Dance Studies:
Namami: Performative Translations (2019, presentation)
Presented at Telling Stories: Performer(’)s Present symposium at Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music (2019)
With this project, I centre the empirical in artistic analysis by experimenting an analytical method that began and ended in performance. In doing so, I hope to elaborate upon the generative potential of analysis and question the implicit antagonism between ‘drastic’ and ‘gnostic’ (from Carolyn Abbate) forms of knowledge in artistic epistemology. To this end, I present five analysis-texts I created of a dance item in the Odissi (Indian Classical Dance) tradition, which use different notational languages and prioritise difference aspects of the ‘dance’. Four of these were performed by a dancer who had not seen the source piece. In this presentation, I used the dancer’s ‘re-performances’ to reflect more broadly upon the role of analysis in dance and music, and the forms analysis could potentially take beyond the text.
Gendered Beings in Indian Classical Dance (2019, essay)
This paper explores the articulation of gender in Odissi, giving special attention to Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra’s performances of ashtapadis from the canonical cycle Gita Govinda, by poet Jayadeva, in Odissi dance repertoire.
Pursuing Theological and Aesthestic Interests in Devotional Indian Dance (2021, essay)
I trace the intersection and conflicts of ‘interests’ given by rasa aesthetic theory and bhakti philosophy in performing devotional Indian dance. As aesthetic and religious philosophies respectively, both rasa and bhakti act upon ICD; however, while rasa theory values aesthetic distance, depersonalisation and abstraction, the devotional attitude/practice of bhakti requires a devotee to identify fully with religious figures in order to attain transcendence. I elucidate the problem of conflicting interests from the perspective of a performer of ICD, and speculate upon philosophy’s role - as well as its limitations - in resolving it.
Toward a Queer Phenomenology of Dancing Odissi (2022, short Master’s dissertation)
This academic paper, inspired by years of dancing and fragments of personal writing about dance over the years, is an auto-ethnographic queer phenomenology (Sara Ahmed) of the Indian Classical Dance form Odissi. My exploration begins from points of ‘disorientation’ – when I fail to perform in the way that Odissi demands through its agents. How can moments of queer failure offer alternative interpretations of what goes on in Odissi? And how do these interpretations relate to theoretical prescriptions of meaning? In bringing from within my body to the surface of the page felt queer meanings in the social experience of learning Odissi which are foreclosed by mainstream readings informed by compulsory heterosexuality, I attempt to clear space for queer life within Indian Classical Dance (from my own little corner), just as so many queer lives have so lovingly made space for it.
Forming Form in the Brandenburg Concertos (2021, essay and multimedia)
Situating itself within music analysis and choreomusicology, this essay analyses Concerto 1 within the production The Six Brandenburg Concertos (2018) by choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker. I argue that the element of dance offers an alternative structural argument to pitch-based methods of ritornello form analysis (e.g., Dreyfus’s Vordersatz-Fortspinnung-Epilog model) rooted in ‘under-heard’ aspects of rhythm and energy expenditure. Building upon Joseph Swain’s technique of dimensional rhythmic analysis, I further show how the dance performs the malleability of form, and, by evoking image schemata, provides a pathway to a three- dimensional understanding of musical form in both single-media and multimedia contexts.
Namami: Performative Translations (2019, presentation)
Presented at Telling Stories: Performer(’)s Present symposium at Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music (2019)
With this project, I centre the empirical in artistic analysis by experimenting an analytical method that began and ended in performance. In doing so, I hope to elaborate upon the generative potential of analysis and question the implicit antagonism between ‘drastic’ and ‘gnostic’ (from Carolyn Abbate) forms of knowledge in artistic epistemology. To this end, I present five analysis-texts I created of a dance item in the Odissi (Indian Classical Dance) tradition, which use different notational languages and prioritise difference aspects of the ‘dance’. Four of these were performed by a dancer who had not seen the source piece. In this presentation, I used the dancer’s ‘re-performances’ to reflect more broadly upon the role of analysis in dance and music, and the forms analysis could potentially take beyond the text.
Gendered Beings in Indian Classical Dance (2019, essay)
This paper explores the articulation of gender in Odissi, giving special attention to Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra’s performances of ashtapadis from the canonical cycle Gita Govinda, by poet Jayadeva, in Odissi dance repertoire.
