Opens: a para-academic forum

Here's more about 1 of 6 Pecha Kucha micro-presentations for the evening, ‘Threshold, Frontline, Frontier: Biodynamics in Struggle & The Power of Witness’ by Meli Chan Lee.

How can body-centered healing practices attuned to our original embodied being-states also nourish political action and enable collective repair? Through personal anecdotes gathered from her experiences in activism, performance, and therapeutic practice, Meli Chan Lee’s micro-presentation encourages us to tap into our bodies’ potentials to better awaken and amplify consciousness, offering strategies for expanding our thresholds to receive the vibrant life-forces within and around us.

Meli Chan Lee is a craniosacral therapist working between clinical and psychospiritual modalities with a background in dance improvisation/performance, critical studies and community organizing. An anthropologist and activist by training, she has most recently been working with collaborative transnational teams on generating new models for ritual, healing, and breath- and body-work for civic society frontliners in East and Southeast Asia. A child of Asia and the US, her BA in Anthropology, Theatre, and Peace & Conflict Studies is from Swarthmore College, PA.

Here's more about 1 of our 6 Pecha Kucha micro-presentations for the evening, 'Convergent Shamanism Through A Diasporic Lens' by Arunditha Emmanuel.

Shamanism is arguably the most ancient and universal form of human spirituality, with multiple shamanisms arising around the world and throughout (pre)history in a kind of convergent evolution. Drawing on ethnographic materials and personal insights and experiences, Arunditha Emmanuel’s micro-presentation discusses some of the techniques and principles that guide her own neo-shamanic practice, offering a glimpse into the cosmological schema of one shamanic being.

Arunditha Deborah Emmanuel is a performance artist, writer and space-holder working between poetry, sound, movement, and the dramatic arts. She has performed at many festivals and other occassions locally and worldwide, winning poetry slams in Singapore, New Zealand, Germany and Australia. She has been a resident writer/artist at the Watermill Center in New York, Literarisches Colloquium in Berlin, and The Marpha Foundation in Mustang. She also makes neo-shamanic tribal funk music with Mantravine.

Here's more about 1 of our 6 Pecha Kucha micro-presentations for the evening, 'Cow, Union Buster!' by Parashar Kulkarni (Yale-NUS).

Did the spread of the cow protection movement in colonial and postcolonial India encourage identitarianism and erode working class solidarity? Reviewing the situation in and around industrial cotton mills from the onset of the industrial revolution in India to the 1990s, Parashar Kulkarni’s micro-presentation discusses how the cow, a sacred symbol in Hinduism, was appropriated and weaponised in the anti-labour strategies of mill owners, political leaders, and pro-capitalist governments, becoming symbolic of new collusions between religion, politics and capital.

Parashar Kulkarni is an author, documentary filmmaker and an assistant professor working at the intersections of religion, history and material culture at Yale-NUS. He has published in literary and academic journals such as Granta, The Sociological Review, Boston Review, Social Science History, and the British Journal of Political Science. His writing has received several prizes including the British Academy’s Brian Barry Prize, Boston Review Aura Estrada Prize, and the Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize. His first novel, Cow and Company, published by Penguin Random House Viking, is about the interactions of religion and capitalism under colonialism.

Here's more about another of our 6 Pecha Kucha micro-presentations for the evening, 'Spectro-Commodities: A Very Brief Introduction' by Joshua Comaroff.

It might seem curious that ghosts and spirits in Singapore are widely believed to be covetous, up-to-date consumers. Whereas “spectral theory” in the West often associates the ghost with the immaterial, the historical, and with lack, a rich and wildly diverse economy of offerings and other goods, including effigies modeled after luxury cars, designer clothes, gourmet foods, and the latest tech (not to mention absurdly exorbitant sums of hell money), has evolved to cater to the needs of the non-living here. In this micro-presentation, Joshua Comaroff shares some of his research into past and present conventions for ancestral gift-giving, and explores the questions that emerge around this medium of popular religious aesthetics.

Joshua Comaroff () is a geographer and assistant professor of urban studies at Yale-NUS College and a designer at Lekker Architects. He studied literature and creative writing at Amherst College before joining the Master of Architecture and Master of Landscape Architecture programmes at Harvard. In 2009, he completed a PhD in cultural geography at UCLA, writing on the subject of haunted landscapes and urban memory in Singapore. In recent years, he has written about architecture, urbanism, and politics with an Asian focus, and is the co-author (with Ong Ker-Shing) of Horror In Architecture (2013).

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Here's more about 1 of our 6 Pecha Kucha micro-presentations for POSTCRITICAL SPIRITUALITY PECHA KUCHA + COMMUNITY MIXER - 'My Journey into Buddhism as a Non-binary Girl' by

This micro-presentation is an intimate, heartfelt sharing of An Ding’s unusual, winding journey into Buddhism by way of Christian Evangelicalism, atheism, and interfaith exploration. Through a mix of anecdotes drawn from her spiritual journey and personal meditations on Buddhist scriptures and practices, she offers an inspiring tale about finding q***r affirmation through spiritual practice, and a glimpse into the work that could be (and is being!) done to transform traditionally conservative communities and environments.

An Ding () is a reader, writer and educator broadly interested in the theology, practices, and material cultures of all world religions. Her latest book, "Phoenix Rising: A Memoir about being Bipolar, Gay and Christian," chronicled her experiences undergoing conversion therapy, navigating the mental healthcare landscape in Singapore, and negotiating her various intersectional identities. She volunteers with Rainbodhi Singapore (), a spiritual friendship group for LGBTQIA+ Buddhists, and is currently working on a book about s*x, q***rness & Buddhism with Kyle Neo (), founder of Rainbodhi Singapore.

Join us at 72-13 on Thurs 5/10 at 7:30 pm for a free workshop-performance by ArunDitha with Anise.

Sound is an essential element of the shamanisms practiced in indigenous cultures around the world, and continues to be an indispensable tool for neo-shamanic practitioners today. For the shaman, sonic techniques and technologies can open a multitude of dimensions within the self and the other, helping practitioners access altered states of consciousness, facilitate methods of healing and divination, and enable translocal and interspecies forms of communication. What ecstatic states might become available to us if we approach sound through a shamanic lens? How can shamanic sound practices initiate us into an expanded worldview? In this workshop-presentation, Arunditha Emmanuel discusses the role of sound in shamanism and its possible intersections with contemporary music-making and creative processes. Drawing on ethnographic research materials and insights gathered through her own shamanic studies and practice, Arunditha will explore atypical, mystical ways of making and experiencing sound, treating shamanic soundscapes as portals into new sensorial realities. The evening will conclude with an intuitive sound performance-demonstration by Arunditha and collaborating artist-musician Anise.

This free programme is kindly supported by TWorks Singapore. Please register via the link below:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeadNXPm5z3WaPOqPwd-a9JQ1fwwrbEdi9NxvLA3kcOHvBU9Q/viewform

Deborah Arunditha Emmanuel is a performance artist and writer working between poetry, sound, movement, and the dramatic arts. She has performed at many events and festivals locally and worldwide, winning poetry slams in Singapore, New Zealand, Germany and Australia. She has been resident writer/artist at the Watermill Center in New York, Literarisches Colloquium in Berlin, and The Marpha Foundation in Mustang. She makes neo-shamanic tribal funk music with Mantravine and co-organises Opens, a para-academic forum based in Singapore.

Anise (Suhui Hee) is a multidisciplinary artist and electronic musician working with sound, performance and experimental scoring. Her research interests delve into inhumanisms and the body as ecosphere.