writings – K I M .

Of Trying and Tiring – Documentation

Artist’s statement:

In this installation, the viewer is invited to witness the subjective mind-space as experienced by the artist during increasingly frequent depressive episodes. e embodiment of ‘the cold’ occupies and transforms the mind-space. e artist, trapped in her own madness and the suffocatingly sterile mind- space, seeks ‘the warm’.

Trying/failing.
Trying/tiring.

It is here again.

The viewer, upon entering the work stands between two clocks. The one behind him runs as a normal clock runs. The one in front of him is reflected, as if in a mirror, and runs backward. The viewer understands that the reality presented before him is not reality as perceived by most. Instead, it is a warped and unapproachable reality that the viewer has been invited to (or accidentally stumbled on) witness.

This installation is representative of the artist’s mind-space when experiencing bouts of depressive episodes. This alternative ‘subjective’ space is delineated from the ‘objective real world’ by means of a reflected clock and the blue light emitting from the fluorescent lighting, which contrasts with the warm lighting that occupies the ‘objective real world’.

This blue light, shielded by a mesh guard is an embodiment of the depression, which the artist has come to refer to as The Cold. The Cold sits unobstructedly in the corner, but its presence is strong and acknowledged, enveloping the entire installation space (represented mind-space) in its influence.

The installation features a bedroom, devoid of all furniture but a mattress on the floor and a couple of pillows. On the empty bed rests a section of crocheting – an incomplete blanket. Disembodied hands rest on the crochet, crocheting hook frozen in one hand, yarn still twined around the hook. All is still, as if the occupant of those hands has left for good, or has gone off temporarily. The piece is left abandoned. The hands are tired.

The blanket is connected by yarn to smaller pieces of crochet on the wall – uneven, unshapely, ugly pieces that are the unsuccessful attempts of the artist in her attempt to create the blanket – unsuccessful attempts in creating comfort in defense of The Cold. The artist attempts to create Warmth in a battle against The Cold but is faced with her own failures paraded on the wall like trophies. She is unable to put her own failures behind her, or see past these failed attempts, which suggests a cyclical pattern in the depression she experiences. Sad, therefore creates comfort, but fails, therefore sad, therefore creates comfort…so on and so forth.

This piece is about trying and failing and trying and tiring.

Of trying and tiring: Soundscape

Originally, I wanted to have a performative video piece of myself engaging in a slow process of crocheting the blanket to accompany the installation. However, as the installation came to develop, I realized that I had too many wall-hanging elements and that adding another video onto the wall. Therefore, I needed an intangible element that could add on to the work.

Then, I ventured into sound. And this was when I was fully about to concretise the concept of the installation into a streamlined idea –

This soundscape is a sonic representation of the artist’s struggle with panic/anxiety/depressive episodes. Recently the artist has been having more of these episodes due to various reasons. Each occurrence is terrifying and debilitating and crippling, leaving the artist exhausted and fearing when the next episode would attack.

The soundscape begins with a chilling atmosphere, with whirring sounds. Melodic sequences are then layered upon the consistent whirring. These melodic sequences are unstructured, in order to evoke uncomfortable/ anxious feelings within the viewer. The viewer then understands that the work is sinister in nature. The melodies then continue in fragments, eventually building to a segment where “33 music boxes play at once”. This is the most turbulent part of the soundscape, representing the highest point of fucked uppery that the artist feels. (Feels like there is nothing worth living for/there is no happiness in the world at these moments). Eventually, this segment ends. The storm is over. This is signified by bird song, which give off a more positive vibe. However, the underlying sinister whirring sounds that were repeated throughout the soundscape continue throughout the birdsong, signifying that the underlying illness is still present, that it is never completely gone.

Comfort objects comfort me

Installation is a tricky thing. What makes installation installation and not sculpture? The line between installation and sculpture, I would say, is a fine one. From looking at installations and reading up a bit more, there are a few boxes that installation ticks off:

Immersive
Multi-sensory
Site-specific

So these are the criteria that I have to keep in mind as I plan out the space for the installation.

On comfort objects

In dealing with the space, I at first wanted to recreate the room I had set up in my previous assignment. However, it didn’t make sense for me just to recreate the room as I realized it wouldn’t retain its meaning when placed out of the context of the video like that.

The installation has to carry meaning on its own.

