OCULA | Tentacular Thinking through the Unfaithful Octopus

Wong Binghao (Bing) , Ocula , December 12, 2023
The octopus' alien ingenuity and tentacular reach are judicious metaphors for a refusal to commit to a single discipline or linear chronology.
 
For The Unfaithful Octopus: Image-Thinking and Adaptation at ADM Gallery in Singapore, curator Roger Nelson borrows the conceptual device of the octopus from theorist Mieke Bal to shore up his own essayistic exhibition-making approach, one that is experimental, playful, and partial. According to Bal, the octopus' main body is a contemporary vantage point from which its cunning limbs can grasp and draw in an array of sources, timelines, and contexts.
 
Fyerool Darma takes greater liberties with his reinterpretations. With characteristic obscurity, Darma layers an esoteric assortment of cultural references, found objects, sound, text, and AI in his installation Pathfinder (2023). Here, Darma tries to revive the enigmatic 20th-century cultural figure Erik Flower.
 
Little is known about Flower; he was born Muhamad bin Hadji Abdurahman in Johor, in what was then known as the Unfederated Malay States. Flower relocated to Berlin in 1917 (Darma suspects that he was a prisoner-of-war), where some recordings of his music and poetry are stored in a sound archive.
 

Despite his unsuccessful request to access these materials, through his installation Darma fabricated a rich life for Flower from what little information he could gather. Components include a 2021 essay by meLê yamomo which briefly mentions Flower, and an original screenplay (written by Johor native Sharmini Aphrodite, with an accompanying soundtrack produced by musicians berukera and gr834$ternl4if). An AI-generated portrait of Flower could be mistaken for a poster promoting his latest album: a grey flower is emblazoned across the left side of his face, with his name and the work's collective title surrounding in bold capitals.

 

Even as he attempts to remedy Flower's historical absence, Darma ironically rejects identification as Flower's glorified 'pathfinder' with his typically circuitous and collaborative mode of working. In a similar way, what is perhaps most alluring about the octopus is not its acquisitive ability or the impressive span of its limbs, but its indecipherable curiosities. It is this intrigue that the most captivating artworks in this exhibition grapple with. —[O]

 

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The Unfaithful Octopus: Image-Thinking and Adaptation is on view at ADM Gallery, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore from 12 October to 1 December 2023. It will tour to MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum in Chiang Mai, where it will open on 9 March 2024.