The 90 Months Behind the 90 Seconds

Art in 90 Seconds, a short-form video series presented by the Gallery’s Community & Access team, presents personal and heartfelt stories about the Gallery’s artworks. For International Museum Day 2022, we were thrilled to do a special feature on Art in 90 Seconds, starring our very own museum staff! For many in Singapore and Southeast Asia, what goes on behind the scenes at an art museum is a mystery. This feature helps to shed light on the tireless and often unseen work that goes into building the awe-inducing art exhibitions and spectacular programmes and festivals that our visitors are familiar with.

We asked four different employees from different teams in the Gallery to each pick one artwork that best represents their work at the museum. Cheekily themed “My Art Self(ie)”, the intention was for the chosen artworks to be powerful visual representations of the complex work that each museum department engages with. The responses we got were wonderfully surprising and thoughtful, and gave even us—well-seasoned museum staff—new insights into the work our colleagues do!

Today, we shine the spotlight on Javier Chen, a long-standing pillar of our Audio-Visual and Lighting Team at the Gallery, who has been working at the museum since its opening in November 2015.

What does Javier do at the Gallery?

Although the Gallery is a visual arts museum, much of our offerings are deeply interdisciplinary, featuring other creative mediums such as performance, music, and the literary arts. This is where Javier’s Audio-Visual and Lighting team comes in, to ensure that all the necessary sound and video equipment is set up for a successful exhibition, event, programme or festival. Describing it as “fun and challenging,” Javier sees his team’s work as crucial to bringing the best museum experience to audiences.

However, as with much events-based work, working in the AVL team can also see adrenaline and stress levels spike when things go wrong—equipment can fail at critical moments even though everything went smoothly just moments earlier, during the sound-check. As frustrating as it is, these things just happen sometimes!

On a more personal level, Javier’s one struggle is juggling being a cool working dad on the days that he needs to come into work early for specific events. On these days, he needs to secure alternative childcare arrangements to ensure his two adorable children get to school on time.

Of course, this is all eclipsed by seeing the thrall of curiosity and enjoyment on visitors’ faces when an event is successfully pulled off. We often don’t take notice when all is smooth-running with the audio-visual equipment, but when the sound quality is poor and we’re struggling to hear the speaker, or when the video player has broken down… that’s when we become keenly aware of how important a strong AV set-up is!

Coming on board for Art in 90 Seconds…

We sat down with Javier to chat about his experience with Art in 90 Seconds.

When our production team first approached Javier, there was a good amount of hesitation and trepidation from him. “Initially, I was very reluctant to do it, as I knew for sure that I would become tongue-tied in front of the camera.” Very fair, from someone who has long been used to being behind the scenes!

“But what pushed me to say yes and tell my story on Art in 90 Seconds was that I wanted to be a good role-model to my son. I wanted to inspire and encourage my son, who is very introverted, to show him that if Daddy can do it, so can he!”

If there was a Parent-of-the-Year Award, we would like to nominate Javier for it. We are so grateful to precious 7-year-old Zayden for being the heart-warming motivation for his camera-shy dad to agree to being on screen!

Bringing Art in 90 Seconds to life!

Then came the hard part… filming Javier’s artwork story!

Faced with hundreds and hundreds of artworks on display at the Gallery, Javier had no idea where to start. As a self-described “art noob,” he had not even known that local museums existed in Singapore prior to working at the Gallery. Needless to say, the weighty responsibility of choosing an artwork that would capture the essence of his team’s work, and the prospect of coming up with an eloquent script, were daunting.

But here is where the beauty of working at the Gallery really shone through—colleagues and comrades from all over the Gallery banded together to help Javier tell his story. Basyirah of our Learning team walked the galleries with him to pick out an artwork; Lenette of the Curatorial Programmes team provided crucial art historical information for the shortlisted artworks; and his colleague and supervisor Hilmi brainstormed and workshopped Javier’s ideas for the script with him. Our production team also spent some time with him on the copy-editing process and pre-filming preparation.

Javier jokes that “without their guidance and support, my Art in 90 Seconds story would have taken a whole year to produce!”

After some deliberation, Javier settled on Tan Ping Chiang’s Music, a delightful and often overlooked piece currently on display in the Siapa Nama Kamu exhibition, as the artwork most representative of his work at the Gallery.

Then came filming day!

It was a thoroughly stressful experience for Javier. Although he had been conscientiously working on memorising the 90-second long script, stage fright kicked in and all his hard work seemed for naught. Once he saw the professional five-person camera crew all set up and was faced with the blinding lights, he felt overwhelmed and totally lost. “I lost all my words. It was like they had all fallen out of my brain, and I just couldn’t keep any of my lines memorised despite my best efforts.”

Thankfully, Javier was well-supported by our seasoned film crew, The Creative Room. Director Ric Aw and producer Heni Sugiarto effortlessly coached Javier through various scenes, putting him at ease with their gentle encouragement and creative filming solutions.

Javier reflected: “I felt so bad delaying the shoot due to the number of takes I had to do. I felt like I was wasting so much of everyone’s time, after all the effort that had been put in and all the trust that everyone had put in me to tell our AVL story!” But all in all, it was a successful wrap!

Going live

In the end, it all paid off, with almost 2,000 views of Javier’s Art in 90 Seconds episode in just three months! Shyly but proudly, Javier tells us: “Everyone I met commented that my video was great, and so seamless. My family was so proud of me, especially my wife and children. It is special to us that this will be online forever!”

To wrap up today’s feature, we asked Javier to bust a common myth about his team’s work. He says, “Many people often think that the Audio-Visual and Lighting team is related to the IT [Information Technology] department, and that us AVL people are able to resolve all IT issues, including malfunctioning laptops. This is not true!” So, you heard it here first folks—do not go running to your resident AVL team when your Wi-fi isn’t working, or when your laptop is stubbornly refusing to turn on!

Curious about the Art in 90 Seconds video series? View all episodes at the Art in 90 Seconds playlist.