The Observatory REFUSE, Singapore Art Museum by National Gallery Singapore / Singapore Art Museum

REFUSE

The Observatory

CONTENTS The Mushroom, of course! JOELLA KIU AND TENG YEN HUI

The Observatory: Six Songs MARK WONG

An Interview with The Observatory On Mushrooms On Performance On Archives

Mobius on Mushrooms: a myco-topological timeline MARCUS YEE

A suite for damp rot : first duet : second duet : manifesto (draft) ANG KIA YEE 2

REFUSE

The Observatory

After a rain mushrooms appear on the surface of the earth as if from nowhere. Many do so from a sometimes vast underground fungus that remains invisible and largely unknown. What we call mushrooms mycologists call the fruiting body of the larger, less visible fungus. Uprisings and revolutions are often considered to be spontaneous, but less visible long-term organizing and groundwork—or underground work—often laid the foundation. —Rebecca Solnit, Hope In The Dark

Photo of the Catacombs performance at The Substation in 2012 by Pann Lim.

The Mushroom, of course!

by Joella Kiu and Teng Yen Hui

Of the images that mushrooms conjure in popular culture, one of the better known ones is probably from the children’s fantasy novel and animated adaptation Alice in Wonderland, which follows the intrepid adventures of young Alice into a psychedelic wonderland. Since it was published, its fantastical story has served as a point of reference, inspiration and reinvention for artists, filmmakers, actors, dancers, writers and more. In a well-known scene, Alice meets a philosophical caterpillar that perches on a fungi futon smoking a hookah. It puffs out letters of smoke. Upon its advice, Alice nibbles on chunks of this fruiting body, causing her to either grow or shrink excessively in size. Navigating her surroundings in these fluctuating states requires constant reorientation. When oversized, Alice has to crouch, kneel, hunch over, in order to be closer to the ground. In a shrunken state, every little protrusion in the soil becomes a hill to climb. Plant life towers high above her, and she has to desperately crane her neck just to see past it.

Meandering through The Observatory’s latest presentation, we imagine, might feel a little bit like that.

REFUSE emerges from the confluence of many things: amongst them a fascination with decay as a conceptual counterpoint to our manicured city-state, a desire to push boundaries, a mind for collaboration and ecological sustainability. In fact, the world The Observatory has constructed here pivots on the very term “refuse”—a world built entirely on waste and detritus, but also propelled by defiant gestures and strategies of resistance.

Exploring twin ideas of decomposition and composition— from both biological and musical perspectives—the band conjures an otherworldly and immersive soundscape through the process of bio-sonification. The biorhythms of mushrooms tucked within the space are registered and translated by a series of motors and sensors, which trigger specially designed mushroom-instruments in real time. As the hums, whirrs and buzzes of fungi are carried through the space, The Observatory relinquishes control over the composition process, letting nature take the lead. All these elements are set within an undulating landscape constructed from recycled pallet wood, which is in itself a nod to the Singapore Art Museum’s new outpost in the logistics complex that is Tanjong Pagar Distripark. Interspersed within the set are foraged films and materials from The Observatory’s archive that trace their journey across two decades. Not unlike Alice finding her way in a strange world, visitors to REFUSE can expect an experience of various scales and dimensions. Throughout the presentation, the dense, branching threads of the mushroom’s underground network parallel the band’s own sprawling, fibrous and almost unwieldy networks and entanglements. Tapping into a contemporary current of collaborating with the nonhuman, REFUSE raises prescient questions of nonhuman sentience, authorship and control. It speaks, ultimately, to The Observatory’s constantly evolving methodologies towards sound, the communities they are surrounded by and their significance in Singapore’s music scene.

Conceptualised as a companion and variation to the main presentation, this publication comprises a seemingly motley selection of archival images, interviews, material interjections and creative responses, which is reflective of The Observatory’s propensity for collaborative working and receptiveness to external influences. At the same time, this publication is indicative of how contagious the band’s influence has been—spread far and wide like spores in the wind. As one flips through the zine, diverse ideas will emerge, almost fruiting from the ground without a discernible pattern. Yet as one rummages through the soil to peek beneath the surface, a sophisticated system will reveal itself.

Everything remains connected. 5

Mock-up of set design by collaborator, Sai (aka Chen Sai Hua Kuan). Photo by Anna Lovecchio.

The Observatory. Anitya III – Omnia Mutantur. 28 September 2013, Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore. Sound and music performance, with visual and live projections by ila.

The Observatory: Six Songs

by Mark Wong

“Time of Rebirth” from Time of Rebirth (2004) The first Observatory song I ever heard was not actually performed by The Observatory. It was October 2002 at the old Substation Garden. At a gig featuring solo acoustic sets by singer-songwriters, Leslie Low, then 30 years-old and best known as the frontperson of the folk-rock band Humpback Oak, played a set of both Oak songs and newer (I presume), unreleased material. I don’t recall if Humpback Oak ever announced their breakup; I was still hoping for a follow-up to Humpback Oak’s 1999 album Side A Side B, their third, a work that featured Leslie’s characteristically sturdy compositions of plaintive melodies, stirring harmonies and confident wordplay, while incorporating a healthy dose of studio wizardry—cut-and-paste editing, digital effects, reversed audio and more—introducing a level of sound design more sophisticated than what many in Singapore were doing, and exploring new possibilities for guitar rock in the post-OK Computer world. My first encounter with “Time of Rebirth” was thus a witnessing of a kind of resetting, rewinding and recircling. Leslie’s performance was barebones and stripped down: acoustic guitar and fragile voice; a return to rudimentary forms. The lyrics are reflective, about looking back on past mistakes, learning to “admit defeat,” move on and let go, and to be patient: “Time understands when it wants to.” The song has an ABAB structure that rocks gently like a lullaby. It was only two months after this encounter that the Obs (as the band is fondly referred to by fans) would debut at the first Baybeats Festival as a trio of Leslie, Vivian Wang and Dharma. Sixteen months after that, Leslie, Vivian, Dharma, Victor Low and Evan Tan released the Obs’ first album, named after that very song I had caught at The Substation. The recorded version feels a little sprightlier than my memory of the live performance. On CD, there are light embellishments, like a stoic glockenspiel that punctuates each bar and delicate electronic squiggles that start to swarm the song in the middle of the bridge. For a band whose debut album was titled Time of Rebirth, the Obs never really had a clear origin story. Most of the members were veterans of the Singapore independent music scene. They were always coming out of somewhere else, going into someplace else. 13

