In Conversation with Mark Chua and Lam Li Shuen

Image courtesy of National Gallery Singapore

About Mark Chua and Lam Li Shuen

Mark Chua and Lam Li Shuen are a Singapore filmmaker and artist duo whose practice spans film, installation and expanded cinema performance. Through speculative fiction, their work explores the intersections of histories, materialities and existential anxieties.  The duo have presented 16mm expanded cinema performances in Zurich, Singapore and Taipei, and screened their films at international film festivals such as the International Film Festival Rotterdam and New Directors/New Films (MoMA and Film at Lincoln Center). In 2024, they started an artist-run analog film organisation, Film Nerve, focused on analog film experimentation as well as resource and knowledge sharing.

I had the pleasure of asking Mark and Lam Li about their current exhibition, what they think the ultimate artistic goal is, and so much. In addition, I asked Lam Li about the benefits of working with Mark, how she handles creative differences, and more.

UZOMAH: How do you handle creative differences?

LAM LI : Living and working together, we have come to develop a mutual process of conversation and thought that eventually, naturally reaches some form of synthesis.

U: What is your favorite project you have done with Mark so far?

L: Our most recent 16mm expanded cinema performance WE ARE TOAST, presented at National Gallery Singapore’s Painting With Light Festival, was a special experience. Working with hand-processed 16mm film loops, we projected and effected them live on multiple hand-modified projectors, using organic materials like kaya, breadcrumbs, pandan and coconut milk. It was super to witness the live deconstruction of this image of kaya toast in a tactile and bodily way. Personally, we feel this process of physical performance is an important way to deal with images and the agendas and violences that they hold.

U: Can you name some benefits of working with Mark? What is your favorite trait of his? How does this trait help in developing projects?

L: He falls into deep sleep easily because he has mild narcolepsy. He has vivid and ultra-realistic nightmares and often he wakes up screaming. One of his nightmares revolves around another universe called Cuboid World, where everything is black and white geometry and becoming one in the silence and patterns evokes both terrible fear and a strange sense of peace.

U: How do you see your art as a duo contributing to the broader cultural landscape? How does it help explain societal, cultural, and even political issues?

L: A lot of our work draws from the layers of the material and the historical, to stage happenings in the now. And through those traces in the bodies of land and in our bodies, we often find tensions, spaces, resistances.

What could at first seem defined, almost singular, becomes more multiple - and perhaps that less singular perspective might open more ways of seeing the societal, cultural and political.

Installation Views: Mark Chua and Lam Li Shuen: *WE ARE TOAST,* Sun, 14 Sep 2025, 8pm, 1 St Andrew’s Road, Singapore 178957 Photo Courtesy of artist and National Gallery Singapore

U: You have presented audiovisual and expanded cinema performances utilising 16mm and Super 8 projections with Mark at several theaters and festivals. How do you come up with ideas and which equipment to use that will best convey the theme of your art?

L: Most of the time, the ideas chase us, and the performances become a materialisation of that sense of urgency. We see our projectors, from DIY handmade machines to 16mm/35mm projectors, as instruments that bring different tonalities, textures and possibilities of movement through the interplay of light and time. Sometimes, when conceptualising a performance, these different elements come into conversation with the material, the specific site and environment, or our own physical bodies. Through that, the historical and political layers become deeply embodied in the process itself, provoking new questions that compel us to try and unpack through the live happening.

U: You and Mark are currently developing your feature project, Strange Root (Keinginan), which was selected for CineMart 2025. Can you tell me more about the project?

L: Strange Root is a mythological body horror film that we are developing. It is set in 11th century Temasek (old Singapore) and is about a yam-born demigod and his struggle with obsession and jealousy when his place on the island is challenged. It is part of our larger body of work called The Unending Island which spans performances, installations, films and video games set within this 11th century mythic universe. The project looks at the multiplicities of mythology, fantasy, materiality and history, drawing upon both real and imagined fragments of the past, as a way to critically reflect on the psyche of our contemporary society – our relationship to our political, existential and historical identities.

