Slade School of Fine Art

UCL

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It was a Tuesday, like any other Tuesday

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Sarah Choo Jing

, 2013, video still, 130 x 91 cm.

It was a Tuesday like any other Tuesday depicts a single channel video composite. Here, the actions and routines of 12 individuals living within the same apartment building have been documented from the artist's bedroom window. These potential narratives that occur within the window frames have no specific storyline, and are instead open to interpretation.
The division between public and private has changed massively over this time period for many reasons. There are noticeable characteristics in each city and a different sense of living. It is the individual as a conscious or unconscious performer within their environment, that intrigues the artist.
This video piece focuses on the idea of "getting inside" the everyday from a position of being plunged into daily-ness and triviality. Choo is attempting to appropriate and transform the conventions of documentary filmmaking and photography as she searches for a way to find a form of practice that stays immersed in the everyday.

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He paused, looked over and said

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Sarah Choo Jing

, 2014, documentation, interactive installation, size variable.

He paused, looked over and said; is an interactive multimedia installation depicting nine local Artisans across Singapore. Through documenting then compositing the footage, Choo seeks to understand and re-present potential narratives behind their craft. At the same time, she invites viewers to participate in creating their personal narrative through dictating the placements and sequencing of both people and objects.
This Artwork was commissioned by Pernod Ricard Singapore for the Icon De Martell Photography Award Exhibition; held in conjunction with the Singapore Night Festival.

Waiting for the Elevator

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Sarah Choo Jing

, 2014, immersive video installation.

"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.

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Puddles in the City (New York I)

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Sarah Choo Jing

, 2014, diasec print, 75 x 150 cm.

The city is similar to a film,
One in a state of continuous metamorphosis, one in which not only is everything and everyone animated but also incessantly accelerated.
Everything passes by and is always in the process of unreeling.
Puddles in the City is a series of images, documented across busy cities (London, Paris, New york). These cinematic prints depict a moment in time where street performers are captured while they are no longer performing.
The role of the Performer/ Entertainer is indeed fascinating. Taking on a different persona each time, the entertainer is dressed as an Icon and becomes an object of attraction. At the specific moment when they no longer consciously perform, do these entertainers stop becoming representations of icons? Who is the spectator and who the performer? When, or does the performance come to an end?

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Puddles in the City (Paris II)

,

Sarah Choo Jing

, 2014, diasec print, 75 x 150 cm.

The city is similar to a film,
One in a state of continuous metamorphosis, one in which not only is everything and everyone animated but also incessantly accelerated.
Everything passes by and is always in the process of unreeling.
Puddles in the City is a series of images, documented across busy cities (London, Paris, New york). These cinematic prints depict a moment in time where street performers are captured while they are no longer performing.
The role of the Performer/ Entertainer is indeed fascinating. Taking on a different persona each time, the entertainer is dressed as an Icon and becomes an object of attraction. At the specific moment when they no longer consciously perform, do these entertainers stop becoming representations of icons? Who is the spectator and who the performer? When, or does the performance come to an end?

Sarah Choo Jing

web: www.sarahchoojing.com