content flagged for surveillance
Dye-sublimation print on chiffon, suspended with wooden rod
In 3 parts
Each 90 x 90 cm
2015
content flagged for surveillance was developed from the ongoing series Notes from a Revolution, directly arising from thinking through notions of remoteness, proximity, and urgency while working outside of Singapore. Its form is affected by the interesting problem of how to transmit and display watercolour paintings at a site 11,000km away. The pictures eventually floated on these abstract planes imagine a fictional scenario grounded in Singapore, citing events and the circulation of images during the Sunflower Movement (318 Incident) in Taiwan and the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong. Extant and extensive state surveillance is foregrounded as a framing device, collapsing these objects and the propagation of potentially 'dangerous' ideas of political autonomy into mere content and data. These images are flagged and extracted from their original contexts (user-made digital content from Instagram and Google Maps) as if to be studied, tagged and logged. Presented as flag-like fabric prints, they represent both material and situations that are ambiguous and unfamiliar, unassigned between the impossible and the unexpected — just as how a people's occupation of a legislative building and machinery, or even the simple upsetting of signs and spaces, may seem like incredulous propositions.
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