Pursuing Theological and Aesthestic Interests in Devotional Indian Dance (2021, essay)
I trace the intersection and conflicts of ‘interests’ given by rasa aesthetic theory and bhakti philosophy in performing devotional Indian dance. As aesthetic and religious philosophies respectively, both rasa and bhakti act upon ICD; however, while rasa theory values aesthetic distance, depersonalisation and abstraction, the devotional attitude/practice of bhakti requires a devotee to identify fully with religious figures in order to attain transcendence. I elucidate the problem of conflicting interests from the perspective of a performer of ICD, and speculate upon philosophy’s role - as well as its limitations - in resolving it.
Toward a Queer Phenomenology of Dancing Odissi (2022, short Master’s dissertation)
This academic paper, inspired by years of dancing and fragments of personal writing about dance over the years, is an auto-ethnographic queer phenomenology (Sara Ahmed) of the Indian Classical Dance form Odissi. My exploration begins from points of ‘disorientation’ – when I fail to perform in the way that Odissi demands through its agents. How can moments of queer failure offer alternative interpretations of what goes on in Odissi? And how do these interpretations relate to theoretical prescriptions of meaning? In bringing from within my body to the surface of the page felt queer meanings in the social experience of learning Odissi which are foreclosed by mainstream readings informed by compulsory heterosexuality, I attempt to clear space for queer life within Indian Classical Dance (from my own little corner), just as so many queer lives have so lovingly made space for it.
Forming Form in the Brandenburg Concertos (2021, essay and multimedia)
Situating itself within music analysis and choreomusicology, this essay analyses Concerto 1 within the production The Six Brandenburg Concertos (2018) by choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker. I argue that the element of dance offers an alternative structural argument to pitch-based methods of ritornello form analysis (e.g., Dreyfus’s Vordersatz-Fortspinnung-Epilog model) rooted in ‘under-heard’ aspects of rhythm and energy expenditure. Building upon Joseph Swain’s technique of dimensional rhythmic analysis, I further show how the dance performs the malleability of form, and, by evoking image schemata, provides a pathway to a three- dimensional understanding of musical form in both single-media and multimedia contexts.
Musicology:
The Role of History in Theories of Sonata Form: Negotiating the Gendered Interpretation (2019, dissertation)
A. B Marx’s inaugural theory of Sonata Form (1845) spearheaded a mode of interpretation which ascribed gender to musical gestures. Although currently deemed anachronistic by musicological standards, Marx’s approach left a lasting legacy on, conceptions of Sonata Form through the centuries. Premised upon Susan McClary’s claim that scrutinising the gendered dimensions of ‘absolute’ music is relevant to uncovering prevailing values and systems of power, I contrast historical interpretations of Sonata Form with James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy’s contemporary view (2011), which disavows its gender-ideological connotations - but does so at the risk of erasing the ideological baggage of composers and music theorists alike. The conflict between the analytical agendas of contemporary theory and the cultural-historical agendas of musicology as revealed by the contrasting attitudes to historical baggage compels us to ask: what actually is the function of historical context in the analysis of music?
Western Classical Music in Singapore: Between Ideology and Pragmatism (2020, essay)
Imported by British colonisers and other European travellers in the 19th Century, Western Classical Music is now a common practice in Singapore. With the formation of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra in 1998 and the implementation of compulsory nation-wide music education, the local government has reinforced WCM’s social and ideological significance in the context of nationalism and cultural reproduction. However, as the arts in Singapore occupy the status of “luxury”, in contrast to the more practical “bread-and-butter issues” in political discourse, the pursuit of WCM as a means of social mobility can ironically be fraught with anxiety when it has to compete with notions of economic rationality. Taking the competition between idealism and materialism as my starting point, I examine the tensions between the projected symbolic meanings of Western Classical Music, as construed by state institutions, and the lived reality of its practitioners.
Thinking in Music(king) about Music (2020, dissertation)
There has been significant overlap between performance and analysis in recent years, but a systematic practice of using the ‘performative epistemology’ (Nicholas Cook) of Performance Studies to investigate canonical knowledge in analysis has not yet been developed. I crafted an experiment in which I treated analytical texts as performative statements which compel realisation to demonstrate how performance can act as a form of bodily criticism for analysis. Pianist Churen Li performed Mozart’s K310 followed by Hans Keller and Heinrich Schenker’s analyses of the piece, and then evaluated the analyses in relation to her physical experience. With this project, I advocate the inclusion of the body into the traditionally cerebreal discipline of analysis in order to produce new terms upon which one can engage with analytical propositions and encourage an attitude of playful exploration in the understanding of music.
