 |
|
A Linda Lai video / Visual Auto-Ethnography / color / 16:9 / Hong Kong
Synopsis
Footage of the same house from 2001-2013 pieces together the timeless inwardness of a middle-class living space in Las Palmas, Spain, where the departed live on with the material imprints that speak of their own ways of participating in history.
To trace the traces of those living and once lived, and to grab the etui of the person …, this video alludes to such a process by me, a cultural outsider for a house I have intimate connection. On the interior of the bourgeois home, W. Benjamin comments, “For the private person, living space becomes…antithetical to the place of work.” In shaping his private environment, the private citizen participates in history; s/he “gathers remote places and the past.” This piece contemplates the house as the expression of personality, as well the ornaments that form its signature. To me, the camera and cinema has a unique role to play in archiving such imprints. I then glean the surpluses, among which also traces of our world of commodities.
Conceptual Statement
This work is the portrait of a house in Las Palmas, Spain, in the flow of 13 years. Born and residing in Hong Kong, I have been, since 1997, regularly visiting this house, where my husband lived until 17. To trace the traces of those living and once lived, and to grab the etui of the person, I use footage collected in 2001-2013 to write my alien yet intimate thoughts as a, after all, permanent cultural outsider. Alongside my montage work, I was reading Walter Benjamin and Adorno on the interior of the bourgeois home. While my camera glides quietly over the surfaces of things, inwardness intensifies. This house has many moods and varied sentiments, and yet its ornaments form its signature, pushing for a world at once a retreat from work and lustful linkages with history through the juxtaposition of its ornaments. To me, the camera and cinema has a unique role to play in archiving such imprints. The two main characters of the house passed away in 2006 and 2012. At the moment I started editing, my own father just died. To those departed the objects they have left behind carrying on living on their behalf. The moment of death has always been waiting.
On the interior of the bourgeois home, W. Benjamin comments, “For the private person, living space becomes…antithetical to the place of work.” In shaping his private environment, the private citizen participates in history; s/he “gathers remote places and the past.” This piece contemplates the house as the expression of personality, as well the ornaments that form its signature. To me, the camera and cinema has a unique role to play in archiving such imprints. I then glean the surpluses, among which also traces of our world of commodities.
KEYWORDS: visual ethnography, home, interior of a bourgeois home, objects, Las Palmas, Spain,
Photography /Image Narrative /Sound/Editing: Linda LAI黎肖嫻 /
* * * ** * * ** * * ** * * ** * * ** * * ** * * ** * * ** * * ** * * *
[Screening/Exhibition history放映／展出紀錄]
TBC
* * * ** * * ** * * ** * * ** * * ** * * ** * * ** * * ** * * ** * * *
 |
《房子：棕榈之城》
2014, 21' 18“
關鍵字∶
製作資料
攝影/聲效/剪接：
黎肖嫻
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|