Single Channel/ Stereo/ 3 mins
Let Us Eat Air
Eleven year old Elly, riffs in this scripted video- offering an insight into her generation's lament, on the climate legacy that generations before her has heaped on Earth. It becomes apparent what future generations will have to do without, in order to partake in the crucial attempt of slowing down the current climate decline. The rise of climate anxiety is an unprecedented phenomenon and it now precipitates a psychological demise that could mean future generations living at the mercy of their mental health conditions. As philosophers of the world has so often marvelled at the brilliance of our thinking brain, what will happen when that breaks apart overwhelmed by the state of climate emergencies? And yet, have we been conscious of our actions, to the best of our thinking abilities, how did we end up here? Burdened with guilt, laden with generations of consumption, this video languishes on all the excesses that consumes our planet and the collective collaboration of every individual. Elly's riffs reminds us of how little, materially, we have left for the young ones.
On 9 May 2024, the UN has warned "The world is on the verge of a climate abyss". "The goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C is hanging by a thread,” said the official spokesperson for António Guterres, the UN secretary general. “The battle to keep 1.5C alive will be won or lost in the 2020s – under the watch of political and industry leaders today. They need to realise we are on the verge of the abyss. The science is clear and so are the world’s scientists: the stakes for all humanity could not be higher.”
Single Channel/ Stereo/ 6 mins
The Sweet Spot
United Nations has negotiated and formed the Global Compact Migration which was signed in 2018. It is the first-ever intergovernmental UN agreement on a common approach to managing international migration. Based on a framework - the principles of the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, all core international human rights treaties, international labour standards and relevant international law. This is however, a non-legally binding cooperative. Hailed as a milestone, this pact effectively gives the UN the opportunity to work with UN member states on migration within a systemic structure. Anecdote on UN case study of Portugal "As of 2019 Portugal had, for the first time in its history, over half a million migrants living in the country, 67 per cent of whom were from non-EU countries. Migrants in Portugal – considered an "ageing" country – make important contributions, not the least of which are related to providing much-needed labour."
Moving across several cities in Europe, The Sweet Spot frames the lived experience of being completely enchanted by a new city/country. Migration is on the rise; we have come to the point, as animals do, migrating due to resources as our planet warms and human rights are under threat. The exception is, animals do not face borders, humans do, a making of our own. The crossing of borders within the EU may just be the most exemplary of democracy, but can one effectively negotiate it's rich cultures, diverse languages and assimilate with no historical solidarity? Our internal reserves voluntarily submits to our most immediate survival instincts but navigating these tapestries of life takes on various stripes in new cities. What happens when migration is no longer a matter of seeking or volition, when our liberty is completely yielded as our ailing planet battles for its exsistence? Would we find ourselves in a position of being compassionate when "the others" do not assimilate? Perhaps we would begin to value migrants when we see them as compulsoratory essential workers as nations registers declining birth rate and an aging population. Would the "outsiders" in this condition assimilate? The Sweet Spot as a personal experience takes on a minute consideration of the mitigating elements of migration as the drifter makes her voyage back to homeland.
Single Channel/ Stereo/2mins 19 seconds
Inherently Unsaid
A dialogue of aphorisms surfaces.
This video presents a split screen of different momentums that seems at times an amalgamation of one event. It captures an inner world, a material world, one at large and one existential. These four disparate conditions beats to its own rythm as the artist revisits her life lived with her mother. It treasures the legacy of a truth that manifests at a time when loss is at its most profound. Perhaps it is a way to consider a life worth living, gifting the biggest gift one can at the end of life. These aphorisms juxtaposed in context to living and death, as a way think about our inevitable demise.
Dead and alive.
Words.
Experiences.
Philosophical musings.
Single Channel/ Stereo/19 mins
Masters of Art
In this critique regarding the pursuit of art, the question arises- what is a "Master of Art", academically speaking? Peddled by prestigious academic institutions with hefty price tags all around the world, does its very name ’master’ presents an misnomer? Have traditional practices remain unchanged, unchallenged, that we continue considering "Master" in contemporary times? What is the currency of a Masters that artists unrelentingly pursue? Master of art is a video work that aims to address dreams, agency, dedication and the force of a power that is at work, one of which is beyond an individual. Where that power lies is perhaps is all a matter of perspective.
