Every picture is an argument.
每段聲影流都是一種論據

updated 13:30 (HKT),10 December 2023

Let’s return to the “Essay Film” and/or the “Video Essay”

錄像文章強調書寫。錄像文章作為文章，不止步於讓人欣賞或進入作者的主觀奇幻世界，而是進一步的透過交換感知經驗而要求諒解，引發共鳴，又或激發懷疑。

錄像文章強調書寫，尤其書寫的過程。一步一呼吸，調度的層次，一放一收，迂迴曲折的探前顧後。是思路，是呼吸，都帶著生命力，探觸活下去的可能性。

「暫擬設證」並不指臨時、暫時的設定，而是把設證視為流動的、開放的，恆常地「暫時」而有待持續的設證、修正、以致再設證。「暫擬設證」是錄像文章的一個角度，也指向錄像和數碼媒體的特性，成為一種感知的述說的基本態度。

第六期的《平地數碼》網上錄像文章持續「發掘遺珠」** 的願景，繼續打開門路。頭三個議題的都是 2022 和 2023 夏天的本地畢業作品，為她們/它們結集也是為這兩年的心思留下回音。她們想過的、關注的，超乎一般的直線或多線聯想，高興看到個體和歷史社會的介面是如此多樣性的，「經驗」是甚麼？如何經驗？如何互聯地經驗？希望這些作品打開多幾扇窗。我們看到，議題和媒體方法美學是同體的：地誌的研究以分框和格線去構築獨特的影像的「客觀性」文法（潘子懷）；對多年信仰上的常規操作發出疑問而以驅咒的聲影儀式對應（關倩晴）；跨種族關注以多框多聲度分層的合成法處理（WY Khong)；往來的家書以實時的谷歌地圖的探路盛載（盧韻淇）；問問自己是誰、何處來又何往，所展示的不是答案而是過程（汪淑欣）；以機器學習的方法去轉化家庭照片庫，尋找未可知卻潛在的影像語感（關樂同）。專輯部分的勞麗麗的錄像多在裝置展覽的場所迴環播放，這次的「專題一」，我們得到她的同意，把眾多的作品用選段方式網上發表，希望從人類學的研究角度，喚起觀者的新解讀。「專題二」的希臘舞蹈藝術實驗者，對香港本地創作者來說，首先是個知道不多的創作地域，細看，他們的關注不難在香港本地的舞蹈實驗團體找到共鳴。
**「遺珠」是正面的，重點是「珠」，是珍貴的，並不指比賽中落選之作，而是指按一般業界框架多被隔走而放映不足，甚至而被遺忘的精良之作。

In this and more upcoming issues, DnVe will return to the originary motif that has fueled our previous issues #1-4 – the nature of an essay, and the moving image as specific essaying modes. The broader objective of Floating Projects’ DnVe online video zine platform remains the same: to archive a moment, to preserve individual beings as actions in time and space – to open the door for future historiographic experiments that key in on experiences that cannot be easily tidied up to be logical discourses.

Nora M. Alter and Timothy Corrigan’s anthology, Essays on the Essay Film (2017), has put together a useful map of the intersection of the essay and cinema, showing a trajectory of the historical uses of the essay film (to video essay), all incited by critical enquiries of broader issues in culture, thus the demand for changes, through experiments and concrete making.

As an essay, essay films and video essays are to be shared, to invite rapport, or to provoke. This impulse to communicate, which many definitions of art reject, distinguishes video essay from other modes of videography and crew-based production, marking out a third space that is open for negotiation, suggesting the experimental always located in the in-between, and thus embracing transmediality and interdisciplinary thinking as basic characteristics.

"Essay" in Chinese often simply refers to prose, as opposed to poetry and drama whereas in English, essay refers to a broader spectrum of writing, from a personal letter to a petition, highlighting the author's intended argument, unfolding. As a point of departure in this issue, the essay in film/video has rich linkages to documentary forms and auto-ethnograpjy (self journeys studied and reorganized). It will take a few more issues to explore the variety of the essay form, and to fully engage in the use of the (notion of the) essay in moving image works.

…A BLANK SHEET 錄像文章（有關的是）留白、著墨、染色
“Imagine someone gives you a blank sheet and asks you to freely put something on it…” This was our invocation in DnVe # 4 when dealing with COVID-related isolation and the textures of anxiety as much as consolation in self-dialogues. In this issue, the essay remains a blank sheet at its offset on which we drop thoughts, be they fragmented, roaming, or weaving in morphable patterns.

→ THOUGHT PATHS, instantaneous, automatic, carefully constructed 思緒的自動謄寫、此一步這一刻、流逝，或精雕細琢，隱顯有度
A video essay may not tell a well formed story with cohering resolution, and yet it is definitely a narrative form. The steps – arguments or flows – matter. The breaks and the gaps equally matter. Beyond pure expressiveness, the end point is the object of articulation – ideas and sensations waiting and desiring to be experienced by others. The video essay seeks the fleeting and floating points between Surrealist automatism, abstract expressionism, (imagery-based) poetry, documentary, mainstream story-telling, news features.

