Somebody's Watching Me
In a Dystopian future, tyranny prevails and social justice is none existent.
Everyone is under surveillance, deaf signers more so as everything they communicate can be ‘heard’. Two deaf citizens decide to lead a rebellion against authority and fight for their rights of freedom.
"THE PAST WAS DEAD. THE FUTURE WAS UNIMAGINABLE."
- GEORGE ORWELL
Somebody's Watching Me is the title of Billy's newly commissioned Research & Development project that began in June 2017.
The theme of this project is based on surveillance and is set in a futuristic, Dystopian world. The idea came up as a result of real-life events happening right now as governments seek to watch their citizens' every move, stripping away their freedoms, and instilling fear through their never-ending 'War on Terror' propaganda that distracts the populations into believing they are under attack by a foreign enemy, but in reality the true enemy is none other than their own government. We have seen whistleblowers like Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning - being hunted down and punished for exposing the criminal actions of our own governments.
UNLIMITED awarded Billy with the R&D Commission in the International Collaboration category, which allows Billy to undertake the project with a collaborative partner from abroad. This award is special in that Billy is the youngest artist to ever win an UNLIMITED grant.
The requirement for the collaborator is that they must be a professional Deaf artist/dancer with whom Billy has met and worked with previously.
So after shortlisting a handful of potential foreign Deaf artists (from Spain, the United States, Brazil, and Hong Kong), interviewing the artists and taking advice from his manager, Billy decided to choose Ariel Fung of Fun Forest Deaf Dance Crew in Hong Kong, to become his collaborative partner on this exciting new project.
"UNTIL THEY BECOME CONSCIOUS, THEY WILL NEVER REBEL."
- GEORGE ORWELL
Inspired by George Orwell's 1984, the story looks at the oppression of Deaf citizens, the Eugenics programme (the sinister science of eradicating genes), and the rise of Cochlear Implant technology that threatens to destroy the sign languages and the rich culture of Deaf people, with the goal of wiping out the 'Deaf' gene altogether.
In the future, governments control their citizens through sound waves that manipulate people's ability to think, forcing them to obey all commands.
But this doesn't work on Deaf people. So a new technology of Cochlear Implants is being forced upon the Deaf population who are still capable of thinking for themselves and questioning authority..
The focus of the story is on two Deaf citizens who grew up with different experiences of being Deaf in a hearing world. They meet and fall in love, but have different views on being Deaf, and different opinions on the controversial Cochlear Implant technology...
This project is currently ongoing, all activity and news can be seen on the Somebody's Watching Me blogs. Click the button below to follow the updates.
