Motherland

"The Motherland series started as a part of another project called Ghostwalking, in which I was invited to respond to a journey along an MRT subway line known as the Northeast Line, in Singapore. Ghostwalking involved taking participants in audio tours at various spots along the subway stations, where they could choose to watch my videos. I made three videos for this project (Xiao Jing, Jesmen and Agnes), which eventually expanded into the Motherland series. 

I think the social and political situation of a place/country always plays a big part in my artistic production. My research included news from online media, interviews with the actors involved in my pieces and fictional dramatic intervention based on - or taken from - actual facts and stories. The next step was to write a script in English, whose essence was internalized by the actors, who later presented it in their respective mother tongues. Once the film is ready, the subtitles form another layer of translation, creating a ‘dialogue’ between the director, the actor and the viewer. The actor becomes a composite character, telling a personal story, connected to history, reflecting on the social and political situations of their society and zeitgeist.

Identity, migration, languages (and translation) lead to central questions in many of my works. Actually, I don't make distinctions between fiction and documentary, and I reckon it is clear to say that I work with narratives as opposed to a non-narrative work.

I have always believed that cinema is about the art of being 'indirect'. The long take as a form, or structure, forces the viewers to evaluate their own perception of moving images. If one truly immerses oneself into the narrative, it imposes some kind of discipline, almost meditative and spiritual. With the long take, the viewers may drift in and out of the film's narrative, as they move along tangents, thinking about their own lives or something that might be outside the space of the screen, sometimes connected to the consciousness of the characters."

Sherman ong in a statement to PLATFORM:VB (October 2013)