Catamite (2019) - Lecture Performance
Commissioned by M1 Singapore Fringe Festival

25 January 2019, 7pm & 9pm
26 January 2019, 1pm, 3pm, 7pm & 9pm
27 January 2019, 1pm & 3pm
Black Box, Centre 42

Conceptualised and performed by Loo Zihan.
Developed in residence at Centre 42.

“Memory capacitors are so limited these days.”

“Our reality is what we remember it to be.”

What relationship do we share with our possessions? How can we orient ourselves to these things differently?

This intimate interactive experience for 20 participants each session begins in the form of an artist lecture and dialogue where Zihan will share his experiences of staging his installation Queer Objects: An Archive for the Future (2016), an assemblage of objects for a hypothetical queer archive in Singapore.

Following this, the audience-participants join Zihan in a series of participatory activities and conversation, to examine the fictional and factual, virtual and actual potential of objects, in a bid to meditate on the contingency of identity and being.

Accounts of Catamite:

“By getting audiences to create a temporary archive of their own objects, Loo creates a new kind of "queer archive". Archives are considered permanent records, but this one is defined by its short-lived nature.” - Akshita Nanda

”观演后步出黑箱剧场，读着一名观众对于我的物品在未来语境中的猜想，困惑我的是在这艺术空间之外，消费主义将物品的囊括，是否使其承载的意义被消费殆尽？在全球文化日趋多元化的大背景下，在意识到差异性后强调彼此的尊重是否更重要？(As I walked out of the black box theatre at the end of the show, I read one of the audience’s conjecture on my selected object. What bemused me was the following question: outside of this artistic space, did the domination of consumerism over objects cause them to lose the meaning they carry? With the trending globalization and diversification of our culture, was it not more critical to place more importance on the respect we should have for one another as our differences manifests?)” - Lau Si Xian

“Catamite is driven by a need to create conversation and open minds to new possibilities, and see things from the bigger picture rather than the myopia we often subject ourselves to. Using historical fact and his own effective pedagogy, Zihan creates a safe space where all audience members can feel comfortable participating fully in the experience, encouraging healthy discussion and an ease of leaving behind all of one’s apprehensions. Through the honesty displayed from both Zihan and fellow audience members in Catamite, one leaves the performance-lecture more whole than before, opening our minds to the different points of view present around us, and seeing the world through another’s eyes.” - Bakchormeeboy

"The trial opened for the audience an awareness of a far more specific sub-cultural typology of colonial violence than is conventionally discussed. This micro-history of the legal apparatus in Singapore not only served to reveal the presence of gay people and gay acts by both Singaporeans and British, but also their suppression under British rule that continues today under the very same laws, and the manner that the state then and now uses these laws to maintain gender hegemony. The colonial past was revealed as Singapore’s contemporary, now in 2019." - Ray Langenbach