29 short pieces of videography by 23 young makers enacting their presence, their human-tool assemblage, making experiences from fragments of attentive moments of their existence... The works will stay on-site at Floating Projects on FOUR parallel screens, 28-December 2022 to 8 January 2023.
*feature image: a video still from the work of CHAN On-tung
The creator’s works, as a norm, live parallel to the world of interpretation [1]. Paradoxically, artists depend on the recognition of critics and benefit from their outsider’s view as non-artists, and yet artists’ passively awaiting interpretation is, in a way, to subject themselves to norms, thus reinforcing conventions and the power structure that sustains them. Constantly refreshed dialectical relations between creation and interpretation is important.
Every artist should best be one’s own instructor. Creators must learn and grow to be their own theorists, intermittently looking back, reflecting, questioning’s position and even negating one’s practices in order to move forward, and to stay ahead of conventions that quietly ossify [2] [3]. The following question must be frequently asked, “Assuming that experimental action is to question/demolish and to re-establish/build, what are the specific objects of such actions?” Changing elements that define our milieu, the qualitative shifts in tools and relations of production (for the population and for the artists), the specific purposes of art-making alongside the changing organological configuration of human society, new issues and crises … …
These are just some of the thoughts that 30+ young artists have worked through in a 13-week concept-driven workshop on experiments in videography. [4] This pertains to the artists' discipline to write about one’s practice, which must be differentiated from critics’ interpretation. What would a writer say about one’s work? What are the felt needs to make the work and to write about? What are the origins of a work? Where would their initial thoughts land? … All young artists practiced writing alongside videographic activities in our laboratory. Feedback notes are not interpretation, but to highlight emerging personal signatures. The writing of a personal video manifesto as the end point of our laboratory is, therefore, an necessary act to “remember” those intense moments of the 13 weeks in order that we will look back to measure our changes in future.
The apparently grand issues described above have roots in the intimate vocabulary of the everyday person. The 6 video exercises have sought to draw out the person, not just the informed, crafty expert:
Videography 01: Magic | attentiveness, tool amazement, discovering magic, enacting magic
Videography 02: Being | consciousness, selves (in action), I-tool assemblage
Videography 03: A Thick picture | What can we do with a still camera shot? Maximize time and space with the minimum of a singular framed picture
Videography 04: Naming and performing an emotion | Show-not -tell, thoughts into processes
Videography 05: Making experiences / Connecting the fragmented moments of the dynamic “me” | integrate VE01-04 into one piece
Videography 06: My Own recipe | make a work of felt significance, any format, any length, any themes or without, … … can be building an image-making machine, can be installation as videography, … …
What may often be considered the “background” or “back story” of a work is the manifest content itself, as sight-and-sound, as direct perceptual processes.
Young artists in the laboratory (Sep-Nov 2022) have returned pieces of varied voices. Among the works included in “Micro Narratives 2022: Performative Videography” (21 December 2022 @ Floating Projects, and archived thereafter), we have:
*works inspired by literature
*studies on found footage
*concrete poetry and musique concrete into concrete video
*from intimate diaries to materialist documentary
*day dreaming
*emotions
*cinematic magic
*tool-being
*object-human-thought-performance assemblage
The creative journeys of Micro Narratives 2022 is integrated with the study of historical episodes of experimental art and the use of phenomenology and Critical Theory to uphold versatility. Most importantly, we cultivate the appreciation of moving image experiments as well as broaden and deepen the maker's vocabulary to speak and express.
Notes
[1] Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, “What Is a Minor Literature?” Mississippi Review, Winter/Spring, 1983, Vol. 11, No. 3, Essays Literary Criticism (Winter/Spring, 1983), pp. 13-33. See Editor's Introduction, pp. 13-14.
[2] Stewart Martin, “Autonomy and Anti-Art: Adorno’s Concept of Avant-Garde Art,” Constellations volume 7, no 2, 2000, 197-207.
