About

External Assessment Summer School is an independently organized, interdisciplinary educational initiative that attempts to bridge the worlds of art, theory, and design. The School aims to mentor and build networks between emerging arts professionals, fresh graduates or students in arts, humanities, and design programs. Initiated and based in Singapore with an international outlook, the first two editions of the School, organized in 2018 and 2019, mapped out the socio-political aspects that enable individual and communal creative practices respectively. The third edition, to be held over four separate closed-door Zoom sessions in October 2021, will build on previous editions by continuing to provide platforms for learning, networking and collaboration across cultural silos. These connections are arguably more important than ever in our shared present and future moments of heightened precarity.

Open Call

In the spirit of supporting ongoing research and practice during our current state of global indeterminacy, we are currently accepting the following forms of applications. Please choose one of the two options that is most applicable for you.

1. A 300-500 word proposal OR documentation of work-in-progress (e.g. design, artwork, exhibition, research etc.), along with a short biography.

Interested applicants can submit a proposal for a project that they are currently working on or wish to realize in the future. This project can be in the form of an artwork, design project, exhibition, text, research etc. As much information on both practical and conceptual aspects should be included (For example, what, how, where, why, and when do you intend to execute your project?). More importantly, your application should represent your point of view, whether it be creative, cultural, ethical, or socio-political etc.

2. If you do not have a current work-in-progress, you are also welcome to submit a creative portfolio of work [website or pdf submission under 5mb], along with a short biography.

Selected participants will attend closed-door lectures and crit sessions on Saturday 2, 9, 16, 23 Oct 2021 (Dates and timing TBC), with tutors who will provide guidance and feedback on their practice and proposals. Please email all submissions by 31 August, 2021. Successful applicants will be notified by mid September. The course fee is $220 SGD upon acceptance.

Tutors

Adam Farah aka free.yard

Adam Farah is an artist, composer and sauce-maker who was born 'n' raised in London. They are a Capricorn Sun, Leo Moon and Cancer Rising. They also practice under/within the name free.yard – a project set up to engage with and merge curatorial, research, artistic and equitable communal practices; with a focus on the ever expansive and nuanced creative endeavours/potentials that emerge from endz*. free.yard casts a side-eye onto the oppressive and supremacist structures upheld within the complacent and performative liberal bubbles of the artworld/s, and in the long term desires to create collaborative moments for artists to connect, manifest and exhale under such weight.

Image: BENT ROAD MONUMENTATIONS (NW DESPERATIONS MIX), 2020. Photo © Romain Darnaud

Abdul Basit Khan

Basit is a creative director navigating between art, fashion, architecture, industrial, interaction and graphic design. A hybrid designer who has collaborated with global brands while building and leading creative cultures among cross-disciplinary teams of talented strategic designers, producers, business creatives, architects and technologists.

Pakistan born and Chicago grown. A student of Dutch design who proudly calls Singapore home for the last two decades. His work has been featured in galleries, exhibitions and publications in over ten countries, across three continents.

Image: Resistance (detail); Acrylic on paper; with Habiibah Aziz, 2016, Singapore

Wong Binghao

Wong Binghao enjoys communicating between contexts and mediating art to diverse publics. Working curatorially, they eclectically constellate ideas, scenes, art, and writing as a gesture towards ethical and expansive cultural work. This practice currently takes the form of a series of publications (Indifferent Idols 2018, nominal bliss 2019, and forthcoming 2021) that attempts to generate contextually specific, conceptually capacious, and emotionally available readings of art. They are currently C-MAP Asia Fellow at MoMA, NY.

Ejin Sha

Based in Kuala Lumpur, Ejin Sha is a graphic designer whose practice focuses on visual identity, art direction, print and digital design within the disciplines of art, architecture, retail, and restaurants. She enjoys helping individuals, institutions and brands communicate their narrative through visual language.

