No One is an Island (2021)

FESCH.TV INFORMIERT:

No One is an Island (2021) is a video poem conceived through my research on the history of the southern islands of Singapore; when faced with the concept of non-travel in our city-state, many locals turned to domestic travel, to give ourselves the sense that we were, in fact, travelling or moving beyond the sense of stasis we felt with the pandemic restrictions. However, the histories of the lands we now see as functioning tourist spots or landfills were once inhabited. While the world shifted around them, the islands I’m concerned with have had one constant attribute in their inability to move.

Despite this, they have changed drastically over the years. I write this visual poem in an imagined voice of the land, documenting the journey which they have taken, while unmoved. It is through personifying these histories and stories that I aim to draw parallels between our current predicament of being unable to travel and these bodies of land. I hope to shift the viewer’s perspective from the negatives of being stagnant in Singapore, to a positive.

By looking closer at the connections we forge with both the people around us and the land that we live upon, beyond just looking with a historical and geographical lens, but rather with an intimate and personal gaze, we might find that our wanderlust might be stimulated not by a shift in place, but a shift in perspective.