‘How To Be Human’ presents a fictional setting where our autonomy and individuality are completely nonexistent. Via a satirical lens, the project criticises our desperate need for clarity in a chaotic world, which Albert Camus referred to as ‘The Absurd’. In this fictional setting, humans are each assigned a package containing all the information about their lives including when they will die, their career path, traits and preferences. The project will also give a peek into what a manual on how to be human would look like, highlighting four principles that require human beings to be: 1) Mechanical, 2) Rational, 3) Static and 4) Compliant.
The project invites the audience to reflect on our habit of conformity, ridiculous social conventions and our slow descent into a completely mechanical human life. When provided with information on everything about your life, would you feel relieved by the lack of ambiguity or would you instead have a greater appreciation of your personal freedom?
This project seeks to explore the Buddhist philosophical concept of Sunyata (a.k.a. emptiness) in the entity of the “self”. It serves to explain the impermanent, insubstantial and empty nature of the ‘self’ and how we should be aware of the way it affects our emotions and behaviors. Through a series of personal experimentations of the attempts to observe the self and understand the non-self, the artist attempts to display how she has practised Sunyata from a layman point of view and how she has observed the self in daily life. In saturating the self in our daily lives, she hopes to reveal the importance of understanding the value of the non-self.
The project is an alternative perspective to people whom have not heard of Sunyata, and a reminder to those who know of it, by specifically targetting the “self” as a recurringly perceived entity in .
This project started from a fear that has been festering in my mind, of what will eventually be of my future, an issue that is all the more relevant with the direction the world is headed towards. To tackle this existential crisis, I decided to use a physical installation as an outlet to translate my thoughts and fears.
An installation of a simple “bubble machine” where the viewer cranks an empty frame from a container of bubble solution allowing the viewer to see one’s own reflection up close on the fluid surface. The floating bubble eventually pops and disappears, allowing the viewer to then see their reflection again- this time on the mirror facing them.
Experiencing the abrupt disappearance of the self-portrait captured in the bubble and facing one’s own mirror reflection again is a moment of painful joy. Looking at the reflection in both the fluid surface and the mirror, being aware of the absurdity that is life, one should not despair in this knowledge, but accept the transient nature of life and the freedom that it brings. In this project, what I seek is neither answers nor solutions, but to acknowledge the journey and embrace the ending that comes with it.
