This abstract was recently approved for a conference, and I find myself sitting with that moment — not as a sense of arrival, but as a shift. The work is no longer held only within my own process; it begins to circulate, to be read, interpreted, and perhaps transformed by others.
The paper asks a question that continues to stay with me: who speaks when authorship is distributed across bodies, materials, lineages, and space?
What I am beginning to understand is that authorship, in my practice, does not belong to a single voice. It emerges through transmission — through gestures inherited, shared labour, and the presence of materials and sites that actively shape the work.
In performances where masks are worn across generations — by myself, my children, and collaborators — authorship shifts. The masks no longer represent; they carry. They hold memory, iconography, and something that exceeds the individual. They become temporary guardians, redistributing agency between bodies, objects, and space.
Working through collaborative and improvisational methods has further unsettled the idea of control. The work forms through attention, responsiveness, and care, rather than fixed intention. It resists the frameworks of ownership and originality I was taught to recognise.
I return to listening — before speaking into form.
Perhaps authorship, then, is not a position, but a constellation. Something ecological, relational, and always in motion.
The conference context now becomes part of this constellation:
https://www.nafa.edu.sg/adprex-2026/homepage