Students’ Confession / 2018 / High-definition digital video / 16:9 converted to 4:3 aspect ratio, colour, sound, 4 minutes
In this video work, a group of students attempt to explore concepts related to histories, truths and power. The reading of the detainees’ transcripts verbatim plays with the figure of the student as “reader”, both in the role of the detainee reading from a prepared confession script and that of a Singaporean student reciting from a textbook.
This work is part of the TV Confessions series – an ongoing research series of video works that examine the public confessions made by political detainees in Singapore from 1960s – 1980s. They were arrested for suspected communist activities and most of them were freed after publicly denouncing their communist links on national television. As the televised confessions were broadcasted only once and were not seen again, the re-enactment in these videos were based on transcripts found in newspaper archives.
GREEN ZENG 