More about our Speakers

 

Talk 1 : Inch Chua & Hyder Albar

Singaporean singer-songwriter and musician Inch Chua has performed in various local and overseas music festivals and events. In recent years, she has published a collection of her writings, sketches and paintings in her book “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea”. She has also released well-received EPs such as The Bedroom, Wallflower and Bumfuzzle. Her latest album, “Letters to Ubin”, was inspired by and written during her 4-month stay in Pulau Ubin in 2015. Inch is also the co-founder and COO of Invasion Singapore, a social enterprise dedicated to cultivating our local music scene.

Hyder Albar is currently the CEO of Invasion Singapore. Hyder was a drummer in an alternative rock band West Grand Boulevard, and his passion for music fueled his interest in building up a sustainable music culture in Singapore. Therefore, together with Inch Chua, he founded Invasion Singapore. One of Invasion Singapore’s efforts is the *SCAPE Invasion Tour, which aims to bring youths in Singapore closer to the local music scene and encourage them to continue supporting and discovering home grown talents.

 

Talk 2 : Prachi Saini

Prachi Saini started Je T’aime Perfumery with the vision of bringing the mysterious art of perfume design to a wider audience. Prior to following her passion in designing signature scents, she worked in the architecture and infrastructure construction industries in the USA and India. Now based in Singapore, she works together with her team to host fragrance workshops and parties where consumers can discover and create their own signature scents. Aside from leading these intimate workshop sessions, Prachi also works closely with consumers to design their signature fragrances in order for them to achieve their smell of success.

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Talk 3 : Shannon Lee

Ask Shannon “What is your passion?” and she will give an answer you would hardly expect. Through her 6 years at National Junior College, she was actively involved in a myriad of activities and spearheaded initiatives across different fields; it could be tricky to pinpoint exactly what her passion was. Shannon did her first science research project at age 14 after wondering if the household detergent her aunts introduced promoted instead of inhibit bacterial growth. As her curiosity piqued, she did a project every subsequent year, working with natto beans, silver nanoparticles and neurons. At 17, she took the bold step of experimenting with eggplants and batteries, an idea still foreign to most then. With faith, perseverance and good mentorship, she eventually published a paper in the Royal Society of Chemistry and became the first Singaporean to be awarded the second highest honor at the 2014 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), dubbed the Youth Olympics of Science Research.

To Shannon, discovery and knowledge alone is not the end, for she believes life is ultimately about being a blessing. Besides volunteering with various charities, Shannon initiated a collaboration to raise funds for Touch Young Arrows which educates and supports children from dysfunctional families. She also pioneered workshops for the children of Singapore Children’s Society and a science fair for students in Siam Reap, Cambodia. She currently works with fellow medical students to reach out to elderly who have fallen out of the healthcare system by providing free health screenings at their void decks. She leads a team in creating a health report booklet for the elderly which they hope will influence how other health screenings are done. She also serves in the research and development committee of this project.

If you meet Shannon, you might not think much for she has a quiet spirit that is easy to miss. She is a simple girl who loves her family and friends, enjoys both dance and sports and when asked ‘What is your passion?’ tends to answer, “I’m not too sure exactly, but I do like giving my best and for a good purpose”. Well, one thing is for sure, Shannon does things with a strong sense of purpose and a spirit of excellence and adventure. And when she finds herself resonating with a cause, she can be trusted to test new ideas and perform.

Talk 4 : Shubigi Rao

Artist and writer Shubigi Rao’s interests range from archaeology, neuroscience, language, libraries and books, cultural histories, contemporary art theory, and unfashionable branches of knowledge, to natural history and the environment. Her immersive and tongue-in- cheek books, artworks and installations employ puns (textual and visual) and wordplay, from creating archaeological archives of garbage, writing How To manuals for building a nation and a culture from scratch, discovering and diagnosing peculiar forms of urban malaise where digital dandruff and pixel dust accumulate like lint and cloud the contemporary brain, building immortal jellyfish, to a pseudo-museum environment in which issues ranging from the nature of collecting, the mechanisms of knowledge accumulation and storage, to destruction and cultural genocide are referenced. Since 2013 she has been travelling and filming libraries, archives, and public and private collections, globally for “Pulp: A Short Biography of the Banished Book” a ten-year film and visual art project about the history of book destruction. She is also writing a series of books on the subject, with the first volume of five released in January this year.

Her awards include a current year-long residency at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien, in Berlin, Germany, (June 2016 – May 2017), an artist residency at NTU CCA (Oct 2015 – Jan 2016), the NAC Creation Grant (2013), and Presentation Grant (2013, 2012), and twice the Award for Excellence in the Arts for most outstanding student of the year (MFA First Class 2008, BFA First Class 2006). She also holds a BA (Hons) in English Literature from Delhi University, India. She lectures part-time in critical studies and dissertation supervision for undergraduate and postgraduate students at Lasalle College of the Arts, Singapore.