Highly Infectious — Gross National Distress

Highly infectious

I also borrowed a motif from the story told by Zainab Mahmood about her former colleague who “caused” the episode of MPI. In this retelling of the incident, she mentions that the affected individual started to cackle after returning from the toilet. This in turn started to cause an outbreak in the factory.

Cackling is a known trope in cinema that is often used to portray a “hysterical” person, oftentimes, this person is a woman. This trope is used to perhaps evoke fear in the audience while simultaneously assigning attributes that are “undesirable” to the character.

I wanted to present and exaggerate this “undesirable” trait in the cinema. Instead of invoking fear, the goal was to embolden audiences to release their fears in the cinema. This four minute experiment in sound is supported by a 16mm projection of film that was repurposed from the disposal bin of the Filmwerkplaats Lab in Rotterdam. The loop of film is bleached and drawn on to create a new image in response to the sound. Use of 16 mm film is also due to the fact that the piece was constructed first with sound in mind and because 16mm projectors require the space to be dark, I was able to play with the dynamics of light and darkness. The visual and sonic texture of a 16 mm projector also felt much more visceral than an electronic projector. At a certain point in the presentation, I would start to cackle in the cinema as the projector is turned off. Audience members are invited to join and participate in the cackling too.

The only issue without explicit invitation, I don’t think that the audience will participate in the cackling. Regardless, I invited my friends from Singapore to send audio files of their cackles so when this piece is performed wherever in the world, they will always be cackling by my side.

This piece which is titled, “Highly Infectious” is derived from a quote by P. K. Chew. He states that workers who are affected by MPI are to be isolated as they are considered to be “highly infectious”. Here is where I attempt to think about how such incidents become agents of contagion and contamination. I acknowledge that the context is entirely different. This project is not meant to replicate incidents that occurred in the factories. The intention is to ultimately create a space in the dark for “undesirable” outbursts.

My intention is to create a time and space for the audience to imagine visions within the chaos. Visions that might be influenced by cinema or other mediums of moving images but more importantly visions that come from their own aspirations. Visions that could possibly be highly infectious.