U: Both you and Mark are in the Rock Band ARE. How are creating music and creating art similar? How is it different? Which one do you prefer?

L: To us, music, art and film cannot really be separated from each other. They are part of one and the same deeply human endeavour. We enjoy the process where multiple forms intertwine and dialogue with each other and sometimes bring about surprising possibilities!

U: You and Lam Li Shuen are a Singaporean filmmaker and artist duo who work across film, audiovisual performance, music, and installations. How do you decide which medium to use for your artistic and thematic explorations?

L: For us, our philosophy to new works is through an approach of horizontality. The mediums we use all have a grounding in time - of rhythm, intervals and sequence. And we’ve felt that they are quite porous and overlapping from that view. So I think we would usually sit with and unpack the materiality and history of a particular subject, to uncover which of these mediums of time would be most expressive of the notions and ideas that we’re playing with around it.

U: As co-founder of Emoumie, an independent film production studio, what visions have you realised since you started?

L: Thus far, we’ve produced independent film works and expanded cinema performances of speculative fiction that span crocodilian people as a Singaporean state of mind, up to our strands of hair appearing directly on the screen and recently a parallel multimedia exhibition project that will expand alongside our upcoming feature film.
We’ve been heartened to present these works to audiences at international film festivals and art institutions.

U: What is the best thing about working in a duo? Are there any disadvantages?

L: The best thing about working in a duo is the confrontation with difference. In creating through this sort of sublation, perhaps not a disadvantage but an effect seems to be that we can’t return to who we were before after each work and there’s something fascinating about that confrontation with change between chaos and order.

U: Do you have shared future goals with Lam? Share with us your vision for the future of Singaporean art and film, and how you plan to contribute to it.

L: What we’re excited about is expanding the film and art projects we’re developing alongside collaborators across mediums such as performance, design, game programming. But alongside that we also envision an empowered independent scene creating works without an obsession to professionalize or be mobilized by the dreams and demands of big business - where the dynamics can shift from one of data and means to ends, toward an embracing of multiplicity, horizontality and its possibilities. With our newly started collective Film Nerve, we’re also working toward community knowledge and resource sharing around analog film experimentation, so we’re optimistic!

Questions answered by both Mark and Li Shuen

About We are Toast

U: We are Toast is a performance that deconstructs the image of kaya toast to unpack layers of Singaporean culture and identity. Why is this important in developing what Singapore’s culture is and how it is perceived by the world at large?

L&M We were interested in dissecting the layers of obsessions and idealisations of our society, that lay under the surface of the perfect images of this quintessential Singaporean breakfast that surround us in our everyday lives.

Often in both the positive and negative, the perception of Singaporean culture is quite single-layered or reductive, like repetitions of advertisements. So perhaps for us, it was to create something organic, subverting the advertisement-like quality of how culture is sold today.

Thoughts on art

U: Can you explain what your ultimate artistic goal is?

L&M For us, our artistic goal is to produce works that look with courage at the layers under our skin and in the psyche of our society and to always play and push on the limits joyously - unbothered by industry, culture or nation.

U: Are there any projects that you'd like to do?

L&M There are many: including a new sci-fi film and a video game set in our neighbourhood Hougang.

U: Your works have explored the intersections of histories, materialities, and existential anxieties, through speculative fiction and body horror. How do you reach a happy intersection between each theme?

L&M: We usually arrive at these intersections through diving into a lengthy process of research, experimentation, and discussions with collaborators. The layers, strands and connections would then reveal themselves over time through this process.

For more information about Mark and Lam Li’s work, please visit their site here. Mark can be found on Instagram here, and Lam Li can also be found on Instagram here.

In Conversation with Mark Chua and Lam Li Shuen

In Conversation with Renée Condo