2023

Video Installation
錄像裝置

Size variable 尺寸不定
Duration variable 時長不定

 

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Installation view, exhibited in 2023 AVA BA Gradshow, Academy of Visual Art, HKBU

 

 

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Abstract
 

A nameless river of trash floating in a flat perspective slowly drifts to an unknown destination, just as the fragments of memory in the subconscious are silently forgotten in the pace of changes and developments of the times. 

 

Why do we abandon our trash in the rivers we share? 

Where will all of our memories drift to? 

Can we still retrieve our memories?

 

This work is a single-channel video installation with surround sound, played on a 65-inch LCD TV, flatly placed on a floor consisting of a tarpaulin with various miscellaneous objects.

*
Poem read by artificial female voice in the river clip above:

English version: 

The open floodgates of storage space bring human history to a screeching halt.
Repressed… or rejected memories from the "personal unconscious,"
merge into isolated islands of anonymity on the smooth jade green surface.

Communication technology is invading the rivers of the human subconscious.
As if the memories cannot keep pace with the times.

Abandoned and disposed substances gather without logic.
Self-censored memories are eroded by the magnificent narratives constructed by the collective.
The trauma of individual consciousness is being washed away.

The body of water is beginning to melt everyone away.
Shared memorial inheritance settles in the riverbed,
as sludge and sediment.

Memory is forgotten, tampered with and discarded,
unattended trash,
drifting in the stream of consciousness until it submerges.

Chinese version: 

儲存空間的開放閘門讓曾發生過的一切都戛然而止。
個人無意識浮現出來的被壓抑或拒絕的記憶，
在翡翠綠色的光滑表面上匯成一個個匿名島嶼。

通信技術入侵著人類無意識的河流。
似乎記憶無法跟上時代的步伐。

各種廢棄處理的物質毫無邏輯地匯集。
終究是流體，記憶在自我審查之下無法固化。
個體意識的創傷正被集體回憶所構建的偉大敘事而侵蝕。

水體開始把每個人都融化。
共享的記憶遺產在河床中沉澱最終成為了淤泥。

記憶被遺忘，被丟棄，被篡改，
就如同垃圾一樣無人過問，
在意識流中漂浮直至消失。

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Project Intention
 

The project is a study of memory and the association of the subconscious with the representation of moving images. I am committed to narrating the fragility and vulnerability of personal consciousness and memory in the midst of contemporary social and technological developments through such chaotic and colliding aesthetic combinations of nature and artificiality.

 

Throughout history, society’s ideology has brought about criteria for judging certain fragments of memory as “incorrect.” As a result, individuals intentionally or inadvertently forget these memories of inner conflicts, such as wars and plagues. In the digital era of information inflation, the mass media has become a catalyst for accelerated forgetting and silently tampering with individual memories. Collective memory is also defined and standardized from the top down, and citizens are only allowed or not allowed to remember in silence.

 

In this abstract context of linking the past, the present and the future, I choose the video installation as the main medium to express this theme, because the essence of video is to imitate nature, to represent reality, to reconstruct time and space. Inspired by the Surrealist movement, I employ a vast array of metaphors in the visual language and narrative, setting off a sense of historical sadness in the poetry through the composition of natural scenes and virtual human voices; the metaphor of trash as memory also brings out a sense of calmness in the spectacle. In conjunction with the flea market-like installation, the video also becomes a second-hand object sold at the stall; the memory fragments are circulated as commodities in the market, breaking the rigid space of time. I hope that this representation can give the audience an opportunity to rediscover their memories in the subconscious constructed by the work itself.