwork latent, while Debbie Ding (Singapore visual artist and technologist) drew an alternate reality of Singapore in her project Data Mining Jurong where the past and present of Jurong collided.

The second panel of talks, New Myths, considered how Asian mythologies can become generative spaces for imagining something new or different. Sputniko! (British/Japanese multimedia artist, designer and filmmaker) reinvented the East Asian concept of fate in Red Silk of Fate, where the red thread became a reality through scientific intervention in a probable future. Irene Agrivina (Indonesian artist, technologist and co-director of House of Natural Fiber) reimagined Lakshmi from the archives of Indian mythology as an otherworldly giver of nourishment and sustenance in House of Natural Fibre’s Galactica V.2 Dharma Garden. Soe Yu Nwe (Myanmar ceramics artist) speculated on nature’s potential for metamorphosis through the snake as a mythological symbol in Pearlescent White Snake.