The Golden Record is a series of original verbatim plays directed by Edith Podesta and staged in three parts over several years. The first installment was part of the 2017 NUS Arts Festival and it focused on the creation of the original golden record. With Carl Sagan as the protagonist, the play unpacked the process of curation required to create an object that accurately represented the diversity of life and culture on Earth. The Golden Record 2.0 (NUS Arts Festival in 2018) turned the focus to Singapore; what this Nation would enclose in a new golden record. Implicit in this question were notions of identity and value: what defines us as a people, what do we hold dear and where do our values come from? This work was constructed from numerous interviews with NUS faculty, students, notable people in Singapore’s awareness, to create a pastiche of contemporary Singaporean voices.

Now in its third and final iteration, The Golden Record 3.0 returns to the University Cultural Centre on 18 October as part of Singapore’s Bicentennial Commemoration. The final piece in the trilogy takes one of the most profound voices from part two, Cultural Medallion recipient and Artistic Director for NUS Indian Dance, Mrs Santha Bhaskar, and explores her views on the interconnectedness of life, with alternative perspectives from NUS Professor Valerio Scarani from the Centre for Quantum Technologies (CQT) and others.

When asked to summarise this work in a single word, Edith doesn’t hesitate: “I would say entanglement. I like that the history of Singapore is about the entanglement of different people, different ideals, different ideas and I think we live kind of harmoniously together.”

NUS faculty voices have been an influential feature in prior iterations of The Golden Record, particularly those from NUS’ Centre for Quantum Technologies (CQT). In fact, Mrs Bhaskar’s own work with CQT in recent years has seen the complex school of physics infused into her work and her philosophy, drawing parallels between the technical and the metaphysical.

“[The Golden Record 3.0] is about life. I’m talking about the life in this universe,” says Mrs Bhaskar. “Why am I here? What is my role? The answer … is that we are all here to love each other. I call it, in quantum language, ‘entanglement’ but we can say ‘bonding’.”

Various interpretations on the term entanglement arise in piece, including the scientific definition, and Professor Scarani provides this alternative voice in the production. Indeed, dissent and dialogue feature throughout the play, and contrasting views even come from Mrs Bhaskar herself, portrayed in a different form by student actor, Shirin Keshvani.

“I’m not necessarily embodying a ‘past [Mrs Bhaskar]’,” she says. “You can’t really place [the character] in any sort of time continuum. I’m embodying a version of her that believes the things that she was saying in those moments, in those interviews.”

“There’s something about the things she says that can strike a chord with anybody and it’s because she’s very comprehensive. She links things that are so far away from each other together: like Hindu texts, the cosmos, Indian dance, a bit of her own her own personal biography, Singapore, she brings all that together.

Entanglement is the theme of the production and this extends beyond the quantum world into the interconnectedness of people and, between actions and their effect on history, between different disciplines and different philosophies.

So why Mrs Bhaskar?

“When … we interviewed Mrs Bhaskar,” says Edith simply, “some of her answers were so unbelievable. They really were a combination of science, faith and art.”

For more insight into The Golden Record 3.0, please view our interview series featuring Edith Podesta, Mrs Santha Bhaskar and Shirin Keshvani

Headline image by TET Photography.