ON FOLLOWING AND BREAKING INSTRUCTION by Aditya H. Martodiharjo

Date: Fri, 23 Oct

Time: 9pm - 10.30pm

Venue: Level 1, The Engine Room

Ticketed: $10

Register here

 

The presentation of expanded cinema performances often depends heavily on the presence of the artist themselves. In situations where the artist is unable to accompany the work in person, they would write a set of instructions so the venue is still able to present the work.

 

When there are no instructions, the performance simply cannot happen. But what if those instructions are not merely functional? What if they are actually part of the aesthetic, part of the artwork itself? And how restrictive is the instruction manual for the performer?

 

In this programme, Aditya Martodiharjo will explore and investigate different approaches to creating and performing photochemical works, with a particular focus on how instruction-based practices can shape the presentation and performance of film.

 

The programme will include three performances on 16mm film projectors and 35mm slide projector
• Performance 1: Man with Mirror by Guy Sherwin, interpreted by Aditya Martodiharjo using Instruction Manual by Teaching and Learning Cinema (TLC)

 

• Performance 2: Horror Film 1 by Malcolm Le Grice, interpreted by Aditya Martodiharjo using Instruction Manual by Teaching and Learning Cinema (TLC)

 

• Performance 3: Serene/Static, in collaboration with Rizki Lazuardi, Mark Chua and Lam Li Shuen of Film Nerve

 

Through these three performances, Aditya will explore the limitations, boundaries, interpretations, and possibilities of instruction manuals as part of film performance. By performing works through instructions rather than through the direct presence of their original creators, he examines how a performance can be transmitted, interpreted, and transformed through documentation, and how the instruction itself can become part of the work's artistic and performative framework.

 

The performance for Guy Sherwin and Malcolm Le Grice's works are presented in collaboration with Australian artist group Teaching and Learning Cinema (TLC), who document and archive performance methodologies so that ephemeral photochemical works can be reconstructed and re-enacted for future audiences.

 

The performances will be followed by an artist Q&A and discussion.

 

This programme is presented under the "Clusters" strand of YAM AT SAM (28 Aug 2026 – 31 Jan 2027), comprising expanded cinema performances by local and regional artists that extend the language of moving images beyond fixed screens, using projection, performance, sound and physical space.

 

 

About the Artists
Aditya H. Martodiharjo is an experimental filmmaker from Indonesia who uses celluloid film as his primary artistic medium. Drawing from found-footage archives, his compositions employ techniques of cutting, pasting, and looping. He further manipulates the material through reprinting, drawing directly onto the film, or even burning it as it passes through a film projector. The manipulation of machines—and the way the eye perceives light and darkness—forms a major part of his artistic exploration.

 

He is also active in Lab Laba Laba, an artist-run film lab based in Jakarta, and works professionally as a film preservationist.

 

Rizki Lazuardi is a visual artist and independent film programmer based in Bandung, Indonesia. He works with moving images and its aspect of materiality and institutional power. Lazuardi’s works and programs have been a part of festivals, museums and off-spaces, among others Image Forum Tokyo, Museum MACAN, Berlinale, WORM Rotterdam, and Singapore Biennale. Lazuardi is a member of film laboratory collective Lab Laba Laba and initiated a moving image platform PALAPA. He studied film and time-based media at HFBK University of Fine Arts Hamburg.

 

 

INTRO TO 16MM WORKSHOP by Lab Laba Laba

Date: Sat, 24 Oct

Time: 10am – 5pm

Venue: Level 1, The Engine Room

Ticketed: $50

Register here

 

This hands-on workshop introduces participants to shooting and working with 16mm film using print stock as an affordable and highly experimental alternative to conventional camera negative.

 

Participants will learn the basics of operating and loading a Bolex camera, metering light, and understanding how light interacts with photographic emulsion. Working collectively with 100ft of film, the group will shoot a short roll before moving into the darkroom to process the material by hand.

 

The workshop will also introduce alternative processing methods and explore how changes in chemistry, exposure and handling can be used creatively to alter the resulting image. Once processed, participants will learn basic film editing and splicing before working directly with 16mm projectors, experimenting with lenses, filters and other ways of manipulating the projected image.

 

Over the course of approximately 4–6 hours, participants will experience the full analogue filmmaking process, from loading and shooting, through processing and editing, to the final projection of the film they have made together.

 

No prior experience with 16mm film or darkroom processing is required.

 

This programme is presented under the "Rhizomes" strand of YAM AT SAM (28 Aug 2026 – 31 Jan 2027), comprising workshops that introduce participants to various aspects of analogue handmade image-making - across shooting, processing, projection and cameraless techniques.

