Eight projections on a flat service… collage, montage, still and moving. Restless assertions. Inquisitive hypothesis... 動動書。一個意象接另一個意象。8個投在小桌面上的思考流
+ + + + The Ventriloquists…Thinking Narratively 《腹語系。微敘思考》 4-19 July 2020 @ Floating Projects | to learn more details about individual sessions of the exhibition, follow the Ventriloquists Series, daily newsletter
Click individual work titles to watch the videos.
TANG Pui-ching, Tofu: Human
A sight-and-sound thought path
Do I love the earth? Yes, I do. But I still do a lot of things which hurt the planet — eating lots of meat, using plastic, keeping an iPhone leather case and a Coach leather bag and so on. And I still wish to travel around the world. I start wondering, “Why do I want to do this even though I love the world?” The answer is: I don’t know. I am trying to do less harmful things to the world, but it is not easy because I cannot control my material desires. Is it our nature? Are we evil from the beginning and to the end? I am so double-standard. And I started to think: maybe we are all evil.
NG Sing-yiu, Brian: A [] Girl
A montage video
In this digital age, artworks can be intangible. We watch those digital works on screen but cannot touch them. Our production process and output can be highly separated from our social reality. Responding to this phenomenon, I drew ten pictures on watercolor papers then installed them into a small fable story book. Those pictures are tangible and tactile, I could feel their weight and texture when I flip them. One picture in particular was burned by fire, I even could smell that charred odor. Those experiences make this montage more than just a work of digital moving-image. Someone will say this montage is just my imagination. However this small story book will continue to exist in our reality, whether as a fable, or as a tangible record.
KWAN Sin-ching, Angel: THE ROOM
a sight-and-sound sequence
A man found a hole on a wall and started to peek in at the girl’s life. However, what he did not know was the girl was also peeping into his room though the same hole. They are both observing each other’s life to satisfy their own curiosity.
My main idea is to show the fact that “everyone has the curiosity to peep into others life”. The camera eye is a way to satisfy their desire and curiosity. While watching my movie, you are also peeking at the life of the main characters. People satisfy their desire by peeking at others’ privacy whereas some people simply enjoy being peeped by others.
Cyrus LEUNG: PLACEBO
A story as a montage sequence
While on the path of mutual liberation, the human and the spirit’s satisfaction is temporary, a mere placebo to envy and frustration. Their desire for release has created an infinite loop of discontent. For unknown lifetimes, they have become one in the system – the human was the spirit; the spirit was the human. Their hopes have been fulfilled, at the same time, never have been.
Adversity is inevitable. Short lived salvation has a certain worth, yet it is a questionable price to drive the never ending cycle.
LUK Tak-wai Karen: Quiet Turmoil
A thought path, a montage sequence
a train of thought, fragmented,
in a tunnel of love somewhere near,
somewhere far –
a quiet turmoil eating me up
i wish you’d listened to me
i was breathing
LEUNG Yu-ho Thomas: Time’s Up
a sight-and-sound sequence
This work plays with the idea of syuzhet. Rather than an organized story, it is more akin to an endless stream of thoughts. A path of thought that almost loops back to itself. Quarantined at home, I am slowly deforming into a prisoner of my mind. Every day feels the same, while a sense of terror and underlying pressure creeps up on me, forcing me to face the issues I have been struggling with in other aspects of my life. As articulated in the video, every day I am trying to literally kill time in order to escape from reality. Still, every day I wake up and I am thrown back into the loop again.
YEUNG Ka-hei Hannah: The Portrait of Miss Anonymous
A story as a photomontage sequence
My photo sequence narrates the story of a girl who is addicted to outward beauty. She has done several cosmetic surgeries to improve her facial features. But after her changes of appearance, is the girl still the original one? The question is just like the thought experiment in ‘Ship of Theseus’. When the wooden parts of a ship are replaced by new ones, whether the ‘restored’ ship is still the same object as the original. I would like to look into the meaning of ‘identity’ and reflect on the necessity of exterior beauty through the photo sequence.
CHIU Man-yui Serena: A D.OT
Generative motion graphics
It starts with a simple dot, then it starts to move and gets more friends.
In biology, this little dot can be a cell, the basic unit of living things. Cells come together and form tissues, organs, living systems, organisms, a talking person….
In sociology, people gather together to achieve things they can’t on their own. Thus families, communities, societies, worlds are formed. We can look at humans individually and see one kind of motion, while another kind of chemistry can also be explored simultaneously when more people get together.
It is the beauty of generativity. What else do you think it can be?
