CONTEXT
For a few months during the initial stages of the circuit breaker in Singapore, our bodies of rituals and spirituality including houses of worship were one of the most affected. Congregations and collective worship experienced a direct disembodiment. I was fascinated by the unconsumed spirituality, the wounded sacred, the pockets of void forming across the city over those months. I witness how spaces that are commonly teemed with bodily contacts transform into non-events and non-places. conjuring the spectres of “wounded city” as described by cultural geographer Karen E. Till in its memories and politics of rituals. And presumably, the permanent way in which we encounter the Spirit.
In my art practice and research, the Sufistic notion of wounds as grounds of hope infested with light emerges much. With Mevlana Rumi stating that the "wound is the place that the Light enters you," I can't help but idealize this new shifts in the intimate infrastructures of sentience and ultimately, the sacred. How does body partake differently in the new normal, what is the new sacred? Is the new sacred a certain shade of tenderness, a radical resistance, an act of survival, what is it? What wounds will be stitched up, what other wounds will the body relearn, unlearn and participate in?
FRAMEWORK
Bell Hook's Teaching to Transgress has affirmed the position this project will follow as it re-established the very motivation behind my work and all these overarching vestations: to convert practice in a counter-hegemonic approach so learning becomes liberatory, A pedagogy of resistance...schools as terrains of ecstasy; pleasure and danger both...transformative...”with ideas counter to beliefs and values...”
I pursue this project in an attempt to amalgamate my pedagogy and practice as spaces of resistance and excitement as transgression especially for communities often on the fringe and margin of the society. This tropes are evident in my own practice and pedagogy especially within the context of spirituality, the faith, the Art especially in secular Singapore.
