NADA is a visual arts/sound project that explores the myth and synthetic history of a fabricated group of the same name focusing on the excavation of the golden era of Malay/Southeast Asian traditional and popular music that spanned from the 1960s to the 1980s. A concept developed by Rizman Putra and Safuan Johari, the duo blurs the line between fiction and reality by deconstructing popular Malay songs from the past and melding them back together like a newly-discovered treasure of long lost tapes that has aged with time.
NADA first presented a multimedia installation together with a one-night performance at Budi Daya, the first contemporary art exhibition held at the Malay Heritage Centre in 2014. They were then invited to Palais de Tokyo in Paris for an artist visitation stint, where they re-recorded selected songs in French with a Parisian singer as part of Secret Archipel Exhibition in March 2015. NADA was also part of Singapore Tourism Board’s SG50 international creative showcase, Singapore Inside Out, where they performed in Beijing, London and New York. During their stop in London, they did a special showcase at renowned independent record store, Rough Trade. In between their travels they were also invited to grace the stage of various festivals back at home such as the Night Festival and Neon Lights Festival.
2016 saw NADA’s first theatre appearance for “The Chronicles of One & Zero: Kancil” in which Rizman was also the director and Safuan did the score and sound-design. Following that they played a crucial role in ‘Club Malam’, an immersive performance as part of The O.P.E.N. for Singapore International Festival of Arts 2016.
The Goethe-Institut adopted NADA for 2 different projects in 2017. The first one was ‘Urban String’ where the duo performed with Ensemble Resonanz from Hamburg and the second piece was a commissioned video piece, In Search of the Bukit Timah Monkey.
In 2018 the Singapore International Festival of Arts invited NADA, together with collaborators SA & Brandon Tay, to present an audio-visual performance, Anticipation of One