2023-npsea-project Network Platform of South East Asia

Network Platform of South East Asia：Gender & Sexuality in Contemporary Performing Art（NPSEA Project）

Network Platform of South East Asia：Gender & Sexuality in Contemporary Performing Art（NPSEA Project），formerly known as Connect with SEA Project, is an international exchange and residency program initiated by Thinkers’ Studio (Taiwan) from 2021 and co-sponsored by other Southeast Asian international organizations, including Dance Nucleus (Singapore) and the Pineapple Lab (Philippines). For the past two years, the platform has invited emerging artists from Southeast Asia regions to gather ideas and create progressing works through online residencies under the theme of gender and sexual issues in Southeast Asia.

In 2023, echoing the end of the pandemic era, the platform is further iintegrated and extended its aims to promote and support the international development of emerging artists online and onsite with 3-way approaches: “Exchange Residency”, “International Showcase and Presentation”, and “Online Academy”. In addition, the platform also publishes online observations and organises sharing sessions aimed to consolidate the international experience and promote Southeast Asia gender issues in Taiwan.

Exchange Recidency

The Exchange Residency aims to extend the findings and relationships of the past two years of online residency co-organized with Dance Nucleus (Singapore). Also to support emerging gender artists to continue to engage in cultural exchanges and conduct international art research & development with the joint administrative, local network and spacial support of Thinkers’ Studio and Dance Nucleus. It hopes to accumulate the artists’ international experience and network in Southeast Asia and gradually experiment with the possibilities of international production in the post-epidemic era.

At the beginning of 2023, the platform supported artist Chou Kuan Jou (Taiwan) and artist Hasyimah Harith (Singapore) for a physical exchange residency in Singapore. This initiates the first phase of their creative dialogue. In the second half of 2023, the platform will continue to support the second phase of artistic idea exchange through artist journals publishing and online meetings. The residency will also continue to invest in the third phase of physical development in 2024.

Exchange Artist｜Chou Kuan Jou (Taiwan), Hasyimah Harith (Singapore)

International Showcase and Presentation｜

da:ns LAB

da:ns LAB is an annual artist meeting for artistic discourse and research presented by the Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay, and produced by Dance Nucleus. It is a platform that began in 2015 to interrogate choreographic practice. Each edition of da:ns LAB features several artists or arts practitioners whose critical praxes introduce progressive ideas for the further development of dance and performance in Singapore and in the performing arts industry.

Under the curatorial theme of IDIOSYNCRASIES, da:ns LAB 2023 invited artists and art participants who propose to go beyond identity and representation, but instead, look at how ‘queer’ and ‘queering’ can be formulated as tangible strategies for alternative ways of seeing and being together.

VECTOR#3

Produced by Dance Nucleus in collaboration with Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay, VECTOR is an annual exhibition of new time-based art / trans-disciplinary performance from Singapore, Asia and/or Australia. In each exhibition, different artefacts connected to the featured artistic projects are presented alongside a programme of live performances.

In VECTOR#3, through the performances of transformation, of dancing in in-between spaces, and of the strangely familiar, we look to the queer for inspiration as references for IDIOSYNCRASIES. In the programme, queer is approached less as a question of representation or identity politics, but more as a verb: an active, continuous process of questioning assumptions, testing boundaries, undoing what is stuck, repairing what is broken, or giving a form to possibilities.

Supporting Artist｜Betty Apple (Taiwan)

Participating Artist｜Chou Kuan Jou (Taiwan)

Online Academy｜

Certificate Programme for Critical Practice in Contemporary Performance

[CP]3 is an online academy for the development of critical praxes in contemporary choreography and performance making.The main aim of the 5-month programme is to help artists articulate and develop their own artistic practices.