[3] Andrew V. Uroskie, “Beyond the Black Box: the Lettrist Cinema of Disjunction” in October 135, winter 2011. 21-48.
[4] The author has been running the Micro Narratives: Invented Time & Space workshop almost every year since 2003. The current edition, autumn 2022, would be her last of this 13-week concept-driven workshop conducted at the School of Creative Media.
video still from CHAN On-tung's work
VIDEOGRAPHERS:
CHAN On-tung 陳安彤 | Chelsea CHENG 鄭映彤 | DENG Yuanyuan 鄧緣圓 | Elora Ferraris | Angela Fung 馮樂兒 | Marek Gollan | Jaron Kuehmstedt | Tate Kwan 關樂同 | Kiki Kwok 郭靖錡 | Martha Lai 黎苡臻 | Melody Li 李清美 | Benita Leonie Liere | Longman Luk 陸朗文 Valerie Mak | Green Mok 莫育權 | Luca Serdaroglu | Claire Tam 譚智詠 | TSE Hiu-yin 謝曉妍 | Scarlett Ty 池樂兒 | WANG Lejian 王樂謙 | Yan WANG 汪淑欣 | WU Tsz-ki 胡芷淇 | Abby Yuen 袁栩晴 ｜
IN THE SCREENING
EMOTIONS
KWOK Ching-ki Kiki 郭靖錡: Falling (1m44s)
Cheng Ying-tung 鄭映彤: Open It (1m41s)
Angela Fung (FUNG Lok-yi) 馮樂兒: Anxious (45s)
Wu Tsz-ki 胡芷淇: Phantom islands 幻 島 (2m14s)
LI Qingmei Melody李清美: Moments will pass: they say it's not your personal crusade (17m38s)
MOK Yuk-kuen Green 莫育權: Melancholic (4m01s)
MAGIC
Benita Leonie Liere: Untitled [generative possibilities] (52s)
Jaron Kuehmstedt: Untitled [generative possibilities] (2m37s)
CHENG Ying-tung Chelsea 鄭映彤: Through (1m09s)
DENG Yuanyuan 鄧緣圓: Voyage 漂流 (12m34s)
TSE Hiu-yin 謝曉妍: Untitled [“life is fragmented but continuous"] (2m07s)
WANG Shuxin Yan 汪淑欣: Untitled (1m)
Abby Yuen (YUEN Hiu-ching) 袁栩晴: Untitled (3m02s)
BEING/TOOL-BEING
MOK Yuk-kuen Green 莫育權: In Between the Shadows (2m37s)
Abby Yuen 袁栩晴: Untitled (3m59s)
Marek Gollan: Nostalgia (1m44s)
TY Lok Yi Scarlett 池樂兒: Untitled [on making an effort to remember] (3m)
KWAN Lok-tung Tate 關樂同: Untitled [on a long-distance relationship] (5m47s)
Luca Serdaroglu: Take a 15-second Rest (35m)
Longman Luk 陸朗文: A spinning 360 camera: FPS vs RPM (3m30s)
Jaron Kuehmstedt: OCTV – Open Circuit Television: a live video installation (documentation) (5m31s)
ASSEMBLAGE
Elora Ferraris: Beba CocaCola (1m53s)
WANG Lejian 王樂諫: Zhuangzi dreaming of a butterfly 莊周夢蝶 (4m03s)
TY Lok-yi Scarlett 池樂兒: An ongoing train heading to an unknown destination (3m05s)
TAM Chi-wing Clarie 譚智詠: Dalloway (8m01s)
CHAN On-tung 陳安彤: My Own Recipe (4m32s)
Valerie Mak: On the Road (5m20s)
WANG Lejian 王樂諫: Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue, a found footage exercise (3m20s)
Martha Lai 黎苡臻: Untitled [The drunken cat 醉貓] (55s)
video still from Scarlett Ty's An ongoing train heading to an unknown destination
STAY tuned with upcoming posts for highlights of individual works
