Let the machines sweat/sing/sleep — Gross National Distress

Let the machines sweat/sing/sleep

In collaboration with movement artist Ruby Jayaseelan, this work was developed with the intention to create an exercise routine that embeds gestures related to resistance. The movement is largely inspired by scenes from films that depict disruptive behaviour in industrial settings.

Initially, Ruby Jayaseelan felt that it was difficult to create the movement alone. She suggested that we do workshops together to realise the gestures and forms. This was conceived as a strategy to voice refusal. In Singapore, the right to assemble is severely restricted and so this project is our way of finding a loophole. This has not been tested yet. Ruby also suggested that this routine can be tailored to different bodies and in this sense, the routine shifts away from ideas of uniformity with its supposedly rigid form.

In accompaniment of this exercise routine, I also edited together clips from several films that feature disruptive behaviour. The original intention was to edit together the parts with disruptive behaviour but I eventually decided to create a “narrative” within the piece. In this work, images are cropped to first accentuate machines from the industrial world. The focus then shifts to human presence in their gestures, behaviour and actions.