The Broken Chapters in Reality

2016/ Color/ 14:30”/ Mandarin, English Subtitle

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My attempt on utilizing text from literature touched upon my interest for incorporating the overlapping worlds hidden in the literature(text), which the readers(interviewees) had encountered before, in this video. The bountiful writings of the past and present interweaved with the contexts and further inspired the development of this work. The physical object, the book, which appears in the reality constructed other abstract thoughts and turned it to another matter according to my interference.

 

A brain of a human is like a tiny archive, which accumulates sequential primary information and documents as time continuum, while gaps and cracks unavoidably exist. I tended seek the unseen ‘space’ in the private archives through the interviews, re-organizing information accordingly to my observation and studies, to create new meanings and ties in those records.

 

The use of text is an explicit element in my art practice. I employed diverse approaches to work on existing literature and explored the concept of relativity and intersubjectivity. I explored the triangular relationship of myself as an observer, the interviewees and the texts, and created another narration out of the literature and “reality”. In Michel Foucault’s article “What is an author”, he explored the singular relationship between an author and the text. [1] Through the interplay of different texts, the role of storyteller was shared among the interviewers, interviewees and the original authors. The focus of discourse was then being shifted to another context. With the discontinuities of text, it echoed with the fragmented memories and existence.

 

The repetition and circulation of motifs are another subjects in the video. I dealt with the temporal deployment of lines extracted from different text. A new narrative structure which linked up the past and present, presented the re-occurrence of plots happened in the literature. The deconstruction and reconstruction process generated new layers of meanings, creating new characters out of the text. Faucault thought that there is always a way to return to the original text[2]. To re-read the literature, it created openings to visit the hidden parallel worlds.

 

[1] Michel Foucault, Donald F. Bouchard, Language, counter-memory, practice: selected essays and interviews. (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1993), 115.

[2] Michel Foucault, Donald F. Bouchard, Language, counter-memory, practice: selected essays and interviews. (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1993), 135.