Waiting for the Elevator

“ 'In pursuit of meaning and satisfaction, we are led to grant the aura of life to things and to drain in from people: we personify objects and objectify persons. We experience alienation from ourselves as well as from others. We best comprehend ourselves as social entities by looking at photos of ourselves, assuming the voyeur’s role with respect to our own images; We best know ourselves from within in looking through the viewfinder at other people and things. ’ ”

— Martha Rosler

In her recent work, Choo seeks to reflect upon issues of social alienation and isolation through potential narratives in Everyday scenes. Waiting for the Elevator is a Multimedia Installation that depicts a composite of documented events, projected across the Esplanade Tunnel. Through working closely with Filmmaker Mathias Choo Rui Zhi and Sound Artist Teo Wei Yong, the artist brings uneventful and overlooked aspects of lived experience into visibility.
In Waiting for the Elevator, Choo reinterprets observations of individuals at void decks across Singapore then re-presents them to her viewers. Drawing on normally unnoticed, trivial and repetitive actions, she reflects upon the social purposes of these sheltered environments. The composited panorama ultimately exists as a non-space; an accumulation of fragments over time.
The production of this artwork is made possible with the kind help and support from Beamer Works Pte Ltd.