Daniel Kok + Miho Shimizu
xhe is not a he, not a she, not an it. Pronounced “zhee” or like “j’y” in French, xhe is the
pronoun for the possible, the queer or the multiple, a figure that moves between a Square an an Octopus.
In “xhe”, Daniel Kok and Miho Shimizu explore how a singular body might already be an expression of multiplicity, whereby One is always already Other and Many. The durational performance is a choreographic mash-up of different forms - part installation, part dance, part concert - bringing different international artists together in search for this elusive figure.
As we spend time together, we hope to summon, to discover, to receive, even to become xhe.
Concept & Choreography: Daniel Kok (Singapore/Berlin)
Visual Artist: Miho Shimizu (Tokyo)
Performers: Karol Tyminski (Berlin/Warsaw), Daniel Kok
Sound Composition: Filastine & Nova Ruth (Barcelona)
Dramaturge: Lilia Mestre (Brussels)
Graphic Design: Currency (Singapore)
Premiere production in 2018 by CultureLink (Singapore), Co-Commissioned by Esplanade Theatres By The Bay (Singapore), Live Works Festival of Experimental Art (Sydney), with support from the Naomi Milgrom Foundation
pronoun for the possible, the queer or the multiple, a figure that moves between a Square an an Octopus.
In “xhe”, Daniel Kok and Miho Shimizu explore how a singular body might already be an expression of multiplicity, whereby One is always already Other and Many. The durational performance is a choreographic mash-up of different forms - part installation, part dance, part concert - bringing different international artists together in search for this elusive figure.
As we spend time together, we hope to summon, to discover, to receive, even to become xhe.
Concept & Choreography: Daniel Kok (Singapore/Berlin)
Visual Artist: Miho Shimizu (Tokyo)
Performers: Karol Tyminski (Berlin/Warsaw), Daniel Kok
Sound Composition: Filastine & Nova Ruth (Barcelona)
Dramaturge: Lilia Mestre (Brussels)
Graphic Design: Currency (Singapore)
Premiere production in 2018 by CultureLink (Singapore), Co-Commissioned by Esplanade Theatres By The Bay (Singapore), Live Works Festival of Experimental Art (Sydney), with support from the Naomi Milgrom Foundation
Artist Statement
“For she had a great variety of selves to call upon, far more than we have been able to find room for, since a biography is considered complete if it merely accounts for six or seven selves, whereas a person may have many thousands… and these selves of which we are built up, one on top of the other, as plates are piled on a waiter’s hand, have attachments elsewhere, sympathies, little constitutions and rights of their own… so that one will only come if it is raining, another in a room with green curtains, another when Mrs. Jones is not there… and some are too wildly ridiculous to be mentioned in print at all.” - from “Orlando” by Virginia Woolf
Perhaps the public/audience has always been a dystopia - a singular as well as plural body constituted by irreconcilable differences. In a shared visual space, the experience of a theatrical performance could never be conceived in universalist terms. As an object for spectating, the dancer is always seen differently, answering to different expectations and desires.
“xhe” is a work that is concerned with audienceship. The term ‘spectatorship’ usually refers to the conditions of spectating for a singular subject - the cognitive and perceptual processes, the gaze. ‘Audienceship’ in contrast, refers to the socio-cultural codes and conditions by which a group of people gathers as an audience. By being conscious of the different perspectives and desires amongst the audience, that the audience is in fact a heterogeneous body, the spectator might appreciate that his singular perspective in drawing universalist conclusions about an experience is inadequate. His engagement of a performance then always takes into account that he may not be able to grasp the full (macro) picture of an audience’s experience - the experience of the multitude - and thereby begins to examine different possible realities besides one’s own.
Correspondingly, the dancer should no longer strive to embody only one set of meaning. In order to instigate ways of seeing that require multiple points of view at the same time, and to mirror the pluralism of the audience, the dancer needs to see themselves as both singular and plural, an agonistic Self or a figure of difference(s), that is to say, a trans-individual. Their work/performance might have to go so far as to embody a variety of identities, even conflicting ones, putting various positions into play alongside or against each other.
In “xhe”, we adopt the language of the bricolage, experimenting with mixing different forms together to try and activate different ways of seeing at the same time. How is a graphic pattern already a constitution of movement? How can a dance bring life to abstract objects? What is the sound of a material? We compare the ways we spend time in a gallery, in a theatre, and in a concert. What are we looking for in one aesthetic space that cannot be found in another?