"You once told me that the human eye is god’s loneliest creation. How so much of the world passes through the pupil and still it holds nothing. The eye, alone in its socket, doesn’t even know there’s another one, just like it, an inch away, just as hungry, as empty.” - Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

 

anGie once told me that she doesn't feel her own body, that on some days, she feels herself floating above reality. In order to save herself, she needs to come face-toface with reality, to insert her self into society, to constantly re-position and reflect on her purpose as a person living in the world. To save herself, she has to make art with others.

 

Do we touch each other to see if we’re alive?

anGie began this project with a desire to confront the brutal reality of dying, to get close to the truth of dying alone, with illness, with little possessions. She wanted to know, deep in her bones, what it means to live and die in Singapore. So much of our everyday lives is filled with distractions, as if we are afraid of what we might find when we pause to face a wall. anGie tries to wade through the haze of distractions to reach out to seniors, to immerse herself in their realities. Yet as she visited seniors who were living in 1-room flats in Toa Payoh and patients at Assisi Hospice, she realised that the reality of it was not what she expected. Although dying might seem to be an inevitable journey, despair was not its clingy cousin.

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The deeper anGie immersed herself in the reality of the seniors, the more hopeful she felt. The fear that she had about dying, about losing time, started to fade away. Perhaps the scattering one feels in the face of helplessness can be made full again by the centrifugal force of life. One can be connected to the ground and feel light. As she disappeared into the lives of the seniors, she started to find herself, and maybe even something more numinous - the will to live.

 

Will our hearts ache when we lean towards the truth?

It is a revelatory, moving experience when art allows you to encounter something true, and anGie’s To Live Forever project draws out something that exists deep inside each of us. What began as a private cry in the dark, turned into a conversation, a workshop, a toolkit, a publication, a film, a website, and this sprawling piece of work is only the beginning of anGie’s attempt to grapple with reality.

 

The HANDBOOK TO A CERTAIN LIFE documents anGie’s artistic process with the seniors and takes inspiration from the practices of imaginative and creative ethnography to introduce new ways of thinking about the process and practices involved in participant observation, engagement, interviews, and documentation. 

 

"To live forever" is a research-driven socially engaged art project initiated by artist anGie seah. For a fuller scope of the project, visit www.toliveforever.me