Collaborations, Negotiations, and Radical Transformations of Self

A Conversation with Yeo Siew Hua by Mark Wong

Yeo Siew Hua is an acclaimed filmmaker from Singapore. His feature A Land Imagined (2018), which he wrote and directed, won the Golden Leopard grand prize at the 71st Locarno Film Festival. It was a piece of news which was greatly celebrated by Singapore’s arts community, especially for those of us who know Chris (as he is better known among friends).  

I was first introduced to Chris through a mutual friend to help create a piece of bedlam wedding music for his audacious debut feature, In the House of Straw (2009). While I loved the film for its ideas both prickly and confounding, it was far from a box office hit. Mayo Martin, one of the few critics who ‘got it’, wrote: ‘Straw is structurally adventurous, unapologetically discarding the checklist of what a “proper” movie should have [..] and, I suspect, Yeo treats the various elements of his movie the same way one assembles chess pieces in a game.’ 

After Straw, Chris turned to documentary-making, honing in on the practice of veteran Singapore art rock band The Observatory in The Obs: A Singapore Story (2016). Since the success of A Land Imagined, Yeo has continued to work in a variety of formats, including shorter video pieces for the gallery and a piece of ‘expanded cinema’ titled The Once and Future that would have premiered at the Singapore International Film Festival by the time this piece is published. Earlier in 2022, both of us were collaborators with The Observatory for their intermedia exhibition REFUSE at the Singapore Art Museum.  

This conversation took place on 1 and 3 May 2022 over Zoom and has been edited for clarity and length.

SESSION ONE – 1 May 2022

Mark Wong: I was reflecting on our past. We last saw each other in October, half a year ago. And the interesting thing was that the first and last times we saw each other was kind of for ‘work’. Which is funny, how we first knew each other ‘professionally’.

Yeo Siew Hua: Yes. And that was really long ago. 2009-10.

MW: And over the years, we have found ourselves in recurring circles, both in our friendship and in our work. After I helped you on the In the House of Straw soundtrack, you worked on that ambitious, crazy documentary on The Obs[ervatory], a band I’ve worked closely with for many years. And so our last meeting was because both of us were helping The Obs on their exhibition REFUSE (2022) [at the Singapore Art Museum (SAM)].

So, I wanted to ask you to talk about how you approached the work that you did for The Obs at REFUSE? Especially since the show was partly about the band’s history and given your background of having known the band so intimately when working on their documentary.

YSH: Of course, talking about The Obs, the thing to emphasise is how [the band] has changed. It is always the ever-growing, changing animal, from band members to the music itself. Through the projects that they do, starting off from more conventional music [and later] to even art projects. So yeah, The Obs being something that is committedly amorphous. And for me, I guess I would consider myself one of the many documenters or documentarians of the band, having made a film on it. But also being a collaborator on a few other things…actually, how old is The Obs now?

MW: I think they’re supposed to be 21 now.

YSH: Right, because REFUSE was sort of an anniversary thing. And that's why they wanted to really bring out their archives, which you were working on more.

MW: So, in view of that, how did you formulate your work for REFUSE? Because I know the work itself went through different ideas as well.

YSH: Yeah, it changed a lot. It was supposed to be something closer to a concert with visual elements, and that's why they brought me in. [Initially it was] a lot more about them playing their latest stuff. But then it transformed into something else, a site-specific installation. [An] immersive, environmental piece. It still is a bit hard to describe what that work is. But basically, it's no longer about playing music or recording a concert anymore.

Do I need to describe what the work is? Maybe okay, I can talk about what it was supposed to be. We talked about it being a concert where they would play and then I would create something – we had the idea to bring in [the] idea of nature, something that they have always been concerned with. And you see that in [their discography]. I think I even suggested something about the death of nature, because [their work] is always sort of reflecting on Singapore. So those ideas continued on. I mean, I was thinking to create a cocoon made out of plants. Because again, Singapore is always very green but a very unnatural type of green. And how this cocoon would start to wither as they play their music, and it would reveal what is inside the cocoon – a person being hanged inside. So it's a very strong image and a critique on some level. I think we were also very interested in the idea of the violence of the green in the city. Because the green is also about something else, right? The green spaces, or having the facade of nature, also covers up many things, right? I think in Singapore, historically speaking, we've always used the idea of ‘the green’ to cover up certain violences. And to make Singapore feel very friendly, very tourist-friendly. So, I think these were the original ideas. And I was asked to create the visuals for it. And [following which] they created the soundtrack for this piece.

Later, the whole idea started to transform and change. And I think what we kept was the idea of decomposition, right? And so we created this brown forest, like a brown garden. Because I think, again, the idea of ‘the garden’ also was something that we were very critical about. What does it mean? Like this very manicured, very man-made garden, you know, which is what Singapore is. But what if we are trying to create a decomposed version of the garden? So then once we had this idea of the decomposition and the brown of the garden, the idea of fungi came into the picture, which I think became the main motif of REFUSE [in its final iteration]. It's really about fungi, its symbiotic nature, and how it is very much part of our lives. This idea of decomposition through fungi. So we created this fungi forest, right? I dunno what to call it – this fungi garden, fungi forest, and its processes, the fungi processes.

