Embodying Senescence

Abstract

As rapidly as the city-state developed from Third World to First World, Singapore is facing a ‘silver tsunami’, pre-maturely. Singapore is one of the fastest-ageing countries in the world. In official communication with the masses, the State frames this cultural image as an economic representation distanced from the lived, embodied experiences of growing old. The State’s performance of this ‘biopolitics of greying’ is one of an economic challenge that can otherwise be resolved economically. The lived realities of many aged citizens in Singapore however differ from state-sanctioned performative rhetoric. There are an increasing number who are unable to find employment and resort to retrieving recyclables such as cardboard pieces; they are colloquially termed ‘cardboard collectors’. Living on a paltry and unstable income, they struggle to make ends meet in a country where social and public assistance schemes are failing. The aged body – slow, unprogressive, unproductive – is regarded as ‘Other’ in dromological Singapore. This article is then a critical reflection on a research project that employed virtual embodiment experiences to encourage greater awareness and empathy for this emerging elderly underclass. ‘Embodying Senescence’ is a performance installation work that places participants in an immersive 360° first-person virtual environment. They assume the perspective of ‘Uncle E’, a 65-year-old cardboard collector, and experience the sights and sounds he encounters as he goes about collecting cardboard recyclables. Using data gathered from the project, the article evaluates the possibilities and potentials of embodiment experiences and interrogates the limits of virtual performativity to ‘inhabit’ the Other, and as an alternative means of encountering this Other. It posits ‘an understanding of visual engagement as a political, ethical act – what is seen and the seer are part of a life world, of an extended physical reality beyond the boundaries of an individual body’ (Kuppers 2011: 179).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This research was funded by the Office of Education Research Grant, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University (SUG 07/17 TCC). Ethics approval was given by NTU IRB, IRB-2017-07-002-01.

Notes

1 This is an English translation of Chinese Mandarin spoken by Uncle-E.

2 Singapore has topped the rankings for the highest cost of living for the last five years, according to The Economist’s (2018) annual Worldwide Cost of Living Survey.

3 BeAnotherLab is an interdisciplinary multinational group that uses remote technologies and virtual reality systems to understand and communicate subjective experience particularly with issues of identity and empathy from an embodied perspective. They developed ‘The Machine to Be Another’, an embodied VR system to allow a participant to experience the world from another’s perspective. One of their most significant works was the ‘Gender Swap’ experiment in which a male and a female participant were able to ‘exchange’ bodies through the embodied VR system facilitated by HMDs, and users were able to see from the perspective of the other. They could also see their own bodies from this other-ed view

4 For a comprehensive discussion of VR performances, see Dixon (2006).