Taking on a rejective tone as a means of self critique, Master of Arts hopes to unravel the realities of an artist’s existence. Is it a matter of choice? Faith? Luck? Talent? Privilege? And of whose or what agency? In a reflection of the hypocrisy in the art world and its institutions, the video critique questions if artists are on the same plane of contemporaneity or have we been politicised by the very institutions that aims to free us. And if we did, how did we do? The conclusion, it seems, might not be one for the individual, the collective or the institution as the video very well shows us. What next?
-Selected for krautART ARTspace 2024 Salon de Refusées (Germany)
Single Channel/ Stereo/ 5 mins
I am.Not Alone. In Thinking. About Death.
The subject of death has never been as prominient as it had in the years when Covid-19 rages on and along with it, took millions of life. As the subject can no longer escape our consciousness in these times, can we understand our approach towards death? How does one deal with a taboo subject? As we avoid the grimness of death, in the eventuality of it's existence, are we better equipped to deal with grief as it comes at us, off-guard? Suffering for the dying, suffering for the living, all part of our very existence - the reality illustrates that acceptance, time and compassion may be the only tools we'll ever have.
I am. Not Alone. In Thinking. About Death. documents a personal experience, expressing the commonality of suffering and death and yet the individual and personal experience it encapsulates. Do we look to dealth in order to live or do we live in order to come to death having "lived"? Can these reflections make a tangible change to our present or does reflections at our deathbed remains the only possibility given that death is taboo? Are we only ever seeing the living in the terms of death.
Single Channel/ Stereo/ 12 mins
(After The fact)
Positive Feedback Loop
Positive feedback loop is the description of a process that can happen in physics, sociology, biology, etc, where some sort of occurrence creates a disturbance. That disturbance is then amplified and creates more disturbance, on and on, forming a loop. Positive here is to be taken as "increasing in input". Positive feedback loops can lead to unstable systems. A system is considered stable when its output is under control. Positive feedback loop can tell us the status quo and what we can expect if it continues.
In this work, a theory relating the ongoing climate crisis relative to our mental health attempts to mathematically illustrate where we stand in the state of things. In the age of the anthropocene, can we mitigate the losses of our natural habitat? Our risk, it seems, is more than just our environment that we lose. Having made this work in the midst of the pandemic, post COP 26 and the start of 2022, it feels like we are caught in this loop mentally and territorially, have we any effective recourse now in the year 2022?
- Selected for LOCALIZE 2022 Telegrafenberg -Potsdam (Germany)
- Selected for Treehouse NDSM 2023 Hear all Voices (Netherlands)
Single Channel/ Stereo/19 mins
How does one talk about a subject that seem to have stonewalled? How has society become desensitized by these news- as nothing seem to improve the rampant unjustified conditions foreign domestic workers are constantly faced with? This is a class of mostly women who have been overworked and underpaid, with no fair remuneration or employment protection. Not to mention the risks of psychological fracture they will have to live with forever as they have been punished into isolation or subjected to verbal or/and physical abuses. Who is responsible? The hiring countries, the hirer, the originating country? Who can we trust with for the welfare of these workers- the system or the individual? Is it education that is lacking or regulating or enforcement?
The Bloody Bleeding System directly addresses the severity of the issue - abuses that has seen the public light and yet year after year, the abuses that has turn into serial torture remains. As it continues, one really need to ask questions, at which point did it became this inhumane? How much worse it has to get before every worker is treated fairly and equally? Ultimately, the only protection that can do justice to these group of workers in such precarious work environments must be regulated and enforced, as reality is evident that counting on the individual hasn't been working. The conversation around this issue bears repeating, as long as it takes for the system to be corrected and justified for these women.
