Foot/Notes on Sound: A Conversation with meLê yamomo and weish

meLê yamomo

meLê yamomo is an Assistant Professor of New Dramaturgies, Media Cultures, Artistic Research, and Decoloniality at the University of Amsterdam, a member of the Amsterdam Young Academy, and author of Sounding Modernities (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). He is the project leader and principal investigator of the EU-JPICH project Decolonizing Southeast Asian Archives (DeCoSEAS), and the Dutch Research Council project »Sonic Entanglements«. meLê curates the Decolonial Frequences Festival and hosts/produces the Sonic Entanglements podcast. In his works as artist-scholar, meLê engages the topics of sonic migrations, queer aesthetics, and post/de-colonial acoustemologies.

weish

weish is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans composition, performance and playwriting. Her works have taken her from Sundance to the Golden Melody Awards, and touring internationally with her bands sub: shaman and .gif. Notably, she was playwright, composer and music director to acclaimed musical Secondary, staged by Checkpoint Theatre, performed original composition Horizon at the National Day Parade. Her recent exploration engages with the dying folk songs of her Hakka heritage, in an attempt to(re)connect with, embody, and contemporise her musical lineage. This research culminated in stray gods, a live concept album presented at Singapore International Festival of Arts 2025.

Kathleen Ditzig

Kathleen Ditzig is Curator at National Gallery Singapore. She received a PhD from Nanyang Technological University with a dissertation titled, “Exhibiting Southeast Asia in the Cultural Cold War: Geopolitics of Regional Art Exhibitions (1940s–1980s).” She obtained her MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.

Inspired by her experience in cultural policy, Ditzig studies modern and contemporary Southeast Asian art in relation to global histories of capitalism, technology and international relations. As a curator and researcher, she is invested in advancing and interrogating art as an exceptional site and system of speaking to power. She won an IMPART Curatorial Award in 2021. Her writing has been published by Southeast of Now (NUS Press), Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia (NUS Press), Afterall (University of the Arts London), post: Notes on art in a global context (MoMA), Art Agenda and Art Forum, among others.