Category: WATCH/LISTEN
LISTEN to interviews and provocations on radio and podcasts. WATCH my appearances on TV, documentaries and more. Also WATCH moving images that I have made. I make, programme/curate, perform in and with, produce and used to teach film (meaning Super 8, 16mm, video art, cinema et al). My first moving images made at 18 on an enormous VHS camera won a Panasonic video award. Other recognition since have included San Francisco International Film Festival Golden Gate Award 1999, Official Entries at the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival 2001, AHRC Film Award 2019, Annecy, Bucheon, Ottawa International Film Festivals 2016. I have been called ‘a media artist to look out for’ (Art It, a Japanese publication, 2005) and ‘one of the foremost video artists in Singapore’ (Contemporary Art In Singapore 2007. Eds Nadarajan G, Storer, R. & Tan, E.). My installations have been seen widely, including New York Film Anthology at Museum of Modern Art New York in a Japanese Experimental Cinema Programme (alongside the work of video art pioneer Toshio Matsumoto 2004), on the streets (such as large projections or as a mobile video-guided walk in Singapore 2008), as live performances alongside ‘laptop orchestras’ (including at pompidou and Tokyo Fashion Week 2004) and so on. Collaborators have included Michael Tebinka (Sweden), Kleopatra Korai (Greece/NY), Christophe Charles and Videoart Centre Tokyo (both Tokyo), Bertrand Lee and Philip Tan (both Singapore).
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YOU ARE INVITED to an animated evening that shares insights into the making of the book Neuro-Futurism and Re-Imagining Leadership: An A-Z Towards Collective Liberation by artist-agitator-advisor Kai Syng Tan at the John Hansard Gallery in Southampton, UK. Drawing on the big-picture thinking and risk-taking approach of neuro-divergence, the book introduces ‘neuro-futurism’ as a toolkit, to re-claim ways to think about and do ‘leadership’ as a diversified, beyond-colonial, neuro-queered and (co-)creative change- and future-making practice.
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In the final of the 2024 run of Material Interests, we welcomed award-winning filmmaker Nausheen Khan from India. This session was critical to learn more about ways to decolonise the curriculum and the role of arts and cultural leadership to catalyse change through counter-hegemonic strategies in the face of Islamophobia, threats to human rights and democracy, and misogyny not just in the Global South but beyond, and from the perspective of a courageous young feminist filmmaker.
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When I was asked to appear on BBC World Service to discuss women and ADHD with Kim Chakanetsa, I said yes. After all, the show’s good enough for Olympian & powerhouse (and ADHD-er) Simone Biles. When asked whom I’d like to chat with, I named my friend Dr. Jane Sedgwick-Müller. Listen in on our lively discussion 2nd October 2023.
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What could our future look like? Even — or especially — when the absurdity and extra-ordinariness of how things are makes this a preposterous question to raise, let alone respond to, it is imperative that we insist, persist, and resist, by making, re-making, re-imagining and re-inventing our truths, to re-write our own stories, histories and futures, to work through our pain, trauma and joys. Come ‘Have a Speed-Date With Kai – Let’s Re-Imagine our (Collective) Future Together’, at a group show Ordinary Things (02-25 November 2023), The Winchester Gallery, curated by Professor of Visual Politics Louise Siddons.
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This new short film was created at the invitation of a design pedagogy event by European consortium FUEL4Design: Future Education and Literacy for Designers as International Respondent. A performance-lecture version was created as Keynote Lecturer for Deep Meaningful Conversations of the Design Management course, London College of Communication, University Arts London.
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RAN reframes running as an artistic intervention to unpick our time of multiple global crises. At the 26 February Friday launch 10:00-17:00GMT, we presented 22 new insights into climate change, mental health, tech, inequality through running + art, poetry, theatre, sound and more by artists, poets, academics and more from UK and Europe.
![Premiere of performance-lecture Unreasonable Adjustments alongside exhibition, film screening and panel discussion at Unlimited Festival, Queen Elizabeths Hall, Southbank Centre. Part of art-psychiatry commission #MagicCarpet (Kai Syng Tan 2017-2019).](https://i0.wp.com/kaisyngtan.com/artful/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/2018_SouthbankCentre_KaiSyngTan.jpg?fit=508%2C119&ssl=1)
This is the 2020 lockdown edition of a workshop Practice, Movement and Play in Learning for the module ‘The Arts, Culture & Education and Learning, Participation & the Southbank Centre’ Module, as part of the MA in Education in Arts and Cultural Settings at King’s College London, which I have been delivering since 2019.
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Here are just 3 of several films on the #PAC75: The 75th Anniversary Celebrations of the 5th Pan African Congress in Manchester, Viewing the Past and Looking to the Future channel. Do watch, and use them for learning, teaching and research. More videos to be uploaded during the Black History Month 2020!
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Instead of OBE/MBE/CBE, we’ll have NDE (NeuroDiversity medal of Excellence). Universities will finally stop failing or boring people, offering interdisciplinary MASc and PhDs. ‘Neurodiversity’ will also become truly diversified. We’ll then run around with tentacles on our heads. New performance-lecture at Royal Society of Arts attended by 130 people.
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1) WE MUST STEP UP OUR GAME 2) LET’S BECOME CRITICAL FRIENDS 3) LET’S CREATE PRODUCTIVE ANTAGONISMS 4) LET’S PLAY 5) LET’S BE ILL-DISCIPLINED 6) LET’S STEP OUT OF SILOS & EMBRACE A 360-DEGREE VANTAGE POINT 7) LET’S STEP OUT OF COMFORT ZONES 8) LET’S STEP INTO UNKNOWN TOGETHER 9) LET’S EMBRACE ERRORS 10) WE’RE STRONGER TOGETHER