“The Last Grand Fallible Plan” from A Far Cry From Here (2007) Time of Rebirth was both critically acclaimed and commercially successful. It sold out its first run of 2,000 copies and has over time been held up for forging a renaissance of English-medium popular music in Singapore. Here at last was a Singapore band that could command a sizeable audience, in a culture where the term “local band” has been used disparagingly and often prefaced with “support,” as if to highlight some sort of deficiency. Part of that popularity I think comes from the way the electronic programming and mid-tempo songs on Time of Rebirth tapped into the general chill-out, lounge/ electronica trend of the late 1990s and early millennium—think cocktails at the old Zouk Wine Bar listening to the Zero 7 mix of Radiohead. While 2005’s Blank Walls was for me by and large a continuation of the tone and tenor of Time of Rebirth, 2007’s A Far Cry From Here was a leap into a different sound—knotty post-punk, progressive rock and jazz fusion, without sacrificing any of the melodic and harmonic foundations that the band had laid. Veteran drummer Ray Aziz was now on board, replacing Adam Shah, who joined the band when he was 17, recorded Blank Walls and left after. “The Last Grand Fallible Plan” is one of my favourite songs from the early years of the Obs. A beautiful minor-key lament with lithe bass runs, its lyrics reflect the struggles of living in Singapore and the desire for escape—“Get up and go from here/ Far as can be”—and the soul-wrenching experience of being unable to leave—“Bitter taste in my mouth/Still I live here.” My initial impulse was to call it the anti-“Home”—referring to the classic 1998 national day song sung by Kit Chan and penned by Dick Lee—but I think it is more accurate to see both songs as two sides of the same coin: a love-hate relationship with any form of home. “The Last Grand Fallible Plan” was recorded nearly a decade after “Home” and taps into more recent social debates, including the quitters/stayers divide introduced by then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong at the 2002 National Day Rally. In Goh’s words: “Has the younger generation of Singaporeans gone soft? Look yourself in the mirror and ask, am I a ‘stayer’ or a ‘quitter’? Am I a fair-weather Singaporean or an all-weather Singaporean?” 1 The Obs’ refrain challenges Goh’s dichotomy: “Should I just grow old here?/Deal with the fear/Stay in my hole/Do as I’m told.” Should staying be valorised even if it’s staying in a hole? The lyrics of “The Last Grand Fallible Plan” end by the fourth minute on the tremendous downer of the refrain quoted above, but the music carries on for nearly three more minutes, including a swelling, soaring guitar solo. It’s exquisite, and though given the song’s context, I would hesitate to call it a triumphant moment, there is certainly strength and solace to be found in it.

“Decarn” from Dark Folke (2009) Dark Folke confounded me when I first heard it. With this album, the Obs took a giant sidestep from the trajectory I thought they were on from albums one through three. I loved the heaviness and distortion of tracks like “Lowdown” and “Decarn” but was frankly shocked by the sparseness and nakedness of some of the earlier tracks in the album. This minimal approach is taken from the very beginning of the album, which opens with two guitar strums—one downward, the other upward. Each strum is allowed to fully decay before the next sound is introduced. There is very little layering

of sounds: one instrument plays a riff; another one takes over. There are also no drums in Dark Folke. Coming after A Far Cry from Here, an album I loved for its rich, complex, arrangements and propulsive rhythms, Dark Folke was profoundly quiet. “Decarn” comes late into the album. The gentle, pastoral guitar of earlier tracks has been retired and, in its place, we find a dense and distorted guitar exchanging lines with a haunting organ. Think Sunn O))) versus Portishead. Forces of industrialisation and urbanisation on one side and a mythic Eden on the other. National development versus Bukit Brown Cemetery. Dark Folke is an album of extremes and the first Obs album to incorporate substantial elements of noise—noise as violence from an external, brutish power, which relentlessly destroys the natural, ancient and pure.

“Headworm” from Catacombs (2012) A decade in, we’ve come to expect something new in genre or style, instrument or sound with each new album by the Obs. What took us all by surprise with Catacombs was Leslie’s voice, which dramatically dropped a register—from enchanted Robert Wyatt to apocalyptic Scott Walker. To change one’s voice—something so closely tied to one’s identity—is significant and points to the Obs’ restlessness, fearlessness and commitment toward musical change. “For the worms in my head/How are you?” The first words of the album (in deep baritone) are delivered in the manner of a soliloquy. Catacombs is a claustrophobic work, a study of civilisation and madness through the confused thoughts of a lunatic. But what is the source of these thoughts? “For the worms have little voices/Are they mine?” hints at a wider conflict between self-will and external forces.

