I’M ALL HANDS ALL EYES
Exhibited at: National Gallery Singapore, as part of Light To Night 2021 (Art Skins on Monuments)
Featured in: A-List
In collaboration with Fiona Tan, Faye Lim, Randy Chan, Stanley Yeong. Performer(s):Faye Lim and Shahrin Johry
I’m All Hands and All Eyes is conceptualised as an artwork that invites a tactile and somatic experience into the National Gallery’s Rotunda Library & Archive, by way of a choreographic projection in the library’s inner dome. The projection focuses on the choreography of two parts of the body – the hands and the eyes – both of which are directly activated as one partakes in archival activities.The hands and fingers draw, paint, write, re-write, type, document, arrange, find, retrieve, feel, flip, open and close. The eyes search, look, see, squint and read between the lines.
Though a space such as the library is often quiet, still and polite, the movement and information gathering of the hands and the eyes can be anything but. They can be rapid, excited, doubtful, restless and yearning. The hands and the eyes also communicate differently now, in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. The hands are hesitant to touch (anything really, can’t touch another hand, can’t touch the eyes…) and the eyes communicate where the mouth used to smile. This is the progress for now but what will progress look like later?
Will progress look like hands touching hands touching hands? Will it look like eyes and hands meeting in the library? Will it look like hands upon hands caressing books upon books upon books? Change is constant but if we can feel and communicate, we can be okay.
Concept: Fiona Tan, Faye Lim, Finbarr Fallon
CGI & Projection Mapping: Finbarr Fallon
Sound: Stanley Yeong
Performers: Faye Lim, Shahrin Johry