Sypnosis

The 2023 edition of Running with Strippers returns with The strange beautiful thing was within reach, an exploration by 17 artists and collectives from various disciplines, invited to reimagine the interstitial spaces of an industrial building.

Organised as a non-prescriptive sequence of alternating scenes, the performances and installations highlight the creative affinities and friction between society and technology, while exploring the performative duet between man and machine.

Artists: Brandon Tay x thesupersystem, Rizman Putra, Tristan Lim, Zul Mahmod, Alina Ling x Andy Lim, Kiat ft. ArunDitha, Farhan + William Chan, ARTFACTORY, Studio Darius Ou, Beth Frey x weish x Julius Foo x CULT

Siren Server by Brandon Tay x thesupersystem
Siren Server is an interactive installation that investigates the social contract of exchanging personal data for access and free services. By choreographing a combination of a drone swarm, lasers, live video, and projection, thesupersystem and Brandon Tay explore Jaron Lanier's term 'Siren Server', coined in his 2014 book Who Owns the Future, where he explores our collective practice of sacrificing autonomy, agency, and privacy to participate in popular social media platforms and search engine efficacy. Eight years from its publication, with the quantum leap in machine learning and AI research and development, such practices are even more relevant and prevalent, and this work aims to speculate on a future in which drone 'sirens' actively lure participants to resign their identity for the data pool.

Amad Ibraheem (AI) by Rizman Putra
Amad Ibraheem (AI) is an exploratory movement piece that engages and immerses the audience in the space through a set of uncanny patterns and social behaviours as an NPC (nonplayable character). The character will chart a performative journey through the duration of the event that is taking place by following the rules of a fictional quest. NPCs can do many things: They can be befriended, bartered with, danced with, or even hold a conversation. But ultimately, the defining feature of the NPC is their pre-programmed limit. Watch as you interact with Amad as he makes his rounds, blending in but not quite well.

Notochord by Tristan Lim
Notochord is an interactive multimedia installation that invites the viewer to witness an artwork's evolutionary path - its growth instigated by the presence of the viewer. Starting off infantile and bodiless behind the screen, they adapt to their audience's presence, shaping their forms to better accommodate the silent relationship between themselves and the viewer, requiring an audience to fuel their growth and sustain their existence.
Delving into the silent relationship between artwork, viewer, and medium, Notochord picks on our feelings towards the inanimate, as they struggle and crave for us so that they could be more.

Modular by Zul Mahmod
Modular is a live sound performance that interrelates body, space, and time within a surround sound environment. Immersed in the sonic space where different elements organically converse, Zul orchestrates between scales of perfect harmony and chaotic dissonance.

vOrtex by Alina Ling x Andy Lim
vOrtex is a performative light installation exploring the evolution of visual speed and temporal frequencies, playing with the intensities of circular motions, rotations, turbulence, and dissipation. The vortex organizes the flow of light and sound, held together by the sinews of fluid movements.
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“We understand tornadoes scientifically, but it still feels supernatural. The randomness makes it feel supernatural.” -Michael Koryta

Music Performance by Kiat ft. ArunDitha, Farhan + William Chan
Kiat and his band are set to create a surreal and exploratory atmosphere in this edition of Running with Strippers. The experimental music producer/DJ will be joined by poet-vocalist ArunDitha and multi-instrumentalist Farhan to debut a new music set featuring live vocals, electronic/live instrumentations, and improvisational elements. Performing for the first time together, the trio will be reimagining and improvising the sonically adventurous sounds of The Greatest Hits and Polymorphism. Visual artist William Chan joins the trio on stage with a deconstructed visual installation that echoes the abstracted ebb and flow of this sonic journey.

There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy by Beth Frey x weish x Julius Foo x CULT
Visual artist Beth Frey’s chromatic cartoon-like world is a portal to a different reality as weish sonically ushers a fool into deliverance with a recurring hymn of escape. This absurdist tragic-farce is a nonsensical ode to childlike humanity. A strange beautiful thing brought to you by CULT.
Visual design by Beth Frey ・Song composition and audio performance by weish ・Performance by Julius Foo ・Text by CULT

S p a c e s by Studio Darius Ou
S p a c e s is a work about the negotiation between typographic and industrial spaces—looking at gaps and occlusions as pockets for creativity and typography.