 

Workshop Flow:
- Introduction to 16mm and print stock
- Bolex camera basics
- Shooting
- Processing
- Editing and Projection
- Sharing and Conclusion

 

About the Artists
Aditya H. Martodiharjo is an experimental filmmaker from Indonesia who uses celluloid film as his primary artistic medium. Drawing from found-footage archives, his compositions employ techniques of cutting, pasting, and looping. He further manipulates the material through reprinting, drawing directly onto the film, or even burning it as it passes through a film projector. The manipulation of machines—and the way the eye perceives light and darkness—forms a major part of his artistic exploration.

 

He is also active in Lab Laba Laba, an artist-run film lab based in Jakarta, and works professionally as a film preservationist.

 

Lab Laba Laba is a Jakarta-based film laboratory initiative comprising filmmakers, visual artists, programmers, archivists, scholars, and film enthusiasts. They extensively work with photochemical material and other physical media to disseminate knowledge about the film production technology and its sociopolitical entanglement. In 2015, Lab Laba Laba kicked off their first major exhibition in the abandoned facility of the State Film Production Company of Indonesia. Lab Laba Laba’s work and program have been presented in Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, Berlinale Forum Expanded, Short Film Festival Hamburg, and Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana.

 

ORH NEE SCREENING NIGHTS: LAB LABA LABA (INDONESIA)

Date: Sat, 24 Oct

Time: 7pm - 8.30pm

Venue: Level 1, The Engine Room

Ticketed: $10

Register here

 

Curated by Rizki Lazuardi, this two-part programme by Indonesia’s Lab Laba Laba brings together experimental and independent works made with photochemical film across different time periods. The programme spans works recovered through unconventional restoration and reprinting processes to contemporary films that play with the material, spectral and unpredictable qualities of celluloid.

 

The works will be presented across 16mm prints as well as digitized 16mm and Super 8.

 

The screening will be accompanied by a discussion with Rizki Lazuardi and Chew Tee Pao (Asian Film Archive), moderated by Warren Sin.

 

This programme is presented under the "Orh Nee Screening Nights" strand of YAM AT SAM (28 Aug 2026 – 31 Jan 2027), comprising special screening programmes of films and moving image works, largely never shown in Singapore before, made with analogue film and photochemical processes. The programmes include works by contemporary artists and newly restored prints.

 

 

About the Speakers and Moderator
Rizki Lazuardi is a visual artist and independent film programmer based in Bandung, Indonesia. He works with moving images and its aspect of materiality and institutional power. Lazuardi’s works and programs have been a part of festivals, museums and off-spaces, among others Image Forum Tokyo, Museum MACAN, Berlinale, WORM Rotterdam, and Singapore Biennale. Lazuardi is a member of film laboratory collective Lab Laba Laba and initiated a moving image platform PALAPA. He studied film and time-based media at HFBK University of Fine Arts Hamburg.

 

Chew Tee Pao has been with the Asian Film Archive (AFA) since 2009. As Senior Archivist, he has led the restoration of more than 30 films, developed AFA’s collections, and curated retrospectives and public programmes that bring archival works to wider audiences. He has represented AFA at international conferences and forums on film preservation and advocacy, and his writings include contributions to NANG magazine (Issue 8, 2020) and the anthology Singapore Cinema: New Perspectives (2017), where he co-authored a chapter on independent digital filmmaking and its archival impact.

 

Warren Sin was a film programmer at the National Museum of Singapore Cinematheque between 2008 and 2017. He was responsible for several retrospectives focusing on significant film directors from Federico Fellini to Hou Hsiao-hsien, as well as various cinema related programmes. He was also the key programmer for the annual Singapore Short Cuts programme during his tenure at the Cinematheque. From 2018 to 2020, he supervised new 2K scans of Singapore films such as Royston Tan’s 15 and Colin Goh’s Talking Cock: The Movie.

 

 

Born of the Yam

Date: Fri, 28 Aug

Time: 8pm - 9pm

Venue: Level 3, The Cage (#03-09)

Ticketed: $10

Register here

 

BORN OF THE YAM is an expanded cinema performance presented as a techno-mythological ritual of light and sound. Performed with multiple modified 16mm projectors and DIY machinery, 16mm film loops combining hand-processed and inkjet-printed sequences weave together fragmented visions from a mythic 11th century island, isolated in time. The images draw from an imagined mythology – recurring across the artists’ Unending Island project – centred around the birth of a demigod from a yam.

 

Between elation and fear, the demigod figure is gradually manifested through visions formed from yam eco-developer and vegetal interventions, fusing with 3D-rendered virtual island-scapes. BORN OF THE YAM evokes the performativity of ritualism and idolization, to reflect on their surfacing in our modern political landscape. The event becomes a kind of collective “bonfire” fanned by the flames of obsession and fantasy.

