In this post, the following would be included:
- Proposal
- Artist Statement
- Research Paper
- Project
- Document
- Reflection and individual roles
Proposal
- Programme Purpose/Objective
The main purpose of this installation is to allow participants the chance to take a step back to evaluate their lives so far. The installation aims to evoke recognition of the fast-paced lifestyle Singaporeans have in general. It also allows participants to reflect on the qualities of their life experiences and authentic connection they have with the things that truly matter in life. It also questions them on the meaning of their lives so far – if they were to die in this instant, what sort of legacy would they have left behind, and would it be something they could be satisfied with
- Programme Rationale
Singapore is a fast-paced society and there is rarely any time for people to slow down and truly appreciate life. We thus felt it was necessary to remind participants to take a breather and rethink the value of their lives.
- Programme Details
The installation comprises 2 rooms, both of which are expected to work independently as well as together. The first room is a narrative recreation of Singapore’s fast-paced life, and will end in the ‘death’ of the participant. This is followed by the second room which allows for the participant to do a self-reflection of his/her death.
- Artistic Direction
Life experiences differ from person to person, and we wanted to be as inclusive as possible to whoever that would be viewing it. The installation thus has a mixture of both literal and abstract elements. This allowed us to create a more poetic narrative that was more flexible, allowing participants to slip into the character portrayed.
We will be making use of sound, videos, voice-overs and props to create the desired atmosphere. To ensure that participants are able to understand the installation, we decided to make only the voice over explicit while the rest of the mediums will be kept abstract.
Room 1
As mentioned earlier, the first room is a narrative re-enactment of Singapore’s fast-paced lifestyle. The room is set up with 3 projected screens adjacent to one another.
In this room, we use the metaphorical representation of water as life and merge it together with scenes of the protagonist’s life. The protagonist is never explicitly shown, allowing participants to insert themselves into the narrative and relate the events with their own lives.
The three screens are played in sequence and document the growth of the character from a toddler to a teenager to a young adult respectively. Interlaced with the scenes of the character’s growth are scenes of coloured water droplets being dropped into a tank full of water. The water represents life, and the different coloured droplets represent the memories, experience and feelings associated with each growth stage.
The first screen narrates the toddler stage. The tank of water starts of transparent to represent the character’s innocence and purity. Her first memories, which are represented by yellow droplets are seen penetrating the surface of the water before spreading outwards. The screen then shows clips of a young kid playing with toys and having fun in the playground. The screen then fades back to the now yellow water in the tank.
The second screen starts playing as the first screen continues showing the yellow colours fusing with the water. Red droplets are added into the yellowed water, and is then overlapped with scenes of the character’s slow submission to teenage pressure and rebellion. She is stressed from studying and is too absorbed by commitments which result in negligence of her family. The screen fades back to the water, which is not a mixture of yellow and red. The water is now turning darker and murkier, symbolising the chaos and impurity in her life.
The final screen starts playing as the second screen continues showing the yellow and red tainting the water. This is overlapped with scenes of the character descending into a downward spiral in her life. She starts smoking, and is increasingly distant with her family. She is then seen fainting as the fast pace of her life has finally caught up with her and her health. She dies, and only realises the important things in her life during her last moments, when it’s already too late for her to change anything.
The screen turns black. Black is an irreversible colour, which means that the addition of other colours will not change it. Her life is over, and there is no turning back.
Room 2
While Room 1 focuses heavily on using videos, Room 2 shifts towards the usage of props and performance to create a reflective mood for the participants. In this room, a mock ritual for the dead has been set up.
The room is darkened as much as possible, and a table is setup at the end of the room. On the table lays different objects that are related to death. They include red string, candles and flowers commonly used for offering. In the center of the table lies a dirtied glass bowl. This is a connecting element for the 1st and 2nd room, and is representative of an empty life vessel. Life, symbolized by water, has been drained out, and only the ugly stains of the black contaminated life has been left behind. Behind the table stand a mirror that reflects the face of those who enter the room, and is meant to prompt participants to look at themselves and self-reflect.
As participants enter the room, a short performance is also put up. A male and female stands on either side of the table. They have a short dialogue about the character in the previous room.
Dialogue:
Ziyu
“She didn’t have to die this way.”
