hot b stars

2020 

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Note to the Audience

The installation will sound and look its best in a darkened room, with headphones in or good quality speakers on. Turn the volume up and enjoy.

 

Commissioned as part of the Bagri Foundation's At Home in The World series.

 

Inspired by abstract tantric painting from Rajasthan, Malay poetry and my own notion of identity and mixed heritage, hot B stars is a collection of 4 miniatures; a digital installation providing fragments of memory and journey at a time of self-isolation.

 

Sound art is weaved into musical textures and unfolds with each animation/cinemagraph, manipulated digitally to contain micro-movements that are not always immediately apparent to the eye. Through focus on the image and sound, these minute shifts will begin to reveal themselves.

 

The visual and aural aspects of each miniature have been treated as equals and in responding to these landscapes that I have also called 'home', a musical poem is created through percussion, guitar, voice, electronics and sound design.

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These snapshots offer a glimpse into Chinese and Malaysian culture through the eyes of the young transnational Chinese community in London and challenges audiences on outdated tropes and assumptions held of East Asia.

 

The name hot B stars comes from the star constellation 'The Pleiades', the nearest cluster to Earth and visible to the naked eye in both Malaysia and the UK, as well as many other countries along the way. Taken from the Ancient Greek word plein meaning 'to sail' it is a nod to the significance of the Ancient Greeks to both Europe and Asia, ancient pathways and a reminder that our interconnected history runs deeper than we often think.