It’s that time of the year where I attempt to summarise everything I’ve done into a single post, because I’m absolutely awful at updating this site. I’m neck-deep in writing up my PhD dissertation in a final push before my submission date next August (2023), and that will be preoccupying most of my mental and emotional space for the next six months. But I’ve also had time for a few energising creative projects as a kind of pressure relief valve from the slower, more tedious academic pursuits:
I spent December through July working with contemporary dance company P7:1SMA (say “prisma”) on their site-specific performance, Loading/Unloading, which took place over several weekends at the Singapore Art Museum’s Tanjong Pagar Distripark site in various locations: a loading bay, a cargo lift, and the gallery itself. As writer-in-residence, I produced five essays about their process of research and performance-making (and contributed some videos too!). I’ve always been in awe of how the company takes the body of the dancer and allows them to be both a proxy for and the embodiment of labour, marginality, effort, liberation, transformation. In this case, we were looking at how the bodies of port workers and its overlooked staff are set against the mechanised landscape of the hyper-efficient, billion-dollar Singapore port.
The CITRUS practices (Care, Intimacy, Trauma-Informed Understanding and Safer practices in the arts) working group launched our Library of Care project in March! The Library of Care was conceived as a publicly-available online resource that introduces concepts and tools around care in artmaking processes, and we shared a first draft of the resource at a public dialogue, which I facilitated. My favourite part of the session was hearing from arts practitioners Divaagar, Shaza Ishak and Tan Beng Tian and how they experimented with and applied approaches from the Library in their day-to-day work. Some of us also did an interview about CITRUS practices and our ethos here.
Published two book chapters! Both based on my MA thesis on participatory performance and political discourse in Singapore, and both about the wonderful socially-engaged Singaporean theatre company Drama Box. The first was a chapter on Public Space in the bilingual text Drama Box 30 Keywords edited by Prof Quah Sy Ren (NTU). The second was a chapter on Drama Box’s popular touring work The Lesson (2015-present) in Changing Places: Drama Box and the Politics of Space published by the Centre for Performance Research and edited by Prof Charlene Rajendran and Richard Gough. I also had the huge privilege of writing a biographical essay on outgoing Drama Box artistic director Kok Heng Leun when he was conferred the Cultural Medallion this year (Singapore’s highest award for the arts) to celebrate a lifetime of significant contribution and service to the country’s cultural landscape.
Spent a few months in London on a research sabbatical, which was a really wonderful time of solitude that allowed me to focus on my writing – but also to present at the TaPRA (Theatre and Performance Research Association) conference at the University of Essex, as part of the Documenting Performance working group.
And as always I’m still with the independent academic collective AcademiaSG, where I co-organise the Singapore Studies Junior Scholar Seminar Series! We’ve had a fantastic second season, featuring presentations on how Singaporean parents choose primary schools, the use of Singapore sign language, grassroots leaders in Singapore, and perceptions of new Chinese migrants to the country. We have an ongoing open call for our third season; do send in an application if you’re eligible.
I’ve currently put all creative projects and collaborations on hold, but I’m very much looking forward to being done and dusted with this five-year chapter that has been the PhD. One of my big cravings is responding to performance – but also being able to write in various voices and genres, instead of just the narrow path of the dissertation. I sometimes experiment a little bit over at my Substack; if you subscribe you’ll get intermittent newsletters on performance or whatever I’m feeling enthusiastic about, really. I also did a little interview about “critiquing with kindness” together with fellow writers Joel Tan and Nabilah Said, which you can listen to here.
Have a wonderful rest of the year everyone, and see you in the next!