MW: How long had you been discussing these ideas with the band?

YSH: Oh, it was a back and forth. We talked about ideas, and then we let it ferment – that's the word. Then we would come back and say, okay, this one works and this one doesn't work. At some point, we were also discussing whether to bring in a more VR [virtual reality] or AR [augmented reality] experience, but then they were also working on this project called Demon States. So we didn't want to repeat the use of a VR/AR environment. So then it became about creating an actual, physical environment. Because there was space [in the SAM gallery] and you know, space is very precious in Singapore. So I think the idea was that if you're given a space, how do you really use it and really create something out of a space instead of just jumping on the bandwagon of VR/AR things.

I mean, the idea of fungi and decomposition [is] very physical. It's about spores. It's about growth. [So] at the end, [the thing that happened with] my piece [was that even though it’s] still quite central with the piece, it no longer was the main idea – it's one part of the installation, which then I took [footage from] a film, Seniman Bujang Lapok (The Three Idiots, 1961), the famous P. Ramlee film. We found the original print copy from the Asian Film Archive which had deteriorated, eaten up by fungus. So we thought, ah, here's the idea also lah, right? Like, how do I have a collaboration with the fungi? So we have this film [that’s been] eaten up by the fungi for 60 years lah, if you think about it, it's like 60 years in the making, right? And so I took on the idea that The Obs was doing with their music, which is that they also wanted to have this kind of collaboration with the natural world of fungi – they fed the fungi sounds and MIDI and music and stuff. And they allowed the fungi to create its own compositions, right? A lot of the work was [based around] that idea. And so I took a similar approach with the visuals. I also took the found…let's call it the found footage of this P. Ramlee film that has been eaten up by fungi. And I used this kind of AI (artificial intelligence) technology, right? To basically slow down the video, slow down meaning to recreate the missing frames. So that [the audience] gets to see the movement of the fungi at work, the traces of the movement of the fungi.

Because if I don't use AI to do this, you will only see flashes of images and not be able to see the movement of the fungi. It's also engaging with the idea of time, because I want you to experience the time, you know, because all this decomposition is about time; it's all about what time is doing to our images, our histories. And if I play around with this idea of time, I thought yeah, it allows the fungi to properly orchestrate its ‘art’ in a way that I don't dictate it, right? I didn't need to animate any of the fungi. I just had to give you one frame of the fungi at this moment and another frame of the fungi in the next moment and then allow the AI to recreate it. So both myself and The Obs sort of relinquished our creative licences to let the fungi do its thing, you know?

And then at the same time, there was the sound element. I projected the film onto a[n audience] [of] fungi – a growing, living mushroom. And then from the mushroom’s reaction, it breathes and recreates CO2 to create the soundscape for the work. And so you're listening to a live response of the [audience] mushroom ‘watching’ the work.

MW: In these sorts of projects, how do you find the process of collaboration? [When you’re] under various kinds of constraints and various kinds of requirements or demands from your collaborators? How much does it affect what you will eventually produce? I mean, the work that you produce is something you’d still like to call your own, right?

YSH: It's probably not true for all artists, but for me, I really, really enjoy this idea of collaboration, and collaboration in a way that is really a process of back and forth. And you might not see it, but this is the process even with my films. As much as people think that films are where the director dictates and has full autonomy, for me, making films is very, very collaborative. Like, yes, I come up with certain ideas. But my actor, DP [director of photography], editor, and sound guy are all bringing something that I have a lot less control over than a lot of people think. So as a director, I think I'm there to facilitate and [create] a coherence [while bearing in mind] the different collaborations rather than to say, ‘Okay, you have to do this thing exactly like how I imagined it.’

MW: Do you find that your ideas might be challenged in a significant way? Or that they might have to be modified in a significant way?

YSH: Yes, but I like it leh. When you have two and more people who're committedly, passionately interested in making a work, then it's almost always better than one. Even if I'm heavily challenged, I either need to challenge back in a way that improves the project, or I actually need to give in to the stronger idea, which improves the project. I think the challenge is important. So long as I'm not losing the life of the work…I mean if you need to change certain ideas of a work so much that you lose interest in it, and it totally goes somewhere else that was never something that you can stand behind, then I think that's the danger. The collaboration has to be true and sincere, I guess that's how I’d put it. And if everybody has their heart in the right place, usually the work becomes better. 

MW: Can you think of an example of something like that?

YSH: I don't know how to put it as a singular example leh, but I think all the films that I make are like this leh. Basically, none of the films that I make, the final film is what I imagined at the start [laughs]. After five other creatives come onboard, it’s changed into something [else]. But what is more interesting is how, more often than not, they change into something I didn't know I wanted.

And it's like, how do we allow space for each other? I think that’s the more important discussion about collaborations; how to make space and room for fruitful and sincere collaboration?

MW: I mean if we could use something that I'd assumed – probably the film that most people have watched from you, which is A Land Imagined, what would it have been if it'd been a Yeo Siew Hua megalomaniac production? What would have been different about it?