Alfred
“But at least she was doing what she loved.”
Ziyu
“But what does that amount to?”
Alfred
(Turns to audience)
“Have YOU lived a fulfilling life?”
Ziyu
“Or are you just chasing after happiness that is only temporary?”
After this short dialogue, an usher will come in to encourage participants to have a silent self-reflection for a duration of 1 minute. The narrative her is kept short as the main highlight here is the participants’ own involvement in the room.
- Target Audience
Students of the School of Art, Design and Media and NTU aged 19-30.
- Logistics / Budget
Filming Location | Things we borrowed | Things we bought |
Foundation drawing room 1 | Projector | Black and white cloth |
Critical Room 1-14 | Bamboo sticks | Fake candles |
Gladys House/Room & Living Room | Black cloth | Batteries |
Hall 15 | 2x Speaker | Bell |
NTU’s playground | 3x Laptop | Fresh flowers |
Presbyterian High School |
1x Long mirror | Secondary School textbook |
Foundation 2D Art Room | Fish tank | Black Garbage Bag |
Starbucks | Tables and Chairs | Food colouring |
NTU North Spine open area | Ladder | |
Foundation 3D Room | ||
Product Design Spraying Corner |
The full list of equipments:
- 2 projectors (School)
- 2 loud speakers (Ziyu)
- 3 laptops (Jo, Darren, Gladys)
- VGA adapter (Ziyu)
- Black and white cloth (Bought)
- Bamboo sticks (SC room)
- Long mirror (Foundation Drawing Room)
- Twine strings (Bought)
- Red Strings (Alfred)
- Candles / Fake candles (Bought)
- Batteries (Bought)
- Classic Candle Holder (Jo’s House)
- Bell (Bought)
- Fish tank (Loan from friend)
- Plastic bowl (Gladys)
- Water suction tube (Alfred)
- Mounting board (Ziyu)
- Cardboard boxes (Song Yu)
- Tables/Chairs (School)
- Black garbage bags (Bought)
- Fresh & dried flowers (Bought & Ziyu)
- Food colouring (Bought)
- Acrylic paint / Chinese black ink (School)
- Ladder (School’s cleaner)
- Masking/ clear/ black tape (Bought)
- School uniform/ textbook (Jo Inng / bought)
- Classic Alarm Clock (Hall 4)
- Hospital segregation cloth (School)
- Hospital Pillow/ Blanket (School)
- Phone with family picture (Gladys)
- Art File/Art Friend plastic bag (Gladys)
- Easel with drawing (Foundation Drawing Room)
- Stationaries / Foolscap paper (Gladys)
- Toyota Car (Gladys Bumper Car)
- Cooked food w/ utensils (Gladys House)
- Post-it Note (Gladys)
- Warm Lighting Kit (Gladys)
- Bata Shoe (Zoey)
- DSLR 600D / 18-250mm Macro-Zoom Lens (Gladys/Darren)
- Tripod (Darren)
- Cigarette and lighter (Heng Tong)
- Black spray and artifact (3D Room)
- Foam board and cutter (3D Room)
Artist Statement
Shēng – sî (生死) which means life and death is an installation to commentary on the way we are living and if we have lived life to the fullest. It consists of three screens projected by projectors to segregate the protagonist’s different stages of life and using the ink in the colour yellow, red and blue to symbolise the state of mindset she was in. The ink can be seen dropping into the water as different scenes of her life are being played throughout. The last scene would be an overlay of black ink to show that she have passed.
Moving on to the next room, we created a scene of a funeral with life performers to conduct a mock ritual for the audience.In reference to South Korea’s “Mock Funeral”, this allows the participants to experience a life after death and to have a moment of reflection in conjunction with the three screens that they have watched previously.
(I have also posted it on an individual post where you can view from, here.)
Research Paper
For this project, we aimed to tackle and address the issue of leading a fulfilling lifestyle in a modern context. We observed that many youths face the similar issue of being overwhelmed by school work and other commitments, and often had little quality time with things in life that truly mattered. (BBC, 2007)
In our research, we came across one particular trend that had a huge impact on our artistic direction.
