Residency Day 2, 27 January 2020

11am - 2pm & 6:30pm - 10pm

Winsland House

The initial schedule was to have rehearsal from 10:30am till 1pm before heading for lunch. After getting a sensing of the collaborators’ states, everyone agreed to go up to the rooftop swimming pool. Haizad mentioned it helped clear/calm his headspace after thinking so much about the creative process and researching for Jiwang while also providing a breather for the rest. At the same time, it may have also evoked another meaning and embodiment of jiwang, which could have perhaps been prompted by the atmosphere of the space. This was also an opportunity for the collaborators to spend time outside of rehearsal, casually wading and having mini activities in the pool, which was also one of the aims of the residency. One could not help but recall the groups of friends and families gathering near local beaches or lounging at the pools of chalets

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An unintentional yet integral part of the process.

Once everyone has had their time and washed up back at the rented apartment, the collective headed out to have lunch. The conversations included some of the topics that Haizad would like to address as part of the work, such as ‘medicine’, which was the word everyone was to ponder about. The collaborators shared stories they have heard from their friends and families or experienced themselves and discussed the possible origins and how those beliefs have been ingrained into the modern way of thinking.

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Talking about the different forms of ‘consumption’ over lunch.

After lunch, the collective proceeded to continue on with the rehearsal process. It started off with the Slash segment, where the collaborators were to structure a choreographed “fight” scene with some direction from Haizad, in which Hasyimah stood in for him. Each of their intentions was to kill each other or chop off the others’ heads. They carried out a task (perhaps as a form of warm up) in the form of a laser field, where they have to dodge the “moving lasers” as much as they could.

IMG_9427 Moving in a closely packed field of lasers.

The structure of this segment is to start off with the collaborators continue to have a stare off from the previous segment, Scan. Once there is an impulse, Hasyimah/Haizad will squat, Sharul takes 3 steps back and Syimah stares at Xiao Jun with a fighting stance. 2 duels will then happen consecutively, filled with tension, which can be seen in the collaborators’ engagement of muscles. It then ends off, at least for now, with a collective sequence, in which Haizad will get back to another time. He also wanted to experiment with the different dynamics and speeds within the segment, where the collaborators will engage fast, recover fast, and then re-engage at a slower pace.

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