Is the Body a Machine? Electronic Music as Posthumanist Praxis
Posthumanist and cyborg theories assert that the body is the “original prosthesis” which humans learn to manipulate from birth; thus, it is a naturalised machine. I analyse ways in which the multimedia songs “O Superman” (1982) by Laurie Anderson and “FACESHOPPING” (2018) by SOPHIE evaluate the viability of the proposition “The Body is a Machine” in sonic/performative dimensions, and in doing so shape narratives and symbolic tropes (topics) of technology in mainstream culture. Thus, I appraise electronic music-making as a crucial interface between bodies and machines that continuously changes these very concepts.
An Ethics of (Musical) Care for Unprecedented Times (2021, Undergraduate dissertation)
While “performativity” is a concept in linguistics and gender studies claiming that performances constitute reality, it has since the COVID-19 pandemic and reginited #BlackLivesMatter movement become a pejorative term, being used by social media users to designate empty gestures that fail to effect ethics. Thus far, the nature of musical performativity - which acts music is capable of performing and how - has not been a focus of musical ethics; I suggest that this has hindered understandings of music’s ethical value and effects. I conceptualise a way of analysing the ethical significance of three instances of “musicking” (Small): Clap for our Carers (UK), Sing Together Singapore (SG), and Concierto para el Bioceno (SP), predicated on their common intention to give care and the affordances of musical performativity. Situating these within Care Ethics, I outline how musical performances form performances of care and then evaluate them according to criteria adapted from Stephanie Collins. Finally, I propose care as an artistic value with concrete ramifications for musical praxis.
Essays on Leong Yoon Pin’s Choral Works (2021-2, paid work) (here)
In 2021, I was hired by Pow Jun Kai and the Composers Society of Singapore (CSS) to write a series of essays on the Singaporean composer Leong Yoon Pin as part of the project “Composing Monumentality”. I analysed Leong’s choral works “Street Calls” and “Love Quatrains” in the context of Leong’s life and oeuvre, with a focus on themes of soundscape, aesthetics of appraisal and ethnolinguistic politics.
Remixing Nationalism: Internet Music and State-Society Relations in Singapore (2022, Master’s Dissertation)
Since the 1990s, appropriating and re-signifying nationalist state artifacts through music has been a form of self-expression for Singaporeans; thus, they validate the cultural relevance of the Singapore government and state in society while appropriating their works as raw material for vernacular discourse. Using two music videos derived from the national broadcast by Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsieng Loong on 12 March 2020, I explicate the social, political and aesthetic dynamics of remixing nationalism and its relationships to state-sanctioned nationalism in specific cases. I then analyse “institutional remixes” by state actors on TikTok which incorporate aesthetics, trends and input from Singaporean netizens in a bid to “build trust” with younger Singaporeans (Lawrence Wong, 2020). Bringing the two together, I show that vernacular remixing is influencing the form and aesthetics of political communication in Singapore and engendering a collaborative yet fundamentally asymmetrical relationship between citizens and the state online.
Other Projects/ Activism:
Grassroot Level Party: General Elections in Singapore (2020, website)
https://grassrootslvlparty.wixsite.com/generalelections : a website made with my friend Megan Lim En, consolidating information on electoral politics and an overview of the election process in Singapore.
Saving Spaces (2021, website and position paper)
http://savingspacessg.cargo.site/ : A collaborative response to the closure/impending closure or loss of space faced by four independent art spaces in Singapore. This is a multi-dimensional project consisting of a website and position paper (to come).
The Role of History in Theories of Sonata Form: Negotiating the Gendered Interpretation (2019, dissertation)
A. B Marx’s inaugural theory of Sonata Form (1845) spearheaded a mode of interpretation which ascribed gender to musical gestures. Although currently deemed anachronistic by musicological standards, Marx’s approach left a lasting legacy on, conceptions of Sonata Form through the centuries. Premised upon Susan McClary’s claim that scrutinising the gendered dimensions of ‘absolute’ music is relevant to uncovering prevailing values and systems of power, I contrast historical interpretations of Sonata Form with James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy’s contemporary view (2011), which disavows its gender-ideological connotations - but does so at the risk of erasing the ideological baggage of composers and music theorists alike. The conflict between the analytical agendas of contemporary theory and the cultural-historical agendas of musicology as revealed by the contrasting attitudes to historical baggage compels us to ask: what actually is the function of historical context in the analysis of music?
Western Classical Music in Singapore: Between Ideology and Pragmatism (2020, essay)
Imported by British colonisers and other European travellers in the 19th Century, Western Classical Music is now a common practice in Singapore. With the formation of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra in 1998 and the implementation of compulsory nation-wide music education, the local government has reinforced WCM’s social and ideological significance in the context of nationalism and cultural reproduction. However, as the arts in Singapore occupy the status of “luxury”, in contrast to the more practical “bread-and-butter issues” in political discourse, the pursuit of WCM as a means of social mobility can ironically be fraught with anxiety when it has to compete with notions of economic rationality. Taking the competition between idealism and materialism as my starting point, I examine the tensions between the projected symbolic meanings of Western Classical Music, as construed by state institutions, and the lived reality of its practitioners.
