marketplace

This is a collaboration with Italian sound and visual artist, Claudio Curciotti. The work consists of a multi-channel projection showing videos and stills of markets from various countries, together with a soundscape made up of overlapping sounds recorded while both artists were at different markets in various countries - France, India, Italy, Egypt, Nepal, United Kingdom, Malaysia and Singapore.

The work uses the marketspace as a shared locus of understanding, as we recognise how most of us would usually look for and pay for whatever is needed or desired from some kind of marketplace. This serves as a jumping off point to explore ideas on the arbitration (i.e. bargaining) of worth and value in objects, places, and experiences. 

This absolutely subjective assignment of value for goods and services is perhaps also reflected in our struggles with our intrinsic qualities such as that of self-worth. The exhibit further hoped to engage with the idea of how through the bargaining we make with others, we can build or destroy the sense of community and trust, and the bargaining we make with our own selves can both build and destroy us.

In addition to physical objects and services, the market is also a place where people might chat with each other about daily concerns and thus becomes more than just a space for trading goods and services but also for information and ideas. The exhibition space is thus designed to encourage such interactions between visitors to the gallery.