“Subterfuge” from Oscilla (2014) From 2010 onwards, the Obs had to deal with changes to their line-up. Long-time members Evan and Victor left in 2010 and 2012, respectively. With no dedicated drummer on Dark Folke and Catacombs, bani haykal then joined the band and took up position behind the kit. Much of Oscilla was developed on the road touring Europe and Asia and the sound of the album reflects this. Unlike past albums, which prized lush, multi-instrumentation and arrangements elaborately worked out in the studio, Oscilla was stripped down, with members sticking to clearly defined roles and instruments. Partly influenced as well by the primal energy of their tour mates, the three-piece rock band MoE, the Obs pared down their setup to vocals, guitars, (synth) bass, drums and effects. When bani left the band in 2014 before the recording of Oscilla, the band regrouped by bringing in Cheryl Ong to play drums and Yuen Chee Wai to play synth and electronics. Heavily inspired by political scientist James C. Scott’s The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia,2 Oscilla’s lyrics are direct and read like political slogans: “We are invisible, illegible by choice,” “In the face of power/Do you crumble or do you honestly/Express yourself,” and “People are poured away... Singaporia.” Oscilla begins with “Subterfuge,” a searing, driving and urgent call-to-(in)action. The song opens with what sounds like the afterburner of a jet engine, followed by a forceful line of kick drums that introduces a powerful and insistent rhythm along with chiming, crunchy guitars. The lyrics present intriguing politics: “We don’t need to be 15

seen... We just need to disappear/Disappear now.” It’s an entirely different conception of disappearance from that of a song like Radiohead’s “How to Disappear Completely,” which presents a late-capitalist world of non-places that engender numbness, disengagement and loss of motivation. “Subterfuge” instead posits a strategy of active evasion and refusal. Sounds academic? Perhaps. But Oscilla is also the Obs’ most “rock” album, with loud guitars, powerful beats, stabbing bass and sweet, sweet noise. In fact, I consider Oscilla one of my favourite dance records with the best songs to experience live, where the music is more drawn-out, the flow more intense (just watch how Dharma is entranced during his guitar solos) and the physicality of sound is felt deeply in the body.

“Imprisoned Mind” from Demon State (forthcoming LP by The Observatory and Koichi Shimizu) Here we are in the present day with a new line-up of the Obs—exeunt founders Les and Viv, and re-enter Dharma after five years away. This won’t be the first recorded release by the band as a trio of Dharma, Chee Wai and Cheryl; that honour falls on Authority is Alive, a collaboration with legendary avant-garde figure Haino Keiji, released in 2020. Authority is Alive presented a set of live improvisation between the four players with the sort of dynamic thrills and spills one might expect from experienced improvisers. I’m listening to work-in-progress previews of Demon State, a collaboration between the Obs and Koichi Shimizu. The presence of the latter hints at the new sonic explorations the Obs are embarking on. Koichi is a musician, sound designer and producer who has famously worked on the soundtrack of Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, the winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. He also makes hard-hitting techno for the dancefloor. After the avant-rock Oscilla and its follow-up August is the Cruellest, Demon State is a completely different beast, one saturated in heavy, electronic beats and textures—though also a far cry from the electronica of the earliest albums. In a track like “Imprisoned Mind,” you’ll encounter the Obs as you’ve never imagined them before—through atonal guitars, spoken word performance and industrial techno, with samples of Sukarno’s famous speech from the 1955 Afro-Asian Conference in Bandung. Some of this music was first presented in Demon States, a mixed reality show at the 2021 Singapore International Festival of the Arts, which used virtual reality headsets to bring the audience through dystopic landscapes and, in so doing, raised a mirror up to our present realities—a pandemic that has normalised surveillance regimes and accelerated the digitalisation of the economy, while one of the most powerful companies in the world, Meta (erstwhile Facebook) has announced plans to build a “metaverse” for us to live in. This is The Observatory: ever-changing, constantly absorbing the world around them and producing a creative response to it. This is The Observatory now.

Endnotes 1 Goh Chok Tong, “Remaking Singapore – Changing Mindsets” (speech, Singapore, 18 August 2002), National Archives of Singapore, https://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/data/pdfdoc/2002081805.htm 2

James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).

Using previous album sleeves by The Observatory as substrate for mycelium growth.

Oscilla recording sessions, 21 January 2017, Goodman Arts Centre.

Images from The Observatory’s trip to Bali in 2012, as research for Continuum.

On Mushrooms

An Interview with The Observatory Part 1

There has been regenerated or reinvigorated interest in the humble fungus. Fungi take many forms and can be found everywhere. As musicians, what drew all of you towards mushrooms? Why have they captivated your imaginations? The Observatory (The Obs): There is still so much about fungi that is unknown to us that makes it such an incredible thing to want to understand. While much of it is still speculative, the speculation itself is already offering us a lot of room for experimentation. The logic that drew us to fungi is not primarily centred on the fact of us being musicians, but by our desire to understand the world, and the importance of the unseen. Much of our practice circulates the subterranean and the substrata. Our work continues to connect the nodes in the networks of translocal music scenes. We creatively coexist in symbiotic relationships with our collaborators. Through a wider lens, we realised that we are very much existing in a similar mycelial landscape or assemblage. We are each a hypha, imbued with a sense of indeterminacy. Constantly informed by our sensibilities to be conscious of our environment and responsible for the space that we share, we look towards sustainability and the need to metabolise meaningfully. We were thinking about these first, before thinking about what fungi can do for us musically. This interest in mushrooms led to your discovery of a community of mycophiles in Singapore (e.g. Mushroom Spotters Singapore, mycologist Amy Choong, etc.). How have your encounters with some of these phenomena or individuals contributed to the shape of this project? The Obs: The people in the mushroom community are a very passionate bunch. They share knowledge and make things open source. We learnt an incredible amount from Kiat (and his team at Bewilder) and Amy Choong. They lent us in-depth knowledge of mycology, both in an academic understanding and from a very layperson and applicable perspective. As musicians and artists, we bring along a different bagful of 27