Continuing on the theme of loneliness, the train of thought went to ideas of coping – ways to cope and deal with negative situations and emotions – an emotionally charged subjective space.

I then realized that, for myself, shutting down has become an immediate coping mechanism – going to sleep means the world and its problems are no longer there. Specifically – going to sleep with a blanket.

The blanket then acts as a comfort object that protects and shields. There will be a blanket in the installation.

But then how do I transform the space to make it look lonely?

One of the artists I looked to to find the answer to this was Tehching Hsieh. While his one-year performances are not installations in nature, they are highly site-specific.

In one of his one-year performances, he confined himself to a small cell for an entire year.

Hsieh’s works are highly ritualistic in nature. This action of doing something mundane over a long period of time/over and over again, while simple, conveys strongly a sense of mania and emotional charge. I feel that using a similar repetitive approach would help me convey the sense of “coping mechanisms” in my own work.

In terms of subject matter, Hsieh’s 1978-1979 performance of confinement in a cell strongly features the bed that he slept on. The idea of sleep is echoed here, and the sense of isolation/desolation/lack of human contact/aloneness/nothing to do except sleep align with my own similar ideas.

It is befitting then, that I should use the setting of a bed + blanket in the installation.

To imbue the ritualistic elements in my own piece, I will hand make the blanket (as opposed to buying one and setting it up just like that). In this way, the comfort is created by the subject seeking the comfort. It implies a sense of trying as opposed to stagnant depression. And perhaps in trying one fails, but what is important is that attempts were made to cope – “coping mechanisms”.

This is where it ends.

In This is where it ends., Nguyen explores the theme of loneliness through the visual and sonic portrayal of different mind states one might be unfortunate enough to encounter while experiencing bouts of the aforementioned emotion. Perception is played with through the portrayal of an objective physical world versus an emotionally laden subjective world.

Chronological commentary/thought process (if anyone is interested):

As I was shooting I was playing some music in the background and I thought, “Hey maybe I could cut the shots to dis chill beatz.” So I tried that out. But this segment is supposed to suggest time passing slowly and to introduce the idea of being alone/loneliness experienced by objective observation, so the chill beatz didn’t work very well to keep things minimal. But here it is any way for the luls –

The pretentious typewriter is there because I wanted to be able to capture the character in the act of self-medicating and self-prescribing illegitimate drugs to cope with the crippling loneliness. I was not sure what to name the drugs so a quick google search for “common antidepressants” gave me a few options:

Prozac, Selfemra (fluoxetine)
Paxil, Pexeva (paroxetine)
Zoloft (sertraline)
Celexa (citalopram)
Lexapro (escitalopram)

It is so interesting that there are different types. These ones I found are the sedating types – meant to be taken in the evening to induce sleep. Perfect.

They were meant to imitate prescribed medicine labels but the pill bottles I got were too small for that, so I could only fit a few essential lines in.

“Let her sleep, for when she wakes, she will move mountains.” JK. She wakes up feeling like shit and ends up taking dubious drugs due to her inability to deal with the feeling of being alone.

This part is raw footage from the phone, so the blue was altered in the physical environment with blue cellophane taped over the ceiling light. There are a few reasons.

Changing the colour of the environment is good for suggesting a transition into another space. In this case, there are two aspects of space that has been altered:
One: time. There is a corner in one of the shots in this sequence that shows a peak of the window, indicating that it is dark outside. The blue here emphasises the time of night.
Two: altering the mind state. In her waking, the environment has been transformed from the objective physical world (white, natural lighting), to this subjective mental state world (artificial, altered lighting).

This is also where it transitions from a 3rd person perspective to a 1st person perspective to further emphasize the idea of objectivity and subjectivity. In the 1st person perspective, we see the world through the subjective eyes of the character (quite literally).

Our eyes also see differently from the camera. To play on this, I wanted to use a wide angle lens on the phone to visually portray our wide peripheral vision. I was supposed to bring home the proper clip-on lens and all but I forgot so I bought this dollar jelly lens which is quite sucky but does the trick and also makes blurry vignette edges which is good for emphasizing a dreamlike state.

This is also the part where jtan304’s soundscape is used.

