FUSE#2

SCOPE #3
Notes on There is Speficifisfety
by Lee Ren Xin
After SCOPE#3, the final week in KL:
45.
In this work, I sometimes feel our tasks are really not that meaningful.
However, they are important for us as principles which we have found to
produce or allow for results which we recognized to be desirable as
content of the piece. I’d rather the audience not know too much what our
tasks are.
46.
47.
Sometimes, the tasks is not what the piece is. The tasks allows the piece
to take form in real time. But they are not what the piece is about. It is
important that we do not mistake the tasks as the piece. There are times
when a particular task is no longer relevant or no longer works for the piece,
because of the changed way we perceive or treat the task. Sometimes, the
task is what the piece is. Some other times, simply just do the task.
I wish we could be as sensitive to shifts in the everyday life as we are with
performance.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
Simply, come together. Simply, don’t come together.
Simply, meet.
Photo from Lee Ren Xin
I need to meet the audience. And allow the audience to meet us.
When does it become a collective of people trying to figure out and arrive
somewhere together?
After such long conversations and working time, there is yearning for—as it
also becomes increasingly challenging to relocate—discreteness between
us.
Sometimes, being too brainy forms inertia to move, to respond, to live, to
listen.
48.
49.
Observation, in retrospect: There Is Speficifisfety definitely is less playful
and less personable than Where’s The Speficifisfety. Even the titles reflect
so.
I felt there is some sort of “same-zoning” happening to Mun and I when we
came together this time to work, compared to last year. Perhaps, in future
if we want to live this work again, we need to work differently e.g. not spend
so much time working together, or not spend any time at all and just meet
and perform, from whatever part of life or the world each of us is coming
from. In other words, there is either too much shared ground right now—as
of the KOTAK version, or there is a need to bring it even more
extreme—allow even much more shared ground next time—then maybe,
an inevitable fissure (desirable) can happen. Perhaps, this is also the nature
of the collaboration between Mun Wai and Ren Xin—as of now.
Carrying forward:
We were very invested in the questions and laboratorial processes between us,
but where does it go?
43.
44.
If the dance is independent of music, then what would be the role of the
music in this work?
When is the work about sharing with the audience our journey of figuring
out, and when is simply a closed and unspoken contract, pre-agreed-upon
between Mun and I.
If possible, I would like to explore with different bodies/persons in this
work—whatever retains as “this work”.
What is the work, beyond the two of us?
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