If Not, Accelerate is a project that examines the issues of migrant labour in Singapore through the matrix of the polis, the Greek word for city. The etymological root of the words police, policy and polity, the polis as the de facto site of politics and its many entanglements provides the conceptual linkages to excavate the historic and contemporary links between Singapore and its large migrant labour population. Founded as a trading port, whereupon convicts brought to the city-state – in its dual role as penal colony – had built the very foundations of the city. Beyond their role in the ceaseless construction of the city, their status as indentured workers simultaneously defines the obverse to the constituted power of the land.

Kent Chan is an artist, curator and filmmaker based in Netherlands and Singapore. His practice revolves around our encounters with art, fiction and cinema that form a triumvirate of practices porous in form, content and context. He holds particular interest in the tropical imaginary, the past and future relationships between heat and art, and contestations to the legacies of modernity as the epistemology par excellence. His works have taken the form of moving-image, text, performances, and exhibitions.

He is a former resident of Gasworks, Art Explora, Pivô Research, Jan van Eyck Academie, MMCA Residency, and NTU CCA Singapore. He has held solo and two-person presentations at Gasworks, Kunstinstituut Melly, Bonnefanten Museum, NUS Museum, and de Appel. His works and films have been exhibited in institutions and festivals including Tate Modern, MMCA, Liverpool Biennial, Videobrasil, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Seoul Mediacity Biennale, Times Museum, EYE Film Museum, Onassis Stegi, and Bienalsur. He is the 2023 winner of the Paulo Cunha e Silva Award and Impart Art Prize, and 2021 winner of Foundwork Artist Prize. His works are collected by the Kadist Foundation, the Rijkscollectie, Netherlands, Bonnefanten Museum, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig, and other institutions.

(Credit: Diana Pfammatter for CCA Berlin)