One or Several Tigers – Holland Festival

The relationship between tigers and humans is complex. First regarded as kin and vehicles for ancestral spirits, humans ended up by virtually exterminating tigers in the age of colonialism. Yet, as myths and metaphors, tigers incessantly return to haunt the public imagination. In a film duet, the Singaporean artist and filmmaker Ho Tzu Nyen weaves history, ecology and mythology through his theatrical installation One or Several Tigers. Grafting animism onto animation, a Malayan Tiger and a colonial surveyor on two facing screens sing a duet in which a million years of history pass by. Through seamless use of cinematic techniques, ancient and contemporary, Ho Tzu Nyen enacts the manifold metamorphoses of tigers, humans and weretigers (people who can turn into tigers).

The theatrical installation One or Several Tigers invites visitors to step into a dream world where they meet the Tiger and the Surveyor. These figures come from a historical engraving from 1865, titled

Unterbrochene Straßenmessung auf Singapore (‘Interrupted Road Surveying in Singapore’) by the German illustrator Heinrich Leutemann. The engraving features George Coleman, who was the first head surveyor of British Public Works in Malaysia in the 1830s. Together with a group of prisoners, used as forced labour, Coleman is attacked by a tiger. It’s an image that can be seen as an allegory of colonial history: the wilderness opened up by modern technology on the one hand, confronted by the tiger that resists and attacks on the other.

The history of the tiger in the Malayan world is a recurring theme in Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen’s exploration of South East Asian history. His Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia presents an atlas of motifs woven through this diverse region. In recent years he has created the much-praised multimedia production Ten Thousand Tigers, a number of video works, installations and texts, as well as giving lectures. One or Several Tigers (2017) forms a synthesis of all these different projects.

In the Malayan cosmology people and tigers have always been closely connected: some tigers can turn themselves into humans and some people, like shamans, can transform themselves into tigers. One or Several Tigers is both about the old mythology of the weretiger, the being that communicates with the world of the ancestors and spirits, as well as the extermination of the tiger during the colonial period. In the 20th century the focus shifts away from transformations between humans and tigers, as the tiger comes to exist mainly in the domain of language, as a metaphor. For example: Tomoyuki Yamashita, the Japanese general who defeated the British in 1942, was called the ‘Tiger of Malaysia’ and the tiger is also became associated with communism in the Malaya.

In One or Several Tigers Ho Tzu Nyen a pair of digitally animated surveyor and tiger on two screens, sing a duet spanning a million years of shared history. Ho uses old and contemporary film techniques to mould his story into a hypnotizing sequence, including shadow puppetry, video, 3D scans, motion capture and animation. This means One or Several Tigers is also a reflection on visual technology and the history of film animation. The figures from the engraving have become digital characters in space. They revolve around each other like heavenly bodies, slowly merging as the boundaries fade between what is human and animal, magic and reason, history and folklore. Animism and the silenced history of Malaysia is etched into the retina via the medium of animation, claiming a space in the collective memory.

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direction Ho Tzu Nyen script Ho Tzu Nyen editing Ho Tzu Nyen compositing Ho Tzu Nyen, Vividthree Productions 3D scan Vividthree Productions 2D-animation Vividthree Productions 3D-animation Vividthree Productions, Mimic Productions 3D modeling and animation Mimic Productions project management Stephanie Goh production Fran Borgia cinematography Amandi Wong cast Mia Md Rasel, Md Mohosin, Hassand Khayrul, Chandra Roy Liton, Kathirvel Raja Kumar, Palamppan Kannan, Govindarasu Karuppaiah, Kuppan Ayyanar special thanks to Republic of Korea + Timelines (2017) commissioned by Asia Culture Centre Creation, Institute of Asian Culture D..., Haus der Kulturen der Welt, National Gallery Singapore music Vindicatrix vocals Vindicatrix motion capture performer Vindicatrix co-design installation, light Andy Lim light design Andy Lim show control programming Yap Seok Hui sound design Jeffrey Yue sound direction Jeffrey Yue mix Jeffrey Yue shadow puppetry Hadi Sukirno technical coordination Steve Kwek, Jed Lim touring production Tzu + ARTFACTORY with the support of National Arts Council (Singapore), Singapore International Foundation, Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, Office for the Hub City of Asian Culture, Republic of Korea + Timelines (2017) thanks to Anselm Franke, Kim Hyunjin, Bernd Scherer, Heidi Ballet Kevin Chua, Robert Wessing, Peter Boomgaard, Frie Leysen, Kim Seonghee, Nina Miall, Shabbir Hussain Mustafa, Charimaine Toh, Eugene Tan Max-Philip Aschenbrenner, Hiromi Maruoka, Tomoyuki Arai

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