International Federation for Theatre Research Conference
Organiser: Faculty of Dramatic Arts, University of Arts, Belgrade
Embodied Research Working Group

Tittle: The Body Remembers: An Excavation of Embodied Memories / IFTR World Congress, Belgrade 2018.

Abstract
How do we, as a contemporary, social, post-colonial body, begin to excavate the act of recalling and recovering the buried spaces of silence within? What do these excavations reveal? Can the recovery of these buried spaces of silence go beyond the act of remembering and into the act of recalling? The act of remembering highlights the image of the mind as a keeper of memory and the act of recalling calls attention to the body more as the keeper of memory.  This call to attention to the body as the keeper of memory acknowledges that the body is a vessel through which we experience our lives. With the body as the keeper of memory, I am investigating how our embodied cultural memories are expressed through the body as a site of action, re-action and sometimes even a site of non-action within my practice as a performance maker in contemporary experimental Singapore theatre.

So, what is being expressed through the body and how do these embodied memory travel through the body? What are these embodied routes? These are questions that I will unpack as I acknowledge that the route of the embodied memory reveals a silence within and becomes a process of recalling and reclaiming. This process actually creates a space for the alternative narrative to be heard. A kind of revealing of the shadow of a tale that seemed to get buried within. This revealing highlight that boundaries are drawn and that, since boundaries are drawn, means that they can be erased; and when we start erasing boundaries, we are beginning the process of remembering.