Location: Cemeti – Institute for Art and Society
Date: February 2 – 17, 2018
Hours: 10:00 – 17:00

In a Hard Place Apply Soft Pressure/s

A project by soft/WALL/studs

Exhibition, performances, new artworks, artist sharings, readings, film screenings, cooking, meals, and more at Cemeti – Institute for Art and Society.

Opening : Friday, February 2, 2018

16:00 – 18:30 : Pangsit Union, Collective Cooking by soft/WALL/studs
19:00 – 20:00 : Performance by soft/WALL/studs members Weixin Quek Chong and Luca Lum

Workshop : Saturday, February 3, 2018

19:30 : Propositions: a workshop on statement-making, dialogues and listening (a.k.a. Alternative Artist Talk)

Exhibition : February 2 – 17, 2018

10:00 – 17:00 : Pameran

In a Hard Place Apply Soft Pressure/s is a project developed by soft/WALL/studs (s/W/s), a blend of studio, library and project space located in Geylang, Singapore.

s/W/s writes:

We are/I am neither solely circles nor points, but lines that curve, loop and knot into each other—scaled variably. Passing the pattern from one to another, a finger catching a skein before another takes it on. We’ve misplaced our rulers, pointing machines, leaving straight flight-paths for collective deformations/distortion: to learn to do the time warp again, to feel the lag, the delay, the drag, the swerve, the rush, the eddies. Lingering in the warmth of friction that comes with motion, we give attention to these moments as a way of developing protections and permeabilities, amplifying affinities and noticing differences, kinds of care and sharing. Orientated by waste, meshes, scores, and broken windows, possible gatherings and i/solations. Being beside ourselves and one another.
Conceived through interweaving lines of research, and the interest of amplifying research through collaboration and collective gathering, we present work and ways of working across disciplines, through openings into new signifying worlds stranded in this gulf of time, an interregnum examining how we are entangled together and with others. Becoming a space with .space without space.

As part of soft/WALL/studs’ month-long research period with Cemeti-Institute for Art and Society, the project In a Hard Place Apply Soft Pressure/s forms positions and superpositions, adaptations and maladjustments, with individuals and objects both close and distant, through re-appropriation of materials, collaborations, contaminations, boundary crossings, pulling and relaying an archive of forms and gestures among themselves as a way to revisit and reroute strategies and formats among themselves.

Documentation picture:

Artist Biography

soft/WALL/studs (s/W/s) is a blend of studio, library and project space located in Geylang, Singapore. s/W/s is coordinated by several artists and their friends and affiliates. They play with alternative formats of production, organising, exhibition, circulation, and being together, whether directly through its projects, organisation of space or accumulation of materials, carving out a space distinct from state and commercial institutions. Since formally opening in May 2016, s/W/s has produced and hosted an eclectic range of events, including: an academic reading group, exhibitions, performances, mourning sessions, workshops, music events, residencies/dwellings and film screenings (feature films and documentaries), a fashion runway showcase, a moving-image based exhibition and an open studio collaboration with other studios on the east side of Singapore. Its eclecticism comes from the need to create space -and time- for experimental and emergent forms, practices, and languages. They are invested in the overlooked and the intimate as sites where work needs to occur.