Residual Routes: Willst du mit uns gehen?  |   2017/2026, Reworked for Dealing in Distance

Originally developed during his 2017 residency in Frankfurt, Willst du mit uns gehen? (Do You Want to Come with Us?) explored migration, displacement, and the search for belonging.

For Dealing in Distance, Zelin Seah revisits the work using second-hand blankets collected from flea markets in Frankfurt, filling them with oil palm empty fruit bunch (EFB) fibres from Southeast Asia. The intervention extends the original exploration of migration to the movement of labour and resources across geographical and economic boundaries.

The work draws attention to Southeast Asian migrant communities whose labour has become part of everyday life in Europe, from restaurants and small businesses to domestic and service work. Often expected to remain quiet, adaptable, and hardworking, these individuals navigate unfamiliar environments where silence may be regarded as a virtue or adopted as a means of survival, yet can also leave them vulnerable to exploitation.

The blankets, associated with warmth, shelter, and rest, become vessels carrying the residues of plantation economies. By bringing together discarded domestic objects from Europe and agricultural waste from Southeast Asia, Seah traces the unequal movement of people, materials, and labour within interconnected global systems.

The work questions whose mobility is celebrated, whose labour remains invisible, and what it means to seek a place to belong while carrying the weight of elsewhere.