Peranakan Whispers

The video was produced through an online collaboration between two performance artists. Based in the UK, I collaborated with another artist who was based in Singapore. ‘Peranakan Whispers’ seeks to address the issues of displaced identity, displaced meanings, and displaced expectations. The video consists of tightly framed overlapping and merging footages of us both engaging in the actions of wrapping and unwrapping with leaves, paper, and strings. The images merge, fading in and out, suggesting attempts of assimilation. There were significant difficulties involved in the process, primarily due to the structural and tactile differences of the materials, as one was soft and pliable, and the other rigid and uncompromising. While the empty hand gestures move with much more fluidity and ease, suggesting an independence from the physical limitations set by the objects, the challenge to simulate gestures, hints at irreconcilability. Mimicry has its limitations, and likewise, possibilities. With more handlings of the ‘difficult’ materials, there might be a chance of getting to be familiar with them over time, either superficially, or genuinely. Yet, with nothing to handle (empty gestures), there seems to be freedom and room to create something that has yet taken its form, a new object, perhaps even a new kind of identity.