YSH: It would have been a House of Straw [laughs]. I was being a real dictator [in my earlier years as a filmmaker]. I was being that kind of filmmaker who was like, ‘No, no, it has got to be shot like this. You have to walk five steps and you need to be at point A at how long and point B by five minutes later…’ And the whole thing [becomes] a single-handed mission and everyone else working on it becomes like a puppet to my control. And yes, I think there are certain effects and certain results coming out of that but I then start to realise that there's so little joy in doing [it like] this. And I do think that moving into doing a documentary like The Obs, which is the film that I made [after House of Straw] – a documentary is something that you really have zero control over. You can only sit there and wait for something to happen. I’ve described doing the Obs documentary like a National Geographic [nature] documentary. I sat in the jamming studio and just watched them. I needed to be available. My key task as a filmmaker was not to go there and shape how they make their music, but just to wait for things to happen. To be available for when something happens and then I [would] slowly collect these things and then in the post[-production], I’d put it together to create a coherent narrative. I mean the amount of collaboration it involves – basically not having total control over the work while doing a documentary is a stark difference from when I was doing my earlier films like House of Straw. And so that experience really changed my mind about many things, [questions like] how do I make space for these collaborations to happen but still provide a guiding vision for all the collaborators to work so that we're all [still] walking in the same direction. I think as a ‘director’ that's my job. I mean [with] A Land Imagined, there was so much that certain actors did in the film that was totally outside of the script. But it's only because I'm just there to say, ‘Okay, you do what you're comfortable [with], you're now the character of the film and if you feel like sitting on this chair, you do it. I'm not going to tell you [what to do].’ And it falls in so much more naturally and beautifully because [we’re] making the space for that to happen.

MW: Do you think this is more common in terms of contemporary filmmakers in general? This kind of, I don't know what you might call it, ‘method acting’ or whatever is it? What do you call it?

YSH: I don't think it's like method acting, but different directors have different tolerances. To create a collaboration requires a lot of time. It requires a lot of patience. And it requires a lot of flexibility. And sometimes your original vision as you had [initially] suggested can get twisted or changed in ways that you don't expect. I like those surprises but other filmmakers might not.

I mean, A Land Imagined famously is a slightly ambiguous film because so much of the script changed [laughs]. The original script is a lot more narrative[-driven], a lot more coherent. It was the only way that I could even find the money to do it. If you imagine writing a film like A Land Imagined that's so mysterious, ambiguous, and incoherent on various levels of storytelling, I'm not going to be able to get the money to do it. All these grants people, they need to see that you have a very solid, coherent, rational story…[they need to see something] ‘logical’ before they can give you the money. So if I had made it that way, then yes, A Land Imagined would have become a much more coherent narrative, but a lot less interesting. I think people enjoyed A Land Imagined because there is something that is…can we – for a lack of a better word – call it a mystery; there is a mysteriousness in what is happening that opens up the space [for thought], rather than close or narrow it down for a narrative to become coherent.

MW: I think with A Land Imagined, one of the things that became apparent to me in terms of just having observed what you've been working on over the past years, is that when we had gone down to help as some of the extras, and all of a sudden when we walked into your production, it was like, wow, actually you have a million crew members. You have so much expensive equipment, the production values maybe added a few zeroes to your previous budget on House of Straw, right?

YSH: Yep, a few zeroes. Exactly.

MW: I think one of the things that is quite fascinating is that maybe in terms of the group of artists, musicians, or people in our circles, when there is that kind of a leap from all these indie efforts into something that is backed by some substantial production budget, what actually changes in our art-making? I think that's a big question that came to my mind. And like what you alluded to, with House of Straw, a lot of things are very DIY, but now, somebody has to manage a lot of people, a lot of scheduling, making the pieces fit together, a very complicated process.

YSH: Yeah, for sure.

MW: How did you make that transition?

YSH: To put it another way, I was a very indie filmmaker and also making documentary projects which you can say were lower budget in nature. Being low budget gives you the flexibility and nimbleness to move around and adjust and change the schedule without affecting 50 people every time you do something. It could [involve something like] six people and then you call them [and say something like], ‘Eh maybe today not such a great day to shoot. Shall we do it another day?’ Or ‘Shall we just change the location to somewhere else? I found a place that's better.’ So this kind of nimbleness in the filmmaking or whatever [art] work that I'm making, [having the flexibility and doing it on a low budget] is something that I truly enjoy. But I guess at some point I was also asking myself, okay, if I am to seriously look into this filmmaking thing, should I try to be a filmmaker, to experiment? For me it's still an experiment, like how to experiment working [within] bigger budget films. Just to try. So I think after that I was like, okay, let's go for it. Meaning I try to get a bigger producer, try to get grants and everything. Because I think I have to try it out, and if I don't like it then I go back to small[er scale] filmmaking and that's all right. [Otherwise] I can never truly know if I didn’t try it. So I said okay, for myself, if I'm going to be seriously looking into filmmaking for life, then I should try out [bigger projects] to see if I enjoy it. So then I spent something close to five to six years trying to put this together. And once you put in that kind of commitment, there's no turning back. Now to talk about how things change, I think the process is key, right? As I've said, you can't just willy-nilly change something ‘just because’ and then you have affected the schedules, time and budget of fifty people. So this ability to be very nimble on set – everything has to be planned beforehand. Even if I was to say [something like], ‘I wish to make a film with more improvisation involved’, I have to plan the improvisation. So with that in mind, everything really changes. I cannot be as half-minded about something as I used to.