…A FORM OF BREATHING 錄像文章：呼吸的一種，隨狀態、聽脈、敏感於周遭
Breathing is being alive. The personality of a video essay (and its maker) materializes in the temporal trajectories of a piece. A videographer's aura may sustain in multiple works, but moods and sentiments differ from work to work as different forms of breathing. We need to constantly refresh the vocabulary of breathing, from instance to instance. Breathing may be expressed in the form of perceivable rhythm. And yet rhythm is restrictive, and far from adequate to describe breathing as a vital activity, especially when we just equate rhythm with beats and meters – i.e. continuously repeating patterns, or systematic regular recurrences. How about thinking up new action verbs and metaphors to describe how we breathe – vibrating, hissing, dashing off, staggering, stampering, blowing and more, like an amoeba, like dancing, like mopping the floor, like vacuuming-cleaning, like…?

→ FROM BREATHING to COOKING 數碼的物質性：數碼素材，烹調
However we breathe, the materialization in a video essay is the way we put images together – continuity, contiguity, clash, juxtaposition, contrast, montage, or the total dissolution of the shot system, or the shot-to-shot convention. As well, the lower level components of the digital medium are the “ingredients” that afford an infinite number of “dishes” if you know how to cut them, marinate (prepare), combine and play with different modes of cooking – RGB values, pixelation, luminosity, grayscale, and more.

→ VITALITY AND POTENTIALITY 活著的力。前向的潛能。
Breathing is to stay alive, but not only. The video essay is not a written essay. It breathes through the materiality of the digital media – instantaneous, fast, alloying, morphable, mobile, multilateral, hopping, mankind pauses, doubting, relaxing, resolving, hypothesising, self-healing, meditating, propelling, and many other forms of living and staying alive.

Personal milestones

In this issue, we have collected several works that are graduation thesis completed in the summer of 2022 and 2023, We have obtained the videographers’ generous agreement to have their pieces published on our online platform. Their existential quest, aesthetic exploration and communicative strategy are fully integrated.

PUN Tsz-wai’s Cavity seems eerie, and KHONG Wan-ying’s Above the Background took her out of her familiar, comfort zone. Their video essays ask questions. They revoke common sensibility and visualize what is disappearing and being disappeared. Some voices must be heard. Not only that, they have created their own sight-and-sound vocabulary and grammar to assert "objectivity" each in their own way.

In LO Wan-ki’s News from Home, alluding to Chantal Akerman, and WANG Shuxin’s Drifting / jamais vu / Otherworldly, both videographers take writing as a moment or series of moments best understood in the present continuous sense. Being away from home and the quest for one's existential core are two modes of drifting in order to assert one’s presence.

Angel Kwan’s Devoted also highlights the process and the continuous tense of the mind and her thought paths, but intensifies to become a ritual. Is she praying? Or is she performing an exorcism to free herself from convoluting mysteries of life from eclectic Taoist-Buddhist hearsays imposed on her? Cleansing materializes in abstraction. The viewer is incribed to be a participant of the ritual, immersing in the ambience without having to fully understand all details. Tate Kwan’s Latent Belonging is an experiment with the power of data abstraction: what could machine learning do? Training with a few hundred family photos, she dives into the invisible space of her data’s unseen “appearances,” transforming intimate memorabilias into unknown musicality speaking affect of a different horizon.

Collectibles: LO Lai-lai Natalie, and Evi PSALTOU & team ANOMIA, two features

In this issue, we have also put together two features to explore individual artists or groups whose works have suggested what video essays could be.

In a way, one can only do justice to Natalie Lo’s works by understanding each as part of an ongoing series over time. Was her camera presence a result of her direct involvement in farming, or does farming raise new urgencies for how she and her imaging tools could participate? In this feature, we have collected excerpts of her numerous works to give DnVe readers, especially those overseas, to immerse in an imaginary journey of Lo’s thought paths and sensuosity. Hong Kong-based readers would probably have experienced her works in full in real-time running in numerous installation contexts.

In my last trip to Traverse Video (Toulouse, France), I was excited to meet Evi Psaltou via her performance, who then introduced me to dance videos she and her group ANOMIA have been accumulating. As a dancer herself, Psaltou’s understanding of dance video is auto-ethnographic, turning properly choreographed dancing into dance-like movements blended into everyday objects, urban spaces and on-the-spot affective displays, without losing the rigor and crafts of dancing. Call it dance video or not, our ANOMIA selection here suggests a notion of the essay that does not follow thoughts, but an evolving process of breathing that defies metric tempering. Rather the documented movements for the camera connects directly to a kind of vitalism, or, say, self-determining impulse to live.

The Provisional Imaginary 暫擬設證

The provisional in the “provisional imaginary” is not about being temporary or short-term, but the possibility of forward and multilateral flows, the performative power of enacting what is potential and probable. Closure could be a psychological necessity, as in wounds healing and stories resolved with an affirmative denouement. The provisional embraces and generates the imaginary, inviting a different mentality: take off, adventure, be curious; trust our senses, share experiences of our own to connect with others’ experiences and, last of all, revitalise the technics provided to us.

The provisional state challenges the image that is often reduced to “imagery” and, instead, emphasises the ambience and aura of the material image. But each image is a state in the process of becoming, embodying potential iterations of its material form. And yet an image is no pure technical facts – it is an episode of a phenomenon impregnated with what is about to unfold via technical affordances.

Linda Chiu-han Lai 黎肖嫻, General Editor / Selector | 30 November 2023

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Editorial Team:

Linda Lai, John Chow, WONG Chun-hoi