Lastly, there is a final transition into the hallucinatory drug stage where the character experiences visions/memories induced by the drug taking. The spasmodic bursts of images of physical intimacy with another person are where the viewer finally comes to the conclusion what the character’s distressful state of mind might be attributed to. There are many ways to cope with loneliness (many things one might do to distract oneself from loneliness), but this is perhaps the easiest way to do it without taking too much time/explaining too much.

Even Olivia Laing mentions it briefly, where she questions –

How do we live, if we’re not intimately engaged with another human being?… Is sex a cure for loneliness, and if it is, what happens if our body or sexuality is considered deviant or damaged, if we are ill or unblessed with beauty?

In editing this part I also played with colour, bathing the non-flashing memories with blue to create a spark contrast between the physically experienced world versus the imagined hallucinations. However, I didn’t quite like it in the end, and much preferred the original where the two narratives were in the same colour, suggesting a dissolution of the barrier between the imagined and the objective – the character is confused as to what is real and what is not.

Here is the alternative footage that I tried out –

I didn’t know what to call the film initially. But in my editing, I realized there were many cadences in the piece that seemed to suggest that the film has reached a conclusion, but always seemed to be followed by another sequence of images. And even then, for myself, in the experiences that brought about and inspired the making of this film, I was asking, fearful – when is it going to end?

This is where it ends.

Exhibition Review: How Loneliness Goes

How Loneliness Goes is a book about those of us who abide in the city.

My wish is for this book to wander in my stead, exist as a testament to existence, and credibly proffer the possibility of beauty as a balm for everyday sorrow.

— Nguan

It is with a slight upward curve of the lip to have to review this exhibition by Nguan. I started following his work when rrhzhao introduced him last semester during one of his classes.

It seems so immediately instinctive to be drawn to Nguan’s images. Something about the colour. Something about the light. Something about the people and the architecture. Even after looking at his photographs on different occasions, I still feel like I can’t grasp fully what it is that the photographs have that so penetrates the soft inner core of this young adult.

This show at FOST features a selection of Nguan’s photographs from the “Singapore” series, and as suggested by the exhibition title, the photographs deal with the idea of loneliness. Specifically, loneliness in the urban context. It is interesting to have to approach this in the state of mind that I am currently in, dealing with loneliness of another kind. I will first try to dissect the images objectively through their formal elements.

Something about the colour.
Pastel hues are more characteristically recognisable in Nguan’s photographs. It is not a desaturation of colour, not really. Robert says Nguan does not edit his photographs and that the colour is achieved completely through the analogue film that he uses. I am not inclined to believe him a hundred percent. But then again they are friends. I will settle for the in between and conclude that Nguan obviously uses voodoo magic to achieve such colours. On a more serious note, something about the pastel hues, to me, evokes a sense of other-worldliness. A dreamlike state that is separates his photograph from objective perception by the viewer. This is perhaps a more Nguanced (nuanced) and lighthearted approach to loneliness, in great contrast to how I have chosen to portray the more crippling kind of loneliness in my own film.

Something about the light.
What immediately follows the observation of colour is the light in the photographs. There are no absolute blacks or white, just a sort of ambivalent low contrast grey area in-between. This further serves to propel the viewer into this dreamlike world that Nguan creates in his photographs, serving as an almost mist-like, fog-like veil shrouding the subject matter in the photograph.

Something about the people.
With the rare exception, the people in the photographs are mostly not looking directly at the camera. They almost always are caught in the act of simply being, simply existing as they are, simply living; as humans do. And in the act of simply existing, Nguan has, through his voodoo camera magic, captured a sense of ‘nothingness’, of unguided ponderous thought, and most importantly, a kind of vulnerability of having been caught in this moment of ‘nothingness’. Perhaps there is a universal alignment in understanding these candid, vulnerable moments that allows us (me) to feel what the photographer intents me to feel through his photographs – a sense of emptiness.

Something about the architecture.
When there are no people, there is space uninhabited. In the “Singapore” series, the language of space is depicted through Singapore’s communal living spaces – our HDB flats. One would think that being alone would mean being in private spaces inaccessible to those other than ourselves, therefore Nguan’s transformation of public spaces into lonely spaces is beautiful to note. Of course, the trope of lonely = empty space is used formulaically. But of course, it works formulaically as well. Also, there is sky. There is almost always sky. I am not sure what this means for Nguan. But for myself, the presence of negative space – of sky – has always had an effect in influencing my state of mind. Be it day sky or night sky, this vast beyond calls for trepidation and fear and yearning all at once. Most of all, it leaves me feeling small, vulnerable, alone. There is so much sky.