However, as I say all these things, the beauty of it is that I can finally get the most amazing talent onboard. For these collaborations to happen, I need to be able to pay for their time and talent to commit to my project. I need to give them the right equipment and resources to be able to fulfil their potential. For great collaboration to happen, you need money. It's not just sitting down and [saying things] like, ‘Let's have a great collaboration. So I have to do the work and find the money so that my collaborators can do their work. But once that process happens, you necessarily have to become a lot more structured. I mean there's structure, there's hierarchy, there's the very well-known and hated hierarchy on the film set that is sometimes almost military in nature. That's just the structural nature of a bigger budget film. If you don't set these orders in play, a lot of people are going to waste a lot of money and a lot of time.

MW: I find film quite a strange beast as well. In terms of the sheer numbers of people involved. I mean even if you are staging a concert at Wembley [Stadium in London], it also does not involve that sheer number, you know what I mean?

YSH: You're right, there's something about filmmaking that involves so many people and lots of cramming in – I basically took five, six years to find enough money to shoot for one month.

MW: No way.

YSH: We needed to really be able to squeeze out every possibility within a month and that's why you need so many people. It's economics; how do you utilise this money? And that's why everybody has to follow a certain structure and order. I know a lot of filmmakers, myself included – we've always been trying to experiment with a different filming structure. And I think sometimes it works, [and] sometimes [it’s] more difficult, depending on what kind of film it is. I've not given up on trying to experiment with this, but at the same time, yeah – 50 people all with their own schedules and their own job areas – there's a lot to coordinate and a lot less nimbleness.

So I still truly enjoy – even after making a bigger film like A Land Imagined, I still truly enjoy going back to doing smaller, video-art works, such as An Invocation to the Earth, [and] more recently I did like a VR work called The Lover, The Excess, The Ascetic and the Fool. I've been making smaller things because I still truly thirst for this kind of small, nimble [work], because this is where I can get to experiment more. If I have to drag 50 people to my experiments, it’s either a waste of their time and money, or they are just looking at my experiment and I feel like a fool. But if it's a lot smaller a unit, I have so much room to do different things lah. And sometimes they fail one lah, but at least it's not like [there are] stakeholders or investors that you have to answer to. So I still really enjoy making small video works. That's why I have been quite active in the arts scene. It's so that I don't have to be encumbered by my productivity ratio of like one [feature] film every four to five years [laughs]. It makes me feel very unproductive as a filmmaker. So yah, to make these kind of small works, to experiment and feel like I still can do different things. I am still going to do my feature films. So in between lah, I get to become nimble.

MW: Your upcoming one is a feature anyway.

YSH: Yep, I mean I'm making two things this year before the feature. One is actually a series which is quite interesting. It's like a five-part series and for TV proper, a commercial series called Deep End. And that's about cybersex crimes and deepfakes because I'm quite interested in these technologies and also the idea of realities. And then the other thing that I'm working on – I mean I've already sort of finished [it] – it’s called The Once and Future, which I'm showing at SIFA (Singapore International Festival of the Arts) in June. 

You have to experience [that one] live though, because you have the Berlin Philharmonic flying in to perform and it has this kind of laser projection on the film that I shot for it. Technically it’s an ‘expanded cinema’ film. So these are things I've been working on. And then at the end of the year I'm shooting my next feature film called Stranger Eyes. I think we are starting the shoot in November.

MW: Where is it gonna be shot?

YSH: Singapore. I guess it looks into the ideas of surveillance and voyeurism and basically how we look at others and ourselves. It's a film about watching. Watching people and watching ourselves.

MW: Along the way there have been very high points in your career. Last year you won the Young Artist Award. The oldest young artist ever.[1] How does it change the way you make work or see yourself as an artist when you get national recognition? When you're conferred awards by the state, how does that affect the way that you view your own work?

YSH: I know what your question is. For me the answer is [that] hopefully, it doesn't. Because if it does, it never really is a good thing. Whether you become more of an establishment artist or you start to only make things for the institutions that support you, I think if one is to go down that route, it's always almost less interesting. It almost always makes you a less interesting artist.

