Wood, TVs, mixed media, two-channel video
Dimension variable
video:
part one: http://vimeo.com/160582898
part two: http://vimeo.com/160586717
I recall the fleeting image of Chow Yun-fat in a leather jacket; then Stephen Chow and Athena Chu in A Chinese Odyssey, caught up in their fantastical chaos; and Wong Kar-wai, adrift in an ever-deepening, dreamlike haze. In childhood, the flat narratives of film left impressions more vivid and dimensional than reality itself. Yet late at night, the screen at home would present an entirely different world. Sometimes, if my parents stayed up, I would peek from under the covers to watch TV; other times, when they were fast asleep, I would slip out of bed to turn it on—scene after scene of flickering black-and-white drama. Speech with a different rhythm; stories of poverty yet self-sufficiency and struggle; and, at times, the interjection of refined, soaring Cantonese opera. Together, these elements formed my composite impression of the 1960s—virtual, unfamiliar, as distant and unreachable as antiquity.
The only scene that could connect those two eras with my own was the home in which I watched these films. As long as there were people in the story, the camera almost always framed them within an interior space—capturing the universal imagery of everyday human life. This allowed me to bridge eras, to understand the past, moving from reality into the screen. From here, I entered history, creating distorted sculptural assemblages of film-and-television-inspired furniture. On one side of the screen, edited Cantonese feature films play; on the other, I read aloud and sing the lines and operatic passages that have been familiar to me since childhood.
記下周潤發穿著皮褸閃過的身影；一時又見著身處仙履奇緣的周星馳與朱茵怪力亂神；還有茫然於越看越迷離失魂的王家衛。孩堤時代，電影裡平面的情節留下比現實更立體的印象。然而到了夜深，家裡銀幕又呈現不盡一樣的情境。有時候雙親晚睡，自也在被窩裡探頭偷看電視，甚或在他倆酣睡時下床開啓，一幕幕是黑白及跳動的戲。節奏不一樣的話語；貧窮卻自足生活與奮鬥的情節；間或穿插一段文縐縐且高亢的粵曲。這些組合，已然是自身對六零年代的總體印象。是虛擬、陌生的，像遠古得摸不著邊際。
唯一能串連起兩個時代及自己的場景，是在看戲的家本身。戲只要有人，幾乎都具備住所室內的取鏡，因而也必體現到人文生活的普遍景象，可以跨越時代認知過去，由現實到螢幕。我從這裡進入歷史，製作引申為扭曲的影視家具組合雕塑。螢幕一邊播放已剪輯的粵語長片；一邊播放自身讀著及唱著那些從小便耳熟的對白及戲曲。