Januar Rianto

Januar Rianto works at the intersection between design, education, and popular culture as a designer, editor, curator, and producer. Graduated from London, he later broadened his design methodologies in Treviso and Tokyo focusing on speculative design and design research. His practice mainly navigates through the peripheries of design, with intention to develop criticality towards design as a discipline and towards the subject it explores, by embodying design as a way of seeing, framework and/or strategy. He runs Each Other Company, a creative practice; Further Reading, a multifarious design journal; and Further Reading Press, a production and distribution unit for the independent. In 2019, he was a co-organiser for Jakarta Art Book Fair.

Image: The last day of Further Reading Print No.2 Boundaries pop-up launch as lockdown relaxes amidst restrictions in Bandung.

Heman Chong

Heman Chong is an artist whose work is located at the intersection between image, performance, situations and writing. His practice can be read as an imagining, interrogation and sometimes intervention into infrastructure as an everyday medium of politics. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at STPI, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Weserburg Museum, Jameel Arts Center, Swiss Institute New York, Art in General, Artsonje Center, Rockbund Art Museum, South London Gallery, NUS Museum, amongst many others. Chong is the co-director and founder (with Renée Staal) of @thelibraryofunreadbooks, a library made up of donated books previously unread by their owners. He produces ASMR videos which he uploads on ambientwalking.

Image: Heavy rain walk at Tanjong Pagar Plaza, Video uploaded to @ambientwalking, 2021

Kathleen Ditzig

Kathleen Ditzig is a Singaporean researcher and curator. Her research unpacks the enduring legacies and networks of the Cold War in relation to Southeast Asian Contemporary Art practices and a global history of capitalism. As a curator, she is invested in advancing and interrogating art as an exceptional site and system of speaking to power. Beyond contributing to artist catalogues and making exhibitions, Ditzig’s art historical research on Southeast Asia and Singapore has been published in Southeast of Now (NUS Press, 2017), as well as presented at international academic conferences and platforms. Her recent exhibitions include As The West Slept (2019), a group exhibition of Contemporary Singaporean artists, which was presented at the World Trade Centre in New York as part of Performa and the co-curated project with Carlos Quijon Jr In Our Best Interests: Afro-Southeast Asian Affinities During A Cold War.

Image: Munirah Mansoor

Kenneth Tay

Kenneth Tay writes and researches on media histories, logistics and infrastructures, but he is broadly interested in the mediation and performance of the "global". He is the author of The Sea is All Highway and Flat Spaces (both Temporary Press, 2019) and a co-editor of Left-Right (2016). He holds a MA in Media Studies from The New School. And between Mondays and Fridays, he works as Assistant Curator at Singapore Art Museum.

Image: gideon-jamie

Archive

15—19 July 2019
DECK

Tutors:
Adeline Setiawan, Wong Binghao, Candice Ng, Darius Ou, Heman Chong, Joshua Comaroff, Kathleen Ditzig, Kenneth Tay, Magdalena Mageria, Nurul Huda Rashid, nor

Programme Organised By:
Studio Vanessa Ban

Participants:
Benjamin Lee, Deepa Nivashini, Elaine Oh, Jake Tan, Jing Qing Goh, Kavern Tan, Kristie Sim, Lorena Ting, Sandhya Pillai, Trey Seah, Valerie Ee, Yueling Tan

23—27 July 2018
Goodman Arts Centre

Tutors:
Vanessa Ban, Kathleen Ditzig, Sean Kelvin Khoo, gideon-jamie, Darryl Lim, Anca Rujoiu, Kenneth Tay, Binghao Wong

Programme Organised By:
Studio Vanessa Ban

Participants:
Kia Yee Ang, Raissa Ali, Radhiah Anis, Justin Chua, Catherine Kusuma, Thalia Lam, Leonardo Laurensius, Adelia Lim, Clara Lim, Jael Ng, Kevin Ng, Sara Ng, Ow Ting Quan, Kyle Ngo, Sha Yee Jin, Ramona Raj, Bernice Sim, Berny Tan, Jenson Tan, Daryl Bradley Tan, Nadia Wagner, Johann Yamin, Rakeeza Sheren

Founded by Studio Vanessa Ban     Website Design by Kyle Ngo