Songs without Words

2020

single channel full HD video, colour, stereo sound, 9’07”

Songs without Words follows a gondolier on an artificial canal inside a Qatari shopping mall. The Gondolier floats through pastel coloured faux-Italian facades of shops and restaurants under a blue painted sky ceiling, as the narrator carries you through his daily routines and daydreams. Anecdotes about the Southeast Asian background of the gondolier are waved into a projected imaginary of life in Venice.

The narrative is co-written with five Filipino ghost writers and edited to Mendelsons ‘Venecian Boat Song’ from his series ‘songs without words’, lyrical piano songs.