The Something-Something Working Group was first convened through the ELEMENT#10 Research Residency at Dance Nucleus in November-December 2021. The aim is to imagine and prototype new paradigms and infrastructures for knowledge production, artistic practice and their contingent entanglements. The working group desires to facilitate ways in which artists/arts practitioners, arts workers and arts organisations (or institutions) in Singapore might question, reflect on and articulate their internal infrastructures and working processes. Through the group's long-term curiosity and engagement, these different constituencies may be able to gain a broader picture of how their practice is positioned within and also shifts the wider Singaporean arts ecology—and the hopes, possibilities and futures that might emerge from this process of dialogue and reflection. This includes considering how these individuals and groups document their processes and practices (SG Arts Plan 2018-2022).
During the residency, the collective worked on developing and articulating a facilitation framework that could support artists, institutions and organisations to be more self-reflexive about their projects, positionalities, processes and practices. Through this process, the collective also aims to examine how they are located within the artistic ecology in Singapore, and whether their framework and methodology are more specific to the Singapore arts context or could be broadly applicable to other arts contexts.