The Embodied Image (Part 1)
THE EMBODIED IMAGE (Part 1)
This Singapore Art Week, artists have explored a multitude of interdisciplinary approaches to filmmaking
As soon as you’re past the familiar gates of the Objectifs Lower Gallery, you are teleported into a foreign landscape.
You enter a small, dimly lit room and brush past the veiled curtains forming a misty wall. The only artificial neon lights in view light your way through the room to an uncannily lifelike island that appears to be airlifted straight out of a plant conservatory. Despite being lit by mere LED strips, the spider plants and ferns bristle with life, perfectly nursed - and you can’t help but shiver at the thought of this vague human presence. Strangers from afar mutter unheard but familiar words, their faltering echoes aligning with the vacillating lights just right.
As an agoraphobic panic creeps up your chest, about to wrestle the consciousness out of you - snap! - you suddenly realise that you’re not trapped in outer space - you’ve just arrived at
Phenomenology of Light and Rhythms of the Earth, a
multidisciplinary exhibition by visual artist
Zen Teh and dancer-choreographer
SueKi Yee.
Zen and SueKi met by chance in Berlin, Germany, during Zen’s residency at Künstlerhaus Bethanien - initially a participant in Zen’s walking workshop held in Berlin, SueKi is now a long-term collaborator of Zen. Together, their synergy has left an unmistakable mark on their convening practices - Zen’s visual exploration into human activity in natural environments, and SueKi’s work as a choreographer and dancer. For them, interdisciplinary connections have become a common thread, guiding their workshops across Berlin, Phnom Penh, Singapore, and Bangkok as they seek to unearth perspectives we have yet to discover.
In
POLAROTE, Zen and SueKi delve deeper into merging image and time-based medium with their pre-existing project, inviting an animator working remotely to add to the installation. Beneath layers of translucent curtains, animated strobes light up a dim space. As the light rays are suspended in space, filtering through the feathered curtains, they leave behind a hallucinogenic cast of artificiality and constructedness.
We are reminded, once again, that film is no more than moving light.
Two iPads are set next to real ferns and spider plants in the installation - upon closer examination, they flash with disparate photo-montages. At one moment, we see light rays shining through the treetops of an unidentifiable forest. At the next, vines creeping up a tightly-cropped concrete wall.
Soon, I come to learn that these photos are by-products of participatory workshops, which Zen and SueKi have held across each city they visit. During these public events, participants without any prior knowledge of their oeuvre are given prompts relating to light and urban space in each city, which they react to freely through photography and audio responses. Spanning three sites in every city - anywhere from Singapore’s Fort Canning to Bangkok’s Mekong River, their input is compiled and cumulatively assembled to form a comprehensive collage.
Hidden from plain sight in front of the iPads are motion and light sensors, responding to the varying visual imagery presented, and altering the temperature and intensity of the LED lights in the room instantaneously. As a result, we not only experience the film organically, but the visual matter completely shrouds our perception, altering our lived experiences entirely.
Singapore as a city is so… bright.
Where to find dark spaces in Singapore?
I don’t know where…
I actively avoid the dark.
Undoubtedly, Zen and SueKi’s collaborative work are evidence of the interdisciplinary potential of filmmaking. In Singapore, an increasing number of artists are working across their fields of expertise to bridge movement-images with an array of artistic mediums.
At the 9th edition of Light to Night, an ‘annual visual arts festival’ jointly organised by National Gallery Singapore and Singapore Art Week, time-based mediums coalesce with architectural delight. Known for its public light projections termed ‘Art Skins on Monuments’, the festival spotlights different visual artists each year, inviting them to craft titular time-based work that precisely match the arcs and curves of national monuments.
This year, National Gallery Singapore’s Rotunda Library and Archive’s dome ceiling transforms into a three-week home for Kapilan Naidu’s
Kālacakra (A Clock For Progress), an
interactive installation tracking real-time data input from participants to mould a revolving collage of generated artworks spanning the dome ceiling.
