M1 Singapore Fringe Festival’s 10th birthday as it takes off on 8 January 2014. Organised and curated by The Necessary Stage, this year’s line up features a total of fifteen international and local works from six countries, focusing on the theme of Art & the People. Spanning across performances, video screenings and visual art installations, the Festival presents an exciting variety of works, with six making their world premieres and two making their Asian premieres. Audiences can look forward to be engaged, challenged and inspired at the 10th edition of the Festival which runs until 19 January 2014.

As the Fringe invites you to explore and exult in the different aspects of the relationship between Art and the People, it also aims to celebrate its anniversary with the people who have made it a success over the last decade. All ticketed performances to M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2014 is priced at $19 each, excluding ticketing charges. Furthermore, M1 staff and customers will also enjoy an exclusive 20% discount off tickets through till the end of the Festival.

Celebrating Art & The People

The relationship between Art and the People is one that requires re-examination as we open ourselves to new possibilities of the definition of art and creative processes. Undeniably, it is the art pieces directly connected to the people, inspired by human frailties, strength, desires and hopes that are the most powerful. Yet, art also challenges people and ruptures established perceptions about life, enabling us to critique what has been normalised. Art and the People seeks to celebrate one another, to form perspectives that do not propel any single dominant ideology, but rather, accepts differences and see them as integral components of an all-encompassing, fluid, and truly democratic whole.

Fringe Highlights

The M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2014 will feature three highlights from Singapore, Portugal and Japan. From Singapore, opening the Festival is An Enemy of the People《人民公敌》by Nine Years Theatre Company (九年剧场). Making its world premiere at the Festival, this Fringe Commission is the company’s Mandarin adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s play, depicting one man’s struggle to hold his beliefs against the benefits of the majority – or, depending on how one looks at it, a society’s collective rejection of a person’s misconstrued self-righteousness.

Three Fingers Below the Knee by Portuguese theatre Mundo Perfeito is a performance based upon the historical archive of theatre censorship during the forty years of dictatorship in Portugal. Making its Asian premiere, this eye-opening work examines the act of censorship and its relationship between art and people within the country.

The third Fringe Highlight, Majulah Singapura – Tree Project by Japanese artist and filmmaker Hiroshi Sunairi, shares the profound experiences of growing the Hibaku trees that survived the atomic bombings in Hiroshima. As a gesture of remembrance to the catastrophic event, invited participants from around the world grow and nurture seeds of the trees. An exhibition will feature the grown seedlings through collaborative efforts between participants from around the world, including Singapore. Alongside the exhibition, a film entitled Tree Project, comprising interviews with participants, will be screened at the Festival.

Fringe Commissions

The M1 Singapore Fringe Festival’s 10th anniversary will showcase of seven commissioned works from Singapore artists and groups. The world premiere of The Mountain presented by new performance collective The Art of Strangers is based on a short story by Amitav Ghosh, which puts forward a reflection about the relationship between art, people and global warming. What will be at the end of the world? Fifteen performers come together in a mix of storytelling and role-playing that sets out a unique and intimate experience for just fifteen viewers at each show.

Joget, Abang, Joget (Dance, Darling, Dance) by ponggurl, helmed by veteran artist Noor Effendy Ibrahim, is an evolving body-based performance art series, about a man who dreams of invoking the ghost of his unborn child. The Necessary Stage’s Theatre for Seniors presents two afternoons of free forum theatre performances entitled Take Me or Leave Me! where issues closed to the hearts of seniors in our midst – divorce amongst seniors and the abandonment of the elderly – will be examined and role-played by the cast and audiences.

Artist Alecia Neo’s large-scale multimedia installation, Unseen , is a showcase comprising photographic sculptures in the form of tents, video projections and sound experiences. Making its world premiere at ION Art, the installation presents intimate stories of the visually impaired and individuals who have lived with blindness. Developed in collaboration with participants from Taipei and Singapore, it is a merging of worlds across a myriad of individuals.

Specially created for the Fringe, The Face Daily, by new media artist Ong Kian Peng, is a fictional daily newspaper that emphasises crowd-driven news, sourced via computer algorithms on Facebook feeds. Making a world premiere at the Festival, this work invites the public to witness the newspaper production process at The Substation Gallery where one is also able to grab the latest edition of the papers on site. The Face Daily will be distributed across multiple Fringe venues.

Artist Tan Wei Keong’s Foundin rounds up the fifth Fringe Commission. City installations of miniature plastic figurines are left in public spaces, waiting to be found by passers-by, who can then opt to engage online with the real life individuals behind the figurines. The project inspires city dwellers to head out and actively explore the city and to notice art in different scales and perspectives.

-M1 Singapore Fringe Festival