Interview #169 — Ling Ang

by Leah Jing McIntosh

Ling Ang is a filmmaker and artist. Her works have mostly been documentary based with an interest in encouraging cultural awareness and diversity. Over the last three years, Ling has been recording her lucid dreams through written records and materialising them in multiple forms for interpretation.

Ling spoke to Leah about her new work, Souvenirs of Sleep, documenting dreams, and new technologies.

Souvenirs of Sleep is a documentation of your own dreams; how did you decide to share them, and why did you choose photography—and the print object—as your medium?

Whilst renting my first studio at Le Space in 2019, and after years of making work that sat on screens, I wanted to do something tangible. At that point, I had 300 written dreams and was curious to see what that looked like pasted across the walls. There was a warm response to the installation and many friends overseas wished they could have seen it firsthand. The photobook was born in response to this. A means for the text to travel. Paired with my photographs I had taken in that same period of time, chosen to help visualise my subconscious a bit further. The images are also printed on this transparent paper that sits over dream text. Something like this could only be experienced in print.

The print object is so beautiful; when you flick through the book, the transparent papers of the photographs incorporate the text behind, and then, in turning the page, the text once more separates from the image. How did you come to this form?

There were a number of reasons in choosing this combination! Our—my sister, the designer and I—immediate decision was to emulate the feeling of lucid dreaming, how the world can become translucent when one starts to realise they are in a dream. The decision was also in response to most of the images having been captured using an iPhone. Trying to foresee the best way to print these images in a quality that could age well.

You also play with the form of the text, dreams almost in the form of concrete poems.

I had bombarded our designer, Nedim Rahmanovic, with a much higher ratio of text to images. He thought it would be an interesting way to break up some of the dreams and in turn, the dreams have then evolved themselves into something further. So frequently we read the immediate visuals of our subconscious, only to interpret the surface level of the information our brain is feeding to us. Looking closer, we can find the trail of clues that could go somewhere deeper.

Can you tell us about the process of creating this book?

The first draft was done in two months so that I could travel overseas with the work. Due to the time constraints, it limited the book on some of the printing choices and design for the initial draft. Across the next year, through the pandemic and multiple revists of the work, we printed a second dummy which was practically the finished version.

What compelled you to keep revisiting the work—does dreamwork always feel unfinished?

Revisits of the work were mostly for design. How the book aged after months of handling. The dreams and text mostly stayed consistent in between the drafts as it was conceived at a point in time within a certain headspace.

Did you dream last night?
Yes!

What did you dream?

I was observing medieval replica sculptures of body bags. The feet were painted backwards. Some male bodies had female feet and vice versa. The curator offers me a coffee. She’s in her thirties and has a messy ponytail.

Souvenirs of Sleep also includes an Immersive 3D Experience at the Alex Theatre; can you tell us more about this experience, and the thinking behind this immersive form?
The film industry, going out to cast characters and to shoot them, had disappeared under COVID-19 lockdown restrictions. Many artists I knew were either adapting to the virtual realm if not the ones who already had, were being propelled even further. I was asked to be a producer in a short film competition that involved virtual production, the technology that will be part of the experience at Alex Theatre.

I’ve always loved new digital technology and how we can tell stories with them. Learning about the advancement in 3D and realising how much of it had seeped in around me, it seemed like such a wild way to reinterpret the dreams.

You’re also a documentary filmmaker, winning ‘Best Documentary Short Film’ at London Independent Film Festival, amongst other accolades.

My sister, Ying Ang, is a photographer; her work and network is predominantly documentary based. I spent a lot of time in my formative years of filmmaking around documentary makers. Documentary filmmaking blows me away because of the variety of stories that one can happen upon in real life. The filmmaker just needs to be in the right place at the right time, asking the ‘right’ questions. I feel mostly limited by the genre because I’d rather hang out with the interviewee and live out the scene organically.

Did COVID-19 have an impact upon your work?
COVID-19 took away a lot of initial approaches to ideas. If anything, it forced me to focus on what I have here in Melbourne. How to work with what I have here and if not, how to use the internet to work.

You are als a young philanthropist! Can you speak to some of your projects?
I’m currently the executive producer on the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne’s film mentorship called ‘My Melbourne’. It’s an initiative working with up and coming talent, mostly from across the Indian diaspora of Melbourne, who will be working with some of the most prolific Bollywood directors of today. I’m also super passionate about working with the arts, institutions and educational platforms to further create cultural awareness and diversity. Helping them navigate through this new chapter of the world, I’ve realised the power of human intellect. Knowledge being shared to grow and to survive as a community.

Do you have any advice for emerging artists?

Learn from everything and everyone around you. Even from the negative situations.

How do you practise self-care?

I’ve never felt more at peace until I started giving in to my dreams and taking the time to understand my subconscious. When I wake and remember a dream, I write it down immediately. I briefly reflect on the dream that was just had, how things and people have made me feel. Digest the emotions and then let go.

What does being Asian-Australian mean to you?

Someone I’ve probably only embodied, in this combination, only in the last few years. The initial childhood years of rejecting the Asian side in order to assimilate, then the early adult years wanting to embody the differing side as a rebellion. I’m happy I can finally find peace between the two. It’s a term and group that I love being a part of. It’s helped me find others with a similar sort of history that can be so empowering when one felt so lost and alone.