In they long to be, a lone, digitally manipulated voice offers a serenade of The Carpenters’ (They Long To Be) Close To You over montages of day-to-day life. Two of three screens play through clips from a personal archive of footage, mainly first-person accounts of suburbia. The third screen of dashboard camera footage acts as a method of transport between each of the recorded settings. The three frames undulate and weave through situation, context, and environment, highlighting intimacy and absence with each rise and fall of the modulating voice.
James Legaspi is an emerging Filipino-Canadian multimedia artist living and working in Brampton, Ontario. Legaspi is an alum of Visual Arts Mississauga’s Creative Residency program and is currently participating in the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival’s Unsung Voices program.