The National Gallery Singapore’s (NGS) acclaimed podcast series “NO FLASH” returned this October with its much-anticipated Season 2 titled “Third Eye”.
National Gallery Singapore’s NO FLASH podcast: How SWF's writers transformed art into fiction for the second season Third Eye
FEATURES, PROFILES
06 November 2024
By Rytasha Passion Raj
Following the success of its debut season “Unstill Life” which premiered on 6 July, 2021, this new series transforms handpicked artworks from Singapore’s National Collection into captivating audio experiences. Each episode weaves fantastical narratives that breathe life into these unique Southeast Asian masterpieces.
This season, six exceptional writers – Bani Haykal, Diana Rahim, Lisabelle Tay, Manish Melwani, Wen-yi Lee and Ng Yi-Sheng – were chosen to participate in an intensive workshop led by Dr. Nazry Bahrawi and the Gallery’s Curatorial Programmes team.
The workshop encouraged them to push their creative boundaries and explore themes of mystery and the macabre. Each writer crafted a mesmerising story that will be featured across the six podcast episodes, enhanced by original music and sound design by Mervin Wong.
FEATURING WRITERS FROM SINGAPORE WRITERS FESTIVAL 2024
Adding to the excitement, two of these talented writers, Lee and Ng, will also be featured at the highly anticipated Singapore Writers Festival 2024 (SWF), which will run from 8 to 17 Nov, 2024.
They told Catch during an interview that participating in this NGS initiative has been a meaningful opportunity to expand their skills and spark their creativity, and how this collaboration serves as a perfect prelude to SWF, attracting fellow writers, book enthusiasts, horror and mythology fans, and art lovers alike.
Here’s a glimpse into their experiences and the inspiration behind their stories in the “Third Eye” podcast:
WEN-YI LEE
With her love for the local speculative fiction community and cross-medium collaborations, it was an easy decision for horror and fantasy author Lee to partake in this initiative. It gave her the chance to engage with visual art – an aspect she said she regrettably doesn't engage with enough – as well as meet more local speculative fiction writers and gain new sources of inspiration for her work.
“Looking through all the prospective art pieces to choose from and considering what I might imagine from them was a really good exercise I haven’t had a chance to do before,” she shared. That being said, picking out the artwork that spoke to her and set the foundation for her podcast entry was also a walk in the park.
“Across various art forms I’m drawn to elements that are strange, striking, slightly concerning, and/or have strong female themes; I like social horror a lot. Pacita Abad’s ‘Evil Eye’ just immediately stood out to me. The name, the almost psychedelic colours arranged in this hypnotic spiral around the central (almost yonic) iris. Like the name implies, there’s a gaze to the artpiece. I couldn’t look away from it. It felt cosmic.”
This vibrant artwork sparked the birth of Lee's story, “An Eye for An Eye.” As Lee describes it, the tale follows a girl taught by her mother to sew herself up, pulling threads and ribbons through her skin – until one day, she accidentally uncovers what she’s been holding inside and unravels all the stitches to become… something else.
“I saw the artwork and immediately landed on cosmic body horror”, she said with regards to how she tied her piece back to the given theme. “Honestly, this piece just flowed for me. ‘Evil Eye’ was very much about the strong emotions it evoked in me, and I just took those and ran.”
Lee did however face a challenge in adapting her story for audio. “Some lines or quirks that work in prose just don’t translate well to narration, so I had to keep that in mind while writing,” she explained. However, she found it easier to adapt since ‘Evil Eye’ is an abstract piece, allowing her more freedom without feeling tied to a specific scene.
NG YI-SHENG
Ng Yi-Sheng on the other hand, took a literal approach to his chosen piece, incorporating visual elements from the artwork in his story.
This Singaporean writer, researcher and activist, has a deep interest in Southeast Asian history and myth. Having used ekphrasis – the practice of using artworks as stimuli for literature – quite often when writing poetry, Ng shared that it was refreshing not to have the original artists demand changes to his work through this initiative, letting him freely adapt the original artwork to his heart’s content.
His story, titled “Heaven Waits”, is a more light-hearted one, set on a planet where it is always night, and a little “kochasri” – this adorable half-elephant, half-lion creature from Buddhist lore that was featured in the artwork – patiently awaits the morning. This concept stemmed from the elements and background of the artwork, which Ng referred to as “utterly untraditional and colourless, like a bleak, distant planet”.
Ng first came across the artwork, a painting called “Memory of the Universe” by Warnjing Den, years ago on the National Gallery Singapore’s website, which he used to scroll through for fun. Having seen the actual artwork at the Heritage Conservation Centre when he embarked on this project, with all its size and detail and gold leaf, he thought: “Whoa, one of us has got to do a story about this”.
Like Lee, Ng found the workshop very helpful in getting him into the groove of writing his piece. He shared: “It was honestly just great to be placed into a setting with other creative people and forced to write. I think I would’ve taken a lot longer to get started on my own!”
ART X FICTION
Through the in-person workshop, Ng even started writing a story based on Lee’s chosen artwork “Evil Eye”, which he hopes to develop further. This ties back to one of Lee’s key takeaways from the whole experience – which is that people can look at the same art and have entirely different perspectives.
“A couple of us picked the same art piece to work on and turned up with entirely different creative directions for the stories, and I think it’s always a testament to the subjectivity of art and also the breadth of imagination,” shared Lee. “Plus, a good art piece that has a hundred different possibilities in it.”
So, while Lee champions for women’s rights through her story, Ng kept his story’s message completely open to interpretation.
Tune in to each of their stories on the podcast and draw your own conclusions! Episodes 1 to 3 of "NO FLASH: Third Eye" launch on 29 Oct, 2024, followed by Episodes 4 to 6 on 5 Nov, 2024, on platforms like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and Luminary. The podcast will be available in Singapore, Canada, Germany, India, Malaysia, the UK and USA.
Image Credits: National Gallery Singapore, Moonrise Studio
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