possibilities on what mycology can be for us. We embarked on making mycelium and mushroom musical instruments, mycelium speakers, and also bringing in sensors to test on mushrooms. The sensors yielded very interesting results, which are helping Kiat grow mushrooms more effectively. On top of the looped soundtrack—that will be composed and performed by the band—other instruments have been placed within the exhibition space. As biodata is harnessed from mushrooms growing in the space, these instruments will be triggered to respond. Why was it important for the presentation to centre on nonhuman voices through collaboration and participation? The Obs: As musicians, we spend long periods of time writing, composing, rehearsing and making sure we get things right. But for this work, we made a conscious effort to de-compose and to relinquish a large part of that control of making music to something else, be it an organism or another natural order. Making this exhibition forced us to relook at our work over the past 20 years, and how we identify as musicians and artists. But the involvement of this force—a force of nature—creates for us a new possibility for understanding the impermanence of things. It is a neverending challenge for us to retune our eyes to fully understand the umwelt. We are still learning to shed anthropomorphic tendencies. While we spent time trying to understand what we got from the biodata, and converting the data to energy and sound, albeit with human lens and language, we had to also unlearn our humanity. It is our responsibility to give voice to those who are marginalised that brought us to this project. As we researched deeper into the world of fungi, we realised how their importance to the ecosystem had been neglected. In fact, our research entrenched us deeper into ecological discourses, which encompass the colonial and capitalistic exploitation of nature, environmental histories, the garden city, climate crisis and the Anthropocene.

“In protected homes across the empire, humans have curled up in their armchairs with their pets and their species-simulated snacks to watch the destruction of the rest of the world on TV. It is hard to know whether any humans will survive such domestic dreams. Fungi are not taking a position. Even the hardy lichens are dying from air pollution and acid rain. When they take up radioactivity from nuclear accidents, they feed it to the reindeer, who in turn feed it to human herders. We can ignore them, or we can consider what they are telling us about the human condition. Outside the house, between the forests and fields, bounty is not yet exhausted.” — Anna Tsing, Unruly Edges: Mushrooms as Companion Species

A suite for damp rot : first duet With no beginning we discover our selves flowers in the mud brown clotted blood comforting the upright stem. The petals of our pink mind full of ethylene, beginning to turn to mush. The return journey is usually easier. Is that true? My eyes are still clear and round as marbles. Light still passes through. My heart still in the left cavity of all the cavity I am. Cave woman. A craggy depth where my intestines should be. But how did you come here? If you’ve come then come in from the cold. There’s coffee. Hot liquid passing from stone to body, vessel to vessel. I see you now in the light of this fire, your eyes like glass pebbles. How did you come to live alone in this wet dark? The floods were rising as acid rain fell, and smoke from fires, incense, and candles rose up together toward the sky. I had no boat when the water came rushing in. The white pain made me fold inward, turning my world inside out. When I woke I was here, nestled next to my pink lungs, my trachea looming as though the trunk of a tree. I had no boat after all, but I had a body. Does it have a name? A soup mush of blood, food, gunk, mucus, etc. A large soft mass, packed together with cellular cling wrap. All these little and medium parts hung and held in a big bag machine. Meat sack. Possessed and animated by a soul. There it is, a lone figure making a faint slice across the landscape as it walks. There it is. We watch not from above, but within.

by Ang Kia Yee

Jae Rhim Lee, The Forever Spot Pet Shroud (left) and Coeio – Infinity Burial Suit (right), both 2016. The Posthuman City. Climates. Habitats. Environments. (2019), NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, installation view. Courtesy of NTU CCA Singapore.

Photos of Continuum performance at The Substation in 2015 by The Idealiste.

Mobius on Mushrooms: a myco-topological timeline

Hyphae stretch across timelines, embedding into time itself. Instead of a straight arrow of time, there is the continuity of a Mobius strip: an entanglement of fungi along all planes. Time is laced, twisted, interweaved, bonded, strung up. Narratives of decay and progress are morally oriented vistas of time. They are warnings and celebrations. Direction is confused in this fragment of a diagram, perhaps as a way to re-orient time’s nonorientability. Time goes backwards, forward, up, around and back to its starting point. Chronologies of different scales come into encounter. Records from the time I tried to grow edible mushrooms, time stamps from rushes filmed by the Primary Production Department, fungi-hunting logs taken from E.J.H. Corner’s Boletus in Malaysia (1972), newspaper reports on campaigns against “moral decay,” the emergence of fungi in geological time. We see only a snippet of a hypha’s walk; this diagram offers connection as potential. It is an impure model: a halting Rube Goldberg machine, a Bretherton diagram without arrows or black boxes. Things are too flayed open. Sometimes, hyphae trail into nowhere. As hyphae travel beyond the page, the page itself may be further disassembled into strips. Each strip may contain its own narrative, one that loops effortlessly between geological and domestic time. Or it may be lengthened, latched onto another strip to build another narrative. Tear them up, fold them, glue them, crush them. Worlds may be looped together. Instructions

Cut out the vertical strips along the lines.

Loop a strip together.

Make a half-twist on one end of the strip.

Affix both ends of the strip together, where it says “AFFIX HERE.”

Extend and lengthen the Mobius strip by joining multiple strips together.

Run your finger along the strip. How many sides does your Mobius strip have?

by Marcus Yee

E E E E

AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE

AFFIX H AFFIX H AFFIX H AFFIX H

13 June 1982 Straits Times "Why Confucianism: The Eastern Way" The state was unable to ﬁll the spiritual vacuum and that resulted in moral decay, as evidenced throughout Western society.

31:51 i) Holes in several leaves of vegetables, also that of chye sim, so many holes leaving it almost shapeless;

31:20 h) White insects crawling on soil, another yellow ﬂower of lady's ﬁngers;

15 January 1972 The Straits Times “Long hair: The people speak their mind” The Singapore Gov Government is to be congratulated on the implementation of the snip-snip campaign at the causeway to curb the “shag “shaggy-dog” cult in our Republic. —Bravo, Singapore 13.

AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE

p. 97 B. Emondensis In humus and on tree-trunks and bark in the forest. Malaya, Singapore, Borneo, India, Thailand, Vietnam.

AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE

p. 101 B. Ridiculus Ad terram in silva, solitarius. Singapore, Bukit Timah, Corner s.n. 10 December 1940

3 October 2002 The Straits Times "Freedom doesn't come free." 'IF YOU want to dance on a bar top, some of us will fall off that bar top. Some people will die as a result of liberalising bar-top dancing.

p. 211 B. Junghuhnii In humus and under rotten logs in the forest. Java (Tjibodas), Borneo

AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE

AFFIX HER AFFIX HER AFFIX HER AFFIX HER

IX HERE IX HERE IX HERE IX HERE

AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE

3 March 1956 The Straits Times "Opium and Moral Decay"

Late June 2020 Received grain spawn of ﬁve cultures

10 July 2020 Reishi colonized by green mold, sent to compost

13 July 1889 Straits Advocate 2.4 billion years ago Ongeluk fossils, fungus-like mycelial fossil in South Africa

1 billion years ago Ourasphaira giral giraldae,, early fungi dae microfossil from Artic Canada

AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE

We are glad to see that the Magistrates have been punishing offenders this week for bathing in public. There are bathers at the wells in Hill street and several other quar quarters of the town who pay little or no regard to decency.

AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE

485 million years ago Mucoromycotina, Glomeromycotina: ﬁrst fungus plant symbiosis

AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE

AFFIX HE AFFIX HE AFFIX HE AFFIX HE

AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE

ERE ERE ERE ERE

AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE

12 July 2020 Orange metabolite leak, mushroom bags double-bagged with concerns over air circulation

AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE

AFFIX HER AFFIX HER AFFIX HER AFFIX HER

Radio Singapore has virtually cut out all rock ’n’ roll or the juke jukebox type of music from its programmes. programm es.

Sir Mr Lee Choon Eng, a member of the Legislative Assembly, is report reported to have said that striptease shows are a "moral danger" and should be banned.

420 million years ago Prototaxites fossil “logs” around 1 to 8 metres in height

AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE

17 June 1959 The Singapore Free Press “RADIO SINGAPORE TO BE SERIOUS BUT NOT DULL”

13 March 1958 Singapore Standard "Moral Danger"

22 July 2020 Don't leave grains soaked for too long; lactic acid will be released after 2 days

AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE

254 million years ago Emergence of brown rot fungi 145 million years ago Gondwanagaricite, age of oldest fossil of mushroom

AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE

AFF AFF AFF AFF

AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE

p. 68 H. Mandarina In deep humus, often gregarious in oak forest. Malaya, Borneo.

27 February 1961 The Straits Times "ROCK MUSIC HAS TO BE 'PRIM 'PRIMITIVE' to BE BANNED"

p. 59 S. Annulatus: In humus in the forest, solitary or 2-3 together. Malaya, Borneo

p. 54 G. Castaneus: Bem Bembangan River, 1700m, 26 Feb. 1964

FIX HERE FIX HERE FIX HERE FIX HERE

26:28 10a) Plant Pests/DisPests/Dis eases: Caterpillar crawling on under underside of leaf which has dark patches, on stalk, on chilli plants, on papaya fruit;

p.65 S. Veluptipes Coll. Singapore, Gardens Jungle, Bukit Timah and Mandai Road, Corner s.n. April 1929, Sept 1929, Sept. 1930, 20 Sept. 1930, 29 Oct. 1934

AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE

27:55 e) Small little white/yellow 'egg' on underside of leaf; dark brown objects on other leaves;

27:32 c) Small pest boring into plant stalk; insect with long legs on another stalk;

AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE AFFIX HERE

Moving image projections as mushroom nourishment.

The Observatory. Anitya // Skandhas. 17 January 2015, Latent Spaces, Haw Par Villa Warehouse. Sound and music performance, with dance and movement by Andrée Weschler and Elizabeth Lim. Photo by The Idealiste.

Asian Meeting Festival. 2015, Japan. Image courtesy of Asian Meeting Festival.

Photo of Empty Vessels at Singapore Ceramics Now 2021: Making | Marking by The Observatory. 58

On Performance

An Interview with The Observatory Part 2

In co-sounding with nonhuman counterparts, a certain level of control over the delicate process is relinquished. Has this experience altered or repositioned the band’s approach towards composition or performance? The Observatory (The Obs): There has been an interest in recent years to pursue a more multidisciplinary approach and to start exploring multimodal forms of communicating through sound. The pandemic actually catapulted us into this process of amassing new bodies of knowledge and expanding collaborative processes into new forms of expression. We started exploring these new formats with the ceramic piece Empty Vessels, which was devised for Singapore Ceramics Now 2021 and later expanded on and presented at Playfreely—Nervous systems (Sequential Karma) (2021). We thought of presenting a performance of sound without physically being there, which resulted in the investigation of materials, motors and programming. The approach towards composition is still very much what The Observatory has been doing—a combination of parts that are composed and parts that are largely improvised, a balance of indeterminacy within a structure. Improvisation, whether or not with human or nonhuman counterparts, involves deliberately relinquishing control and reacting to the now. The natural world has always fascinated sound artists and musicians, with composers such as John Cage, for example, referencing mushrooms and indeterminacy in his methodologies. Today, organic material and biological organisms continue to captivate contemporary practitioners. They have found their way into the practices of artists such as Tosca Teran, Olafur Eliasson, Pierre Huyghe and Tini Aliman, for example. How has this touched the band’s own perspectives on bio-sonification and bio-performativity?

