An accidental death in February (?) 2018 ended young artist Anna Chim’s barely started exciting journey of creative adventures. She was also inventive, self-directed and genuine in her response to the world which she found often causing wounds. As I was revisiting principles of economizing in image-making in film and art history in preparation for teaching, I accidentally returned to this saved message Anna sent me. Anna Chim was my student at the School of Creative Media, and was a contributor and member of the project team for Videography, a Manifesto 1 (2017).
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From: CHIM Anna <annachim3c@my.cityu.edu.hk>
Sent: Friday, August 5, 2016 7:10:59 PM
To: Dr. LAI Chiu Han Linda
Subject: My new video & please lend me your book
Dear Linda,
How are you? Are you still in Spain? How is Spain?
Holiday have slow down my brain. I miss you! I miss the school!
I went to Beijing for two weeks and I loved it. It was so much fun. Very good vibe.
I planned to shoot a video in there but … when I was enjoying my time.. . I enjoyed my time. I did not think about art at all … > <
So, the time I pulled out my phone to film was the time I got bored. And I used these footage to make this new video. This is the second cut. The first cut was sent to the festival you forwarded. Thank you for noticing!!
Please watch and tell me what you think when you have the time. This time again I discovered new things about video making… I love doing it …
idk. Think of you when bored (Anna Chim, 2016)
idk means I don’t know
another thing is…
thank you for your effort in helping us with the proposal. Sorry, I think at the time I was so uncertain about what you had in mind and what I was supposed to write.
Do you remember you mentioned two books when you commented on my manifesto? I think the name is Failure Art and Hispanic Poor Cinema.
Could you please lend these books to me?
Anyway, enjoy your holiday. ( I assume this is holiday to you?)
Best,
Anna
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Dr. LAI Chiu Han Linda
Sat 8/6/2016 2:17 PM
To: CHIM Anna
Subject: material you want: Failure, Aesthetics of hunger
SEARCH: Cinema Novo, Brazil, aesthetic of hunger (“The Esthetic of Hunger”), Glauber Rocha, Nelson Pereira dos Santos
Here’s Cinema Novo:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_Novo
Here’s the “Aesthetic of Hunger” essay in 1965:
https://www.amherst.edu/media/view/38122/original/ROCHA_Aesth_Hunger.pdf
You also want to read this regarding the return of the Cinema Novo directors to Brazil in the 1970s: http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC21folder/BrazilStamJohnson2.html
Here’s a film by Nelson Pereira dos Santos called Barren Lives (original title Vidas Secas), which is exemplary of the director’s principle of using minimum material for filmmaking (cinema of poverty). It is luckily available on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pSn37ZJqBQ
For “Failure” (Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art), it is in the library: http://encore.lib.cityu.edu.hk/iii/encore/record/C Rb4074388 SWhitechapel%3A% 20documents%20of%20contemporary%20art P0%2C4 Orightresult X1?lang=eng&suite=pearl
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In Memory of Anna .Her spirit, to me, is most intensely felt in this work:
Flanger (2015) by Anna Chim
A transmedia study of Robert Cahen
The first half of this video is an imitation of an excerpt of Robert Cahen’s 1980 video work Glimpse, and the second half is the continuation of it according to my understanding.
Glimpse to me is the spectacle of a mindless walk in which what happens around stay as a hollow visual. Things are being looked at but not viewed while memories are recalled or mind is emptied. But Cahen’s walk is not like my usual walk in which my emotion is usually numbed. Cahen conveys forceful feeling to me. Partly because of his elegant editing, partly because of looking at VHS style video as a digital age teen having some imagined nostalgia. Picking up his shoes, I try to compose this video by using old video technique to amplify the feels. My practice is just like composing music this time. All the footages used are found online as if sampling. I focus on how much feeling to be put in certain point by controlling the rhythm, movement and volume.
Flanger is an audio effect to mix two signals together, one signal being slightly delayed and gradually changed. (Anna Chim)
