“Landscaping a Personal Myth” is a multi-media duet that articulates the contemporary cross-cultural collaborative processes of performance-making through the embodiment of cultural memory and environment. The work locates cross-cultural performance methodology specific to my own (as a Singaporean performance-maker), and draws from the multi-cultural heritage/memory that is seated within the body.

Using personal narratives, juxtaposition, and metaphors as a means of articulating a personal discovery for one’s existence, “Landscaping a Personal Myth” attempts to make sense of our belonging in a transient society through the re-calling of memories and stories of past, in order to make sense of one’s present.

The performance addresses the paradox of the familiar and the unfamiliar—the position of the observing gaze, of the body, the human, the subject of perception—in other words, the very experience of familiar and unfamiliar—the strangeness of one’s own origins. This strangeness of one’s own origin confronts the ‘mythical portrait’ of the individual, where we begin to expand from the peripheral and to look from the margins.

“Landscaping a Personal Myth” is a minimalist performance and its intent is for the performers to exist within the space. Thus the choices and elements used in the performance are specific to the performer’s memory and cultural upbringing.