Student/ Wingki :
Hi all. I’m a student of 2016 Creative Playground, Ching Wing Kiu, Wingki. I’d like to introduce to you our guest, Mr. Kok Heng Leung. Society. Economy. Culture. Humanity. Voicing out. In my theatre, apart from myself, if you are willing to join me, you are welcomed.
Now may I invite Mr. Kok Heng Leun.

Kok Heng Leun:
Thank you.
I keep thinking which language should I use? I’m Cantonese, but in Singapore, there is little chance to speak in Cantonese, so I think when I’m in Hong Kong, I must take the opportunity to learn. However, everybody speaks in Cantonese and Mandarin today, so I should speak in English then. Well, I’ll do it in English now. So, thank you very much.
Thank you, Danny. Where is Danny? He doesn’t want to listen to me. He’s somewhere. He doesn’t want to listen to me. Thank you, Danny, and thank you Zuni for inviting me to come here. And of course, Mathias. It is very hard to be one of the last speakers, because probably everyone has already spoken and talked about many things. So if you do find what I say seems to sort of repeat what other people say, bear with me, except maybe I have a Singapore accent, so I hope you would just bear with me. Of course, what I do is also to share my personal experience as a theatre practitioner. As you would know, some of you know that I’m a member of parliament, a nominated member of parliament in Singapore. Where, then I realize that I have a different platform now, besides the theatre where I work in. I realize that the chamber, the parliamentary chamber became the other theatre that I have to work in. So, will I talk about it or not, you know, it really depends on how this conversation goes. So, I will come to that point when it comes to.
However, I have to say that over the last 2 days, when you hear everyone speaking, a few topics keep coming back, and it keeps resonating with me. I mean showing that in the end, we are actually all global citizens, and we are not just people who live in an isolated world. However, it’s very interesting yet at the same time, everything seems to be pointing that note, the way we have been living is that we have been put in an atomized way, that means we have been living in isolation at the same time. Well, the way that the economy has worked, the industrial revolution has worked, that makes us into parts of the machine, and all of time we realise that we actually become an individual. And that individualization actually makes us fearful a lot of time, so that alienation makes you feel that probably you are the only one facing the world, and you feel very helpless. And that’s why the fear becomes this, whereby in face of change, you probably feel fearful then.
What would that change be? And because we are in that system for so long, that fear becomes even more real because you really don’t know how to make that change. So we are operating in two conditions which I think is very common. One is that we have been ruled to division, the divide and rule concept, strategy, and the other one, which is then living in fear, fear for freedom, fear for future, fear of not knowing what to do. And most importantly, a lot of time the individual would actually feel helpless in terms of dealing with the system. And so a lot of time when we feel that we are helpless, we probably think that we would not want to speak to another person, because we feel lesser, and feeling of being lesser certainly make you even more isolated. And for me, this is very interesting because from there I start to think about what my work really means and what I can do.
I actually started out doing theatre, you know, on stage like this, in black box. I like to do experimentation. But yet I have a very interesting teacher, though he never really directly taught me. One is Kuo Pao Kun from Singapore. When I work with him, he always does this. When he does something, he looks at me, and then, when I ask him, “So, is it ok?”. And then, his question would be, “What do you think?”.
Ah, we ask him for an opinion and you say, “So, what do you think?”, and you struggle. The other person who always does it to you would be Danny Yung. However, it’s very important, because if you know that in terms of education, nowadays we don’t talk about education. They use this word when the students start to do the homework. They use the word “xue ye”, which means learning to get a job.
We don’t use the word “xue wen”, learning to ask, learn and ask. Asking is actually a very important thing in the way we learn as an individual, and I think that has been reflected in a lot of conversations today. If education has to be the act of asking, then in the whole process, how do we actually do it in such a way that people would feel that being asked and asking is not something that is aggressive. It doesn’t show that you are stupid. It doesn’t show that you do not know. I think those are a number of questions keep coming back to us and to me when I’m working.
And after working in theatre, I realize that theatre is a public space, and I started to ask myself, “Who comes in to this theatre?” Probably the converted, the people who agree that the theatre is a public space. So one day, then I decided that maybe my theatre should not be in the theatre, that my theatre must be in the real public space, and then I went up into the communities and went to use the outdoor spaces.
And then I discovered different kinds of public space. In this process, I started to ask myself a few things.
So, if I’m going to do art, what kind of art am I supposed to do? And how does it connect to the society that I have? Three things, I thought, are important, based on what we said about the fear and how we are atomized and individualized and alienated. Three things came to me.
One, I do think that art can be an act of repair, repairing what may be broken, and I think that repairing can sometimes be very important, and it becomes part of the healing process. Of course, I can breakdown the word - repair means re and pair, pairing things together, when a lot of time, we have been individualized and atomized.
Am I going too quick? Ok, thank you. We haven’t thanked them before and I think we should thank them. They are amazing.