- Selected for RADICAL RESISTANCE ABC NO RIO IN EXILE @ PS122 GALLERY (New York City)
-Curated by Jolanta Woszczenko for LAZNIA Centre for Contemporary Art (Poland)
Single Channel/ Stereo/ 29 mins
pillwillwillpillpillwill
The precarity of a world wide mental health crisis is on a short waitlist after the assault of climate disasters, Covid-19 pandemic and the economic crisis. How prepared is the world for this? We have collectively contributed to these circumstances, and must come to undo them. Mental health care is far too costly around the world, the dispensation of psychiatric drugs without mitigating repercussions seem to be the best and quickest dispense on hand. Faced with the high treatment cost or a comprised efficacy of the pill, what other resource can one have? Is this disease our next population culling after Covid-19? For all the riches of capitalism, we leave mental health hanging at the edge of risk. With all the knowledge, information and stats of our century, is the unpreparedness going to be written into history as COVID-19 pandemic has? Pillwillwillpillpillwill is a music channelled visual mindscape of the depressed condition to initiate further discussions on the issues concerning mental health.
WHO Mental Health 2020 (excerpt)
The survey of 130 countries provides the first global data showing the devastating impact of COVID-19 on access to mental health services and underscores the urgent need for increased funding. WHO has previously highlighted the chronic underfunding of mental health: prior to the pandemic, countries were spending less than 2 per cent of their national health budgets on mental health, and struggling to meet their populations’ needs. Many people may be facing increased levels of alcohol and drug use, insomnia, and anxiety. Meanwhile, COVID-19 itself can lead to neurological and mental complications, such as delirium, agitation, and stroke. People with pre-existing mental, neurological or substance use disorders are also more vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2 infection ̶ they may stand a higher risk of severe outcomes and even death.
- Selected for ROMBAK 2021, Multimedia University (Malaysia), Faculty of Cinematic Arts
- Selected for SPHERE WORLD CINEMA CARNIVAL 2021 (India), Experimental
- Selected for Art in Odd Places, 2022 STORY (New York City)
Single Channel/ Stereo/ 3 mins
NEW YEAR/ New Year
NEW YEAR created in 2017, was a sculpture that disintegrated with no material traces, save for the digital photo and video documentation. NEW YEAR, reworked toward the end of 2020 as "NEW YEAR/New Year", resurrected as a video, as a renaissance for survival given a pandemic year of 2020. After an avalanche of events, which went beyond our worse projections, enters an urgent call for rethinking every aspect of our existence, relationships and agency. In this moment of survival, "NEW YEAR/ New Year" reminds us of our inherent survival instincts in order to prepare for a whole new reality ahead of us. This final version of NEW YEAR digitally eternalises it.
- Part of Saigon Experimental Film Festival 2022 Satellite Program screening (Vietnam)
Music and vocals by The Analog Girl.
Single Channel/ Stereo/ 5 mins
Dialetics
A clean slate. A new dialectic. A discourse that arises out of neutrality without subjects. Emancipation of the feminine and masculine from its gendered narratives. Hardened and used , the body never lived its organic form- it's identity seems to belong elsewhere, never truly owned. Dialectics confronts as a way to revisit our tactile sense in identifying with it. Dialectics, in its binary and opposing sense, presents a certain concreteness that is slippery, subjective whilst remaining objectively visually veritable.
- Selected for The Room's Project (Paris) Video Screening in collaboration with LUX London, 2021 (UK)
Single Channel/ Stereo/ 23 mins
Smart Cities: DYSTECHTOPIA
In 2014, Singapore leaders set out with an ambitious plan to make Singapore a Smart Nation. As headlined in an article, "Singapore tops the list of cities that will spend most money on smart city projects..."(CIO.com). Along with this vision, the authorities of the various Government agencies have invested systematically in media communications for its public to announce this new master plan. Synonymous to Government campaigns popular since the 1970s, such conditioning models have seamlessly coalesced into the everyday environment, through the ruling party's ownership of mass media channels.
As the machinations of technology continue to advance, the disciplinary panopticon has internalized self-regulating behavior and mass surveillance is the new rearview mirror of power. Smart Cities in their becoming are a worldwide phenomenon that seems impenetrable and as individuals navigate this new dystechtopia, have we come to intervene too late?
SMART CITIES: DYSTECHTOPIA weaves a narrative that attempts to read beyond the message intended for the public by those in power, subverting promotional and publicity videos that are made by Singapore Government agencies and interviews with head of Governments from broadcast TV. Deconstructing these materials, renouncing didacticism, the essay work against the autocratic norm as practiced by the ruling party and instigates questions on advanced technological interventions.
