More wavering thought paths… Is remembering the same as nostalgia? What does street photography remember? Shall I be pretty, shall I be loved? What would happen to to me when I die? There are moments when you must spit it out… #4 D-Normal/V-Essay online video zine, collected and edited by Linda Lai. 記住就是懷舊了嗎？街頭攝影可記住的是甚麼？我長大後會漂亮嗎？會有人愛我嗎？我死了以後會怎樣？有些事情，確實不吐不快。… 黎肖嫻蒐集彙編，更多搖擺的思路。《平地數碼》網上錄像誌第4期。
/… continuing from last post: Voices from the Atmosphere (2)
**Chinese summary translation by Linda Lai
Remembrance is Not Nostalgia 憶記不同於懷舊
Liminal Memory (Yani Kaye Linsangan Castaneda)
重看舊照片是不尋常的拾遺，模模糊糊，照像支離破碎，激發出來的情感卻猛烈如烙在肌膚之上，或過去的就在眼前。作者觸及照片，引來回家團聚的慾望，卻生逢外遊不便的特殊景況。
I traveled to the past, looking at my childhood photos. The photo quality has deteriorated, and my memory of the events captured is hazy, incomplete and sometimes non-existent. Regardless, my emotions are still strong and became even stronger due to nostalgia, aging like fine wine. My photo montage Liminal Memory captures the process of my attempt to recall the past. … The process of visualizing my memories was perplexing, and the process drew in great nostalgia. The hustle and bustle of the suburban town, the scent of the farm, the sound of jeeps and trucks, the laughs I had with my cousins back in the Philippines… all make me want to reunite with them. However, the situation of the world is still at a critical stage. The only thing we can do is stay healthy, and let time decide when it is safe.
Rec. (The Filer)
一個被要求遷出的房間，一個朝代的轉換，一代制度的終結。
This is the story of the ordinary life of R6202. Without human characters except for a shared toy-shark which bears the mark of changes, it documents the end of a shared life. As the artist filled up empty boxes with discharged objects, the screen space was filled up by the desire to rescue, to collect, and to archive. This sequence takes us to the final moments of a university student union in its habitat that is no longer. An impulse to remember.
Street Photography (DAI Chenyue 戴晨岳)
街頭攝影不一定是實錄。可以是現在進行式的書寫，用身體，用步履，用徘徊，用單一的攝影法去說明重複才得以開發空間的隱密。
During my three years in Hong Kong, I have taken a large number of photos of the streets. I find myself increasingly inclined to go out late at night, use vignetting effects, use a similar perspective for every photo, and avoid obstructions — which results in my defamiliarizing my subjects from their immediate reality. The streets in my camera are quiet, peaceful, and even a little bit deserted. Lipkin speaks of street photographers, “Instead of wandering the streets like a hunter tracking prey, they can venture out into the world, collect the picture elements they like, and piece them together in the dim room, just as a still life artist would collect objects to assemble later in the studio.” When I visited the street at its busy hours, I also started to question my approach: am I recording humanity, or manipulating humanity?
Spit it Out 不吐不快
Watch the videos on Dn/Ve #4 […]
Copy Cat – (Wang Shuxin 汪淑欣)
二次創作和抄襲、複製之間的分野是怎樣的？作者為「抄」和「貼」發明了自己的視覺文法。
I use copycat to be the theme of this work to respond to our fast-paced age of information in which our easy access to information warrants more caution. Quick typing of a few words in the search box could lead to our enjoying the fruits of others’ work. The keys ctrl+c and ctrl+v become a shortcut just at the tip of our fingers. But without proper citation and altering others’ works may raise more complex issues, such as copyright and intellectual property rights. My visual material includes different kinds of found cats and other object-icons with associated social meanings – poppies, prison, printer, scissors, glue and so on — to build my visual grammar of “copy and paste.”
So Long, My Pain – (HE Yuqi 何宇騏)
「這個世界不要我了。」這是誰的申訴？假如，這是個被非法禁錮20年，被強迫生了八個孩子的女性…?
