After a summer’s COVID delay, Linda Lai’s 10957 Moons (= 30 years) finally got projected onto a wall on Macau’s Oxware House alongside 12 artists’ works. EXiM 2022: Experimental Video Festival. 6-27 September 2022.
I was stunned by the bigger-than life-size chairs projected. The elegant chair dances and intimate chair talks I sought to conceive, when blown up on a wall, turned into massive, assertive marches of conspiracy stir-up. Ssshhh!!! Quiet. Call no attention.
I also suspect if the title of my work in fact gives the wrong impression of a monumental retrospection of my life. Perhaps to call the year “elliptical” is a quick fix. Each moment I was able to preserve is dense and enigmatic, and my montage method
The totality of events in a city forms a thick collage that rejects systematic reading, nor individuated signification. Objects function like humans. Humans are objectified. Together they form a huge net, each element mapping its relational paths, crossing now and then the paths of others. On a certain day of a certain year, everything connects. The loose threads come together to form a logical while. Do they really?
The city has always been breathing, following its automatic rhythm. Only when the camera is set up in a particular place in a particular moment would we begin to see drama.
In my sudden awakening in the midst of chanceful triviality, I fret, I shake, embarrassed, dumbfounded. (Feb 1997)
城市裡所發生的，比任何拼圖更繁碎複雜，要理也理不清，湊也不一定湊出些甚麼來。城市的物質性總在支配著人際甚至人和自己的關係。毫不相干的生命軌道偶爾交錯；突然災難來臨，末日走近，一切隨機。在某年某月某日這一切都忽然邏輯起來。真實世界無機延續著，鏡頭只要若無其事的站在那裡，戲劇便會自動發生。顯微鏡作用，我們竟驚訝於生活的操作是這麼瑣碎、技術性而煞有介事；我們若有所失，不安、侷促、甚或漲紅了臉。
A compilation video essay in 8 chapters 彙編錄像文章八部
Linda Chiu-han Lai (Hong Kong) 黎肖嫻（香港）
June 2022 | 16:9 | color + black and white | 58m6s | source format: multiple
完成於2022年6月4日 |16:9 | 1彩色+黑白 | 58分6秒
In eight chapters, 10957 Moons & 30 Elliptical Years (2022) is a collage-compilation of events, objects, thoughts and sensations. From naturalistic camera images captured in daylight, the chapters grow into more introspective fragments that embody unspeakable sentiments, occasionally paying tribute to nature and contemplating things quietly forming systems of their own. Whose 30 years? Mine, my city’s, the world’s cities’?
Images are slices of the world that flow and fleet. They are lines of flight (Deleuze and Guattari) – a series of escapes and entrances, bearing the traces of change. The images in 10957 Moons are thus thresholds between states of being. I shuttle between the virtual image and the real image. The former is subjective and recollected whereas the latter is perceived out there. I want what was perceived and what can be recalled (at present) to flow into each other. The at once present-ness and pastness of virtual images connect with concrete existence. This is how, as a videographer, I answer to the call of historiography.
Hong Kong stories are hard to tell – so the banal saying goes. But artists have always known how to write histories creatively. In 10957 Moons, HK stories are always at once personal and political, to be experienced alongside those of other cities, written for the present. Artistic sensibilities “retrain” our attentiveness. The artist looks for immanent standards of value from within herself: to live well, she goes to the limit of her potentials (Deleuze). How well does such an ethical naturalism withstand the force of time and the constraints of our current situation?
The entire narrative is punctuated by a sonic motif that functions as a structural device: a coarse voice relentlessly trying to vocalize. This sound is a key site for the passage of virtual and actual images, ensuring the present continuous performance of the artist’s murmur. Is it a lost voice, a voice that struggles to voice, a muffled voice, or bold persistence?
I have never thought of an artist’s life (my life) that could actually cut through several decades. Yet this work is not about aging. Its eight chapters constitute a series of sight-and-sound whispers on constantly shifting spatio-temporalities. The past and the present blend as the flâneuse walks with her image-making tools.
