The Cup

The Cup is a meditation on being in the world, upon the flattening out of life as we know and image it during the pandemic. It was shot and produced in our home during the lockdown period in Singapore, and an early version was first presented as part of a group exhibition 'flat' at Sullivan+Strumpf Gallery (Singapore).

The pandemic and its effects, in some sense, have profoundly altered our envisioning of being in the world. Perhaps due to the large intersection of our collective lived experience in this period around the globe. While the restrictions in daily life protect oneself as well as the general public from the spread of the pandemic, they seem to have resulted in an observably diminished joy of life for many. Bringing to surface a dissatisfaction with simply being, in this more isolated, restricted way.

The film, as a picture of and from the flattening out of life during the pandemic, hopes to explore the notion that perhaps what felt missing during the lockdown - where satisfaction and a ‘more joyous life’ lie in - was the freedoms to individually curate and have the choice of risking our lives how we see fit, in various engagements, something we had in life before the pandemic.

Perhaps we felt such a joy of life when death, its elusion and risking it was in a way of our choice, in which arises the inexplicable tangle of the living we want, and how we live.

在封鎖時期內拍攝完成的《杯子》，是對似乎平淡化的疫情生活之中在世存在的進一步反思。

疫情的影響，根本地改變了我們所想像的在世存在。也許是因為在這個時期，全球各地的集體經歷有大部分的相較。個人生活中的限制規定，雖有保護個人及大眾以防病毒蔓延的作用，但也似乎導致多人的生活樂趣減弱。這浮現出人在這個孤立、受限制的狀態下，對於單單存在的不滿。

本影片刻劃著、並且出自於疫情生活的平淡化，希望能夠思考：也許封鎖期間我們所感受到缺少的——一個所謂知足的、含有樂趣的生活之所處——就是冒險生命的個人自由與選擇，這畢竟是我們疫情之前的生活中所擁有的權利。

也許當冒險與逃脫死亡曾在於自我的選擇，我們才能感受到生活的樂趣，之中顯現出我們所要的生活、我們如何生活的莫名糾纏。