SAW 2022 - Insulate

JAN 2022

TWO-CHANNEL SOUND INSTALLATION

Planeswalker

SINGAPORE ART WEEK 2022

It's my party and I'll cry if I want to, you would cry too if it happened to you

THE PROJECTOR SINGAPORE

Curated by Louis Ho

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WHEN
12 January – 6 February 2022

VENUE
The Projector (Golden Mile Tower branch)

OPENING HOURS
4 PM to 10.30 PM (Mondays to Fridays),
1 PM to 10.30 PM (weekends and public holidays).

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Insulate is a sonic installation informed by the soundscapes of filmic utopias and dystopias, including The Color of Pomegranates (1969), Blade Runner (1982), Blade Runner 2049 (2017), and Dune (2021). Employing a varied range of aural sources, ranging from found noise to synthesized and performed sounds, the work presents various auditory configurations of the happiness ideal. As the artist puts it: “I explore different imaginations of an escape from the unhappiness of daily life, the small bits of unhappiness that collectively adds up over time and builds a sort of debt of happiness that weighs us down continuously over time.” The sonic conjuring of this happiness debt is channeled through the diegetic worlds of cinema, asking the fundamental question: “To what extent does sound seal us within these worlds, demanding a suspension of disbelief to remain within?”

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I. A ritualistic scene in an alien land. The air is foreign, the materials are rare, of a different nature. Patterns of repetition in movement, garments that reveal a certain form of culture. An escape perhaps, or a peering into the gateway of another reality?

II. Exotic melancholy, farmed string sonics. A slow interjection, a consistent ground bass stretched and its form and function pulled apart. Pushing, pulling, an everlasting sinking, but still trudging forward.

III. Mother nature, wrath and a turning of the wheel. Oblivious to the musings of man-kind. It goes on, regardless. An ebb and flow, a turning of the wheel.

IV. Akira. A tribute. A reveration to the inspiration that is the musical collective Geinoh Yamashirogumi. Synthesized organic elements combined with exalting synth voices.

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LISTEN TO A PREVIEW

Mervin Wong · Insulate (Extract)