Now, as an artist, of course it's a great thing to feel acknowledged and recognised, whether by your peers or your audience or even the institutions, [especially] the bigger institutions that give you awards that come with cash prizes. This is important, because it’s a known fact that we are of course all not very well-paid. Even if you are to say that oh, ‘You have made a film that is very international, blah, blah, blah’, [it’s] won a lot of awards, but we are still not very well-paid ultimately. So to get recognised and to be given money for your work is always a good thing, for me. I mean the whole idea of receiving grants and awards and money and rewards is so that you can work more freely as an artist. But if you have allowed these awards and grants to put a restraint on your practice, then it's almost always a bad thing. It almost always defeats the practice. And so I am trying my best to not let that happen. Is it going to be a case of at some point the institution will ask me to make something that is for their purpose? I mean that is a possibility and for the money I might do it – I won't say no outright; it depends on what the agenda is, but hopefully it still can be interesting and at the same time not allow it to change my practice lor. Thankfully I don't think there has yet been a situation where I have been forced to change my practice just because I'm being endorsed or supported by these institutions. I think for them it’s worse if that is to happen to me because my purpose [is] as a cultural worker and artist – the whole idea is not to make propaganda, to put it this way.

MW: I mean we do know that there is a [regime of] regulation in Singapore. There are film ratings and that affects how filmmakers create their work. I just wonder, sometimes the nature of your work and things that I enjoy very much as well are films that might tend to be a bit more abstract, a bit more conceptual, a bit more elliptical. Criticisms of state also might be veiled in more ways than a different filmmaker might make. And I'm just wondering what these strategies do to the message. In a way they might be seen as helpful in evading the iron fist of censorship. But in other ways they become a bit less clear to the audience and they also might alienate a lot of people. So that also reduces your message in a way.

YSH: But at the same time, all this censorship stuff is what we are criticising. It's also part of the discourse in the making of the art, so actually working with and against the censorship is all already part of the work, I think, [at least] for me. Immediately of course when I think about writing something, whether it is to do with something like homosexuality or nudity or something a bit more ‘provocative’, it's already part of the work. Basically what I'm saying is that I'm never really working outside of a context. And if you are engaging the context, if you are engaging that discourse, you are already working with the regulatory bodies, whether working with or against the regulatory bodies, and it's always on some level already political. It's just how you [go about] doing it.

MW: And what happens to the work?

YSH: What happens if the work is heavily censored? But this is really a case by case issue. I’ll admit that many times I have allowed the regulatory body to try to censor my work. But meanwhile I've also fought it. So I think this fight is like – what are you going to lose in this fight, and then what will you win if you give in, or if you lose it, right?

MW: I've not really known you to have any encounters or any situations like that. Are there any examples you can talk about or share?

YSH: With A Land Imagined, there was a shot of an ass, or a butt, which we basically shortened so that we could get an NC-16 (No Children Under 16) rating. But it was important [to consider], if I were to insist on it and then have less audience be able to watch the film? I mean, they are very specific cases that you basically negotiate with each work. In terms of topics and what I want to explore in the film and stuff, I've always just pushed through even though some are sensitive topics, even if there are people who tell me, this one, very dangerous if you want to talk about these things. But I think these are [such a] core component to the work that there would be no work if I took them out. But yeah, these are the little negotiations that we have to make.

MW: I love the ass scene.

YSH: Yeah, the ass scene is great! And the best thing is that later on we realised, ‘Okay! We can show it on Netflix!’

MW: Ah!

YSH: Yeah. So on Netflix, you get to see the butt in its full glory.

MW: Did we not see it in the premiere in Singapore?

YSH: In the premiere in Singapore and subsequent screenings, it was shortened.

MW: Even in the premiere?

YSH: Even in the premiere. We see it but not to its full extent.

MW: And in Netflix it's the full?

YSH: Yeah, Netflix access is the full.

MW: And in the DVD is it the full?

YSH: The DVD, that I'm not very sure. I don't remember.[2]

MW: I've been cheated of the full experience [at the premiere].

YSH: But it's really like less than a minute of difference.

MW: But it would be a long minute.

YSH: [laughs] Yes, yes, yes, but there you go. I have made my compromises too.

MW: No, I mean with these kinds of things, the problem I suppose is that when there are censorship issues really, it’s just impossible to arbitrate them.

YSH: Yeah, it's just impossible.

MW: There are actually absolutely no objective ways of making a call at all.

YSH: But I think it's important [that] we push. We try and we push. Because I think one of the things that I've really learnt from my many years of working in Singapore TV – which is the most restrictive [medium] – is that more often than not, we don't push because of self-censorship. And the many layers even before we get to the regulatory bodies. The many layers that will try to self-censor the work, which means we don't end up pushing and then nothing is ever negotiated. And for me that is the problem. But if we push and we negotiate, one body [will] need to compromise; the other says yes, the other says no, maybe one minute more, maybe one minute less. I mean, for me these are the meaningful negotiations. Rather than to say, ‘Oh, it's already there and there's nothing we can do.’ Many times I've been surprised that the negotiation does do something. You can negotiate stuff. But we first have to make the thing so that we can push those boundaries.

MW: So that's nice in the sense that we started out with art-making as a form of collaboration, and now it's art-making as a form of negotiations with certain parties as well.

YSH: Yeah. You know the regulatory bodies, they have their work to do. They are just bureaucrats. They are just employees, salary-taking people. They have work to do, but you have work to do [too]. And so you just have to negotiate. Everybody has their work to do, but then there are ways [around it].

