Diaspora

More than 200 million migrants exist around the world today, a number that is steadily rising by the year. Epic multi-media performance Diaspora intelligently documents this phenomenon by fusing live story-telling with music and film.

The brainchild of writer and director Ong Ken Seng, Diaspora is an extremely ambitious project that explores concepts of nationality, identity and belonging through the perspectives of those who find themselves rootless. Personal stories of Vietnamese Americans, Indonesian Chinese, Indians in South East Asia, sea nomads and Scottish Muslims are performed with intensity by four actors who adopt a variety of guises.

While one man feels alarmingly "temporary" in America, another relishes the freedom of being "simply rootless," and Diaspora commendably presents the differing viewpoints without bias. The sheer volume of visual material collated for the project is staggering. Thousands of photographs and hundreds of video clips projected onto giant screens offer arresting glimpses of life on far flung shores.

Varied visual techniques are employed to create a rich panorama that illustrates the individual narratives. One man's desire to reclaim memories of life in pre-war Vietnam is represented by a vast collection of black and white photographs depicting typical Vietnamese families, while elsewhere a beautifully crafted Bollywood-esque film follows a man as he traces his roots back to India. This visual feast is perfectly synchronized with a spellbinding soundtrack performed live by the Singapore Chinese Orchestra.

Conductor Tsung Yeh leads the musicians through a diverse selection of Chinese music, which spans 2000 years and ranges from mountain songs to contemporary compositions. To its merit, Diaspora rejects generalizing conclusions about the migrancy and instead embraces the plethora of experiences recounted. A dazzling record of cosmopolitanism in the modern world.