D-normal/V-essay 平地數碼

Imagine someone gives you a blank sheet and asks you to freely put something on it… An instantaneous thought? A long held grudge? A heart-felt concern? A playful pretense of somebody else? A question? The performance of annoyance? A mark, an enigma? Or, well, let me grab this chance to unfold my thought paths? Anger, desperation, self-consolation, a genuine experience in a virtual world … And what if the blank sheet is a canvas? Would you splash paint for the pleasure of automatism like Pollock, or would you turn it into a cut-up artbook to store fragments waiting for you to make sense of in a later moment?

This issue (#4, April 2022) contains 20 montage-collage photo sequences of 1-2 minutes for free expression, all made during the quarantine or period of limited mobility and limited resources. It has the grand purpose of turning our chains of thoughts visual-narratively; it is also an open game with some basic rules:

(1) A game of combining collage and montage -- to play up the richness of a single image and the adventurous journey of a series of single image constructing as they add up.

(2) Live-action video reduced to minimum: construct moving images from still images and output as video.

(3) For collage work, using found images by others is acceptable but it must be followed by proper citation.

Stop motion. Montage, Superimposition. What else? How to make a still image move?

Other than formal criteria stated above, the remaining task is to ask oneself, “What is worth expressing?”

Visual-narratively, we stretch the possibilities of “narrative” by taking it to its lowest possible form – sequential ordering that has an impact.

Given that the basic, minimum characterization of “what is narrative” is agreed upon to be a thought path, i.e. a cluster of things (fragments of thoughts and images) in sequential order, hanging together by the connective “and then … and then… and then…,” we may advance into more possibilities of a thought path:

// What if the connectives are more than “and then… and then… and then…”… such as “but,” “on the other hand,” “in the meantime,” “surprisingly…” …?

// What if the general idea of a work is not as interesting as the process of argument and integration of details?

What if the final value of an arithmetical operation is not as interesting as the process?

7 = 0 + 7

7 = 1 + 6

7 = 2 + 3 + 2

7 = 6 + 5 – 4

7 = (2+1)² – 2

7 = {(2+1)² + 4 + 1} 2 so on and more…

In some of the pieces in this issue, the art’s thought paths are more a sustained state of mind about to morph or proliferate but not quite.

Some works start off to look for their expressions in existing images by others. These collage works with found images remind us of the collage tradition in which the negotiation of cultural artifacts result not in appropriation but re-invention of meanings. The points and modes of “closure” in many of these works are like an enigma, or a silent secret.

Lastly, the works in this issue were all made this spring 2022 when classes are all online, some in quarantine, and there are limited resources except basic software from the open source and a smartphone.

In the final stop-press moment, I felt compelled to include a few more videos on hotel quarantine, unexpected experiences that have been prolonged up till this very moment. … By serendipity, I found several such pieces from young artist-friends who graciously responded. These last few solicited videos are marked with an asterisk [*], all placed in section I. They are the only works that are not restricted to the game rules described above.

| Linda Chiu-han Lai 黎肖嫻, April 2022

VIDEO ZINE

錄像雜誌

#4

VOICES FROM THE ATMOSPHERE

大氣中融融細語

VIDEO ZINE

錄像雜誌

#4

VOICES FROM THE ATMOSPHERE

大氣中融融細語

Video content

錄像目錄