Moving on From the Past/0004.04- by SKRL

Featured in Volume 2!

About the Work

"0004.04"

2020 | Multimedia | IG: @0004.is.04

0004.04 is a short conceptual series of digital images and text-to-speech audios framed as a semi-ARG (Alternate Reality Game). At its core the work is the recall of traumatic

incidents/moments in the artist’s childhood; a deconstruction of the contents and reconstruction of mediated elements. This is the only project (as of current) to directly use the artist’s 'personal narratives' as content for art.

A turbulent childhood that was painted over as mellow through the combined forces of

gaslighting and dissociation, the lingering trauma stored in the body was never dealt with.

Because most of the time it was survival, to heal was to thrive in living. After starting on

trauma-related healing with a trusted counselor, the advice given was to express the

amalgamated baggage through art. To process the old wounds through art because I was

purposefully choosing to engage with art as a detached spectator, gave me a reason to

challenge my own practice and to reconcile the ways to relate to my past that my mind fought so hard to suppress into a foggy maze. So it was then I decided to express this process in the form of a decentralized mode of story-telling.

Deconstructing morbidly iconic highlights of those troubling memories in the form of places

(geography) and thematic motifs, reconstructing into pixel art and audio files.

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I’ve become someone who’s unsure of myself but understands that there is crazy strength in

me to continue being better in my journey. It made me unable to withstand too much stimulus, but I learned to serenity in the small balances - like a well-made cuppa joe. I’ve grown to be sentimental, and maybe soft. But that’s because I saw the consequences of people who have hearts hardened. It also taught me to help people be visible in their struggles, to give spaces no matter how small to those who need room to breathe and be, and I will say to them, “You’ve done well.”

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01- Bus Stop

My parents had a fight, Dad was caught having an affair and Mom obviously freaked out. She

blew her top at him, she was always the hot-headed alpha of the house. Dad was chased out, and my older siblings were out (working adults). I was only 7. So after Mom ripped most of Dad’s clothes, she took off from the house with me. After heading to a few places, we ended up at a nearby jetty and took shelter at the bus stop for a while. I sat there wondering if I could go home soon, it was 1 am, and I had school the next day.

02- Jetty

After my parents had a huge fight because Dad was caught having an affair, Mom took off with me (who was 7 at that time) from our empty house to several places that day. The final place was the jetty. I remembered my Mom calling Dad over the payphone, she handed me the phone to speak to him, Dad told me that I can tell him where we were so that we can all go home. So I did, to my Mom’s dismay. We bunked at the jetty, it was drizzling and the smell of the green sea was strong. The winds were cold, I was shaking. Mom covered me with a small blanket, and I waited where time froze and home was a distant memory.

03- Pikachu

I was in a Pikachu onesie my sister bought from her trip to Japan when I was 4, trivial enough. But now that I recall (and confirmed), we have photo albums dedicated to younger me dressed up in outfits my mom curated. She always questions when will I decide to dress up and find a boyfriend, I always look at her and say I’m busy with life. I am. When I look at this photograph, I look confused and anxious. I remembered that all I wanted was to relax in the onesie, and be me who isn’t interested in how good the onesie looked because it was Pikachu - it’s a guaranteed feel-good. I look at myself today, and somehow, I’m still trapped in that Pikachu onesie.

04- Chinatown

One of the places Mom took me to after that huge fight with Dad was Chinatown, it’s one of her favourite places to go to for food and cheap fashion. My association with this place is the fried dumplings store at the hawker, comfort food. We ate some and walked around aimlessly, we were there for a good 3 hours. When it was evening, I asked Mom if we could go home, as if that would bring back some sense of normalcy. Mom didn’t reply to me.

05- Bugis Street

Another hotspot of the past, my parents and I frequented Bugis Street when I was young as the go-to eat and shop location. Good food, good drinks. Mom and I would take the bus from the bus stop near my old kindergarten to Bugis, buy us some Takoyaki and Wheat Grass drink, then I would throw a tantrum after Mom shopped for too long. I would walk the streets of this place these days, and realize the past is long gone but ever-present.

About the Artist:

Shanice ‘Shan’ Ng (SIRKL)

Artist IG: @full_sirkl

Personal IG: @shan.ng.yx

Website: https://sirkl0circle.wixsite.com/sirkl

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A Singaporean artist-curator who sometimes thinks to themselves that they should leave their home country to do art but realizes they're broke. Shan is a trained spatial designer (diploma) & fine artist (BA), they still can't nail a specialization which is why most of their artist descriptions are vague - except for the mention of their coffee addiction. Coffee is good.

If Shan were to choose the type of artist they are, perhaps the term 'Interdisciplinary' would be it. SIRKL's works range from ink doodles from a time when they had the patience to multi-media works that can't make up its mind to fully migrate into digital.

Taking a conceptual, intrinsic approach to any project, SIRKL's attitude can come across as nonchalant & aloof towards creating. But that's because they're just feeling tired in advance when they have to explain themselves after making something really cool but too abstract for themselves to comprehend. Okay, maybe they stretch it too far sometimes.

But that's what makes SIRKL tick, layers upon layers of connected thoughts & incidences that had happened across history in the inorganic & organic, pattern of life/living that pisses them off. These points of knowing they've experienced their life pulled in parallel to the universality of the human condition. Which is probably why their works end up unresolved, becoming a series or borders on transcendence/uncanny/boring. They don't know what their grand plan is; they just take it one cup of Kopi Gao Kosong at a time.

Every nightly COD: Mobile gaming session at a time. One at a time, then maybe a full circle might just come about.