MW: The only thing with all this and I think Alfian [Sa’at, the writer] has written about this many times, but the fact that when they make these decisions, it wears you out. It takes away your time from art-making itself.

YSH: It does, it does. And whether you see these negotiations as a core part of your practice. That's one way to see it.

MW: It's interesting that you've actually embraced it and seen it as part of your work. And that helps to sustain yourself. Otherwise people who are always fighting against it and find it unnecessary or ludicrous, it wears them down more.

YSH: And in the end just don't push for it, which is the saddest thing.

SESSION TWO – 3 May 2022

MW: In our last conversation, you were moving around. Is that actually a thing that you do? Are you a kinetic [thinker]…? 

YSH: No, just busy lah, you know? (laughs) Busy period. Well, yeah. Anyway, you caught me on shoot days, but today is the last day of my shoot. I don't know if I told you?

MW: So you have a shoot today huh?

YSH: Yeah, I've been shooting...The day before when you called, that was a break day. But this is my shoot. I mean, I've been on shoot the whole month.

MW: What is this shoot for today?

YSH: Did I tell you that I was shooting this series?

MW: This is the TV one is it?

YSH: I don't know if it will be on TV eventually? But I think they're trying to sell it to [a streaming service]. It was commissioned by this Korean production film company called CJ Entertainment. They're quite big lah and basically they want to do some Chinese content, and they’re working a bit with Singapore. So they’re doing this five-part, five-episode series. And also because their main market is Taiwan, we got a lot of Taiwanese actors onboard for this. But it’s shot in Singapore. So I've been shooting [this] for the last month and today is the last day. It's called Deep End. And it's about cybersex crimes.

MW: Okay, yeah.

YSH: And it also has something to do with deepfake technologies and stuff. It’s like, a play on realities. Yeah, something like this, yeah.

MW: This is fascinating. Maybe at this point I wanted to ask you about something interesting. I wanted to ask you about Olivier Assayas. So, funny thing, because I think when you were interviewed by NTU CCA [Nanyang Technological University Centre for Contemporary Art] as one of their resident artists, they asked you about things that influenced you. And you named two things – you named Zhuangzi…

YSH: [Laughs]

MW: …which I have some background into, because I know you studied Chinese philosophy. And I am also very much inspired, influenced by Daoist ideas. But the other influence you mentioned was the Assayas film, Irma Vep (1996). Which was a surprise to me, you don’t see it that much on lists. But Assayas is a very interesting director. Because of you, actually, I started to get into him.

YSH: Yeah? Great!

MW: I went to catch Irma Vep. I loved it.

YSH: Yeah, I think [it’s] one of my all-time favourites.

MW: When you talked about Deep End, your TV series on cybersex, I thought of another Assayas film, Demon Lover.

YSH: Yep [laughs]. Exactly. 

MW: Maybe another parallel between you and Assayas – another thing that Assayas is known for is his use of [and interest in] indie music in his films. And he also did this 2006 film Noise. It was shown on Mubi some time last year. That one is made up of concert footage. There’s a lot of French bands and there’s Sonic Youth somewhere in there also.

YSH: I mean we all know of filmmakers who are super coherent, right? We have Hong Sang-soo, Woody Allen…Basically their films are a continuation of themselves and I really respect this. It takes a certain discipline to keep making the same film, but better [each time]. But then for me, someone like Assayas is amazing in the sense that his films are all so different. And I think that’s the thing – it’s like [he’s] constantly pushing himself? And I think that is something that I value in artists and also myself. To push oneself to do different things, make different kinds of films. Sometimes it might not work, sometimes it might fail, but [you continue to] push lah. Because I also don’t think all of Assayas’s films are necessarily a success. Even something like Demon Lover which we just spoke about. It’s a very strange film which at many parts I think just didn’t work. But he still pushes it. He still tries. And it still gets somewhere. And that’s amazing. And then later on, he surprised me with something like Personal Shopper (2016), which is totally different and is wonderfully, deliciously amazing.

I think as someone who makes films – because we [were talking] about Zhuangzi right? As someone who makes films and makes work from a more conceptual standpoint…I’m talking about myself [here] – I make works from a more conceptual or idea-oriented standpoint, compared to many films which are very psychological, films which are driven by the characters’ psyches. [So] even though [a film I’ve made] may still be a narrative film with psychological elements or characters and stuff, [if you zoom out] they are more conceptual, or the starting point is more conceptual. And maybe I feel Assayas has a similar starting point and that’s why I feel these strong kindred feelings with his films. He’s a real master; I think Irma Vep is life-changing for me. Like how can a film be so experimental but so effective, so emotional, all at the same time, right? I mean, of course you have Maggie Cheung and all the craziness, [the] film-scratching stuff. But then at the same time, off set, she is with her friends, I mean, with the film set crew and little things happen here, little conflicts happen there, and it’s about her as an actress, and this strange director and their relationship, and all of that was deeply moving for me? Yet at the same time the film was totally something else as well. Once she puts on the outfit, she transforms herself.  

