ABOUT M1 SINGAPORE FRINGE FESTIVAL
The M1 Singapore Fringe Festival is an annual festival of theatre, dance, music, visual arts and mixed media created and presented by Singaporean and international artists. Themed differently each year, the Festival aims to bring the best of contemporary, cutting-edge and socially-engaged works to the Singapore audience.
The M1 Singapore Fringe Festival is set to be a creative centre, with a twin-purpose of innovation and discussion; a platform for meaningful and provocative art to engage our increasingly connected and complex world.
The theme for M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2018 is Let’s Walk.
ABOUT LET’S WALK
The 2018 theme Let’s Walk comes from the title of a series of striking street performances by eminent Singaporean contemporary artist, Amanda Heng.
For Fringe 2018, we invite you to consider this culturally significant work by one of our most important artists. Amanda began this series in 1999 and performed the work in Singapore, Japan, France, Poland, Indonesia, Sweden and Spain.
Amanda Heng has worked in a range of mediums, and perhaps her most notable works such as Let’s Walk are so immediately engaging and participatory. While charmingly simple in form, they are arresting and deeply effective in drawing much needed attention to some of the most important social concerns of our times.
Let’s Walk is one of a series of walking performances that she has created over the years. The walks are designed and carried out with spectacular simplicity and intimacy, managing to carry both the potent provocation of a protest, and the peaceful contemplation of a walking meditation. From the title itself, Amanda clearly signals her invitation to engage, connect, collaborate and move forward.
Let’s Walk invited us all to think about the beauty business, and the lack of progress for women in society. In her performance, she invited members of the public to join her in walking backwards along the streets with high-heeled shoes in their mouths, while trying to guide themselves with handheld mirrors.
Amanda created the work in response to a range of worrying trends she was concerned about in the late 1990s, and are still concerns to this day. In 1997, Asia had been hit hard with a financial crisis. Many people lost their jobs and businesses, but women seemed to be the first to get retrenched.
Curiously and disturbingly, the beauty business did especially well at this time, as women were pressured to look better than their natural best. In Amanda’s own words, “A lot of Singaporean women were ‘upgrading’ themselves, going to beauty salons, having plastic surgery and so on to keep their jobs. A woman’s looks are still worth more than her abilities.”
So in tribute to Amanda’s work, to this work in particular, and to the many important ideas and questions it evokes, we invite you to propose your own works, to build on the provocations in Let’s Walk.
OPEN CALL FOR PROPOSALS
We are looking for progressive works that voice the concerns of today. Whether you are exploring themes of gender, beauty, inequality, injustice, economics, or all of the above, and more. And in whatever form or discipline you practise.
The Festival is accepting proposals for both existing and new works, that can build on the spirit of concern and creation inherent in Amanda Heng’s Let’s Walk. We are looking for works in all disciplines that will fall within that theme.
Deadline for submission of proposals: 3 March 2017
For more information, please visit:
http://singaporefringe.com/fringe2017/fringe2018.php
http://singaporefringe.com/fringe2017/application_faq.php