The Obs: Zheng Bo, Precious Okoyomon and Pierre Huyghe were definitely interesting for us in our journey. The terrain of enquiry is what brought us here in the first place. There was much desire to discover and devise new modes of working by expanding collaborative processes into new sectors. That prompted us to research and learn. The natural world presents itself in many of The Observatory’s works; it runs alongside us but is often unseen. This time, we were interested in the undergrowth, looking at what was below ground and drawing parallels to The Observatory and its networks. Sonification was something that came later. Attaching motors, extracting bio-data and giving movement were what we considered speculative organic extensions of the phenotype. They were also an attempt to interface with these organisms through the medium of sound. Much excitement comes from these unknowns and we are very much looking forward to discovering more. We do not seek to beautify. We seek to amplify. Relentless experimentation and reinvention are at the heart of what The Observatory has always done, through decades and genres, avoiding a signature style. You have described your music as an “impassioned response to the society it is enmeshed in.” Within the context of Singapore, why is this spirit worth pursuing, defending, believing in? The Obs: We have always been concerned with the socio-political—a reality that concerns us directly as citizens and as living beings on this planet. We speak about these trickle-down effects of greed and asymmetries in power—these are topics that come up in our daily conversations and naturally present themselves in our work in one form or another. While the output has provided an avenue for a certain level of catharsis, we do feel a shared responsibility in mapping out these forms of oppression and to present some form of resistance, however small it may be. These are small steps we’ve taken to break down inhibition, convention and encourage people to think more critically.

Photos of installation of Empty Vessels at Singapore Ceramics Now 2021: Making | Marking by Mish’aal Syed Nasar.

A suite for damp rot : second duet My body is due, limp amongst the worms. After a life on its feet, it arrives home on its back, eyes gazing ahead at the sky. Due to come alive, to fester and simmer as soup, putrid and desirous. > It’s speaking. The screen lights up. Hand still on my heart. > What does it say? Not even an echo from the inner room, no tender sound from this blue, blue night. But who am I who speaks, if not something enclosed, tethered within this old machine? The enzymes soften this gummy sack. Are they the prickling feeling on my back? > Mushrooms cluster and bloom there, forming a crowd. They are the common Lepiota, white and inedible. Mush room. I feel its hyphae push in, snowy strands tangling with my own. Mutual transplants for a third body, another room. These dead limbs turn lively in a new world— hyphae, vessels, veins, capillaries, nerves— bound, nested, in logic and in love. Curious worms scale our uneven face. See: the shape of this world’s desires. > Still its flesh continues its rot, its stench and slow juice. A sticky mucky pool between solid and liquid, thick and viscous, rich with nutrition. It would be hard to call this a body. It would be hard to give this a name. Eye no longer see, only sense, feel. We a hovering mist, a thinking cloud tickled by the wind. A swarm that persists and is. Our permanence is made of temporary assemblies on repeat, extending a body into some kind of forever. We think we can outlive 62

by Ang Kia Yee

the future. Parts gather and part within an us that is regardless, regarding one another as though we don’t survive the same world. As though we don’t eat one another, catabolizing and anabolizing. You consume me and I nourish you. We recompose our bodies with the bodies we’ve eaten: some part of me is lettuce, is rice, is pig, plastic. Is your meat and marrow. > I hear a buzz, a hum. It swarms up from the putrefied pool, growing louder, a swirling din of voices speaking all at once, forming one large sound. The beating wing of a sky-sized bird. Who’s that speaking, a vibration in the mud? > I hear you, a fold in the wind. I watch over your body, a nurse of the morgue. Standing guard? For how long? > A year now, not a long time at all. Long enough for a body to dissolve and a new world to come into being. > Long enough for an I to give way to a we. What are your names? A swampy meat and mushroom stew. A spore cloud of tangled pathways that collect, disperse, distract, enable, trigger, block, destroy, build, repackage all at once. An indecipherable map of the world, a record that necessarily exists, formed from residue and imprints, and yet cannot be read. > I see it on screen. Your liquid world. There we are and you, companion species of same surface folded without end, an immortal strip through which all is seen. We scroll and find our fingers covered in oil, in mud, in landfill sludge. Our rot has bottom notes of city desperation, top notes of curt urban rain. Pressing in we smell sour-sweet skin. Its cellular parts from some fish, some vegetation digested, repackaged. Everything forms to die to form again. What form will you take next? > A petal, a toothpick, a shoe mark on the ground. 63

More fleeting than this enduring hour. > Slower than this urgent species. In my next life, I will not refuse my limits. Will you give in to the world? > Which part? I want to live in the muck of my small human heart. Not cling. Give this body its bloom and rot, the forgiveness of dissolution after the effort of being a whole, a whole life lived. We get to be goo, to be eaten, to simply pass through. And then? > We continue—

by doing it again.

Behind These Eyes: The Catacombs Remixes poster.

Photos of Catacombs performance at The Substation in 2012 by Philipp Aldrup. 65

Photos of Oscilla album launch at The Substation in August 2014 by Martin Chua.

“We do not seek to beautify. We seek to amplify.”

— The Observatory

The Observatory. Anitya I. January 2011, Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore. Sound and music performance, with visuals by Andy Yang Soo Kit.