The second thing, beside repairing, what we really need to do is to have a critical analysis of who we are, where we are and what we are. And that is something that art can probably do. And the third thing, I think that art has always provided, is the capacity to imagine. Because it is only through imagination that we actually see hope. It is in imagination that we start to improvise, which, just now has been articulated by a lot of our speakers. The best way to face our future is for us to be able to improvise, and that actually sometimes can be very scary, especially through the power there is. Because the moment when you improvise, you transgress, you can even transform. So these three things come to me, I mean, for me, these are the three things that I need to address, and I think art being an aesthetic space that deals with it.
What is an aesthetic space? It is penta-dimensional, 5 dimensions, the dimension of us being in it, our thoughts, our feelings, our body. It includes two other spaces which are so important. One, memory, and the second, which is imagination. So, it is in this aesthetic space that our imagination get activated, our memory get recorded, that we remember who we are, remember the things that we’ve done, and then help us to imagine the future. So, my approach, which is quite alike many of our friends here, has these few things.
One, if I need to repair, participation becomes important. And thank you for the introduction just now. Participation became then one of the strategies that I use.
And the participation, I would say that, it helps to build relationship. However, it is also very important that every time when we talk about relationship, it is not just about you and me. But this relationship is not just between people, but me and the system, institution and institution, institution and institution, and of course, between that, crosses different kinds of discipline as well as crosses different kinds of culture.
And that kind of participation is important, because it opens up the white space that allows inter-culture to happen. Every time when we talk about inter-cultural dialogue, I always ask one thing for myself，”Did I create an empty white space for that to happen?” Because if we enter into the inter-cultural dialogue, thinking about the culture that I have, and not opening up a space, the dialogue would not have happened. So, participation becomes important for me.
The second thing that I do is actually space and place. My experience in the parliament tells me that, if I stand in the parliament chamber, and argue with the government of might, I probably won’t go very far. And I realize that actually in the parliament there is another room, which is called the members’ room, that’s where sometimes you complain that you never see a member of parliament. That is in Singapore, inside the parliament, but we are actually inside the members’ room. That’s where we created many different spaces where we actually have a lot of negotiation and discussion.
Before, so that we understood where we are from, we know where we agree to agree, and where we agree to disagree, and when we go into the parliament, it’s very clear where we come from, and that actually helps us a lot in a lot of negotiation. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t work, but you need to create lot of this space. Because if you want to have participation, and if you want to have critical dialogues, one thing we must have is, we must feel safe to disagree, we must be ok to being disagreed. And a lot of time we feel uncomfortable when someone disagrees with you and argues with you. So, creating that safe space becomes important, not safe so that you don’t feel offended. In fact, a safe space is a space that you feel it is alright to be offended.
And the third thing we must have, which is time and participatory… in my word, I will create a lot of pockets where I allow people to just sit to have conversations.
And it goes that to one of the pedagogy, which is then the next thing, which is the pedagogy that I work a lot with, which is, critical pedagogy that has these few things. First, finding the problems, problem posing, through asking, then, the other few things is action and reflection. This way, we go back to this topic of experiment and experience. Theatre is actually a lot of time a kind of rehearsal of possibilities, and that’s putting into action, at least in a safe space. But that’s not enough, because after that, we actually need reflection. And through reflection, we actually then realize that what you have worked on doesn’t seem to work, or some part work but some part doesn’t, and then you go to the next phase. You put them into action again, with the new strategy. So, this iterative process is so important that it helps us to learn in the process, so that we are not just someone who ask for change, but we are a reflective thinker, and someone who activates. In fact, one of my teachers would say, people who think and who act without reflecting die on the street. People who reflect but doesn’t act on it, will die at home, inside their studies.
Then comes the next thing. After doing this, what does it mean? I think the next thing is actually we need to evaluate. And what do we evaluate? Efficiency? Or efficacy? I think efficacy is a very important word for me, and what does efficacy mean? How effective it is? How much reach it does? Does it mean I reach to 5 or 10? You know some work that we do, we actually work with 5 to 10, but that is not all that you do, because if we go back to what I said just now, that the work that we do is not just about yourself, but about the system. So then the work that you do, we need to set to critic and ask, “What is the kind of network that we built to that participatory art, that not only about you and the people you are working with, but the different stakeholders?”I have one more minute. And the different stakeholders, we mean building the kind of conversation that happen between you and the public, the public and the institution, institution and institution. And a lot of time you realize that institutions are not speaking to institutions, and then we become that agent, that intermediary agent that allows such institution to converse and dialogue.
And of course, all in all, I would say that what do we do even as artist? In this case, I like a word that Meli Wood thought this, which is called Pun Gun Gu, it means appeasable, someone who mixes things and digs up things. I think artists can come up with solutions all the time. But what I always find interesting with artists is that they are so sensitive, that a lot of time they are able to sort of have a view of a bit of the future. And the anxiety is so important that we want to put them out to work, and we put them out, but importantly, I think it’s an artist because we must be reflective, we do not stop at that moment but we keep going on. And that inter-cultural, inter-disciplinary dialogue creating the white spaces is what we as artist have to do and with that.
I just end here. Thank you.

Woo:
Thank you.