"He stared at him, at himself, and his shadow(s) to be…
Our world could be re‐defined as motions within a 4x3 or 16x9 rectangular frame. One frame, many worlds. Many frames; one/many world(s)…"
(from originaal poem written by Linda Lai)
A Linda Lai video
Micro Narratives, a Visual Poem 微敘事。詩變
05.2017 / Hong Kong / 14m 49s / HD / aspect ratio 16:9 / color + b/w / Stereo sound
Original formats (RM): Hi-8, mini-DV, HD, various digital automatic camera and cell-phone formats, digital and analogue still photography, hand-drawings, found footage on YouTube
Synopsis
"Micro Narratives" (MNs) is a visual poem using the artist’s personal audio-visual archive (1999-2017). Poetry, automatic writings, doodles, photography, video diaries (covering seven world cities and various Hong Kong districts), and found-footage inserts from HK’s 1930s, create vast temporal, conceptual and audio-visual gaps spatialized in 15 minutes. Individual fragments are abbreviated quotations that form a concrete-yet-abstract mnemonic whole.
MNs call for refreshed attentiveness to a life world of micro processes. Our city’s hidden rhythms, minute movements, textures of the quotidian-material surfaces, nameless emotions and loose thoughts. No grand discourses, no calculated plot lines.
Montage is a performative game, and MN, a performed assemblage: diverse audio-visual fragments, modes of expressive-conceptual articulation and levels of sonification, and the collision of words with sights-and-sounds, form a network of connectivity, erasing incommensurability in conventional hierarchies. Visual-aural musicality highlights the presencing of labour, demolition and construction which underline the logic of progress.
A longer statement
Micro Narratives is a visual poem, a game of montage, using the artist’s personal audio-visual archive (1999-2017), which includes video diaries, still photography, poetry, automatic writings, doodles and so on, covering seven cities (Macao, Cambridge, London, Las Palmas, Singapore, Shanghai and Bilbao) and various locations in Hong Kong, as well as found-footage inserts from 1930s Hong Kong, to create vast temporal gaps spatialized in 15 minutes. Gaps highlight the conceptual space of the in-between and individual fragments – abbreviated quotations that form a mnemonic whole that requires live viewing.
"Micro Narratives” refer to a life world in which micro processes, as opposed to broad geographies and monumental history, require refreshed and stretched attentiveness – details of the perceivable, minute movements, textures of the quotidian, material and perceptual surfaces, nameless emotions and loose thoughts. No grand discourses, no calculated plot lines.
Montage to me is a performative game against our assumed comfort with routines. This work is a space of assemblage, in which a broad range of audio-visual documentary fragments, diverse modes of expressive-conceptual articulation, collision of words and sights-and-sounds, and different levels of sonification form a network of connectivity to enact the co-agency of humans and things, erasing incommensurability in conventional hierarchies. Discourse is displaced by visual-aural musicality that revolves around the use of fragments to highlight the presencing of labour, demolition and reconstruction which form the logic of progress.
“Micro Narratives” is a visual poem, using the artist’s video diaries (1999-2016), her automatic writings, doodles and poetry, covering Hong Kong, Shanghai and Las Palmas. Inserts from 1930s Hong Kong create vastness temporal gaps spatialized in 15 minutes. The life world comprises of micro processes, against the vastness of the world. Poetry, visual or in words, speaks against our settling with routines and habits. “Micro Narratives” calls for the opening up of our modes of attentiveness – attention to the details of the perceivable, minute movements, textures of the quotidian, of material surfaces, of emotions and loose thoughts that have escaped our naked eyes and informed perceptions. No monumental events, no grand discourses, no calculated plot lines, but…
CONCEPT
Calling the work a poem, I am yearning for liberated modes of visual discourses. I want to turn the burden of genre division into a dialogic journey, zooming in, zooming out, in search of patterns and oddities.
Call it diary or not. Call it experimental or not. Call it documentary call it drama…
Naming is empowering. Moving what is felt, one tumbles into the zone of conscious articulation. De-naming and re-naming result in audio-visual fragments’ presencing I here call it micro narratives. It is a frame that calls attention to flows and unseen potentiality. Points with possible conjoining… awaiting our (re-)invention.
Videography begins with being there gleaning, collecting, observing, reaction on the spot… Only montage brings in the full circle…
I also think of economist-minimalism, conservation and greenness in artistic creation. What do I do with shots that are obscure, shaky…? When taking images is everybody’s daily activities? What do we do with the unmanageably bulky data we accumulate? In contemporary videography, there is no such thing as a dirty shot. It is simply a seed awaiting – a purposeless document with many possibilities amounting to new purposes.
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Linda Chiu-han LAI, camera, montage, soundscape, voice performance
Theresa Junko Mikuriya, voice performance
Based on 2 poems by Linda Lai
Kattie Fan: recording of voice performance
Elliot Leung: piano fragments
Dialogue List [...]