- Selected for The Floating Project's (Hong Kong) D-Normal/V-Essay 2021 online video-zine (issue #03)
- Selected for The Floating Project's (Hong Kong) D-Normal/V-Essay 2021 online video-zine (issue #03)
Single Channel/ Stereo/ 6 mins
LEMONS
LEMONS is part of three videos made during the lockdown confinement as a result of Covid 19 pandemic. If ever, this is a time where every confined person becomes highly aware of their domestic space and evaluates this relationship to that of their physical environment and interpersonal circles. As the world enters into a moment of quiet solitude, is this moment of tension and fear productive for our contemplation? Has this unfortunate phenomenon become an enforced moment to evaluate our human intervention across the world? What were we thinking - separated from each other, in our supposedly safest environment? Caught between the bliss of quiet and solitude and torn apart by the news cycle, the silver linings of a wake up call and the destruction the virus hurls towards our humanity, the horror of its ability to transcend our physical bodies. Infiltrating into every aspect of our lives, the virus feeds on the febrile polarities that would drive the society into further chaos and divide.
- Screen alongside to commissioned video "An Embodied Monologue" Sirius Art Centre (Ireland)
(Part 1 of III)
Single Channel/ Stereo/ 4 mins
SQUEEZED
Violence, mayhem, urgency, ensues on the streets across the world. A CRY FOR JUSTICE: AN EXISTENTIAL CRISIS.
Pre-Covid 19, our society seems plague with an insurmountable political, societal and climate emergencies - threatened by forces we can't control. Covid-19 pandemic worldwide enters Year 2020 penetrating further inwards into these layers of encroachment. We have reached our limit - our only remaining fight - revolt and rebel.
"What is a rebel? A man who says no: but whose refusal does not imply a renunciation. He is also a man who says yes as soon as he begins to think for himself." Albert Camus, The Rebel.
Camus continues "Rebellion, though apparently negative since it creates nothing, is profoundly positive in that it reveals the part of man which must always be defended".
This video work is in solidarity with all the courageous and brave individuals who have taken to the streets for a collective humane voice. What does it take to be heard? To have rights? To be respected and be an individual collectively?
(Part II of III)
- Selected for The Filmmakers Cooperative (New York) "In Solidarity" Festival, 2020
-Selected for RAW (Rome Art Week)/ Miami New Media Festival 2022 (Italy)
-Curated by Jolanta Woszczenko for LAZNIA Centre for Contemporary Art (Poland)
Single Channel/ Stereo/ 15 mins
aIR
Where is a civilian's liberty located during a pandemic? Who decides? Is it in the hands of politicians? Scientists, who supposedly provides the most indisputable insights? The wider community at large for the greater good? These are the questions Gina attempts to underline as she documents a 15 day mandatory quarantine within a 15 minute long video. Set within 5-star hotel accommodations for its citizens, with all expenses paid by the Singapore Government, the essentially enforced confinement quarantine comes across as a generous offering. The luxurious experience is however accompanied by policies more connected with penal institutions: stepping out of the air-conditioned room for 5 minutes of fresh air is strictly prohibited; location monitoring is enforced by video call, location-sharing app and in person, for every individual above 12 years of age, a maximum of up to 5 times daily, to make sure no one escapes their heavily CCTV equipped habitation. A failure to comply with all quarantine restrictions could result in incarceration or a hefty fine of up to 5000€, or both. After 7 days of artificial air, within an 8 sqm space and constant surveillance, this supposedly luxurious quarantine becomes an onerous one, mentally and physically.
(Part III of III)
- Screen alongside to commissioned video "An Embodied Monologue" Sirius Art Centre (Ireland)
Single Channel/ Stereo/ 6 mins
\
Selected for CICA Museum (South Korea) "Art Teleported Korea" conference, 2021
go to Daimon
A text-base documentary that is a round up from science and technological websites that have written, discussed and extensively put out information regarding AI and/or the issues surrounding AI. Although these information are online, it is not directed for an individual and the impact it can make for all that comes into contact with A.I application. The attempt is to generate a video that debunks A.I myths, consider it's widespread use and highlights how damaging A.I bias can be. This video is then disseminated on Twitter, by an A.I signed off as Daimon- whose job is to do as trained, sending video to the relevant public. Daimon is also the first ever self sufficient A.I who lives on those who chooses to support him in this task (online at daimon.watch). The lack of regulation on AI is an issue that is as urgent as the climate crisis, especially so if one considers the rate of AI being implemented across major industries worldwide. Support this project's petition to the EU on A.I regulation here.