In [CP]3, artistic praxis is seen as a holistic process of defining one’s research questions, outlining responses to one’s socio-political context, designing heuristic methods for artistic creation, proposing encounters with the public(s), and forwarding choreography as a vital discipline in the production of cultural knowledge. As a study programme, [CP]3 caters to dance and performance makers in the Asia-Pacific with several years of experience in choreographic creation and production, and who wish to deepen their experimental approaches to art making.

In 2023, [CP]3 has invited artistic praxis from 12 countries/ cities, including Australia, Thailand, Indonesia, Japan, China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, forming online learning groups and mentorship toward 8 contemporary creation topics.

Supporting Artist｜Li Wen Hao (Taiwan)

Co-Organizer｜

Dance Nucleus (Singapore)

Dance Nucleus is a centre for practice-based research, creative development and knowledge production for independent/ contemporary performance.

Dance Nucleus fosters a culture of critical discourse, self-education, artistic exchange and practical support. Our programmes are designed to respond to the needs of our members in a comprehensive way. We build partnerships in Singapore, Southeast Asia, Asia & Australia, and internationally.

Dance Nucleus is an initiative of the National Arts Council of Singapore.

Artist｜

Chou Kuan Jou (Taiwan)

Chou Kuan-Jou is a Taiwanese artist born and raised in Taipei. She is actively engaged in the fields of physical creation, performance, design, and education. Her work is inspired by the abnormality of bodies in daily lives, capturing behavior and movement from a choreographic angle and creating its own theatrical aesthetics. In recent years, she has focused on researching the somatic experiences of gender and sexuality.

She has been invited to international events such as CND Camping 2019, Tanzmesse 2022, and da:ns lab 2023 at Dance Nucleus. In 2021, she co-created the “Nyu Shu Movement” project with artist Chen Yi-Chin, as part of the Connect with SEA (Gender Issue): Residency in the CLOUD by Thinkers’ Studio. This project was showcased at the Loei Art Festival in Thailand and the Creators’ Cradle Circuit in Tokyo. In 2022, her work “TOMATO” was selected for the Taiwan Season at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, receiving a five-star review and several awards, including The Bobby Award.

Artist｜

Hayimah Harith (Singapore)

Hasyimah is a Malay-Muslim female artist that performs, choreographs and teaches Malay folk dance. Using her body as the starting point, Hasyimah works with the Malay identity and female sexuality, as a way to reclaim the agency over her body. Her working method involves strategies such as pleasure, vulnerability and confession. She believes in the power of the body to confront and overcome the conditioned shame that is often attached to female sexuality.

Hasyimah is also a Visual Arts educator and Company Manager of P7:1SMA Ltd., a dance company formed in 2016 that uses dance to confront and reimagine the Malay’s relationship to their identity.

Artist｜

Betty Apple (Taiwan)

Betty Apple comes from a millennium generation of avant-garde artists in Taiwan. She received her B.A. in Theater and M.A. in New Media Art at the Taipei National University of the Arts.

Betty Apple’s art (and music) focuses on using body politics and performativity as her framework and drawing on her lived experience as a millennial living in post-colonial Taiwan, her work appropriates symbolic objects from kitsch culture and consumer society as sound elements; mass-produced objects intended for eroticism or entertainment, such as vibrators, underwear or part of sexbot’s body are carried inside the body through violent and grotesque means.

Recently invited to Melbourne Fringe 2022, CTM 2021, Mona Foma FOMO 2021, Nuit Blanche Taipei 2020, Taipei art festival 2020, Biennale Jogja in Indonesia, HKW House of the Cultures of the World in Berlin, Bergen Assembly 2019 in Norway, etc.

Artist｜

Li Wen Hao (Taiwan)

LI Wen Hao was born in 1989, graduated from National Taipei University for a bachelor degree in law and finished his master degree in performing art from National Taiwan University of Art. His esthetics is a mix of contemporary dance and live art; lately he puts his focus on how conceptual and theatrical languages are expressed by body, object, time and space. In 2021, his work “From Music Cooperation to Interpersonal Cooperation” was nominated for the 20th Taishin Arts Award.