Business idea: Nguan should collaborate with VSCO and make a filter. It will be the first filter that I spend my money on.

Starting with visual representation

There was a film I watched that was quite lovely.

It deals with an interpretation of the Ganzfeld experiment which is used as a measure of detecting ESP (Extrasensory Perception).

Extrasensory perception, ESP or Esper, also called sixth sense, includes reception of information not gained through the recognized physical senses but sensed with the mind.

The contents of the film are not so important as the way the visual aspects of this “extrasensory state” are dealt with.

In the extrasensory state, the character dreams/remembers/sees what seems to be memories in surreal and dreamlike sequences. What is interesting (to me) about these sequences are the colour and image distortions used to alter the images (aka glitch effects). In contrast with unaltered footage, it very effectively suggests a kind of alternative mindstate

In contrast with unaltered footage, it very effectively suggests a kind of alternative mindstate – one that is beyond objective perception in the real world. I am quite keen on exploring a similar style of image alteration in my film as well, to portray the perceived contrast between the objective physical world and the subjective lonely state of mind.

I downloaded some glitch apps on the phone to see what kind of visual language was accessible to me in image alteration. There were some really good ones like (Glitché) but that wasn’t free (on top of paying for the app itself, you have to play like $5 more to access most of the functions) so forget that. #brokeandhungryandsleepdeprived.

I ended up really liking (Bent) for its many suitable filters and functions. But one downside to the app was that I couldn’t import existing videos into the app for it to alter the image. Meaning if I went with this I will have to shoot on my phone straight from the app as opposed to using a proper camera.

Life is for dangerous living.

I went with it anyway.

Here is some footage I got to see what the app could do –

4D: This is where it starts.

I wanted to make a film about loneliness based on the story I wrote for Narratives class. It was about loneliness – how a girl hallucinates her body parts as being separate entities from herself, sentient beings that speak to her and talk to her. She thinks her body parts are her friends, a sort of twisted kind of imaginary friend.

The thing is – no one else sees these body parts as sentient beings. And so it is significant to consider that loneliness is a state of mind accessible to only the individual experiencing said loneliness. And said loneliness is experienced through a lens that distorts the objective physical world through emotions and skewed perceptions.

I also realized that what I did for Assignment 1 also aligns with this idea somewhat – on the idea of perception.

So, this film will continue on the theme of perception – subjective versus objective perception of spaces. Specifically, alterations caused by loneliness.

There is a book I want to read.

But I predict I will not have the time to read it + think about it + evaluate my thoughts + come up with a concrete conclusion about the book that would inform my thought process for the film in time for submission.

But I did read a Brain Pickings article [here] that talks about the book and about how Laing describes her loneliness.

It feels shameful and alarming, and over time these feelings radiate outwards, making the lonely person increasingly isolated, increasingly estranged. It hurts, in the way that feelings do, and it also has physical consequences that take place invisibly, inside the closed compartments of the body. It advances, is what I’m trying to say, cold as ice and clear as glass, enclosing and engulfing.

Loneliness is difficult to confess; difficult too to categorise. Like depression, a state with which it often intersects, it can run deep in the fabric of a person, as much a part of one’s being as laughing easily or having red hair.

Beautifully poignant. But also, I think these did not do much to inform my thought process about the work, more so, it has cushioned my own feelings of loneliness.

Some say that one does not know loneliness until he/she has felt completely and utterly alone whilst in the company of others. Then perhaps Laing has alleviated some part of this lonely 20 year old girl by speaking words she herself is too crippled to form.

In response to reading about other people’s Lonely, I thought more about my own Lonely. Here are some raw thoughts from the stream of consciousness (if you are interested):

Idea of loss
Emotions associated with losing somethings that was once there
Losing objects/people/things in general
Missing the lost object

Why keep objects?
For their sentimental significance
Sometimes this gets a little manic and illogical – the kinds of items we keep
There is no objective reason to keep these items but
We keep them to justify/ the last thread to the thing that is lost
Objects of permanence vs memories/feelings of impermanence

How does a lonely person live life?
Either succumbing to the loneliness
And therefore crippling themselves, not doing anything for long periods of time
OR by distracting themselves with things to do, people to see

At the end of it all, here is my conclusion:

The film is (will be) a representation of the objective world and the lonely state of mind of the artist.