Thinking in Music(king) about Music (2020, dissertation)
There has been significant overlap between performance and analysis in recent years, but a systematic practice of using the ‘performative epistemology’ (Nicholas Cook) of Performance Studies to investigate canonical knowledge in analysis has not yet been developed. I crafted an experiment in which I treated analytical texts as performative statements which compel realisation to demonstrate how performance can act as a form of bodily criticism for analysis. Pianist Churen Li performed Mozart’s K310 followed by Hans Keller and Heinrich Schenker’s analyses of the piece, and then evaluated the analyses in relation to her physical experience. With this project, I advocate the inclusion of the body into the traditionally cerebreal discipline of analysis in order to produce new terms upon which one can engage with analytical propositions and encourage an attitude of playful exploration in the understanding of music.
Is the Body a Machine? Electronic Music as Posthumanist Praxis
Posthumanist and cyborg theories assert that the body is the “original prosthesis” which humans learn to manipulate from birth; thus, it is a naturalised machine. I analyse ways in which the multimedia songs “O Superman” (1982) by Laurie Anderson and “FACESHOPPING” (2018) by SOPHIE evaluate the viability of the proposition “The Body is a Machine” in sonic/performative dimensions, and in doing so shape narratives and symbolic tropes (topics) of technology in mainstream culture. Thus, I appraise electronic music-making as a crucial interface between bodies and machines that continuously changes these very concepts.
An Ethics of (Musical) Care for Unprecedented Times (2021, Undergraduate dissertation)
While “performativity” is a concept in linguistics and gender studies claiming that performances constitute reality, it has since the COVID-19 pandemic and reginited #BlackLivesMatter movement become a pejorative term, being used by social media users to designate empty gestures that fail to effect ethics. Thus far, the nature of musical performativity - which acts music is capable of performing and how - has not been a focus of musical ethics; I suggest that this has hindered understandings of music’s ethical value and effects. I conceptualise a way of analysing the ethical significance of three instances of “musicking” (Small): Clap for our Carers (UK), Sing Together Singapore (SG), and Concierto para el Bioceno (SP), predicated on their common intention to give care and the affordances of musical performativity. Situating these within Care Ethics, I outline how musical performances form performances of care and then evaluate them according to criteria adapted from Stephanie Collins. Finally, I propose care as an artistic value with concrete ramifications for musical praxis.
Essays on Leong Yoon Pin’s Choral Works (2021-2, paid work) (here)
In 2021, I was hired by Pow Jun Kai and the Composers Society of Singapore (CSS) to write a series of essays on the Singaporean composer Leong Yoon Pin as part of the project “Composing Monumentality”. I analysed Leong’s choral works “Street Calls” and “Love Quatrains” in the context of Leong’s life and oeuvre, with a focus on themes of soundscape, aesthetics of appraisal and ethnolinguistic politics.
Remixing Nationalism: Internet Music and State-Society Relations in Singapore (2022, Master’s Dissertation)
Since the 1990s, appropriating and re-signifying nationalist state artifacts through music has been a form of self-expression for Singaporeans; thus, they validate the cultural relevance of the Singapore government and state in society while appropriating their works as raw material for vernacular discourse. Using two music videos derived from the national broadcast by Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsieng Loong on 12 March 2020, I explicate the social, political and aesthetic dynamics of remixing nationalism and its relationships to state-sanctioned nationalism in specific cases. I then analyse “institutional remixes” by state actors on TikTok which incorporate aesthetics, trends and input from Singaporean netizens in a bid to “build trust” with younger Singaporeans (Lawrence Wong, 2020). Bringing the two together, I show that vernacular remixing is influencing the form and aesthetics of political communication in Singapore and engendering a collaborative yet fundamentally asymmetrical relationship between citizens and the state online.
Other Projects/ Activism:
Grassroot Level Party: General Elections in Singapore (2020, website)
https://grassrootslvlparty.wixsite.com/generalelections : a website made with my friend Megan Lim En, consolidating information on electoral politics and an overview of the election process in Singapore.
Saving Spaces (2021, website and position paper)
http://savingspacessg.cargo.site/ : A collaborative response to the closure/impending closure or loss of space faced by four independent art spaces in Singapore. This is a multi-dimensional project consisting of a website and position paper (to come).