Talking about the word ‘transform’ – that’s the thing that I see in Assayas’s films. I see a lot of transformations. Which is something I myself am quite obsessed about lah, how to use the film medium as a mode of talking about transformations. I think, for me, this is also in the [work of] Zhuangzi that we were talking about. About transforming, [about transformation]. Because I think Irma Vep has a visual element that is very embodied, you know? Yes, you have this in a novel, in writing – but in film, you get to see and relate to characters visually and aurally, but they are also changeable, they are transformable. And that’s what I always seek to achieve in my work.

MW: Are you talking about the malleability of images?

YSH: I dunno if it’s images lah, but if we go back to talking about A Land Imagined, we have Lok the detective, an upper-middle class Chinese-Singaporean, quite privileged guy. And he's tasked to look for this immigrant, this foreign worker, [who is] missing, [and who is a] more disenfranchised character. They are both of very different worlds. But the task I have conceptually in the film is for me to try to make the audience feel like by the end of the film, they might just be the same person. I [always ask myself] – how do I shift these consciousnesses? Because I think at the end of the day what I’m trying to do is also to try to shift my audience’s [way of thinking]? If I can get them to feel just a little bit closer to my subject matter, for example with the migrant workers – just to [make them] feel and see how they’re not so different. [If that happens then] I would have achieved what I wanted to do with the film.

It’s a bit like when I was doing field trips to visit my migrant worker friends in Tuas. When I was writing the film, I could only visit them during the weekends when they are making music like how you see in the film – they are basically doing their weekend recreational activities: merrymaking, holding gigs, you know? And I really felt like, in those moments of us dancing, I no longer felt that separation; that ‘us and them’ divide, or the labels – [things like] the ‘migrant worker’, the ‘local’ or the ‘filmmaker’ and the ‘construction worker’? These sorts of labels faded away [during our collaboration]; I felt quite at one with them, you know? Again [this was] what I think a lot of what A Land Imagined is trying to express, and I think that’s what I’m trying to seek out when I talk about the transformation.  

And since you mention Assayas, we [can] talk about Maggie Cheung [in Irma Vep]. [She plays a character having a] total fish-out-of-water experience in France, trying to recreate some bizarre classic vampire film, obsessed by this director. She was totally like, ‘What the fuck am I doing here?’Right? Then she puts on that outfit and she became her own Irma Vep. She runs out to the rooftop and runs around the hotel. And then she becomes; it’s that process of becoming. And again lah, this is what I’m trying to describe, this feeling of transformation, to become something of a radical imagination of oneself.

Yeah, [so when I saw Irma Vep] I was like, wow. It gave me a lot of wonder, [and made me see] a lot of possibilities. And I guess it's something that I seek [to create] in my work.

And because you asked me about Zhuangzi and Assayas in the same question. So I have to answer you [similarly]; Zhuangzi and a certain kind of radical imagination of the self. Which maybe not enough Zhuangzi commentators talk about. Because I mean the most well-known story of Zhuangzi has always been ‘The Butterfly Dream’, right? Which is about dealing with realities. I mean a lot of your classic philosophy would talk about Zhuangzi in the sense that…okay, I will just reiterate that story. Very famous, but I will say it agai;: Zhuangzi dreamt that he was a butterfly. But then his dream was so real, he was flying around, flippy-flapping around the flower, and then he woke up. And because the dream felt so real, he was so confused and couldn’t differentiate whether it was Zhuangzi dreaming that he is a butterfly, or was the butterfly now dreaming that he is Zhuangzi.

For me there is a poetic and beautiful touch to this which is not just a question of ‘is this real or not’, which is oftentimes the standard reading of that story, because I think people usually don’t consider the final statement in that story. So [back to the story], Zhuangzi makes a final statement, [which is] a eureka moment with an exclamation mark, almost. And his final eureka realisation is, ‘Ah! And this is what is called ‘wù huà 物化’, i.e. the transformation of things!’ ‘Wù 物’ is ‘thing’, and ‘huà 化’ is like ‘evolution’ or ‘transformation’, right?

So when he meant transformation, I don't think that he meant to question reality so much. If you look at his body of work, he’s not so much about trying to question [concepts such as] is this real, am I real, or is my reality what I can really trust? But [what I think] he’s trying to talk about [is this]; if I can imagine the butterfly [as being] so real to me, maybe it and I are not so different. Maybe I can transform. It requires a radical reimagination. That transformation is possible but we need to really push ourselves. I mean, it happens easiest in a dream because in a dream, things are the most fluid. And I think that is also why the trope of the dream is quite important in my work, because it is in those moments where we really remove most of our inhibitions – where we really become most fluid, most free. We don’t have reminders from society and family and whatever to tell you who you are. [The dream] is the moment when you can become. Whoever you want to be. Even a butterfly lah.

MW: Cinema has been likened to being a dream as well.