Before entering the Rotunda, visitors are asked to scan a QR code, redirecting them to a
web application. After responding to three questions, every visitor is assigned an image specific to their responses. Effects of mechanisation and computing are made ever more apparent - each collage features uniquely spliced segments calculated from the participant’s responses.
Which concepts hold the most meaning for you?
In which moment do you find the greatest meaning?
Where do you feel most inspired?
With each puzzle piece uniquely generated, participants are forced to look up at the revolving clock on the dome ceiling to find their assigned piece, as it is updated in real-time. In this work, cinema’s natural encouragement of collaboration is heightened further. Involving every passing participant in the sequencing of the final product, film invades the entire collective space of its viewers. By incorporating the elements of chance and the unexpected, no two moments are the same in this artwork. While one would traditionally expect the narrative of a film to have a beginning, middle, and end, the use of live updating disrupts this concept altogether - weaving together an incomplete narrative laden with suspense, aptly descriptive of Singapore’s uncertain national development.
Revolving images recalling national art identities are pieced together to form a randomised assemblage, projected from the sides of the dome.
Interdisciplinary approaches to film, from the frontier of technology, allow us to imagine the future trajectory of filmmaking and film-watching in our increasingly digitised world. On the flip side, others dive deep into the history of interdisciplinary filmmaking, closely scrutinising its origins and pioneers. Accordingly, they also remind us of the physicality of filmmaking in the past such is its ‘crafty’ character.
At
Altered States: Experiments in Moving Image, interdisciplinary connections adopt a more concrete form as exhibiting artists closely scrutinise the potential connections between film and science. From decomposed film, to radioactive decay, to adhering washi tapes on films, artists across
this exhibition at the ArtScience Museum each take deep strides towards advancing experimental filmmaking.
Circular aspect ratios seem to be a common thread at both museums - the black pupil at the peak of the dome ceiling, once representative of a void ad infinitum, is now inversed to be a window to the past. Inspired by optographic images of the early 20th century, Sapphire Goss’
Revenants: Optographic Animation
is an amalgam of hand-scratched film presented in circular aspect ratio. Reminiscent of the pupil, the hallucinogenic video montage seemingly transports viewers into an alternate reality. As though seeing life through another person’s eyes, viewers are transported through a surreal, dreamlike dimension, as light rays reverberate across the screen.
Implying both life and death, Goss’ hauntingly metamorphic work inspires a sense of memento mori.
Once I treaded past the dark curtains barring each exhibit, I was met with a wall of ceramic plates, each presenting a uniquely foreign landscape, imbued with organic texture, geometric patterns, and liminal spaces. Moving up close, the protrusions and cavities grow apparent, hypnotising the viewer in their novelties. On the opposite wall, a projector lights up a large screen, its flashy, mesmerising variations undulating relentlessly. Tesselations of hexagonal shapes appear to gradually morph into naturalistic landscapes in the blink of an eye, the inverted colours of the flashing images distracting the viewer from these reifications.
Rectangular ceramic pieces made by the artist in collaboration with Pinch Ceramics Studio are displayed on the wall opposite the film. Their stillness invokes a sense of serenity amidst the flashing chaos of the film.
Reminding us of film’s interdisciplinary potential, this exhibition invigorates us with a new spirit to create and synergise the disparate and unconnected.
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About the author: Interested in philosophy, history, and sociology, Xinyi is an aspiring artist and filmmaker who weaves historical tidbits into her writing. A Hwa Chong Institution's Art Elective Program graduate, she won the 2024 Youth Film Program and participated in the Objectifs Young Photographer's Mentorship Program. Drawn to narratives that challenge convention, Xinyi explores queer identities and underrepresented histories, aiming to shed light on oft-overlooked perspectives through her work.
This review is published as part of *SCAPE’s Film Critics Lab: A Writing Mentorship Programme, with support from Singapore Film Society.
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