Guzheng Improvisation Recorded live at "TRANSIT: an evening of trans* arts" @ Artistry Cafe, Singapore

Part of the 12th Indignation, Singapore Pride Season 

14 August 2016


To Trans* artists*

Like flowers in a mirror or a moon's reflection on the water's surface, be the elusive liminal beings you are...I think it's beautiful you try and tell them stories they become actors in and they listen and try to understand their realities we become characters in but I don't think any last one of us would waste our dying breath chasing a dream we already are

I said I don't have a song for an occasion like this but this is the song that my instrument and I have for you.

镜花水月 / Mirror.Flower.Water.Moon

I.   Petals fallen     ...... 00:00-09:30
II.  Flaring  gold     ...... 09:30-20:30
III. Pollen Pixies     ...... 20:30-25.40
IV. Venus Scepter  ...... 25:40-36:00


Papilio

Free Beings

Spoken word - Nina 
Sangu & Darbuka - Murali 
Dan tranh - Marla 

Improvisation Recorded live 8th Sept 2016

FreeBeings

月～亮
月亮月满
心空缺
月亮月满
心空缺

月亮～
怎么叫她都不回应
月亮越满
心空缺

月亮～
月亮湾湾
像个刀子
割啊割
滴啊滴
血海

海涛浪浪
越来越满
滴啊滴
血海
该怎么越过？
滴啊滴
血海
越不过

月亮～
月亮慢慢
想起妈妈
唱啊唱
睡吧

梦像座墙
敲啊敲
开门啊
梦像座墙
滴啊滴
血海

月慢慢
想起妈妈
睡吧
月光漫漫～～

Moon

Recorded Live at The Chronicles of Che Siti 99
LASALLE College of the Arts, Winsted Campus


In this lecture-performance we revisit, write letters and talk back to regional mythologies, ethnographies and historiographies in an attempt to peer into and form an inventory of its blind spots. The blind spots of subject positions, the blind spots of texts, of authorship, of history, of storytellers, of the voices, ventriloquists, gazes that make up history and myth. The blind spots of exoticisation, fetishisation, romaticising, eroticising, demonising the other, the past, the unknown. The blind spots of cultural translations,of names and naming and archetypal representations of duality, gender, the chthonic, the animist, the abject, the body in pain and when shamed, desired, feared, revered and cursed.

Moon - Letter to Che' Siti #6

Recorded Live at The Chronicles of Che Siti 99
LASALLE College of the Arts, Winsted Campus
Spoken word - Nina
Darbuka - Murali
Dan tranh - Marla

In this lecture-performance we revisit, write letters and talk back to regional mythologies, ethnographies and historiographies in an attempt to peer into and form an inventory of its blind spots. The blind spots of subject positions, the blind spots of texts, of authorship, of history, of storytellers, of the voices, ventriloquists, gazes that make up history and myth. The blind spots of exoticisation, fetishisation, romaticising, eroticising, demonising the other, the past, the unknown. The blind spots of cultural translations,of names and naming and archetypal representations of duality, gender, the chthonic, the animist, the abject, the body in pain and when shamed, desired, feared, revered and cursed.

Free Beings - Letter to Che Siti

Birds on a hot afternoon after a dream

"Homecoming", featured track from “Tracks”, a soundtrack of live recordings of improvised experimental guzheng & dan tranh, voice & site-specific ambient sounds.

“Marla Bendini” was created in 2007 as an amalgamation between art and life, to explore multiple liminal identities and fluidity in perspectives. Her multidisciplinary approach towards this amalgamation has become a signature form of hypervisibilty, using the existing politicized body as a catalyst and vehicle for further discourse. She seeks to both engage and disarm audiences and to bridge the present to what she envisions to be an inevitable trans/post-human condition. 

Since her first self-titled exhibition “Marla.” (2008) which was presented in a transsexual bar in Pattaya, Thailand, her mediums and presentation modes has gone on to include the arena of competitive pole dancing, aerial acrobatics,  drag nightclub entertainment and community events. Her present work seeks to lose the form, questions and answers through music improvisation and DIY culture. 

www.facebook.com/marlabendini

HOMECOMING

porthole city

"TUMPANG GLAMOUR", featured track from “TRACKS”, a soundtrack of live recordings of improvised experimental guzheng & dan tranh, voice & site-specific ambient sounds.

“Marla Bendini” was created in 2007 as an amalgamation between art and life, to explore multiple liminal identities and fluidity in perspectives. Her multidisciplinary approach towards this amalgamation has become a signature form of hypervisibilty, using the existing politicized body as a catalyst and vehicle for further discourse. She seeks to both engage and disarm audiences and to bridge the present to what she envisions to be an inevitable trans/post-human condition.

Since her first self-titled exhibition “Marla.” (2008) which was presented in a transsexual bar in Pattaya, Thailand, her mediums and presentation modes has gone on to include the arena of competitive pole dancing, aerial acrobatics, drag nightclub entertainment and community events. Her present work seeks to lose the form, questions and answers through music improvisation and DIY culture.

www.facebook.com/marlabendini