Name: the centre trembles by XUE
Start: 2024-12-07T10:00:00+08:00
End: 2024-12-07T21:00:00+08:00
Location: ArtScience Museum

𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗯𝘆 𝗫𝗨𝗘
📅 𝟳 𝗗𝗲𝗰 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟰 (𝗦𝗮𝘁), 𝟭𝟬𝗮𝗺 – 𝟵𝗽𝗺
📍 𝗢𝗰𝘂𝗹𝘂𝘀, 𝗕𝗮𝘀𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝟮
🎟️ 𝗙𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗮𝗱𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻
the centre trembles is a durational performance by butoh artist XUE sited within ArtScience Museum’s Oculus, the hollow core of the building’s architecture. The intervention creates a context in which participants can bear witness to rhythms of choice, change, and stillness in relation to how one situates the body, or how the body inadvertently situates itself in space.
Functioning as both an interior and exterior, the Oculus piques the artist's interest as a site that defies containment, as it allows for human and elemental seepages. Through an extended dwelling, XUE deepens the contradictions of this paradoxical site, using the body as an instrument to unsettle invisible thresholds and disrupting etiquettes of private and public.
XUE will reside in the space and its surrounding vicinity for the entirety of the museum’s opening hours. Visitors are invited to enter and exit the Oculus freely, engaging in embodied co-being with the artist.
The sound design of the work is crafted by composer and new media and sound artist Mervin Wong.
the centre trembles is presented as part of ArtScience Encounters: m—a, a micro season of performances inviting an emptying, grounding and centring of oneself.

𝗔𝗿𝘁𝗶𝘀𝘁 𝗕𝗶𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗽𝗵𝗶𝗲𝘀
𝗫𝗨𝗘
Previously based in New York, butoh artist, performance-maker, and choreographer XUE is a Singaporean artist currently honing a transdisciplinary performance practice in Southeast Asia.
XUE's performance-making practice is invested in the development of experimental and transdisciplinary methodologies, rooted in the belief that art is a boundlessly creative and productive force that generates new forms, concepts, and possibilities. In their work, the body-in-motion is the main instigator, operating as an imaging device, carrying shifting sets of relations and affects that imprint themselves onto participatory bodies. The body also functions as an analogical archetype for translating political, conceptual and emotional themes. Their nomadic figures deterritorialise reality across space and time into captivating visual and metaphysical intersections, encouraging phenomenological discoveries and interpretations. Through the design of unique performative situations that play off the relational dynamics of all interlocutors involved, XUE hopes to provoke revelatory experiences that endure in the collective consciousness.
XUE co-runs and founded Endless Return, an experimental rave series and music label which was awarded a T:>Works Per°Form Open Academy Fellowship in 2024. XUE forms one half of the artistic and curatorial duo RAGA with painter Pallavi, organising arts events in Singapore. A dedicated butoh practitioner, XUE is the founder and facilitator of the Singapore Butoh Collective and is currently studying butoh under the guidance of Vangeline (NYC, Vangeline Theater/New York Butoh Institute) and Emiko Agatsuma (JP, AGAXART).
As a Butoh dancer, XUE has been featured in The Online New York Butoh Institute Festival (2020) and The Online Queer Butoh Festival (2021). In 2022, they performed their work Shadowbloom live in New York City at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn with musical collaborator Mervin Wong, presented by Vangeline Theater/New York Butoh Institute. In 2021, XUE presented their research on their durational performance work SLEEPWALKERS at Dance Nucleus’s Scope #11. Their improvisational butoh piece Tsujikaze was staged at SAINOUSPACE in 2023, under The Sainou Space Stage program. They have performed twice in Indonesia as a featured artist in Solo Butoh #3 (Surakarta) and at ARTJOG STAGE (Yogyakarta) with Gamelan group Saron Groove, at the invitation of gamelan artist Ari Wulu. XUE is currently studying butoh under the guidance of Vangeline (NYC, Vangeline Theater/New York Butoh Institute) and Emiko Agatsuma (JP, AGAXART).
𝗠𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗻 𝗪𝗼𝗻𝗴
Mervin Wong is a performer. Raised in chambers of string, it took a moment for him to recognize the Viola as his truest limb. The tectonic shift to this deeper, enduring register has shaped his foray into electronic music-making. Mournful but reft of grief. Mervin Wong’s long-form sensibilities rouse our waterflesh.
Years of forging his intention allow his process to be bright with speed. In service of resonance, every grain is burnished to the bone. A canoe made of ice. His sounds return to matter. Where footsteps span lightyears. Waves seethe and where the cosmos can glide through an albatross.
Mervin Wong is an artist that is deeply dedicated to the shared experience of sound. His compositions and performances escape the confines of genre to paint deeply immersive sonic narratives. Mervin Wong is also the co-runner of the Singaporean experimental rave collective and music label Endless Return with XUE and their long-time collaborator.

#XUE #MervinWong #ArtScienceEncounters #performance #performanceart #livinggently