Directions for an instrument — Gross National Distress

Directions for an instrument

For this project, I wanted to start from a place where I felt most vulnerable. This is supposed to be realised through putting myself in front of a camera and performing/acting scenes derived from a mass psychogenic event that concerns people that supposedly come from my background. Collaborators are invited to choose a motif from the selection below and after discussions about that particular motif, the collaborator will direct me in a short scene that will be recorded.

I believe that through this act of self experimentation, one would be able to understand more about performance in front of a camera and perhaps when working with collaborators on my original topic will help one to be more sensitive. This “micro” project is based on a mass psychogenic event that happened in Singapore and mostly involved Chinese males who believed that their penises were shrinking due to a variety of anxiety driven reasons. These episodes occurred in 1967 which are right in the middle of Singapore transitioning into its industrial phase. This event occurred before the factory mass psychogenic incidents that took place in 1973.

This new trajectory will also investigate the misconceptions of mass psychogenic illness as being a gendered issue that affects the female body and psyche. In thinking about subverting hierarchies of film production, this project is a way for me to become a subject and serve a vision that is not mine. In this way, I believe I have created a way in which my subjective self can be quickly reflected back to me so what is formulated is twice as much(my own perception of myself and that of the directors). This is an attempt to transform “vision” into concept because in my past experience, the vision of a filmmaker is enforced above all else.