 

Hand-Processing 16mm with Eco-Developer Workshop

Date: Sat, 29 Aug

Time: 2pm - 6pm

Venue: Level 3, The Main Deck (#03-07)

Ticketed: $50

Register here

 

This workshop introduces participants to the techniques and approaches of eco-processing 16mm film. Together, we will brew an eco-developer using foraged plants and learn how to hand-process 16mm film using a Lomo developing tank.

 

Participants will be guided through the complete hand-processing workflow: preparing the plant-based developer, practicing loading 16mm film into a Lomo tank, and learning the basics of the development process and recipes.

 

The workshop frames eco-processing as both a sustainable technique and a creative language, seeing it as a way to make moving images through local material while avoiding chemical-heavy workflows. With this workshop we aim to embrace the sensorial, ritual-like craft of brewing and developing. Focusing on creating with natural materials rather than aiming for perfection, we will explore how the film itself can become a site where moving images are formed by ecology and chance.

 

Shooting on Super 8 workshop by Film Nerve and Experimental Society of the Philippines

Date: Sat, 12 Sep

Time: 2pm - 6pm

Venue: Level 1, The Engine Room

Ticketed: $50

Register here

 

An introductory, hands-on workshop for anyone curious about shooting on Super 8 film. Participants will learn the basics of using a Super 8 camera, including selecting film stocks, loading film, understanding camera controls to exposure, focusing and practical shooting techniques, tips on processing and scanning film and other useful resources. The workshop will also cover simple camera care and maintenance.

 

During the session, participants will shoot a collective film together on Super 8, with results to be processed, scanned and shared as digital files after the workshop. No prior experience with analogue film is required.

 

As part of the workshop, participants will be entered into a lucky draw for a chance to win a free Super 8 camera and continue experimenting with the format after the session!

 

This programme is presented under the "Rhizomes" strand of YAM AT SAM (28 Aug 2026 – 31 Jan 2027), comprising workshops that introduce participants to various aspects of analogue handmade image-making - across shooting, processing, projection and cameraless techniques.

 

 

About Experimental Society of the Philippines
Experimental Society of the Philippines (ESP), formed in 2023, is a collective of filmmakers and film enthusiasts passionate about experimental cinema. ESP holds screenings of experimental films not often shown in public, with a focus on programming works by up-and-coming filmmakers. It has mounted screenings in various venues while supporting many other exhibitions and screenings in experimental and art house cinemas, such as Voyage at the Asia Pacific Film Institute in 2024 and Rise in Sine Pop in 2023, and the Forum for Super 8 and the moving image at the Ateneo Art Gallery in 2023. The Experimental Society of the Philippines has also initiated an Asian filmmaking collective alongside artists in Cambodia, Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, and Myanmar.

 

ORH NEE SCREENING NIGHTS: EXPERIMENTAL SOCIETY OF THE PHILIPPINES

Date: Sat, 12 Sep

Time: 8pm - 9.30pm

Venue: Level 1, The Engine Room

Ticketed: $10

Register here

 

Across the selection, personal histories merge with archival material, disappearing spaces, and fragmented recollections.

 

Furan Guillermo’s I Feel Like A Stranger But I Know I Left Pieces of Myself Here uses Super 8 to map a hometown through everyday places and memory. Rustom Pujado’s Fragments brings together 1960s and 70s archival imagery, photomontage, and mixed media to explore historical memory. In (Thorns in My Chest) Mga Tinik sa Dibdib, Cha Roque captures fleeting recollections before they vanish, while Caloy Soliongco’s Form Study Five – Pt2. layers Super 8, cyanotype, 35mm stills, and archival 120 film in a dreamlike exploration of sight, fear, and memory. Lastly, Lih Ocampo’s Familiar Strangers manually manipulates decaying footage of anonymous Japanese families in real time, framing the projection as a reflection on laughter, loss, and time passing.

 

The screening will be followed by an in-person discussion and Q&A with Caloy Soliongco and Lih Ocampo.

 

This programme is presented under the "Orh Nee Screening Nights" strand of YAM AT SAM (28 Aug 2026 – 31 Jan 2027), comprising special screening programmes of films and moving image works, largely never shown in Singapore before, made with analogue film and photochemical processes. The programmes include works by contemporary artists and newly restored prints.

 

 

About Experimental Society of the Philippines
Experimental Society of the Philippines (ESP), formed in 2023, is a collective of filmmakers and film enthusiasts passionate about experimental cinema. ESP holds screenings of experimental films not often shown in public, with a focus on programming works by up-and-coming filmmakers. It has mounted screenings in various venues while supporting many other exhibitions and screenings in experimental and art house cinemas, such as Voyage at the Asia Pacific Film Institute in 2024 and Rise in Sine Pop in 2023, and the Forum for Super 8 and the moving image at the Ateneo Art Gallery in 2023. The Experimental Society of the Philippines has also initiated an Asian filmmaking collective alongside artists in Cambodia, Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, and Myanmar.