Annual Arts Festival

The Substation offers a home to cultivate and foster imaginations, particularly those that find other spaces inhospitable. For Art cannot be without freedom and it has no enemies except ignorance. And so The Substation is also a school: a place of learning, of discovery and of experimentation. School not just in the sense of a classroom: but classroom-cum-gymnasium: For Art makes equal demands of both mind and muscle. This is possible, indeed only desirable, because The Substation is also a meeting place: a node, where Art, artists and art-lovers mingle, muse and meditate. Which is why The Substation is always open: open in mind and heart and attitude. Embracing all who choose to come: including those who don't: containing at once consonance and conflict.

The boundaries that pigeon-hole hold no sway. This is a multi-disciplinary, multi-media space. And all histories, traditions, heritages and languages are welcome within; in the firm faith that this is the road to the future. Art speaks with a single tongue; which expresses nothing but itself. And there is a place in the language of Art for eloquent failures as for resounding successes. For nothing is wasted in Art, and the seeds of success are often scattered in the fields of failure.
- T. Sasitharan, Artistic Director

NOALIBI
By Metabolic Theatre Laboratory
4 - 5 Sept
8 pm

"Waiting for death is nothing if we remember the sensation of sleeping in a water bag and under a pile of shit. If we can escape through our anus we will evaporate as gas. It doesn't matter if we have to swim through a pile of shit. We will join the cloud and return as dew in the morning."

Noalibi is a dance theatre piece about prisoners awaiting a trial that never came. Noalibi looks at the body in a state of betrayal, courage and hopelessness. What does it mean to be inside and outside. Or is there such a thing as "inside" and "outside"?

Noalibi was first produced for The Substation's Theatre Festival in November 98. It is choreographed and directed by MTL's Artistic Director Zai Kuning. This is a preview of MTL's latest piece, which Zai Kuning and the performers will bring to Tokyo, Hong Kong and South Korea later this year. WALKING NAKED By Gitanjali Kolanad 8, 9, 12 - 14 Sept 8 pm

"FOR WANT OF A BETTER WORD" (OR "PLEASE") A performance within an installation By Daniel Kok
5 Sept
2pm

"Please" is an accumulation of motifs in my work over two years. Glass, paper, water, thread, lines, words.

Stuff.

Silence. Impossible to say anything. Impossible to make a statement. No point to make, just the doing. Action. Movement. But no distance covered, nowhere to go. Only turning, turning, turning. Essentially stationary. When one carries on moving without a destination. One is dancing.

So I go on, looking for someone like me, someone to dance with me, someone to share this bewilderment, someone to be truly human with.

To look for one's word. One word. One's best word.

THE RE-MEMBERING BODY
Installation and performance By Chu Chu Yuan
3 Sept: 3 - 5pm and 8.30 - 9.30pm
4 - 5 Sept: 12 - 3pm and 5 - 8pm

A work engaging the body in a performing state within an installed environment, where the body becomes at once an object moving within an environment and is also an environment of itself. Chu Yuan's installation draws from her reflections on the positioning of 'suffering and sacrifice' within the realm of women's experiences, and on her deepening understanding of the strength of the human will.

WEST MEETS EAST
By Brigitta Zeumer
12 - 19 Sept Artist Talk on 18 Sept, 2.30pm: Watercolour Painting in Europe
- In history and today, especially in Germany

25 original watercolour paintings and graphic works by award-winning German artist Brigitta Zeumer. With her affinity to East Asian mentality and spirituality, the works tend towards abstraction, with a quiet, meditative mood of great depth and lyric.

In 1991, Zeumer was the first German living artist invited by the Chinese Minister for Arts to hold an exhibition at the Emperor's Palace in Beijing. This widely acclaimed exhibition was followed by 6 other exhibitions between 1991 and 1998.

With support from Lyves & Company and Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany.

FALL' ART
By Myriam Machi
25 Sept - 7 Oct Based on the theme of renewal in nature, the passage of time and evolution, the works are painted in the colours and symbols of the 4 seasons.

Executed in a technique copyrighted by Machi, some of the large canvas works (measuring 2.7m x 1.6m) are placed on the floor, and are to be stepped on to be viewed.

This exhibition by the Swiss artist is held in conjunction with Swiss Connections 99.

With support from Banque Cantonale Vaudoise, Swissair and Embassy of Switzerland.

WORDS
By Ingot Art Dimensions
16 - 19 Sept
8pm

Go out into the open, the power of words in plain air is there.

Ingot Art Dimensions presents an evening of dramatic monologues in The Substation Garden. Seasoned stage actors take scripts out of the theatre and breathe life into their favourite monologues in the open. WORDS goes back to the spoken word as the basis of drama.