Illustrations by Winnie Wu/studioKALEIDO
So, here’s the thing. The robots are coming; indeed, they are already here. With the emergence of generative artificial intelligence that creates text, images and sounds increasingly indistinguishable from that formed by human sensibilities, the meaning of meaning-making is in delicious flux.
And in this arena of the Internet where we meet you, the advantage has long been ceded to the algorithm’s appetite. Even so, this was and can still be a place of wide open spaces, an enchanted terrain where we encounter one another, as we are. So, here, we examine conventions, in the service of connection.
We test the vitality of our imaginations against both the creative expressions of performance-makers, and the imperatives of this digital realm. In the face of change, some people twist; some people turn. Here, we play.
Critics Circle Blog
The following creative responses are authored by writers from Critics Circle Blog, a platform that hosts diverse voices responding in multiple ways to the performing arts in Singapore, in order to generate conversation.
Reclaim: Language & Machines in a Contemporary Age
Dia Hakim K. examines the flux of identity and progress in Jaha Koo’s Lolling & Rolling and Cuckoo.
Activate: Remembering is not Nostalgia
Adeeb Fazah speaks to Centre 42’s Robin Loon and Casey Lim about how the golden age of 1990s Singapore theatre can inform future evolutions.
Observe: Telling Time in Performance
Archiving memories, canon-making, provocation — Tracey Toh takes a closer look at the documentary impulses in A Day, 2023 and SIFA X: there is no future in nostalgia.
fantasise: we belong together
Heng Jia Min refracts Privacy’s exploration of humanity’s complex and consuming relationship with the digital realm’s all-seeing eye, through her own lens.
Shimmer: Moving Pictures, Moving Sounds
Can power co-exist with play? Azura Farid considers the question through Joanna Dudley’s installation and performance work, We Will Slam You With Our Wings.
More Responses
Remember: Angel Island’s Sobering Symmetries
Jon Lin Chua traces how the recursive narrative, musical and visual structures of Angel Island connect historical injustices to our present moment.
Grieve: A Spell, A Space
Abyss invites the audience to share in the visceral experience of sorrow. Mok Zining reflects on how its cultural specificities open up a deeper resonance.
Endure: A Life in Emerging Moments
What makes a self? Mok Zining ponders the question and how Muna Tseng attempts an answer in the self-portrait and performative archive that is Me, You, Then, Now.
Encounter: Interspersing the Body Politic
SIFA X: Intermission shows pockets of urgent non-conformity and disobedience in a suppressive environment. Noramin Farid grapples with this challenge to the conventions of spectatorship.
Feel/Transcend: Beyond The Big Top
Adele Wong finds historical resonance and contemporary creativity in the circus-inspired innovations of MATERIA and Humans 2.0 at SIFA, and Forget Me Not and Circus Park at Esplanade's Flipside 2023.
Prevail: BLKDOG keeps it real
Nur Arianty thrills to the immense physicality and emotion of BLKDOG, and how it stays true to Hip-hop’s roots as social commentary prioritising marginalised voices.
Dare: An Objectively Insane Thing To Do
Hong Xinyi tests the ties that bind in Love Divine.
Transform/Linger: An Inventory of Invention
Realm of Silk and NEW-ILLUSION use different forms of technology to explore new strategies in performance-making. Hong Xinyi unpacks these experiments in bewilderment.
Dominate: An Unfeeling Experience of Being a Bank
Keshia Naurana Badalge steps into the shoes of the 1% in Ontroerend Goed’s £¥€$, and rolls the dice.
Disappear: The Eternal Endpoint for Everything, Except Love
Keshia Naurana Badalge takes heart from Pompeii‘s meditations on loss, grief and grace, as she contemplates the shadows of mortality.
