Kent Chan: Let the Music Revolve (Again)

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Exhibition and research of DIVA Station archive
Eclectic re-mix of AV material

Friday, 6 July 2018, 8pm
Project Room SCCA, Metelkova 6, Ljubljana

10pm, Modri kot (Rog Factory, Trubarjeva 72, Ljubljana)
Parallel DJ event with Horizon99 (Singapore) and Modem (Ljubljana)

SCCA-Ljubljana presents Let the Music Revolve (Again), the culmination of Singaporean artist and curator, Kent Chan’s research into the DIVA Station video and new media archive. In 2017 Chan was focused on video archives both within and out of institutional boundaries, touching upon the surprise links between the Slovene and Singapore moving images scene. With the sight specific exhibition Let the Music Revolve (Again) in Project Room SCCA Kent Chan will conclude his research.

Was there revolution hanging in the 80s air? Were the rumbles synced to the rhythm of people’s grumbles? Looking at the DIVA Station’s many 80s music videos feels like peering into a crystal ball from reverse – the (mis)fortunes of an era told backwards – accompanied by a soundtrack of punk and underground music.

The exhibition and its title is a reflection on Let the Music Revolve, a 1989 exhibition of Slovene video art in a Singapore television factory. An exhibition that unravelled amidst the winds of change in the 80s is made to play out once more in today’s uncertain climate. What might this present hold?

To what politics, what soundtrack and at what volume? (Kent Chan)

Correspondence concerning an exhibition in 1989 and in 2018 (pdf)

Parallel DJ event in Modri kot (Rog Factory, Trubarjeva 72, Ljubljana)

The exhibition is accompanied with the DJ event in collaboration with Horizon99 (Singapore) and Modem (Ljubljana). The eclectic re-mixing will start on Friday, 6th of July, at 10pm. Might the spirit of the 80s possess bodies into movements once more?

Kent Chan is a Singaporean artist, filmmaker and curator. His practice revolves around our encounters with art, fiction and cinema that explore the links between aesthetic experience and knowledge production. He holds particular interest in the tropical imagination, and the relationship between moving images and the modern city. The works and practices of others often form the locus of his works, which examines the ambiguity that lies at the interstices of art (making) and daily life. His works have taken the form of film, text, conversations and exhibitions.

Horizon99 (H99) is a broadcast series using the party as form, the club as situation, music as binder. These inherently hold the potential for collective being, coalescing towards horizons beyond capitalist realism. This is an online archive for all contents that was generated as part of the H99 project which currently consists of our on-going project and series of labels. Most of them concern, but are not limited to, the future and its various imaginaries.

Modem connects you to the internet via radio, where it guides you through the overlooked areas of the web underground, while exploring, analysing and, above all, enjoying the latest draws of modern electronic music. Modem is Matej Mihevc, present also in the radio aether every other Monday, at 10 pm, on Radio Študent.

Photo: arhiv SCCA-Ljubljana

Media coverage

No Nails, No Pedestals 2018 (Project Room SCCA, Metelkova 6, Ljubljana) is presenting authors, working in the field of contemporary artistic practices (installations, performances, video, interdisciplinary & web projects).

Production: SCCA, Center for Contemporary Arts – Ljubljana, July 2018
Special thanks: Matej Mihevc, Una Larisa Pečovnik, Modri kot
Supported by: City of Ljubljana, Department for Culture