Hot Pot Talk: Dramaturgy Sessions 30 June to 17 July 2022

About

What makes a recipe, a recipe? Is it in the nature of instructions written and executed with precision, unchanging through time? How do recipes evolve with – and reflect – those who create, carry, and share them? Besides heirloom dishes and comfort food, what other recipes can we cook up that help us tell our stories to ourselves and those around us, and invite conversations and better understanding?

HOT POT TALK: Cooking up Recipes is a participatory project that looks at the ‘recipe’ as a means of exchange and transmission of cultural information, personal memory, diasporic / migrant identity, ownership, and agency. Through a series of facilitated workshops with migrant workers in Singapore, followed by a process of in-depth conversations (informed by a conversation score), writing, and annotation exercises, this project will culminate in the creation of (i) a virtual exhibition; and (ii) a zine of annotated food and non-food related ‘recipes’ that will add to our current narratives about food and identity in Singapore, particularly for a demographic whose stories are often overlooked...

As part of this residency, the HOT POT TALK team will be doing preliminary research and dramaturgical discussions in preparation for the project. We will also have facilitated workshops and activities exploring the use of annotations as a device, as well as questions and ethics around documentation, visual narratives, and representations in the context of this project and broader community-engaged / participatory practices.

THE ARTISTS

Chong Gua Khee is a performance-maker, director, dramaturg, and facilitator who is nourished and energised by bodies connecting with each other, be they human bodies, plants, animals or objects. Hence, across her work, she seeks to create and hold intimate, playful and porous spaces for bodily encounters and connections to happen. This sometimes manifests as Gua Khee creating or directing performances, and at other times translates as her dramaturging or facilitating. 

Gua Khee graduated from the University of British Columbia, Canada, with a Psychology (Honours) and Theatre (Major) degree, and then joined Drama Box as a full-time staff. In 2016, she left to develop her own practice, but continues to work regularly with the company. Gua Khee co-founded the loose working group CITRUS practices in 2021, and is also currently its co-coordinator. Other recent projects include co-curating new residency platform Arts-Business x Business-Arts (ABxBA) Residencies, co-editing the e-zine series Re/View by Asian Dramaturgs' Network, co-directing Tactility Studies: Hold to Reset at Singapore International Festival of Arts 2021 and directing HOT POT TALK: The Measure of a Meal.

Adib Kosnan is a performer on stage and screen and a bilingual VO artiste (English and Malay). He is also a playwright and director on stage and has been nominated numerous times in the Straits Times Life! Theatre Awards. He is also an arts educator teaching drama to various age groups. Adib is especially interested in improvisation and forum theatre as tools for creating awareness and enhancing communication. He is currently an Associate Artist with Checkpoint Theatre. Adib is also a founding member of Singaporean playwriting collective, Main Tulis Group.

Mok Cui Yin is an in(ter)dependent producer. She interested in the intersections between art,
anthropology, and social action, and in working to make good art happen, better. Her producing experience spans dance, music, theatre, contemporary performance, visual art, literary arts, social practice, and experimental and process-based works. She has also produced, project managed, and/or consulted for organisations such as Asian Film Archive, Arts House Limited, Dance Nucleus, DesignSingapore Council, Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay, the National Arts Council, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, and The Substation. Cui is an organising member of Producers SG, a community network for independent arts producers, arts managers, and self-producing artists in Singapore. She is also a member of the Asian Producers Platform planning team, and an international associate of Asia-Art-Activism.

Nurul Huda Rashid is an intersectional feminist, visual artist and writer, currently pursuing her PhD in Cultural Studies in Asia. Her research interests focus on images, narratives, visual and sentient bodies, feminisms, and the intersections between them within the digital world. Her current research project, Women in War, is a survey of images of women in war, critiqued through lenses of gender and violence, politics of the visual, and the roles of the algorithm and archive as methods. Nurul develops and facilitates Photography workshops with Objectifs, and has taught across various tertiary institutions on various subjects. In her free time, Nurul loves smelling old books and building on her collection of books and plant babies. Nurul hopes to adopt a cat someday. 
 

The Space

136 GOETHE LAB 136 GOETHE LAB is a new project space at the Goethe-Institut Singapore. Housed in the former library and reading room, the space is intended as a response to the need for physical spaces for the arts, and an ongoing conversation with the public and arts community in Singapore.

HOT POT TALK is supported as part of the open call for 136 GOETHE LAB, which invited applicants to activate the space with a group proposal.