Portals is an innovative visual arts exhibition that bridges Singapore's wartime history with creative technology at the Battlebox. Set within the World War II bunker, the exhibition features seven Singapore-based artists whose works explore technologies and systems as agents of change to reclaim power and place.
Portals opens its doors for the first time, inviting audiences into a muti-sensory experience. Portals : After Dark presents a roving movement-sound performance that interacts and respond to the 7 new installations. Witness the Battlebox’s rich history come to life and engage with Singapore’s past like never before.
The Edge of Our Unmaking
A performative system set within Singapore’s Battlebox, a World War II bunker built by the Allied forces in 1939. The one-night only event unfolds through relational dynamics between the body-in-motion—an embodied process of exploration that confronts the frictions produced by difficult and obscured histories. Dancers will engage deeply with the embodied residues of past violence, using choreographies of resistance to challenge and disrupt these inherited legacies. The performance creates a space for physical reckoning, where the act of moving through the space becomes a process of interrogating and negotiating the weight of traumas embedded in both the body and the environment.
Portals: After Dark is curated by Butoh artist XUE in collaboration with Mervin Wong, Jack Lim, and Josh Tirados.
Portals is a programme of cmd.exe ("command prompt"), a new platform that explores the convergence of heritage and creative technology. The exhibition runs from 28 March to 29 June 2025. More details of the exhibition, and its public programmes can be found at cmdexe.art.
