What does a disability-led art practice mean? How should we be thinking about access in an artistic context during the pandemic? This talk features the creative team behind Move For?ward (Unseen: Inside Out), who will share the artistic processes behind this experiential artwork. Tune in and learn about their motivations, challenges, and insights that arose from their collaboration and co-creation with visually impaired persons. A QnA will follow the artist talk.

Speakers:
Claire Teo, Kira Lim, Samuel Woo and Clarence Chung.
Moderated by Alecia Neo

Lead Artist, Claire Teo.
Claire Teo graduated from LASALLE College of the Arts’ Diploma in Performance in 2019, the first visually impaired person in Singapore to do so. Closely mentored by Artist-Educator and Disability Arts Specialist, Peter Sau, Teo saw the need for more communities to have access to arts education, and began developing and teaching drama curriculums for persons with diverse abilities. Teo is now the Academic Director of Talent Academy (a division of Singapore Raffles Music College), as well as a scriptwriter and director for PLAYInc Pte Ltd. In the long run, she hopes to work closely with her fellow disabled artists to advance the disability arts scene towards true inclusive practice,; creating art with different communities that empowers and encourages awareness and social change.

Key Artist Collaborator, Kira Lim
Kira Lim is a contemporary classical soprano under the tutelage of Ms Khor Ai Ming. She placed first for all categories (Classical/Folk/Opera) in the American Protege Vocal Competition 2018 and was later invited to perform at Carnegie Hall, New York City. In 2019, Lim graduated from Lasalle College of The Arts with a Diploma in Performance and was accepted into the prestigious Manhattan School of Music in New York City to pursue her Bachelor in Music (Classical Voice) the year after. She has performed several times with many established conductors including Joshua Tan, Alice Farnham, Tsung Yeh and Justin Freer. Lim is the main storyteller in PlayINC’s The Classics Retold, telling fairy tales that also touch on issues that children may face today. She aims to inspire young children to be imaginative, creative and have the courage to chase their dreams.

Moderated by Creative Producer, Alecia Neo
Alecia Neo develops long-term projects which involve collaboration with individuals and communities. Her socially engaged practice unfolds primarily through photography, video, and participatory workshops that address modes of radical hospitality, caregiving, and wellbeing. Her recent projects include ramah-tamah (2020), a dance film commissioned by the Asian Civilisations Museum, and Modern Resonance: Power to the People (2019), a site-specific art installation commissioned by Goethe-Institut Singapore. She is currently working on Care Index, an experimental platform that collects and features diverse practices of care performed by people from all walks of life. She is the founder of Unseen Art Initiatives and co-founder of Brack, a platform for socially engaged art and collaborative practices.

Music Composer and Audience Experience Lead, Clarence Chung
Clarence Chung is a Singaporean composer who has produced soundscapes and movie film scores in China, Italy, Malaysia, the Netherlands, the United States and Singapore since 2011. After graduating with a degree in history from the National University of Singapore, he pursued music performance and composition in the advertising industry. Professionally, Chung has also been a user experience strategist and business analyst in the technology sector. Chung has represented Singapore as music director in the Chengdu International Twin Sisters Cities Music Festival in 2015, won first place in a design hackathon for mixed-reality mapping solutions, and designed Singapore’s first peer-to-peer solar energy trading platform.

Installation Artist and Design Lead, Samuel Woo
Samuel Woo is a designer who enjoyscreating art and visual stories that make people think. He is one-third of Foundin, an interdisciplinary art collective known for interactive projects—including If Stars Could Talk, Love Lives Here and Foundin—that focus on building rainbows and bridging differences.