Due to high societal pressure and escalating suicide rates, the ‘Near Death’ movement has become increasingly popular in South Korea. This movement aims to address this issue by giving participants the chance to detach themselves from their fast paced lifestyle to reflect on their lives. As such, multiple ‘Fake Funeral’ services have been conducted across the country. In this particular one, they are lectured by a philosophical guru and invited to write out their own eulogy. After that, they will be placed in a coffin for 30 mins to experience death. The act of being enclosed creates a deafening space of endless darkness, and the atmosphere allows the participant to evaluate their lives from a objective and detached point of view. A lack of self-reflection usually leads to people feeling lost and depressed, and this death meditation in the enclosed space forces them to look within themselves for answers that they have been seeking, but thought they didn’t have.
Another work we came across was Christian Boltanski’s The Heart Archive. Occupying a space in a museum on the uninhabited island of Teshima in Japan, this artwork collects heartbeat sounds from all around the world. Participants are invited into a room where they listen to the sounds of their own heartbeats through a headset. After that, their heartbeats recordings are saved and used in subsequent set ups of the art piece. The heartbeats are immortalized, and remain as fragile remains of their existence on earth.The work makes one contemplate on bereavement and what we remember during our existence on earth. As you take part in the installation, it evokes a sense of uncanniness which acts as a mirror of what lies ahead and our future and our nonexistence in it. The artwork questions the impact left behind by each individual whose heartbeat sounds have been recorded, and we believe the fragile and faint nature of the recordings makes one ponder on the meaning of their lives, and how many people they have impacted. It also relied heavily on symbolism and non-literal ways of portraying the theme, which we found interesting.
We believe these two artworks were greatly valuable and conveyed an important message. We thus decided to reference these two particular artworks/movements in terms of artistic style and content.Bibliography
Bibliography
- Life in the fast lane ‘speeds up’. BBC. BBC News, 2 May 2007. Web. 4 May 2007.
- “Fake Funerals in South Korea.” Vice. Vice Japan, n.d. Web. 21 Apr 2016.
- Demetriou, Danielle. “Boltanski’s hearts don’t skip a beat.” The Japan Times. The Japan Times, 6 Aug 2010. Web. 4 July 2013.
- Waters, Florence. “Christian Boltanski: The Heart Archive, Serpentine Gallery, review.” Telegraph. Telegraph, 12 Jul 2010. Web. 6 Aug 2010.
Project
The full actual presentation including room 1 and 2.
The full video that was played in room 1.
Documentation
Reflection and Individual Roles
In this project, I learned a lot regarding how much work and thoughts are put into an installation. From choosing a location to creating the content, and then being able to source out the suitable equipments, all these has to be considered in depth to avoid making mistakes and losing precious time. With that in mind, we too have to give ourselves ample time to buffer in case of unexpected scenarios, like in one of our case the partition were able to hold up with just strings in our heads, but in reality could not, thus we had to borrow the bamboo sticks from somewhere else to create a stand to drape the cloth over.
For our topic, which is about life and death, we decided to make it more relatable to the students of ADM and included scenes of of drawing in the wee hours which many of us could see in the shoes of the character. It is also a topic that is close to my heart as my family is very important to me but I am not always able to come home to spend time with them due to school, and thus made my weekends very precious.
For my part, I firstly thought up of the idea with the ink spreading effect when it drops into the water. I thought it fits well in the whole concept that we were discussing, and was well received by the group as well. The following sections, though we all worked together and helped out when someone needs them, we were still mainly in-charged of different things. For Ziyu and me, we were taking care of the logistic part. We planned out the floor plan for the rooms that we have selected, and went off to decide what we needed for the room.
We had to make sure we knew where the items were, how much they cost and also what time the shop closes. This is extremely important as you don’t want to make a empty trip because the shop have already closed, or over spend on things that you could have saved elsewhere.
The setting up of the room was relatively easy since we already have everything decided on what we have to do, and it was only the execution of the plans that we have already laid down. We had a buffer day to make sure everything was in place of when we were going to present, and that if there was anything missing or not working, we could solve it within that time frame.
Actual Setup
LAST BUT NOT LEAST, THANK YOU RUYI AND MY LOVELY CLASSMATES FOR THE WONDERFUL SEM ♥