Okay, so it’s not exactly the most exciting title, but film-maker Kin Chui’s Open Call video installation is pretty interesting.

A case of layer upon layer of appropriation and reinterpretation, you’ve got two components here, clearly delineated once you enter the Substation Gallery.

You have, to your right a section dealing with a black and white archival image of coffee plantation workers in Malaya(? Java?) taken from the National Archives in the UK.

The photograph itself (I’m assuming it was reproduced) is placed on a table in front of two angled translucent fishnet screens — a wedge or an arrow — on which are projected Chui and gang’s filmic reconstruction of that very image (somewhat similar to Ho Tzu Nyen’s video tableaus).

There’s a dialogue right there between the photograph and the videos, but the videos themselves are in contrast to one another. It’s a bit like a loopy three-way thing here. The frozen-in-time colonial staring match in the archival photo (them at us/the-dude-who-took-the-photo, us/the-dude-who-took-the-photo at them) melts away to the scene to our right, with the “coffee pickers” coming alive, talking about us among themselves, returning our gaze quite actively, wary but also defiant or maybe dismissive. Its partner video, meanwhile, features the film crew just sitting there, barely moving, almost as static as the photograph on the table — the ones who capture images are themselves contained.

There’s a three-way thing going on at the other side as well. This part features performances by a Kuda Kepang group. Literally translating to “horse dance”, it’s a form practised in Singapore and Malaysia that’s derived from Java. Three of the fishnet screens are placed one in front of the other, all there projecting three different performances by Sapari bin Amat and gang recorded at The Substation Theatre. Because of the screens’ translucence, they sort of blend into one if you look at it from a straight angle.

If it’s easy to spot the “colonial” entry point part in the first section, you’ll need a bit more background info on the second. Apparently, the Dutch were the ones who introduced horses to Indonesia — but the dance’s roots (Kuda Lumping in Java) is, ironically, anti-colonial. It’s done after the Javanese wins a battle against the colonisers. Here in Singapore, Kuda Kepang itself has been marginalised, its trance elements a bit too much for some (the show’s curator, Zarina Muhammad, mentioned how MUIS had issused an advisory regarding elements “objectionable to Islam”.

So here you are, smack in-between these two things, enveloped in the hypnotic gamelan music that gets trippily intense later on, smelling incense. (Actually, I really didn’t smell any incense because it wasn’t lit when I dropped by, but it’s supposed to be there.)

Formalistically and thematically, there’s quite a lot going on here — stage and film and photography; the intense chaos on one side and the silent, detached calm of the other; the indoor performance of what I’m assuming is a very public dance form and the outdoor reenactment of an image kept in a private archive; the spiritual element of Kuda Kepang and the colonial enterprise implied in the coffee plantation image; the confluence of intimacy and detachment in the videos and even in relation to you as a viewer (there’s no fixed viewing point and you get to go around, your own shadow imposing itself on the projected images).

As I type this, I’m still getting a lot out of Performing Coloniality.

Maybe it’s not such a boring title after all.

Performing Coloniality runs until Sept 13 at The Substation Gallery. Free admission.