Introduction
Novelty of factory labour
Productivity as a national concern
Asian values
Cleanliness
Consciousness and control
Network of operators
Flatted factories as sites of visions
Mass Psychogenic Illness
Industrial toxicities
How to handle hysterical factory workers
Sightings
Experiences of a friend
Gross National Distress
Directions for an instrument (project description)
1983 (project description)
Ballad of the graveyard shift (project description)
Highly infectious (project description)
Interpretations of an outbreak (project description)
Let the machines sweat/sing/sleep (project description)
I dream of surplus (project description)
Shrunken desires (project description)
Dear passenger (project description)
Graveyard shift girls(project proposal)
Bibliography & Acknowledgements
Shrunken desires
This work is explored through the re-edit and appropriation of footage from the films Black Magic and Black Magic 2. These two films were made in the attempt by Shaw Brothers to capitalise on The Exorcist craze of the 70s. The films also drew from horror tropes that could be found in films produced by Shaw Brothers’ Malay Film production in Singapore during the 50s and 60s. The portrayal of “male hysteria” is also quite rampant in these two films. Something that is not commonly found in films of the day. The intention of the work is to interrogate images manufactured through cinema that instrumentalise certain cultures for capital gain. The work will also reflect on the research initiator’s position as a Chinese male from Singapore and how that has shaped his worldview. This work also questions the “Confucian gaze” on the population of Singapore/Malaysia in parallel with how indigenous cosmologies are being “rationalised” through science and rationality. This project will eventually culminate in a performance.
