About

About Karen Chan

Karen Chan is the Executive Director of the Asian Film Archive (AFA) and is focused on the preservation and access of collections, and the training of archivists. She teaches film literacy classes to students and the public. She writes and publishes essays about film preservation, most recently in the book, Keeping Memories: Cinema and Archiving in the Asia-Pacific (2022). She presents at industry and academic events like the International Film Industry Conference, the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) Conference, and the EYE Filmmuseum Amsterdam International Conference. Karen is the current president of the Southeast Asia-Pacific Audiovisual Archive Association (SEAPAVAA). She serves on the Singapore Film Commission advisory committee. Her previous experiences include working at the National Archives of Singapore, National Arts Council, and the Natural History Museum in New York City.

About Kirsten Tan

Kirsten Tan is a writer, director and filmmaker with a penchant for bold visual storytelling. Raised in Singapore, she lived in South Korea and Thailand before moving to New York City, where she has been based for over a decade. A Sundance institute and Cinereach Film Fellow, she did her Master’s in Film Production at New York University and received the Tisch School of the Arts Fellowship. Her debut feature POP AYE (2017) was awarded the Top Production Prize in the Torino Film Lab competition. It also received a Special Jury Prize for Screenwriting at Sundance, the Big Screen Award at Rotterdam Film Festival and the Best International Film Award at Zurich Film Festival. Tan was accorded the Young Artist Award by National Arts Council, Singapore (2015) and was nominated as a Singaporean of the Year by The Straits Times (2017).

About Zai Tang

Zai Tang is an artist, composer and sound designer based in Singapore. Drawing influence from acoustic ecology, phenomenology and electronic & experimental music, his practise is built upon a belief that listening is an invaluable means of attuning to and forming deeper relationships with the worlds we inhabit.

Recent presentations include the National Gallery Singapore (2021); Thailand Biennale, Korat (2021); Busan Biennale, South Korea (2020) with Rei Hayama; Singapore Biennale (2019); Danspace Projects, New York (2018) with Emmanuèle Phuon. {if your bait can sing the wild one will come} Like Shadows Through Leaves by The Migrant Ecologies Project won the FIPRESCI Award at ISFF Oberhausen (2021) and Best Singapore Short Film at SGIFF (2021). In 2022, Zai toured with Pichet Klunchun Dance Company performing “No.60” at ROHM Theatre (Kyoto), Tanz Im August (Berlin), Dansens Hus (Oslo), NorrlandsOperan (Umea), da:ns festival (Singapore) and IDF (Jakarta).

About Alfonse Chiu

Alfonse Chiu is a writer, artist, and curator working at the intersection of text, space, and the moving image. Their practice investigates imaginaries of capital and ideologies as shaped by media infrastructures and networked economies. They are the founder of the Centre for Urban Mythologies, a critical research and artistic platform exploring the tropes and narratives of the urban condition to propose larger situated critiques of capitalism and Anthropocene positioned from the Global South. They are the Fall 2021 e-flux journal fellow and the 2021/22 DECK Associate Curator. Their projects, performances, and engagements have been presented internationally including at Venice Architecture Biennale 2021, Ars Electronica 2022, and the IMPACT22 symposium presented by the PACT Zollverein, Essen.