I Love You Like Me: Final

Artist’s statement:

The struggle of contamination

Master Zhao mentioned this one work by Tan Pin Pin where she visits sites in Singapore where people have died/have been killed. It sounded along the lines of what I was trying to achieve, so I went to look it up online:

The Impossibility of Knowing

Can a video camera can capture the aura of a space that has experienced trauma? I made a list of places I knew about where accidents had happened and we filmed them. But my camera did not “capture” anything. It could be due to the limitations of physics, but the canal remained a canal, the house, a house. Maybe the aura we sought doesn’t exist. Maybe you can see better than us.
– Tan Pin Pin, 2010

The film comprises of still shot after still shot of “traumatic” locations, accompanied by the natural sounds occurring in those spaces, with the deep, slow narration of the traumatic stories that accompany these spaces.

I agree with Tan that the camera is not able to much beyond the objective representation of the space. The “aura” that seeks to be imbued was only possible through the narration of the story associated with these places. The experience of said “aura” then comes through through the viewer’s own imaginations, a sort of “fill in the blanks”, a trying to picture what is not pictured.

Now, what am I to do with my contaminated spaces?

Evidently it doesn’t really work to just document these spaces. Something has to be done to it. Visually through altering the space/visually through providing accompanying texts/auditorily through narration.

But how do you elegantly depict what is invisible i.e. how does one depict aura?

How appropriate it is that Robert brought us to see this one show “WHAT IS NOT VISIBLE IS NOT INVISIBLE”.

I think of all that was there I really enjoyed this one the most. So poetically captures and imbues physicality to air. I think it was really smart of them to open the show with this first work. 10/10 (Y)

But how does one imbue physicality to “aura” and memory? Crei.

2 strands. Word Vomit.

The way you navigate the world is the way the world tells its story to you.

– Robert Zhao, 2017

Lately, I have become interested in stories. The whole idea of story-telling and its intricacies and mechanics started to make more meaning of itself in my head than before. There are no bad stories, only bad story tellers (this is an opinionated fact), so in my first assignment for Shifu Zhao this year, I will aim to be the best storyteller I can be.

I have two stories I might want to tell this time round. As of the typing of this post I am still trying to wrap my head around the execution of both because both seem like very abstract concepts to deal with, especially visually.

A story about noise.

For the longest time, I have been quite sensitive to sounds. (All other senses as well but sounds seem to affect me the most). They almost always trigger my physical body into a fight/flight state which is very sucky when I’m stuck in a situation that demands me to not run away from these triggers.

Repetitive sounds – pen clicking, rhythmic whoosh of cars passing by, knocking, loud keyboard typing, feet tapping etc.

And, whistling.

I have yet to consider where to even begin harvesting a story from this idea, but first instinct is to:

Pair annoying trigger sounds with peaceful environments – disparity between what is experienced by the self and what is experienced by others.
Overlaying massive amounts of noise together to make some sort of grotesque symphony of visual and auditory stimuli
Make a pseudo-documentary of Steve (name changed) – a guy who whistles too much all the damn time fucking gets on my nerves fuck.

A story about contaminated spaces.

A thing happened recently that got me thinking about the spaces we occupy and the things we do in these spaces – and the subsequent memories that are formed through our interaction with people in these spaces. We tend to perceive spaces differently after having experienced either positive or negative (mostly negative/significant/impactful) interactions in them.

“You know, I hate that this room is contaminated now.”

“Yeah, memories.”

I think this idea could be much stronger than the other one. I will ask Robert tomorrow. Or Tuesday.

Again, I have yet to figure out ways to depict this visually, but again, first instinct is to:

Photographic stills of spaces that are significant/contaminated to me/others. But how does the audience distinguish the contamination? Physical alteration of the photograph? (Draw things, cut things, blur things, erase things, add things) Or maybe it is the way the photograph is treated to bring out nostalgic effects? (Lighting/mood/composition)
GIFs of the empty space, and the space altered – lapses of people/conversation floating omnipresent in the space
A short film that conveys this concept through narrative and sequencing. A little bird told me that there is a film that has similar ideas to mine – Before Sunrise (1995) – I will find time to watch it soon.