Malar has been with LASALLE for 22 years serving as the Library Director. She has been part of the LASALLE's quality assurance process from its humble beginnings to the tertiary institution it is today. As the first homegrown institution to be awarded the Edutrust and evaluated by the international panel Art Quality Assurance Framework (AQAF), the research looks to share the lessons learned with other institutions both local and regional. It covers the challenges faced by LASALLE and the rigor that was applied overcome them.

Damaris is currently pursuing her doctorate in education. Due to changes in education policy in Singapore, educators in Institutes of Higher Learning are experiencing increasing numbers of learners with special educational needs such as dyslexia, attention deficit and autism. Firstly, the research aims to explore issues that are of current concern to educators of learners with mild special educational needs as they transition from secondary education to tertiary education. Secondly, the research will investigate strategies that have been adopted in order to deal with these issues.

The research aims to investigate traditional Chinese music (Huayue) in Singapore. Although Huayue is a traditional artform, some of its practices encompass modern forms and traces of western influence. This project captures developments in the traditional artform that are new, creative and different from how it has been managed, taught and performed. It is an ethnographic research study compiled from the fieldwork conducted by musicians, performers, teachers, composers and arts managers.

The research project examines documentation of extreme violence and death in two significant contemporary artworks—The Pixelated Revolution (2012) by Rabih Mroué and Touching Reality (2012) by Thomas Hirschhorn. The resulting extended essay contains in-depth analysis of the artworks and newly conducted interviews with the artists. The essay demonstrates the works’ emphasis and mirroring of the violence of image capture and mediation, through methods of framing that evoke and "perform" violence and death.

In the present information age, can digital technologies be adopted within contemporary art as drawing, thereby engaging new paradigms of representation, materialisation and aesthetic experience? How do we re-define drawings that make use of computers, machines and programmes and therefore question the convention and institution of drawing?

Zarina Muhammad’s research, writing and performance project draws from her decade-long multidisciplinary research on the shapeshifting forms and cultural translations. Her research investigates Southeast Asian ritual magic, sacred sites, forgotten spirits as well as the tracing of mythological roots of the feared, desired and revered (supernatural) body across the region. Her series of often collaborative and performance-based works deconstruct and aim to confront histories, texts, definitions, and (mis)representations associated with these bodies of knowledge and polycosmologies.

The research explores socio-cultural concerns surrounding the Aravani culture found in South India. By interpreting two specific narratives, Aravan (mythic, traditional) and Aravanis (gendered, life). The research examines the transgender community within the context of "transgendered" body, rituals and traditional narratives.

Cover image: God Aravan, Courtesy of the Artist.

Videologue: Encoded Expositions is a continual investigations and presentations in exhibitions, talks and forums, symposiums, workshops, roundtable discussion and play – including visitations and exchanges between curators and artists from countries in Asia that are in collaboration with my ongoing practice and research in video, audiovisual, digital and media art.

The research examines the cultural entity of the Malay artists across a period of time and provides an understanding of the current practice through reflections of the past and projections of the future. It explores and identifies the creative process, strategies, motivations, and opportunities of these artists.

Cover image: Malay Artist Ahmad A Bakar & Exhibition Curator Suhaimi Sukiyar at the official opening of Wahana Exhibition, Balai Seni Lukis (National Art Gallery), Kuala Lumpur - Malaysia, 2003.

The research aims to rigorously and critically contextualise the everyday as an object of theory and a material of art practice in the context of contemporary art made by Chinese artists. It questions how the details of everyday life provide a site of possibility with unforced aesthetic statement, but not gentrification aesthetics (Chang 2014), in critiquing the human condition from the perspective of Chinese culture. Cover image: Entrance view of exhibition 100 Kilometres, Chengdu, China, 2018. Courtesy of the Artist.