Video (published)

I Told Them My Camera Was on (中文版)
(v. 2, 25 min. 2005)

Crytoglyph
[ Click to view video clip ][ Click to view clip on YouTube ]

From the 4748 Moons and 13 Elliptical Years series
Linda Lai’s visual auto-ethnography (1990-2004),
a video cycle in 7 parts / completed 2005, HK

I Told Them My Camera Was On is a self-conscious narrative game re-constructing my own video diaries between 1990 and 2004, from VHS, hi-8 to mini-DV.  It looks for a structure that would hold together 13 women found in my footage.  It subverts causal narrative logic and shows 13 women’s stories as a network of acquaintances, each in an isolated moment of her life, thus questioning the necessity of an epic approach. Instead, a composite story made up of women from diverse backgrounds is invented. Standard theses on cultural differences and identities, realities of growing up and growing old etc. become ambiguous. Questions on the practice of auto-ethnography are raised via “the politics of the everyday.” The construction of a network of acquaintances, with me in the centre, is based on the rule of playful chain-connectivity.  I show each woman in an isolated moment of her life, thus questioning the necessity of an epic approach and structuralist depth-hermeneutics.  Instead, a composite story made up of women from diverse backgrounds is invented.

I Told Them my Camera Was On plays with the thin line between remembering and fabricating, recording and staging, and document and story. It mocks the “standard” narrative of a woman’s life-story by inventing a composite story made up of women from diverse backgrounds.  Assumed theses on cultural differences and identities, realities of growing up and growing old etc. become ambiguous.

The scratches and jerking lines of the images from older format footage have been preserved to signify the multiple sheets of time-space and the passing away of time.  Towards the end of the work, the narrative takes on a new style, like an organism about to move into a new phase of life. Many questions about image-making and representation have emerged in the process of making this work: early cinema’s direct presentational style, what it means to write women’s history, can an individual’s life be understood without the illusion of continuity in an epic form? Etc.


 

《六度分離∶準備好未?》

(v. 2, 25 min. 2005)
《4748個陰晴圓缺還有還有》
黎肖嫻自傳性民俗研究式錄影七部曲 (1990-2004)/ 完成於2005年

《六度分離∶準備好未?》展示的是我為13個女性尋找可以盛載她們的敍事架構的最後方案。我從自己13年的錄像日記當中,重新發現了她們、她們之間的隱而未現的文化關連,以及她們各自的獨立性。敍述活動所假設的因果邏輯過於理所當然。我想,難道隨了史詩式的傳記法,以一個人的過去解釋一個人的現在,為一個人尋求一件生命事件與另一件之間的延續性之外,就沒有別的方法嗎?於是我發明自己的敍事遊戲,提了好些疑問∶一個人的某個專注的一刻難道就不可以述說一個人嗎?以種族、年紀、年代、背景的差異去解析人與人之間的差異一定有效嗎?這個作品原先希望做到的是述說我自己,最後,我把自己放在她們的中央,把自己編為她們的旁觀者、「她」者;而她們,合成了一串因我而起的連鎖鏈,卻又各自各。橫豎關連、整合等等都是一場虛擬吧。

 


Production details / Credits:
Narrative/Text/Sound design: Linda LAI黎肖嫻 / Camera & footage: Linda LAI 黎肖嫻 / Editing: WOO Ling-ling 胡玲玲 / Additional  footage: Vinicius NAVARRO, Rita HUI 許雅舒, Annie CHANG MARTIN 張美恩, Sherona CHAN 陳曉茵 / Additional editing: Kedy FAN 範可琪 /

Screening history 放映歷史:
Version 1 (2004) was world-premiered at the 51st International Short Film Festival Oberhausen [51. Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen] (May 2-10, 2005), Germany as Official Selection in competition.

Version 2 (2005) was screened at the 12th Festival of Independent Cinema at Barcelona [L’alternativa, 12è Festival de cinema independent de Barcelona], November 11-19, 2005, Barcelona, Spain; and the Paris/Berlin Meeting for New Cinema and Contemporary Art [Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin…Nouveau cinema et art contemporain], Paris, November 15-27, 2005 [...].