Sherman Ong | Art | Film | Photography

Shapeshifter

shermano — Thu, 21 Sep 2017 10:35:43 +0000

I was reading a book about the ancient art of shapeshifting when a stray cat came into my garden with a dead moth in its jaws.

By definition, shapeshifter refers to a person or being with the ability to change their physical form at will. This idea of a shapeshifter is prevalent in many of the ancient cultures around the world.

I wondered if the cat had killed the moth. I didn’t want to let its life be in vain. So I decided to make a pact with the cat. I offered it the tuna bun I was eating in exchange for the dead moth.

The cat looked at me in the eyes. I wondered if we had met before. The exchange was quick but deliberate. I felt a sense of déjà vu. The cat left behind something more than just a moth. I wondered if the cat had caught a shapeshifter.

I read in the news that there was an abundance of moths, which might interfere with out daily lives, much like the politicians in the country. I wondered if they are all shapeshifters. I brushed aside that thought and carried on with my reading as peacefully as possible. I wondered if I could shapeshift.

It was déjà vu, all over again.

Monsoon

shermano — Fri, 11 Apr 2014 01:42:12 +0000

The Mechanics of Rain, Mobility and Intervention

The word ‘monsoon’ comes from an Arabic word ‘Mausim’ which describes a seasonal shifting of wind directions. The monsoons govern life in most parts of Southeast Asia, determining the profitable months of beach resorts and the agriculture calendar of farmers throughout the region. The landscape changes and human mobility is affected during the monsoons, but this intervention also creates a seasonal shifting in mindsets and psyches of the people as they go about negotiating this transient watery terrain. The sudden, heavy downpours have turned the region into one of the water-rich areas of the world but without the proper means of harvesting rainwater, the region still suffers from water-related problems. This series contemplates the impact of the monsoons and its intervention on human mobility, the landscape and the psyche of the inhabitants of Hanoi. Taken through a moving van with the windows wound up, the images offer another way of looking at the urban landscape through the intervention of water, wind and glass.

Spurious Landscapes

shermano — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 14:29:48 +0000

‘Spurious Landscapes’ draw inspiration from this statement by John Berger:
“Landscapes can be deceptive. Sometimes a landscape seems to be less a setting for the life of its inhabitants than a curtain behind which their struggles, achievements and accidents take place.”

The series straddle between randomness and planned, where the viewer is invariably drawn to question the ‘validity’ of the photograph as a document or a construction, whether the scene was ‘found’ or ‘intervened’. I would like to let the answer remain ambiguous and to open up possibilities for the real and the surreal to mingle in the works.

Memories of a Burning Tree

shermano — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 12:18:48 +0000

Flooding in the Time of Drought

shermano — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 11:54:54 +0000

Banjir Kemarau
Singapore | 2009 | 92 mins + 92 mins | Color | with English subtitles
http://floodinginthetimeofdrought.blogspot.com/
DROUGHT – 92 mins
Languages: Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Tagalog, Mandarin, German
FLOOD – 92 mins
Languages: Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Thai, Indonesian, Malay, Hokkien
Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane 2013
Casa Asia, Madrid & Barcelona, Spain 2013

Unseen: Cinema of the 21st Century, Queensland Art Gallery, Australia 2011
Malaysia, Singapore Cinema! Centre Pompidou, Paris, France 2010
Rainbow Asia, Hangaram Museum, Seoul Art Centre, Korea 2010
Rotterdam International Film Festival, Netherlands 2010

What if suddenly the water supply runs dry in Singapore?
Commissioned by the Singapore Biennale, this fusion of documentary and fiction narrative depicts the lives of foreign migrants as an impending water crisis begins to seep into their lives. With water, or the lack of it, becoming the central motif, this two-part feature length film takes us on a journey across 8 interweaved stories and 10 languages, as the protagonists, consisting of non-professional actors, grapple with this hopefully temporary discomfort, amidst their dalliance with human foibles, and their fantasies of everlasting loves and broken romances.
This aberration is a memento mori as the narratives grazed across the vague impressions of the racial tensions lingering past the 1997 riots in Indonesia, World War II, ritual beliefs, and ethnic discrimination in Southeast Asia which has been ingrained over generations and transported along with the migrant communities. Nonetheless, amidst the sporadic ventures into death and violence, sexual relations and sexualities, these are the lines of division that bind us to each other, in one way or another, as people survive through their crises.

Hashi

shermano — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 11:32:43 +0000

はし
Japan/Singapore/Malaysia | 2008 | 111 mins |
Japanese with English subtitles
http://hashithefilm.blogspot.com/

Best Screenplay, Singapore Film Awards, Singapore International Film Festival 2009
International Film Festival Rotterdam 2009
In Competition, Rome Asian Film Festival 2009
Barcelona Asian Film Festival 2009

A film that deals with very relevant issues in our everyday lives, Hashi centres on 3 women from 3 age groups – Shino(50s), Junko(30s) and Momo(20s). Momo is a bento (box lunch) delivery girl who sends bento lunches to Shino and Junko, who are colleagues in an office. Momo would always tell her dreams to Shino or Junko. One day Shino gets a call from an ex-boyfriend whom she has not met for 30 years. Junko has doubts about her relationship with her boyfriend. Their 3 lives cross and diverge in oblique and tangential ways. As the story weaves around issues of love, relationships, insecurity, death and the blurring between dreams and reality, the men in their lives are always present but hardly seen or heard.

HanoiHaiku

shermano — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 10:27:57 +0000

I am interested in the idea of transition and its relationship with the memory of the past, the changing of values, the passing of tradition and the aspirations of a different reality. I am keen to explore this idea through the social/private spaces within an evolving urban environment like Hanoi.

This series is presented like a visual Haiku. Intentionally left untitled, the juxtaposition of images produces their own narratives, temporal connections, and is open to many interpretations infused with the personal experiences of individual viewers. Similar to the Japanese Haiku, they are observations in its purest form, distilled into a simple gesture, a moment of reflection, a point in a continuum, touching on the beauty of imperfection, in delicate, quiet, nuanced moments.

Spaces

shermano — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 06:22:32 +0000

Man & his Environment

This series explores the relationship between Man and Nature, and the boundaries between the built/urban/constructed spaces vis-a-vis the Natural landscape/ environment. In addition, I am also keen to explore the connections and slippages between the concepts of mise-en-scène in cinema and tableau in painting, against the documentary tradition and the notion of the ‘decisive moment’ in photography. These seemingly staged photographs were made almost instinctively as I was exploring the spaces within a particular area, synthesizing the ‘decisive moment’ with ‘constructed photography.

Missing You

shermano — Sun, 06 Apr 2014 11:00:55 +0000

The series deals with memory, body memory and spatial memory. Reflecting on the elements of the Yin and Yang, to miss someone posits the existence of a person who is no longer within the same physical space or sharing the same spatial/temporal relationship with the person who is missing him/her/it. This situation of ‘missing’ would exist as long as the presence-absence dialectic is present and I hope to explore/recall this dimension that exist beyond the photographic space.

I ask the participants to:
– tell me who she misses, can be someone who is dead/alive,
– bring something that represents that person/thing
– do the same gestures/actions they would do if the person is with them OR her usual pose when she think about this person
– write their thoughts that go thru their mind when they think of this person on the transparent boxes
– to do that gesture/action as if they are in their usual space/environment, through their own recollection/memory of that space(spatial memory)
By repeating their usual and familiar gestures/poses, the body memory triggers the mind to remember, recollect, reminiscence the memory of a loved one, and to revisualize the spatial context where the memory is formed. Some participants became quite emotional during the process.