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"The totality of events in a city forms a thick collage that rejects systematic reading, nor individuated signification. Objects function like humans. Humans are objectified. Together they form a huge net, each element mapping its relational paths, crossing now and then the paths of others. On a certain day of a certain year, everything connects. The loose threads come together to form a logical while. Do they really? The city has always been breathing, following its automatic rhythm. Only when the camera is set up in a particular place in a particular moment would we begin to see drama. In my sudden awakening in the midst of chanceful triviality, I fret, I shake, embarrassed, dumbfounded. (Feb 1997)
城市裡所發生的，比任何拼圖更繁碎複雜，要理也理不清，湊也不一定湊出些甚麼來。城市的物質性總在支配著人際甚至人和自己的關係。毫不相干的生命軌道偶爾交錯；突然災難來臨，末日走近，一切隨機。在某年某月某日這一切都忽然邏輯起來。真實世界無機延續著，鏡頭只要若無其事的站在那裡，戲劇便會自動發生。顯微鏡作用，我們竟驚訝於生活的操作是這麼瑣碎、技術性而煞有介事；我們若有所失，不安、侷促、甚或漲紅了臉。
(text extract from the video written by Linda Lai)
A Linda Lai video
10957 Moons & 30 Elliptical Years 《10957個陰晴圓缺》
A compilation video essay in 8 chapters 彙編錄像文章八部
2022.06.04 / Hong Kong / 58m 6s / HD / aspect ratio 16:9 / color + b/w / Stereo sound / multiple media sources
Original formats (RM): Hi-8, mini-DV, HD, various digital automatic camera and cell-phone formats, digital and analogue still photography, hand-drawings, found footage on YouTube
Synopsis
In eight chapters, 10957 Moons & 30 Elliptical Years (2022) is a collage-compilation of events, objects, thoughts and sensations. From naturalistic camera images captured in daylight, the chapters grow into more introspective fragments that embody unspeakable sentiments, occasionally paying tribute to nature and contemplating things quietly forming systems of their own. Whose 30 years? Mine, my city’s, the world's cities'?
共八段的《10957個陰晴圓缺》（2022），是30年前後的零碎事件、物件、思緒和感觸的拼湊聚疊。平實的記錄，自然風的攝影，光天化日之下，天大地大；篇章逐步前進，聲影越來越零碎、內觀，虛擬和紀實互為表裡，難以啟齒無法言喻的在膠結糾纏。一時召喚大自然，一時又定睛於人世間之物，在悠長歲月中靜靜建構了它們的系統，不由得我們准許或不。這三十年是我個人的？還是香港的、世界的？
Artist's conceptual narrative
In eight chapters, 10957 Moons & 30 Elliptical Years (2022) is a collage-compilation of events, objects, thoughts and sensations. From naturalistic camera images captured in daylight, the chapters grow into more introspective fragments that embody unspeakable sentiments, occasionally paying tribute to nature and contemplating things quietly forming systems of their own.
Images are slices of the world that flow and fleet. They are lines of flight (Deleuze and Guattari) – a series of escapes and entrances, bearing the traces of change. The images in 10957 Moons are thus thresholds between states of being. I shuttle between the virtual image and the real image. The former is subjective and recollected whereas the latter is perceived out there. I want what was perceived and what can be recalled (at present) to flow into each other. The at once present-ness and pastness of virtual images connect with concrete existence. This is how, as a videographer, I answer to the call of historiography..
Hong Kong stories are hard to tell – so the banal saying goes. But artists have always known how to write histories creatively. In 10957 Moons, HK stories are always at once personal and political, to be experienced alongside those of other cities, written for the present. Artistic sensibilities “retrain” our attentiveness. The artist looks for immanent standards of value from within herself: to live well, she goes to the limit of her potentials (Deleuze). How well does such an ethical naturalism withstand the force of time and the constraints of our current situation?
The entire narrative is punctuated by a sonic motif that functions as a structural device: a coarse voice relentlessly trying to vocalize. This sound is a key site for the passage of virtual and actual images, ensuring the present continuous performance of the artist’s murmur. Is it a lost voice, a voice that struggles to voice, a muffled voice, or bold persistence?
I have never thought of an artist’s life (my life) that could actually cut through several decades. Yet this work is not about aging. Its eight chapters constitute a series of sight-and-sound whispers on constantly shifting spatio-temporalities. The past and the present blend as the flâneuse walks with her image-making tools.
KEYWORDS
Video essay | auto-ethnography | visual ethnography | experimental documentary | visual poetry
THE 8 CHAPTERS
Chapter 1 | One Take: Many Folds 一鏡到底千層疊
Chapter 2 | Chair Talks 談坐物語
Chapter 3 | Camera Exercises 常常遊戲
Chapter 4 | Mobility 移動。浮游。
Chapter 5 | The past: whose past? 歷史，記憶誰屬？
Chapter 6 | Object-logue, Objectiles 物物語。物體態。
Chapter 7 | Les enfants, toute va bien? 孩子們，一切安好？
Chapter 8 | Daydreaming 白日夢
PRODUCTION INFORMATION
output format: Quicktime movie, HD 1808i 25, H264, AAC, 48 kHz
Camera / Montage / Image Collage / Sound Composition: Linda C.H. Lai Video diaries: Linda C.H. Lai (1990-2021) Improvized vocalization: Linda C.H. Lai Additional camera: Hector Rodriguez, Hugo Yeung, Ling-ling Woo, Ivy Fung, Winsome Wong, Tracy Ngai
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Art Performance:
As Slow As Possible (1988, Shatin City Hall, by various HK artists)
Look! Object-Activities (2006, produced by Linda Lai, performed by students at the School of Creative Media)
《細路祥》The Kid (1950, HK) |《七十二家房客》 House of 72 Tenants (1963, Guangzhou) 《七十二家房客》House of 72 Tenants (1973, HK) |《雅馬哈魚檔》Yamaha Fish Stall (1984, Guangzhou) | Daisies (1966, Vera Chytilova, Czechoslovakia) | Road to Health (1938, British Social Hygiene Council) | Found footage of old Hong Kong on YouTube
Linda Lai’s videos quoted and compiled in this work:
Diaries: Dry Rain (1999), Diaries: Half Dream (1999), One Take (2000/2012/2021), Chair Talk (2005), Trespassing World Cities (2005), Camera Exercises (2005), Excitable Speech: All About Cinderella (2008), Floor Drama (2008), No Path but My Footprints (2010), 72 Tenants (2012), Object-logue (2012), Ocean Curiosities (2018), La Casa 3: the Apartments (2021), Long Day’s Journey (2021)