Observer: Andrei Nikolai Pamintuan
DAY 2
To All the Little Girls
Charmaine Poh of Singapore presented such a poignant work that was both a reflection and a reclamation of one’s sense of self and value. To All the Little Girls took audiences back to Poh’s experience as a tween actor in a television series whose concept was centered around children who fought crime before dinner time. And while many kids (and their parents) who enter showbusiness dream of being famous, and even – dare we say – go viral, Pho found herself to be an accidental celebrity. Auditioning and getting a part in a show was an unexpected path for this young, bookish, and shy little girl right on the cusp of puberty at the dawn of the internet era.
In this piece, Pho creates a holographic performance lecture that unpacks her rude awakening from the vitriol of troll culture and toxic online masculinity. While largely based on her personal experience of what we now call cyberbullying, the work is a commentary on how young girls, who find themselves as public figures, become powerless over their bodies. Pho’s presentation is a clear depiction of how technology can be weaponized and facilitate gender-based sexual violence, wherein the female body is reduced and dissected as flesh. It was quite powerful how Pho simply put this experience as of the many failures of the internet. One that I feel has bled into a global culture, which has regarded the female-presenting body as consumable, an online product, a free for all comment section that is supposed to be an exercise of free speech and expression. But when harsh words become laced with impossible standards imposed by the cis-het gaze, one must fight back, one must draw the line – a glitch is in order.
So, is freedom to reclaim one’s agency possible? I believe this work answers this question with a necessary yes! Pho exemplified compassion in this piece and has given hope for those who have ever felt powerless.
“If I lose, we all lose.
But I’d like to think we’ve got the audacity to survive
So, to all the little girls: may we all win.”
This is important work and I cannot wait to see where it goes.
Pok-ing Gender
Soultari Amin Farid’s Residency in the Cloud presentation was an off-shoot of his lecture performance Pok-ing Gender, which he presented at the Esplanade in Singapore in 2020. This work was partly a result of his ethnographic research on how dance and culture coincide in the lives of people within communities. Drawing from his extensive background as a professional traditional dancer, he examined the strict gender roles attached to or assumed by dancers and artists who are biologically male and female. The title of the piece itself derives its root from the Singaporean word “bapok,” a derogatory term oftentimes hurled at or used as an insult towards effeminate males, transgender folks and “crossdressers.” A word that can be attached with so much, which Amin himself has heard from his own family and within his dance community. An interesting insight is, however, the queer community’s embrace of bapok to empower their own identities and take control of their narratives.
In his talk, Amin investigated two topics he was interested in incorporating in his research:
1. the primadonnna character complex seen in Malay films of the 1950s and 1960s
2. a look at ritual as an invitation to transmogrify or transform in a surprising or magical manner.
Amin first shared a clip of his lecture performance where he talks about a mistake he made during a traditional dance presentation. In the clip, he zooms in on what was barely a noticeable ‘error’. After a close-up inspection, the audiences are able to see Amin’s micro-gelek action, the movement of his hips from side to side. The gelek is typically associated with the female swaying hip movement in Malay traditional dance. This mistake was/is considered an unacceptable error for male dancers. One must always be in control and be able to execute gender techniques in dance perfectly.
In an attempt to break free and challenge these gender specific associations, Amin highlighted several poses from a video excerpt of Primadona Rahma Rahmat. Through a collage of .gifs from the video, Amin embodied these poses – highlighting micromovements of the shoulders and fingers, for example, while incorporating nuances like the slight bend of the hips or a coy yet, confident side eye look, mixed with subtle flirtatious facial expressions.
As an observer, the juxtaposition of Amin’s movement against the Primadonna’s dance was graceful departure from gender norms in traditional dance practice. In some way, it was also an ownership of the feminine or the effeminate that exists within Amin and in many other artists who have been called bapok, baklas, and kù er. The transformation here is embodying the freedom of movement without the limitations gender rules imposes.
Fieldwork and Workshop Presentation
I found this presentation by Chen Yi-Chin and Chou Kuan-Jou of Taiwan as highly interesting. Both artists decided to focus their research on women who were born in 1960s Taiwan. From my observation of the presentation, both artists set out to examine how these women navigated and still continue to traverse the ever-changing landscape of gender-identity through their personal experience as women and as a result of traditional practices on gender roles, cultural expectations on women, and their relationships with others. Throughout the residency they divided their work in three parts: fieldwork, workshops, and the presentation, which is what I am reacting to now. For the purposes of this writing I will be writing about the presentation as the artists’ themselves cover their process extensively through their journal entries.
Chen Yi-Chen and Chou Kuan-Jou presented a video-collage of their fieldwork and workshops. As an audience, it was refreshing to see that they were able to conduct in-person interviews and interactions with their subjects. Amidst the pandemic it was great to see that through the Connect with SEA (Gender Issue): Residency in the Cloud, both artists were able to highlight the evolution of womanhood, if you will, through the personal growth and realizations of their subjects. I must note, however, that the interview montage was a bit confusing because it was not clear who was speaking and the subtitles were a bit fast to follow. With that said, it was eye-opening to hear very similar issues that women in Taiwan go through resonate with the experiences of women in the Philippines (and I am sure in many Southeast Asian countries). For example, the lack of sexual education is something that is still quite common in the Philippines. Conversations on and about sexual activity and reproductive health are still inaccessible. Which, I feel, has led to a heteropatriarchal view on sex, where women generally expected to pleasure the man, make babies, and raise their children. I wish there was more explanation of the workshop and how it responded to the feedback from the interviewees. But as a viewer, I did get a sense of catharsis and some form of self-actualization from observing their activities and conversations in the workshops.
Highlight:
I have loved all men and women in ancient times.
Their characteristics,
their interests,
and their appearances are all included.
So I am a human with breasts.
I have an internal vagina and an external penis.
I am immortal.
I am omnipotent,
crazy
And I’m the one who’s in charge of everything.
Comments