We are Dorothy Wong Ka Chung and Benjamin Ryser, a Hong Kong-Swiss artist duo working with images and sound; our projects are based on collaborative community research and focus on collective memories of migration and personal stories of home and displacement.

For SIPF, we created the photo audio walk “Passing by Paradise” in collaboration with Geylang residents. It invites audiences to wander through Lorongs and back alleys, hearing and seeing others’ stories of home.

In this talk, we would like to give you a glimpse behind the scenes of this project and share some of the insights we have gained along the way: How have our research partners from Geylang and Singapore helped to shape the project? How did we go about embedding the artwork in the neighbourhood? How can the media of photography and sound be used in interplay with each other to create storytelling in public space?