Friday, October 27, 2006

Miracle Tree. One of the more interesting exhibits of the Biennale is this tree that rains. The tree stands along the Singapore River, near Indochine, at the Asian Civilization Museum. I understand that the tree does not rain all the time. I was lucky that when I went down there around 7 plus in the evening, it rained twice for my viewing pleasure. Upon my rough calculation, it rains for 10 minutes, then stop for 20 minutes, then rain again for 10 minutes ... the remarkable thing is that you cannot find any evidence of pipes or hoses running up the trunk to the tree's crown, so it is not apparent how the artiste got the tree to spout water ... Anyway, apparently they are so serious about this water, they are selling the water by the test-tubes, and by the containerful, at the Biennale souvenir shop at SMU ... The fun part was to see unsuspecting people walking into the rainfall when around us it was dry ...

Lawn. This performance by the Splinter Group made a pretty quiet appearance at the University Cultural Centre. This was one of the more set-intensive dance performance I had seen in recent memory. The stage was transformed into a living room, where three men went about their routine. A neighbour who turns on their television too loudly was about the only outside interaction they had. The dancers not so much dance, but jerked and bounced off each other throughout the performance. They climbed on walls, wrapped in celophane, throw furniture at each other. There was a definite element of danger and excitment watching this live show. Oh, there were also cockroaches scuttering around the stage at the beginning of the show too. Unfortunately all these were a little too much for me. I fell sick for the next few days. This is certainly a performance worth remembering, abeit not for the right reasons.

♥ 9:56 pm