Single Channel/ Stereo/ 38 mins
thinking Color
Filmed during Shaftesbury Park Primary School in their annual Creative Week event, this moving visual tries to capture those moments, as teachers and students carve time aside to perform creativity. As the lens closes in and document, this single moment of attention, it allows a closer observation within an energetic and brisk environment in the creative act in an interaction between the one who teaches and the ones that receives. Working in the background in an unscripted approach, there were no rehearsals or retakes resulting in a filming process that captures these developments authentically. We see how these children understand their role in the performance of creation and their intellectual understanding towards creativity.
- Selected for Wandsworth Art Fringe Festival (London), 2020
Single channel, 5.1 Surround, 50 mins
This is what modern day colonisation looks like. As rich nations around the world tap into the low wage labor from neighbouring countries, what appears to be job opportunities have become evident that it mostly benefits the pay masters. Evidently it may be, these low wage workers continues to always being in compromised circumstances, a situation that no single individual would accept coming from a privileged position. This is a portrait of a single woman placed in that position, labelled with various titles, allowing society to forget who she really is. She is Lyn, from Philippines, she is a mother, she is a woman who "brings home the bacon", she has been away for more than a decade, absent from the day to day of her children's life, as she slogs at physical labor to ensure her children doesn't live their existence the way she has to. She pays a price- way more than she could have predicted, her youth, her body, crumbles into this job that offers limited freedom, individual participation, initiative, mundane repetition, loneliness, a complete lack of goal and motivation. She waits, hardened, for the years to pass, for her finances to accumulate, for children's independence. We listen to Lyn here, because she has a voice in society.
Maid. Helper. Caregiver.
Foreign Domestic Worker.
- Selected for Noorderlicht International Photography Festival: TAXED TO THE MAX (The Netherlands), 26th edition, 2019
- Selected for FTho Daytime TV (London), 2019
- Selected for CICA Museum Portrait Exhibition (South Korea), 2021
- Winner for Asian Cinematography AWARDS (ACA) MANILA, 2021
5 Channels/ Stereo/ 19 mins
Phenomenologically Love - a practice
A practice - of love, balance, pace, falling and rising, engagement, connecting to our emotive self. The four performers brings forward- strength, energy, freedom and love through their movements. A strength in order to contemplate, energy in order to practice, freedom to explore, love before neglect. And in these moments, just like the cicadas the muses sent to allure- immerse in song and poetry. Love, more than hope- "Phenomenologically love" considers love as an antidote to our turbulent and cacophonous period that is throttling onwards in an unfathomable speed.
Print 84 x 59 cm. interview excerpt, brackets, rubberband
Where it Progresses?
Society is always in progress. But which way does it go? What does that cost to an individual? This work was made for a work-in-progress show and this empty site holds promise as a work in progress. Who will this empty plot serve? As dense capital cities around the world are faced with increasing habitation, gentrification becomes the norm. Gentrification, capitalism, spreads its influence, gentrifying city centres making affordable housing impossible pushing those who can't afford these to the edges. Living in London at the time of this work, Gina juxtapose an image of an empty plot of land against an excerpt of an interview from a fervent art collector, brandishing his infatuations with famous artists and his extensive art collection. Gentrification capitalism is placed beside the capitalist commodification of artworks as a self-criticism of being in the arts.
Single channel, Stereo, 7 mins
When
Presents pivotal moments of the artist’s parents as they grapple with old age and illnesses. Made after the passing of the Gina's father, it reflects on the period of illness before one succumbs to death and the last memories that remains for the living. The video portrays the 3 generations within the family as a passage of time as it bears witness to these final events of deterioration from time which eventually leads to death.
Transparency, audio track, QR code
An open letter published for Post-graduation show, intended for the administration of Royal College of Art (London).
this is not the work i intended for my degree show
Video works from 2018
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