Remembrance is not nostalgia 憶記不同於懷舊
Everything is at the mercy of time. We all witness the material world erode and crumble, but the intangible shifts and changes unbeknownst to many. Human memory, when unexercised, may diminish, or, if we make the effort to hold on to our memories, they could live on and evolve in perceptual details. Is this not alarming when your memory could betray you without your even noticing? How can we tell if our memories are truthful?
I traveled to the past, looking at my childhood photos. The photo quality has deteriorated, and my memory of the events captured is hazy, incomplete and sometimes non-existent. Regardless, my emotions are still strong and became even stronger due to nostalgia, aging like fine wine.
My photo montage Liminal Memory captures the process of my attempt to recall the past, using an art style that I have never used until now and made up on the spot, somewhat akin to Vincent Van Gogh’s paint strokes. The process of visualizing my memories was perplexing, and the connection between different memories is based on how I remember the events and the people in them. The process drew in great nostalgia. The hustle and bustle of the suburban town, the scent of the farm, the sound of jeeps and trucks, the laughs I had with my cousins back in the Philippines… all make me want to reunite with them. However, the situation of the world is still at a critical stage. The only thing we can do is stay healthy, and let time decide when it is safe.
BIOGRAPHY
創作者簡介
Yani Kaye Castaneda is doing her Bachelor of Arts in Creative Media at the City University of Hong Kong. She is a Filipino born and raised in Hong Kong. Growing up with an avid interest in various fields of art, she spent her years honing her craft in literature and the dramatic arts, and now applies those skills in her future endeavors of writing and film production. A lot of her inspiration is drawn from her personal life as well as any curious societal thoughts.
“…While I was packing the box-files of documents into paper boxes, the gradual disappearance of things from the cabinet raised reluctance in me. …”
This is the story of the ordinary life of R6202. Without human characters except for a shared toy-shark which bears the mark of changes, it documents the end of a shared life. As the artist filled up empty boxes with discharged objects, the screen space was filled up by the desire to rescue, to collect, and to archive.
This sequence takes us to the final moments of a university student union in its habitat that is no longer. An impulse to remember.
BIOGRAPHY
創作者簡介
“The Filer” is a student at the City University of Hong Kong with two equally significant identities – an undergraduate major in Creative Media, and a member of the Students Union’s working committee. The Filer wants her works to reveal the unknown and to draw broader awareness from her audience – in order that the world would be a better place.
Conversations
L: This has to be remembered. Thanks for leaving us with near forensic evidence.
During my three years of life in Hong Kong, I have taken a large number of photos of the streets. I find myself increasingly inclined to go out late at night, use vignetting effects, use a similar perspective for every photo, and avoid obstructions... All these factors together defamiliarize my subjects from their immediate reality. The streets in my camera are quiet, peaceful, and even a little bit deserted.
Lipkin speaks of street photographers, “Instead of wandering the streets like a hunter tracking prey, they can venture out into the world, collect the picture elements they like, and piece them together in the dim room, just as a still life artist would collect objects to assemble later in the studio.” When I visited the street at its busy hours and saw the flow of people, I also started to question my approach to street photography: am I recording humanity, or manipulating humanity?
I suppose photography is a highly subjective action whereby individual tastes and attention vary. In Street Photography, I simply wish to show the viewers the whole process of my photography event so they may start to question me. The acceleration and slowing down of the montage process highlight the thickness of the stacked images at any particular single moment. I want the sequence to end in a more humane way. The total number of raw images I used was eight.
Reference:
Lipkin, Jonathan. Photography Reborn: Image Making in the Digital Era; 93-96. New York, NY: Abrams Studio, 2005.
BIOGRAPHY
創作者簡介
DAI Chenyue is a final year student in computer science at City University of Hong Kong, and will start his pursuit for an MArch degree at MIT Architecture. Supported with advanced algorithms, his works actively seek interdisciplinary practices between architecture, photography and new media art. Besides, he works closely with peers and professors in various fields including art, game development and human-computer interaction.
Conversations
Zimu: The photographer is sensitively recording urban luminosity, by which vibrancy, despite its abiotic nature, is also rooted in the geological time sedimentary of carbon fossils, like the standing still or rushing urbanite. The post-layering exposure of different lights, goods, human bodies in various velocities breaks apart the binary of subject and environment, foreground and background, living and non-living… also obscures a clear sense of time and space. The last image also seems like a phone snapshot, further revokes the balanced and calculative camera photography, leaving viewers afloat. A very interesting defamiliarization of the HK everyday visuality.