YSH: Yeah, it is a moment, right? It is a moment when you stop trying to be yourself. In fact you try your best to relate to what is on the screen, to the film. For you to really enjoy cinema, you need to try and lose your own [understanding of your] self to relate to the character(s) in the film. That’s if you really want to enjoy cinema. Again, a very Daoist trope; to go into a certain kind of ‘wú wŏ jìng jiè 无我境界’, or to lose oneself. And maybe [this is] why I don’t tend to like to make films that are just about trying to ‘relate’ to my audience…I think sometimes my films are a bit alienating to my audience? Instead of trying to create a universe that is so similar to my audience’s world so that they can relate to them – that’s just nostalgia most of the time – I want to expose my audience to an ‘other’, to something so otherly different from them, because what I want is for my audience to transport themselves. Instead of me making something so relatable and you see yourself on-screen and you cry because – ‘Oh!’ [makes crying sound] ‘I see myself on screen!’ That is never my task as a filmmaker, [even if] many filmmakers do do that. I mean, I know that most films try to relate their characters to their audiences, but I don’t – that is not exactly the type of film I make.

MW: That’s a really great background. That gives really rich context into what you do. Because when I see criticisms of A Land Imagined, it appears to me that they come from a place where people do not know how to deal with something that is strange.

I must say though – one of the criticisms is that the ‘strangeness’ actually falls on, for example with A Land Imagined specifically, the worlds of the migrant workers. And of course they are marginalised people in society, and I think the criticisms with the film then were questioning an exoticisation that might come out in portraying them, because the way you portray them is so different from what other realist filmmakers do, which in themselves have certain tropes or certain stereotypical depictions. So how do you address that, in a sense that when you are ultimately portraying a world that is so different from yours – there is this question of a cultural ethics.

YSH: Yeah, well, I think a lot of people say that A Land Imagined could be quite an exotic experience, as though the film is exoticising them? Except that I never felt that way about it. In a sense that what happens in the film or what you experience in the film is pretty much my journey with the migrant workers when I was writing the film, when I spent the two years going back and forth to hang out with them. You see, it is an experience thing, in a sense that I don’t get to hang out with them during their working hours. I wasn’t allowed to be on the construction site. And so whenever I was with them, [it was] when they were dancing, when they were singing. And that became my truth, my [understanding of their] reality. Of course I did still show them at work, but that no longer became the emphasis.

I think yes, with the more social-realist films or even documentaries about migrant workers, there’s more focus on the hardship, the day-to-day struggle and all these things. [Those things are also] in the film, if you want to see it, if you look out for it. But I think for me as a filmmaker, it becomes [a question] about what do I want to emphasise? And I think I don't want to be watching another migrant worker film about how terrible their lives are? Even though they are of course experiencing exploitation? We need to know of course, that there is exploitation involved, and it needs to be addressed in the film. But at the same time I wanted to show a whole other point of view, which was my reality of them. Whenever I spent time with them, it was really one of joy, you know, really about enjoying themselves, making music like the rest of us. They are not just, oh, a construction worker working, doing manual labour, sweating, etc, but that there is a whole other world – they make music, they dance, they experience intimacy issues – it’s a whole other world that I want to open up my audience to that you don’t see in a standard documentary. At the end of the day, I’m trying to tell my audience that we have a shared humanity,and the closer you understand how you are to these migrant workers, that they are [also] music-loving joyful people, the closer you can imagine that we are the same, [and] all these problems fade away faster.

The problem of exploitation, the problem of alienating them, all of these come from the fact that we other them. We other them so much that we are okay with the exploitation, right? We are okay with seeing them as completely alien beings just here to work and build the city. When I ask people ‘Why do you think it is very exotic?’ they tell me, ‘Oh you focus on all this dancing and like very high, trance moments.’ But they are real! They are exactly what happened; in fact I brought a lot of my friends, different people to these trips when I went to visit them. They just get very high and that’s what I see. And in these moments where they’re making music where we no longer rely on speaking a common language, they become so inviting. I was totally welcome in their midst. When I go to Tuas, I am the alien, not them, but they brought me in. Through music and dance, we don’t have to sit and awkwardly try to express ourselves anymore. So I think for me it’s a question of where my emphasis is when I make the film. And I didn’t want to get stuck in ‘poverty porn’; it could [very well] have become a social-realist hardcore poverty porn film lah. And I steered away from that to present my truth [as I saw it alongside] them, which can feel like exoticisation especially to people who have not experienced it, people who had not gone to Tuas on weekend nights to see this totally different side of them.

Mark Wong is based in Singapore, where he is active in experimental music, sonic arts, and independent music practice as an organiser, programmer, artist, curator, writer, and label producer.

Notes

[1] Chris was reported to have received the 35-and-under award at the age of 36, as the result of a technical error in his nomination a year prior. See: https://www.straitstimes.com/life/arts/young-artist-award-goes-to-musician-charlie-lim-dancer-norhaizad-adam-and-more 

[2] The scene in question involves actor Peter Yu running butt-naked on a treadmill. In the uncut version on Netflix, the camera shoots Yu, full-bodied from the side of the treadmill for a full minute. The NC-16 version in the cinemas and on DVD replaces most of that scene with an alternate shot of Yu’s head and torso as he pants into the camera.