︎ GOOD MORNING YOUNG BODY (2021-2023), video, 06:23
Installation images courtesy of Singapore Art Museum
The video uses as its basis found footage and material of the artist’s time as a preteen TV actor in the early 2000s in Singapore, a time of an unregulated internet and nascent image distribution. Through the use of a deep-fake, the video resurrects the series character, E-Ching, to address the politics of the gaze, the femme-presenting body, and agency. By compressing time and space, the eternal 12-year-old E-Ching offers a revisionist narrative that holds a yearning for freedom.
GOOD MORNING YOUNG BODY was first developed under Dance Affectionate by Nirmala Seshadri, then through the Dance-Nucleus-Thinkers’ Studio virtual residency, both in 2021, before adapted for Proof of Personhood: Identity & Authenticity in the Face of AI at Singapore Art Museum in September 2023, curated by Duncan Bass.
Technical director: Jon Chan
Link available upon request.
︎ in the shadow of the cosmic (2023), performance-lecture, video, 30:00
in the shadow of the cosmic is a performance-lecture exploring the multiplicity of the avatar. Expanding THE YOUNG BODY UNIVERSE series, the character E-Ching is placed in conversation with vocal clones, anime characters, 3D influencers, and other entities in a vast digital constellation. The performance-lecture traces a technological lineage from the East Asian economic miracle of the 80s and 90s and the emergence of techno-orientalism, positing that the digital image of the East Asian femme body was borne at a confluence of these historical flows. Pertinent to the work is the recursive logic of Daoism, in which image, self and cosmology reverberate in endless loops. Combining video, live performance and sound, in the shadow of the cosmic is a call to re-open questions of being and becoming.
in the shadow of the cosmic premiered in conjunction with the exhibition Proof of Personhood: Identity & Authenticity in the Face of AI at Singapore Art Museum.
Motion graphics: Jawn Chan
Audio generation: Jawn Chan, Ashley Hi
3D animation: Brandon Tay, Tristan Lim
Movement artists: Sonia Kwek, Chloe Chotrani (Singapore Art Museum); Viola Graef, Florence Lam (Art Central Hong Kong)
Music (the track, Mutualism): Anise
References: Byung-Chul Han, David S. Roh, Greta A. Niu, Jack Halberstam, Paul B. Preciado, Tiqqun, Yuk Hui, Hatsune Miku, Keichiro Shibuya, Toshiki Okada, YKBX, Rae, Eternity, Mediacorp, Dao De Jing
Documentation link available upon request.
︎ pixel-code, flesh-bone (2022), performance-lecture, 20:00
pixel-flesh, code-bone traces contemporary technological developments vis-a-vis the possibilities of the avatar, framed by the bodily presence of E-Ching, and thus by extension, the artist herself. Using multiple modalities of the image, voice, and chatbots, the performance-lecture considers the politics of the Young Girl in a critique of the agency of our techno-selves.
pixel-flesh, code-bone was developed through the Goethe-Institut Singapore residency in Nov-Dec 2022.
Collaborators: Sonia Kwek, Jon Chan, Chok Si Xuan
Documentation link available upon request.
︎ bubble (2022-2023), chatbot program, dimensions variable
bubble is an interactive chatbot featuring the character E-Ching as she leads the participant through a series of questions and answers. Departing from the trend of gendered AI companions, the work comments on the impossibility of perpetual soothing. Using trust, access, and rejection as underpinning tools, the chatbot allows for numerous outcomes depending on the participant’s willingness to share vulnerabilities, thereby addressing notions of power, authority, and service.
bubble was first developed for Vector #2 by Dance Nucleus, presented at The Esplanade in March 2022, then adapted for Proof of Personhood: Identity & Authenticity in the Face of AI at the Singapore Art Museum in September 2023, curated by Duncan Bass.
Chatbot customization: Ashley Hi, Chok Si Xuan
Avatar generation: Brandon Tay
Chatbot documentation available upon request.
︎ public solitude (2022), 2-channel video installation, 04:00
Installation image courtesy of Bernie Ng/Dance Nucleus.
public solitude is a two-channel video contemplating the manifestations of E-Ching following prompts related to desirability, performance, and reality. Drawing from dramaturgical pedagogy, Stanislavski’s theory of public solitude as a means of freeing the actor from an audience, as well as the politics of the public gaze, the two channels are a correspondence of conflicting values surfacing the (im)possibilities of freedom.
public solitude was developed for Vector #2 by Dance Nucleus, presented at The Esplanade in March 2022.
Technical director: Jon Chan
Dramaturg: Sonia Kwek
Link available upon request.