Henry Tan

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Henry Tan

Preferred pronouns:

No pronoun preference
Birth year:

1986
Primarily based in or works from:

Thailand
Skills:

painting installation directing of a performance sound art 3D design visual and performance art
Topics:

environmental technology geopolitics biodiversity body southeast asia
Contact information:

Currently working on:

Henry Tan is developing a sculpture, installation and performance.

on the intersection between art, science and technology.

He uses sleep as a prism to explore different phenomena in the society, the ecological, societal and technological climate that effect our human body, nature and collective awareness.

Quick Facts:

Henry is a member of FREAK Lab Thailand, metaPhorest Japan, and research fellow at CGSB, NYUAD. Henry explores the boundaries between life and simulation. He investigates how emerging technologies like synthetic biology, mixed reality, brain stimulation, and artificial intelligence blur the lines between the real and the simulated. His work delves into how life adapts and negotiates with a constantly changing environment, shaped by factors like climate change, geopolitics, and geoeconomics. Henry uses sleep as a prism to understand and investigate life, society, culture, and technology. He creates installations, performances, songs, and architecture for people to rest and reimagine their perceptions through sleep and dreams.

His past projects include 24hr Sleep Experiments: Hibernation into the mycelium world 2023, The Lantern 2023, Artist residency at The Sociability of Sleeps 2021-2023, Semi-conductor Dream 2023, Young Eel 2019.

His upcoming projects include: 1. Pillars of Creation, 2. Sleep Is A Little Rest, Death Is A Little Growth, 3. How to Explain Sleep to a Robot Cock?

Three relevant works from the last 5 years of artistic practice:

Highest educational degree:

Bachelor of Art in Economics

Work samples:

Portfolio

Semiconductor Dream 2023

Semiconductor Dream 202335 minsperformance by Henry Tan and Huang Ding YunTaipei Performing Art Center

Despite current global chip shortages, our project uses sleep to address geopolitical tensions, bedside devices, and data privacy concerns while simultaneously harvesting sleepers’ biological data to produce semiconductor chips.

The Lantern

2023, InSomnolence exhibition by The Sociability of SleepsMontreal, Canada4×8 meters, light, sound, charms, feltHenry Tan + Ding Yun Huang, Pillow Culture, New Circadia

Where once the sun and moon would synchronize us to their rhythms of light and dark, electrification has contributed to the dwindling of shared night experiences. The Lantern is an experiment in ritualizing the liminal state between wakefulness and dreaming as a collective co-composition, a new ceremony across different temporalities of sleep. Based on the strange marriage of mythological figures, The Lantern is a shrouded time portal aimed at fostering a collective oneiric experience.

In Hindu and Buddhist traditions, Naga is a mythological figure who dwells in the watery underworld, guarding treasures and possessing great wisdom. Naga represents the cycle of life and death, and is revered as a symbol of power, protection, and transformation. Meanwhile, in Ancient Greece, the abaton—the innermost chamber of the Greek Asklepion complex—is where visitors would sleep collectively to “incubate” prophetic dreams and seek healing from “incubus” spirits, leaving behind the testimonies of their encounter. These ritualistic and shared scenes of retreat and restoration promote shared healing and the collective dreaming of the future into being. Across these traditions, The Lantern confabulates a ritual for today in a folded, penumbral chamber. Visitors are encouraged to ascend to the mezzanine, choose a soft sleep-induction charm spun from the recollected dreams of student storytellers, and gather in the thresholds of The Lantern.

Lunartic Dream

Inspired by the story of Princess Kaguya, we arrived at the gloomy Von Karman crater on the dark side of the moon, the princess senescence under the cosmic ray, her memory of life on earth solidified as regolith remnants. We must terraform regoliths into a primordial soup and bring the princess into life. Plant and Bacteria experimentation with lab-grade lunar regoliths and Primordial soup will display at the exhibition. The participants will undertake moon ventures and plan the rescue mission with your friends through virtual-reality exploration then modify the land condition using interactive augmented-reality moon sandbox. Finally, print your memory as a three-dimensional form using brain waves and moon dust.

Pearl of Lunar

Pearl of Lunar project by Artist (Henryandpartners) with Researchers and Scientists from Thailand was launched together with Sojourner2020 and other 7 artworks with SpaceX Falcon 9 CRS-20 to International Space Station for 1 month experiment in zero gravity.

Pearl of Lunar explored infrastructural desire and the futurity of Belt-and-Road Initiatives as seen through wealth accumulation, labor infiltration, and geopolitical control. But also, more ephemerally, the affective meshwork of greed and possessiveness that functions at the level of the individual and corporate entities.