Allora & Calzadilla, Pierre Huyghe, and Rirkrit Tiravanija are participating in the 2025 Singapore Biennale, titled pure intention.

Allora & Calzadilla present the works Returning a Sound (2004) and Under Discussion (2005) reflect on the political and ecological conditions of Vieques, a small Caribbean island east of Puerto Rico, formerly used by the US Navy as a weapons-testing range from 1941 to 2003. Returning a Sound features a young activist traversing Vieques on a moped. Its exhaust pipe, fitted with a trumpet, acts as a military reveille announcing the end of sixty years of regular bombing and sounding a call for unity. Under Discussion follows a fisherman’s son navigating the island in a boat made from an upturned conference table. Filmed from above, the video evokes the view of a military aircraft, revealing abandoned bunkers and airfields. The boat’s passage highlights the island’s paradoxical past and present through two contrasting signs: one reads “Welcome to Vieques Wildlife Refuge,” and the other, marked with a skull and crossbones, warns “No Trespassing, Authorized Personnel Only: Danger—Explosives.”

Pierre Huyghe presents the work Offspring (2018). This instrument, descendant of L’Expédition Scintillante Acte 2, is inhabited by self-generated voices, breathes and invocations, reacting and learning from its environment such as, temperature, humidity, living movement, biochemical variations. These external conditions (monitored by sensors) influence the sound and light generated by the machine.

Rirkrit Tiravanija presents the work untitled 2016 (form follows function or vice versa no. two) (2016), continuing his exploration of the relationship between object, language, and participation. The work consists of a mirror-polished stainless steel box—a nod to Donald Judd’s minimalist forms—paired with a stack of T-shirts bearing the slogan FREEDOM CANNOT BE SIMULATED.

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