On Archives

An Interview with The Observatory Part 3

The archives are an important part of REFUSE and set the band within a constellation of events, collaborators and spaces. Extending from these networks, a storyboard for the archive was also drawn up in consultation with Mark Wong. What was your shared approach towards the archive and its materials? The Observatory (The Obs): The approach was mainly to avoid certain aspects that are commonly experienced in anniversarial commemorations. We wanted to avoid glamourising or romanticising the past too much. Instead, we wanted to present the existence of The Observatory in this vast local and regional musical network and how that has, over time, enabled our presence in the international underground music network. Avoiding linearity was another approach we agreed upon as we felt that would be rather boring. We also wished to acknowledge our beginnings and evolution to the current constellation of The Observatory, which today exists as more than just a band. Of course there was also a common sentiment that the approach needed to integrate with the main theme of REFUSE. Archives are often driven by an impetus to catalogue, historicise or categorise. These might be urges that The Observatory seeks to push back against or resist. Given this context, how do you make sense of the place of the archive, especially in the context of a presentation as ambitious and forwardlooking as REFUSE? The Obs: The intention to avoid how materials from the archives are frequently used was consciously arrived at. We wanted to present archive materials in a more creative way that aligns with the ethos and modus operandi of The Observatory, which is to 69

look forward to the new rather than recycle the past. So, the archives here play the role of illustrating networks built over the years and how they will continue to grow and hopefully inspire and overlap with future networks to come while nourishing and taking care of the environment they exist in. Hopefully this would in turn shed light on the bigger picture, of mother nature and our responsibilities towards her that we need to come to terms with. The form of the archives has evolved quite a bit throughout the project—from first being imagined as a dedicated, contained space to being integrated into the main presentation. How does their embedment within the set and amongst the mushrooms shape or affect the overall experience? The Obs: Embedding the archives helps to emphasise that we belong to this bigger and vast network, which is similar to that of mycelium. With this acknowledgement and understanding, we hope that the broader experience of the fungi world would take shape. REFUSE is not about 20 years of The Observatory; instead it’s about 20 years of existence within a music network that parallels mycelium networks, especially in terms of resilience, collaboration and building connections.

BlackKajiXtra: Nusasonic. 20–21 July 2019, The Substation.

The Observatory. Anitya I. January 2011, Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore. Sound and music performance, with visuals by Andy Yang Soo Kit. 71

A suite for damp rot : manifesto (draft) Wash enormity with care Ant nest underneath salty sour soil Soap water in the lake Seed in mouth sprouting one morning The blood of one land seeps into another Eating a tree Pus and oil, blood and soup Fingernail nestled against the hairy root, white crescent moon Sucking on fallen hairs World fermenting chaos We and we dissolved

by Ang Kia Yee

Acknowledgements REFUSE

Conceptualised by The Observatory

Singapore Art Museum wishes to thank the following individuals and organisations, including those who do not wish to be named, for their warm support of this exhibition.

Collaborators

Asian Film Archive Midnight Shift National Arts Council NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore Roger&Sons Shaw Organisation Pte Ltd Ute Meta Bauer Alicia Chandra Chew Tee Pao Amy Choong Joshua Comaroff Kathleen Ditzig Nia Edwards M J Gandhi Jane Goh Tony Goh Hoe Su Fern Daniel Hui Iman Yahya Lee Yin Wei Jeanette Lim Lim Siew Han Anna Lovecchio Mish’aal Nasar Rosie Othman Danish Sadayan Warren Sin Kristine Tan Marcia Tan Ruby Tan Brandon Tay Tay Ining Teng Kee Wee Tini Aliman Wang Ruobing Sakura Yamakawa Vincent Yap Zarina Muhammad Arabelle Zhuang Cheeto, Koko and Louie As well as all our past, present and future collaborators. TAMAT (moving image) includes found footage of a mouldy and timeworn reel of P. Ramlee’s film Seniman Bujang Lapok (The Nitwit Movie Stars, 1961, Malay Film Productions Ltd.) Courtesy of: The Shaw Organisation Pte Ltd Source: Asian Film Archive Supporters Singapore Art Museum extends its gratitude to the Mind the Gap 200—Sustainable Earth Fund, whose generosity made this exhibition possible.

Guest Curator Tang Fu Kuen Scenography Installation Sai (aka Chen Sai Hua Kuan) Mycological Design Studio Bewilder (Ng Sze Kiat, Michaela Wong and Caroline Woon) Fungi Agaricus bisporus (petri dishes) Agaricus blazei Ganoderma lingzhi (three strains) Ganoderma multipileum Ganoderma neo-japonicum Pleurotus citrinopileatus Pleurotus djamor (time lapse) Poromycena manipularis (time lapse) Moving Image Director Yeo Siew Hua (Incantation Films) Moving Image Producer Dan Koh (Incantation Films) Sound Technologist Chok Si Xuan Lynette Quek Time Lapse Video Producer Juan Qi An Production Manager Kimberly Kwa Reimagining Archives Ujikaji Archives Research Assistant Rafi Abdullah Exhibition Lighting Designer Andy Lim Technical Management and Installation ARTFACTORY Archives Video Editor Eric Qooo Mind Map Designer Debbie Ding Laser Burning LionsForge The Observatory are Cheryl Ong, Dharma and Yuen Chee Wai Company Manager Janice Yap Social Media Marketing Leow Si Min Special Thanks Adam Shah bani haykal Leslie Low Victor Low Evan Tan Ray Aziz Vivian Wang 75

Biography Contributors Ang Kia Yee

Ang Kia Yee (also called kyatos or 慢梦机) is a transdisciplinary poet and artist based in Singapore. Their work performs and speaks within the realms of desire, futurity and ecology, with an emphasis on love and deep time. They are attracted to transgressions and translations of form, which are closely mapped onto their subject matter and allow a new container (logic of space/time/being) to emerge. Their first book, slow dream machine (2020), is a meandering collection of poems in which love and desire emanate out of loss and alienation. More at kyatos.com.

The Observatory

The Observatory—far from silent and objective as its name suggests—is a band whose music and cultural ethos is to respond and speak back to the contemporary afflictions in Singapore and the global milieu. Its current constellation comprises multi-instrumentalists Cheryl Ong, Dharma and Yuen Chee Wai who tread on improvisation, inter-media experimentation and noise-adjacent territories. In confronting new forms of disorders, The Observatory restlessly turns upon itself to agitate, to comfort and to resist. Drawing on old and new lexicons, The Observatory seeks to bridge artists and expressions. Two decades on, the band’s polymath practice encompasses music and performance; in-person festivals and online radio shows; touring gigs and interdisciplinary exhibitions.

