Life in the City-State 1999

“Life in the City-state” is a video installation I did for my graduation from the Art Elective Program when I was in Chinese High School in 1999. I did not manage to learn much in that 4 years of art education, accept film making skills, which I find great pleasure in.



The installation is trying to depict the despondency and degeneration of life in Singapore trapped in the artifice of its own construct, peeling apart its superficial beauty and happiness to reveal the true hollowness within. The set is a dark room pretty much like the atmosphere shown in the picture where a plaster sculpture of me is glued to the television representing the inability of the being to extract himself from the machine of consumption and of being consumed while slowing rotting away with time.

The work is created in the Art block of the above picture, an almost perfectly rectangular double storey enclosure where all sorts of amusing creative antics take place within. I spent many nights there in the Art block working alone sanding my sculpture and editing the video.

The whole video is taken on a professional JVC camera like that in the picture but I can’t remember exactly what was the model (It was like 11 yrs ago). As it uses Super VHS tapes, my work was destroyed 3 times towards the examination date due to a series of unfortunate “tape stuck in lousy video playback device” events. Luckily, by then I decided to go with my instincts, shoot with my feelings, and forgo content, which made me do well for my finals.

Editing then was pretty interesting and extremely taxing coz the world was using analogue technology then. There was no adobe premier or final cut pro, and internet was just introduced to Singapore 2 yrs before. To edit the video, I had to do some extremely complicated programming with all the dials and tv screens, set a long series of commands, hit the big red REC button and pray that nothing goes wrong. Since everything is done in real time, and I made many mistakes, I had to clock many hours in the editing suite while my peers are happily playing magic cards back in the common room.

The plaster component is the 2nd part of my installation besides my video. I had to cast a couple of life-size plaster sculpture of myself which was pretty amusing. I first learnt to cast and shape a series of my hands, a skull and then finally my full body. The full body process takes about a day, where my good friend JT will wrap plaster bandages from my toes up to my head, leaving only 2 holes for breathing. Its hot, strenuous and stuffy as I have to bear the weight of the plaster while in some preconceived pose. I did not have the luxury of that many helpers as seen from this picture when all my friends are busy with their own final year work. Once my body went numb from cold and I just collapsed flat on my face (you can’t move your body as they are under solid cast) and wasted JT’s whole day of work. The drying process takes about 3 hours and JT will give me a free “waxing session” by splitting my cast in two, right at the sides. After which I glued the 2 sides of “me” together, apply more plaster, and sand them to perfection which takes about 3 months. It was such a memorable process doing the whole installation from the filming to the editing and human casting. We often joke that the various casts of me can be found at different places of the Art block in the morning, spinning of supernatural tales. Those days were truly of simple friendships and companionship. Till now after 10 years the AEP peeps still often meet up to dine and stay over :)