Workshop
Dramaturgy of Production with Daniel Kok

The independent artist is a ‘one-man band’ juggling numerous roles and is ostensibly the performer of post-Fordist labour par excellence. Among different responsibilities, an artist often has to rely on themselves to negotiate administrative work, continuous training, studio practice, creative development, documentation, self-promotion, and so on. More crucially, because resources in the cultural sector are in constant short supply, an independent artist frequently finds themselves having to balance different discrete opportunities - usually with inadequate resources - in order to gradually piece together a comprehensive working process, and patiently work towards the full realisation of ‘project’ step by painstaking step.

In this one-day workshop, we will re-examine the motivations, strategies and efficacy behind our respective artistic projects by discussing independent artistic work according to four domains: research, creation, production and dissemination. Besides opening up a space for artist participants to candidly speak about their concerns pertaining to professional sustainability, this workshop proposes a methodical conversation to discuss the salient aspects of independent artistic production as a question of dramaturgy in and of itself.

This workshop is limited to 10 people.

Daniel Kok studied BA Fine Art & Critical Theory (Goldsmiths College, London, 2001), MA Solo/Dance/Authorship (HZT, Berlin, 2012) and Advanced Performance and Scenography Studies (APASS, Brussels, 2014). Exploring the relational politics in spectatorship and audienceship, Daniel has worked with pole dance, cheerleading, bondage and other ‘figures of performance’.

His performances have been presented across Asia, Europe, Australia and North America, notably in the Venice Biennale, Maxim Gorki Theater (Berlin), AsiaTOPA (Melbourne), Singapore International Festival of Arts and Festival/Tokyo. Since 2014, he has collaborated with Luke George (Melbourne) and created “Bunny” (2016), the “Still Lives” series (2019) and “Hundreds+Thousands” (2022).

As artistic director of Dance Nucleus (Singapore), he focuses on sociality as a nexus for interdisciplinary praxis, while building capacities for artistic development and trans-local partnerships in the Asia-Australia region. He curates the annual da:ns Lab and VECTOR exhibition of performance in collaboration with the Esplanade (Singapore)