So long, My Pain is inspired by recent news reported in mainland China. A woman considered a “psychopath” has been found kidnapped, married to a man in a remote village and giving birth to eight kids (seven of them are boys). For 20 years she was dehumanized – chained up and treated like a dog, and living under terrible conditions. Without warm clothes even in extreme weather in northern China, she was left to sleep on the concrete floor. When being asked, the only recognizable sentence she could say was, “The world abandoned me.” (這個世界不要我了) Meanwhile, it was found that the man who bought her from a human trafficker had been enjoying the subsidy issued by the local government due to his poverty status of having 8 kids. As an advocate of feminism in my daily life, I am extremely sensitive to the pain suffered by women. I can’t image how she went through such prolonged terror. I am painful and angry about such sufferings which have lasted thousands of years under patriarchy. “The world has abandoned me.” This lingers in my mind, which reminds me of Pedro Roldan’s The Mater Dolorosa (1675, sorrowful mother Virgin Mary), speaking specifically of the pain I feel.
Self-persuasion 自我勸解
Death Anxiety (Cora Kwun/KWUN Kam-tan 官錦丹)
眾多身邊的人的離去，令作者想到自己的死亡：彌留之際是怎樣的？死後的路程是怎樣的？會有轉化的點嗎？那是甚麼？往後又如何？
Deaths around me over the years inspired this piece – I mean, the sudden departure of my relatives, friends, and teachers… Before they died, they looked healthy, risk-less, and lively. Then death occurred without any signals. But the moments of how they made it through their final struggle stay in my mind: their body shakes with their fast heartbeat, skinniness from cancer, a sinking body that’s found. I stood by their deathbed, anxious about my own death and when. This short piece is about my death fantasy: before-death, after-death, and rebirth.
Inspirational Keywords: 1. As soon as we are born, we are old enough to die. — Martin Heidegger; 2. Ego integrity — Erik Erikson; 3. sadgati (सद्गति, six realms wheel of life in Sanskrit) — Buddhism
My whole life goes through my mind at the last moment; and I remember those happy moments only. Meanwhile, my brain no longer functions, my identity twists. My spirit is collected and brought to ṣaḍgati. … I become an egg. Then I meet the sperm, we melt together and become a new life. … Oops, I will start this cycle again as a fly.
lukewarm water, slow-boiling pot《溫水 慢火》(GUO Rui 郭睿)
並沒有甚麼可說的故事或特定的處境。只是一種狀態。溫水慢火煮蛙可能不著痕跡，可卻要及早提防。到你意識到的時候，會來不及？
This is a narrative on the predicament of time and space. Alluding to the metaphor of boiling a frog in water, it is assumed that a frog will jump out when water heats up whereas in lukewarm water a frog may fail to perceive danger or death coming. lukewarm water is about our being oblivious to growing threats: the “slow-boiling pot” could be the illusion of a comfort zone from which we should step out for survival. … There is no specific situation in this story, but a collage of our everyday environment. Recycling. Reaching out. Day-dreaming. Keep trying things that are doomed to fail. “Never say never.” “Such is life!” Or, when do I get out of lukewarm water before too late?
Unbeauty (Febby Valencia)
美的標準會否像慢性毒藥？外來的，卻主宰了個人行動和社會生活意義的網絡。如何逐步解拆？可以動用的創造性的資源呢？
This work is my critique of the toxicity of beauty standards that has corrupted human sanity throughout countless centuries. I have adopted a classical 3-act-structure to advance my thoughts: (1) beauty standards spread like a fast-paced virus and make us question our beauty; (2) we keep on looking for temporary things by giving up things that matter to us; and (3) an allegory could be an open interpretation, but it has a very deep history specific to the Indonesian culture. My collage work is formed with material from traditional Indonesian beliefs and more, to which I added my own hand-drawn art and self-photography, all in the end turned into a pop-up layered collage before video-recording. This approach speaks of my intention to deconstruct the actual image, layer by layer first, and then to reconstruct it narratively.
Finding (FUNG Hoi-ching 馮凱晴)
頭髮是至親密至貼身的。是我存在的實證，是我的尊嚴，是我的個性和風格，是我的種族數據。但為何我們仍感迷失呢？是因為觀照自我的鏡子模糊了？
I use hair to represent a part of my identity and my ego. Hair could be hair style, a marker of one’s ethnicity and more. In the story, someone’s identity seems lost in the city and yet the only way to recover it is neither to follow the signs inside the city nor to ask others. Perhaps his “identity” is just in his body and has never been lost. Where is the mirror in which he could see himself? And who makes that mirror? And how to ensure the mirror is not obscure? As a social being, I adjust as changes come along with people around me. For better or worse, I often feel obliged to fulfill the expectation of others. But social standards change, too. We may easily feel lost.
/… to be continued…