Mark Wong

Mark Wong is active in experimental music, sonic arts and independent music practice as an organiser, programmer, artist, curator, writer and label producer. Wong works with sound to devise listening strategies for new and intense possibilities of being. His sound compositions, sitespecific works, sound walks, sound objects and multi-channel installations have been exhibited at the Singapore Art Museum, Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, Jendela Visual Arts Space, OH! Open House and Yavuz Gallery. Wong’s label Ujikaji (established 2010) is a stalwart of Singapore’s experimental music scene through its independent releases and events, including the BlackKaji series of programmes, co-conceived with The Observatory.

Marcus Yee

Marcus Yee is an art worker and researcher from Singapore, based in Hong Kong. Between 2017 and 2021, he was involved with the collaborative project soft/WALL/studs and co-organised projects supported by the National Gallery Singapore (2020–2021); Eyebeam, New York (2020); and Cemeti Institute of Art and Society, Yogyakarta (2018). Currently, Marcus is researching Hong Kong’s environmental history. He was a research assistant at Lung Fu Shan Environmental Education Centre for the exhibition, Ecology in the Making (1816– present), presented at the Hong Kong Science Museum. As a writer, Marcus has contributed writing to publications including Arts Equator, ArtAsiaPacific and art-agenda.

Editors

Joella Kiu

Joella Kiu is Assistant Curator and Research Assistant (Director’s Office) at the Singapore Art Museum. Her previous curatorial projects include to gather: The Architecture of Relationships, Singapore Pavilion at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia and The Deepest Blue at the 2018 DISINI Festival. She holds a Master’s degree in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art and a Bachelor’s degree in History of Art from the University of York.

Teng Yen Hui

Teng Yen Hui is Collections Manager and Assistant Curator at the Singapore Art Museum. Prior to taking on curatorial work at the museum, she worked independently on several writing projects and exhibitions, including not the norm: on conjugal blisses and misses (2018). Teng holds a BSc in Economics from the Singapore Management University and an MA in Asian Art Histories conferred by Goldsmiths, University of London (LASALLE). Outside of institutional life, she plays in Ellipsis, a five-piece rock band from Singapore.

Published in conjunction with REFUSE, an exhibition organised by Singapore Art Museum. © 2022 Singapore Art Museum All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without prior permission of the copyright holders. Copyright of the content in this publication may also reside in persons and entities other than, and in addition to, Singapore Art Museum. We are fully committed to respecting the intellectual property rights of others and always use our best efforts to obtain permission for images used. Published in 2022 Please direct all enquiries to the publisher at: Singapore Art Museum Blk 39 Keppel Road #03-07, Tanjong Pagar Distripark Singapore 089065 enquiries@singaporeartmuseum.sg Editors: Joella Kiu, Teng Yen Hui Managing Editor: Elaine Ee Project Editor: Kong Yin Ying Designer: Hanson Ho (H55) National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing in Publication Data Name(s): Observatory (Musical group) | Kiu, Joella, editor. | Teng, Yen Hui, editor. | Singapore Art Museum, publisher, organizer. Title: Refuse / editors, Joella Kiu, Teng Yen Hui. Description: Singapore : Singapore Art Museum, 2022. Identifier(s): ISBN 978-981-18-3038-9 (paperback) Subject(s): LCSH: Observatory (Musical group)--Exhibitions. | Music in art--Exhibitions. | Biology in art--Exhibitions. | Film installations (Art)--Singapore--Exhibitions. Classification: DDC 709.5957--dc23

Image credits: pp. 3, 4, 7, 29, 73, 74, 77: Images courtesy of Joella Kiu and Teng Yen Hui. p. 26: Image courtesy of Chan Wai Yeng, Mushroom Spotters (Singapore). pp. 32–33: Image courtesy of NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore. pp. 39–42: Images courtesy of Marcus Yee. pp. 54–55: Image courtesy of Asian Meeting Festival. Inside back cover: Image courtesy of Incantation Films. Folded insert: Mycobiome Mind Map by The Observatory, Ujikaji and Debbie Ding, from REFUSE by The Observatory, commissioned by Singapore Art Museum. Image courtesy of the artists. All other images, including cover image, courtesy of The Observatory. 80

Singapore-based experimental band The Observatory presents REFUSE, an inter-media exhibition about music, mushrooms and de-composition. The exhibition combines mycology design (Bewilder), scenography installation (Sai aka Chen Sai Hua Kuan), archive arrangement (Ujikaji), moving image (Yeo Siew Hua) and guest curation (Tang Fu Kuen). REFUSE draws on the band’s past and present influences, bringing together their interests in fungi and mycelial networks to explore the twin ideas of decomposition and composition from biological and musical perspectives. The presentation comprises a time-based installation space and archive, and speaks to The Observatory’s constantly evolving methodologies, the communities that surround them, as well as their important place in the Singapore music scene.

Moving image still of TAMAT by Yeo Siew Hua, from REFUSE by The Observatory, commissioned by Singapore Art Museum. TAMAT includes found footage of an 8-minute mouldy and timeworn reel of P. Ramlee’s film Seniman Bujang Lapok [The Nitwit Movie Stars; Malay Film Productions Ltd., 1961]. Courtesy of The Shaw Organisation Pte Ltd. Source of reel: Asian Film Archive. 83

Mycobiome Mind Map by The Observatory, Ujikaji and Debbie Ding, from REFUSE by The Observatory, commissioned by Singapore Art Museum.