The Full Story
Digital Seniors
With the mobile phone, most of us can now immediately enter the transfixing, transformative, addictive, absorbing, convenient, confusing, fun, reckless, madcap world of apps whenever we choose. The premise of the Digital Seniors residency was to engage the seniors with some of these tools. Not only could it be a fun way for them to take a second look at their own lives through these modern, fun and often inane technological lenses, these tools also give us the means to inject elements of popular culture and shared cultural moments past and present into our everyday content - through music, filters, stickers and emojis.
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The first thing I quickly learnt and the seniors were quite ready to let me know as they became acquainted with the likes of Tik Tok is that they have a fairly low tolerance for the ‘rubbish’ on these apps. To get to the good stuff, they had to wade through muscle flexes, crying rants, pranks and shuffling, a lot of shuffling. But we discovered together the music that has stayed with them though many a significant times in the past decades.
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The second was how deeply Covid-19 has changed all their lives. Their popular potluck parties, mass zumba, karaoke and mahjong sessions have all been put on hold indefinitely. From a 10-person session, we could only proceed in groups of 2 almost right from the start of the residency in April 2021. There was a glimmer of hope when we could step outdoors but it was short lived and we had to proceed within the centre right after. But the seniors hung on to these sessions and I am eternally grateful for their generosity of spirit, trust and friendship.
Digital Seniors was always about what it means to create a digital space for expression, often senior-led, as they chose their means of revealing to me and to others who they are. In an intimate setting of 2, the encounters inevitably also became more intimate. It became about the space of exchange that we could weave between us and an unobtrusive mobile phone camera. In the group of twelve seniors that journeyed with me are Rabiah and June, the youngest at 60 and 62 and one of the eldest in more ways than one, Ah Moi at 82. 20 years is a whole lifetime in between.
Perhaps it is my own age, that makes it possible for us to be on a first name basis. They are not aunties and uncles, pak cik and mak cik, that great leveler by labels that unconsciously homogenizes experiences and personalities. In your own journey with them on this site, I hope you also adopt a first name basis with the seniors and that you can see and feel too that they are themselves, as they are and as they would like you to see them.
Digital Seniors ultimately is about listening and responding, not as a historical record but an unspoken exchange beyond words. For this reason, the video content is not subtitled and we do not demand for silence in the space while filming. Life goes on and sometimes it intrudes, but we don't stop listening and responding. By and by, in this navigation of languages, generational modes of expression and the ever changing rules of safety distancing and togetherness, is a reciprocation through the giving of one’s time, empathetic understanding and quiet celebration of lives fully lived in all the ways that makes it consequential and precious.
