“Attention is the beginning of devotion.” (Mary Oliver)
I am Ang Kia Yee or kyatos, a practice of mutual & collective repair based in Singapore. I write poetry, essays, fiction, and performance texts. I co-create performances with people, objects, and environments. I no longer believe in proving anything to anyone. I am learning how to disappear.
My artistic allegiance is to the transdisciplinary and reparative. Most of my projects lope toward the destabilisation, contamination, mutation, and cross-pollination of disciplines, forms, and languages. I heal and expand the world through slowness, speculation, divination, and strategy.
Though my performance practice has largely existed as theatre and performance art, my body was most extensively schooled in ballet, before I moved on to other schools of training such as Suzuki Method of Actor Training and Viewpoints. I am now learning to swim, as well as dance Odissi and hiphop. I believe in choreography that arises from the body through everyday movements and trance. I am trying to move very slowly, with repetitive consistency that does not progress.
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My first book of poetry is slow dream machine. Looser pieces of writing have been published in places like Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Stand Magazine and Cha: An Asian Literary Journal; as well as for exhibitions such as REFUSE (Singapore Art Museum), immaterial bodies (Objectifs) and Networked Bodies (Supernormal).
Other recent projects include live performances FUME (2022) and Loving Things (to say) (2021); performance video Loving Things (2020); and audio walk 氵pasang (2022). I was a participating artist for Natasha, Singapore Biennale 2022, a selected participant for da:ns LAB 2023: IDIOSYNCRASIES at Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay, and a resident writer for Centre 42’s New Scripts Residency 2021.
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I am the Label Lead of Feelers, a future-facing artist-run label that acts at the intersections of art and technology. We take a thoughtful and cognizant approach to art and technology (including Web3) that circumvents hype cycles and hysteria in favour of sustainable world-building through interdisciplinary innovation.
I am committed to CITRUS practices, a working group of arts workers exploring ways to build towards better practices around care and intimacy in artmaking.
I am working on my second book of poetry.
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Education
2019 BA(Hons) English Literature and Creative Writing (First Class), University of Warwick
Residency
2021 Centre 42 New Scripts Residency