Keywords: Video essay | auto-ethnography | visual ethnography | experimental documentary | visual poetry
共八段的《10957個陰晴圓缺》（2022），是30年前後的零碎事件、物件、思緒和感觸的拼湊聚疊。平實的記錄，自然風的攝影，光天化日之下，天大地大；篇章逐步前進，聲影越來越零碎、內觀，虛擬和紀實互為表裡，難以啟齒無法言喻的在膠結糾纏。一時召喚大自然，一時又定睛於人世間之物，在悠長歲月中靜靜建構了它們的系統，不由得我們准許或不。這三十年是我個人的？還是香港的、世界的？
圖像是世界的碎片，流動且快速。它們是逃逸路線（德勒茲和伽塔利）—— 一系列的逃生門和入口，承載著變化的痕跡。因此，《10957個陰晴圓缺》的圖像是存在狀態之間的閾。我在虛擬和真實的圖像之間穿梭，前者是主觀和回憶性的，後者則是被察覺及感知的。我希望被感知的和當下所回溯的能夠相互交融，虛擬圖像的現在性和過去性與具體的存在聯成一線。這是作為影像工作者的我，為回應史學所做的。
俗語有云香港的故事很難說，但藝術家一直知道如何以創造性方式書寫歷史。在 《10957個陰晴圓缺》中，香港的故事既是個人化又具政治性，並為現在而書寫，可以與其他城市的故事一起體驗。藝術鑑賞力「重新訓練」我們的注意力。藝術家從自己的內在尋找固有的價值標準：為了活得好，她會發揮自己的潛力（德勒茲）。這種倫理自然主義如何能經受得起時間的威力和我們當前形勢的束縛？
整個敘事不時被一種作為結構手段的聲音主題打斷：一把粗啞的聲音努力不懈地發聲。這把聲音是虛擬和現實圖像傳遞的關鍵，確保藝術家的喃喃自語在當下持續表現。這是一把遺失的聲音、一把努力去發聲的聲音、一把低沉的聲音，還是勇敢無畏的堅持？
我從來沒有想過一個藝術家的生活（我的生活）居然可以跨越數十年。然而，這件作品與年老無關，這是一個以八個章節構成一系列關於時空不斷變化的視聽細語。當漫遊女子帶著其圖像製作工具行走時，過去和現在匯聚在一起。
關鍵字詞：錄像文章 ｜ 自傳性民俗研究 ｜視覺民俗研究 ｜ 實驗性紀錄片 ｜ 視像詩
The 8 chapters 彙編八部:
Chapter 1 | One Take: Many Folds 一鏡到底千層疊
Chapter 2 | Chair Talks 談坐物語
Chapter 3 | Camera Exercises 常常遊戲
Chapter 4 | Mobility 移動。浮游。
Chapter 5 | The past: whose past? 歷史，記憶誰屬？
Chapter 6 | Object-logue, Objectiles 物物語。物體態。
Chapter 7 | Les enfants, toute va bien? 孩子們，一切安好？
Chapter 8 | Daydreaming 白日夢
Production information
output format: Quicktime movie, HD 1808i 25, H264, AAC, 48 kHz
Camera / Montage / Image Collage / Sound Composition: Linda C.H. Lai
Video diaries: Linda C.H. Lai (1990-2021)
Improvized vocalization: Linda C.H. Lai
Additional camera:
Hector Rodriguez, Hugo Yeung, Ling-ling Woo, Ivy Fung, Winsome Wong, Tracy Ngai
Art Performance:
As Slow As Possible (1988, Shatin City Hall, by various HK artists)
Look! Object-Activities (2006, produced by Linda Lai, performed by students at the School of Creative Media)
Found footage:
《細路祥》The Kid (1950, HK)
《七十二家房客》House of 72 Tenants (1963, Guangzhou)
《七十二家房客》House of 72 Tenants (1973, HK)
《雅馬哈魚檔》Yamaha Fish Stall (1984, Guangzhou)
Daisies (1966, Vera Chytilova, Czechoslovakia)
Road to Health (1938, British Social Hygiene Council)
Found footage of old Hong Kong on YouTube
Linda Lai’s videos quoted and compiled in this work: Diaries: Dry Rain (1999), Diaries: Half Dream (1999), One Take (2000/2012/2021), Chair Talk (2005), Trespassing World Cities (2005), Camera Exercises (2005), Excitable Speech: All About Cinderella (2008), Floor Drama (2008), No Path but My Footprints (2010), 72 Tenants (2012), Object-logue (2012), Ocean Curiosities (2018), La Casa 3: the Apartments (2021), Long Day’s Journey (2021)
