A creative response to Singapore Biennale: Natasha
By ants chua

‘Fragility Game’ (2023) by Daniel Lie opened at 22 Orchard Road on 5 January 2023 as part of Singapore Biennale: Natasha. A multisensory, more-than-human installation that transforms over time, it explores life and loss, death and decay. In this lyric piece, ants chua responds to Natasha through the lens of ‘Fragility Game’.

Daniel Lie, ‘Fragility Game’, 2023, Singapore Biennale 2022 named Natasha, installation view. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.

Daniel Lie, ‘Fragility Game’, 2023, Singapore Biennale 2022 named Natasha. Image courtesy of ants chua.

1.

How do you describe the scent of chrysanthemums? A grin blooms across the window.
How long does the fragrance of fresh earth linger? When does it go stale?
Tiger stripes of soil creep up the pillars, carpet the concrete floor.
Pad softly across the room.

Against the white walls, a rich loamy smell.
Amidst the topsoil, mycelium weave their mesh.
Cordyceps are gold threads growing out of decay.

“These are my boss,” Daniel said.
“I feel they’re my boss or my teacher or my lover. Because we’ve been in a relationship for ten years. I try to make them happy and bring them around to show them to humans.”

No eating in the gallery. You feed anyway.
No drinking in the gallery. We breathe them in and out.
No touching in the gallery. You land unseen on our skin.

2.

Pelting rain thumps onto the ground, the heavy steps of a tired man.
It puddles at the edges of the roads. Little lakes assert their temporary places, rippling streams crossing the path and gleaming, the scales of a fish.

In the gallery, my toes are still damp from my walk, where the rain found a way to touch me.
Sweat beads between my shoulder blades, breath fogs up my glasses.

In the bulk of your body, the reflective blue linoleum floor throws spotlights back at their sources.
Accompanied by the hum of industrial cooling systems, I walk and still perspire.

Donghwan Kam, ‘Fermentation Houses’, 2021-2023, Singapore Biennale 2022 named Natasha, installation view. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.

Where are you? Can I encounter you as human if I cannot tell where you begin and end?
Parts scattered across the island, a macabre murder mystery. I visit, unable to see the shape of you.
Yes. I should like to live with you awhile.

“Where are you? Can I encounter you as human if I cannot tell where you begin and end?
Parts scattered across the island, a macabre murder mystery. I visit, unable to see the shape of you.
Yes. I should like to live with you awhile. ”

3.

I lie down amidst the Migrant Ecologies Project, sink into a stubborn, stiff beanbag.
Replaying recorded birdsong births it into industrial glitch sound.
The installation breathes around me, pendular and ponderous.

Swells of shadows weave their spells over you, my sleeping form.
My body. My unwieldy host. My tether to time.

Lucy Davis, Alfian Sa'at, Tini Alman, Zachary Chan, ‘Talking in Trees (Like Shadows Through Leaves) Part 1’, 2022, Singapore Biennale 2022 named Natasha, installation view. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.

4.

A long distance lover visits. In a bid to impress, I cook for her.
In tiny houses across the country, Donghwan Kam’s soy sauce ferments.

Standing in my kitchen, we speak in the flesh for the first time in three years.
I ask her to mince turmeric.
A deep yellow sinks into her palms, creases in the cloth of her skin.
We peel dragonfruit to add pink, hoping for orange.

5.

In one of the last shophouses on Orchard Road, clay vessels weigh fluttering cloth down, pin it in front of glass. Hungry teeth of sunlight stream in to steal their stain, bleaching them bone white.

Zarina, wearing the same yellow, observes the long limbs of ‘Fragility Game’ reaching toward Fort Canning, embracing the hillside where sultans are buried.
She points out this turmeric gold is a royal shade. “Keramat yellow,” she called it.

Don’t tell anyone, but-
I have begun to resent my body.
It sleeps, eats, sheds, sweats, drools.
It sounds the alarm and I press snooze.
I set the alarm and it sleeps through.

Words run from me to mean more and less what I want.
I surrender to the spaces between us, concede they are active and agential.
Our bridges mislead us, our boats teach us,
even as we walk on, ride in them.

6.

Fort Canning, Bukit Larangan.
Forbidden Hill that houses Keramat Iskandar Shah—a shrine to the last king of Singapura.
At its foot—the first botanical garden (1822-1829).
48 acres of land set aside for experimental crop cultivation; more than 25 football fields of space.

A small spice garden remains.

“The body is not always there,” Zarina said. “The soil sometimes is enough to represent.”

7.

Against the white walls, a rich loamy smell.
In a storm the windows would swing shut by themselves.

A smile of chrysanthemum blossoms, a cool breath of air conditioning.
Tied together at the necks, their heads confer.
“Living and dying is a nonnegotiable condition,” they said.

Stems: bouquets of needles.
Reinforced grass resists incursion.
No. No one can make the plants sing.

Singapore Biennale: Natasha runs from 16 October 2022 to 19 March 2023 at Tanjong Pagar Distripark and various locations across the island. For more information, please visit singaporebiennale.org.