/ Video Sandbox I：What you forgot

—— Discourse on Video Sandbox I: What You Forgot ——

The most frequent subject of my grandfather’s photos was the harbor, but before he passed away, he discarded all the photos, and the ones left behind are those he forgot to throw away. I was never at the scenes when the pictures were taken, but I am very familiar with them. They are the places I grow up in. I visited them according to the photos he left behind, and I used his camera to take photos of those spots.

We were sharing the same place, the cameras, viewpoints, behaviors. The photos by me and him overlap in different time and space. As the photos capture three-dimensional spaces, I tried to create almost the same plane, but I couldn’t ensure that the three-dimensional space I captured was the same as that by my grandfather. The only memory we share together is in the photos, and I could only try to imagine whether the shooting process is the same. I will never be able to dig up the past, and everything can only be pieced together through imagination.

There is a distance between my photo and grandpa’s. I tried to get close but couldn’t, as there is a huge gap in between. I imagined how grandpa felt at that time, but there is still something unclear. Hence, I try to bring that distance between the two photos into the present space.

I use artificial objects such as stainless steel plates and reflections from projected images to simulate the glittering sun on the sea surface. The science behind the two is similar, but not the same.

The laws of physics here are just for representing the scenes when grandpa took those pictures, and these efforts are merely to support imaginations that won’t get any response.

As I try to connect with the time and space of the past, the same places from different times remain disconnected, and the distance and time in between take form here. Perhaps, what lies between the two is “time” itself. That “time” doesn’t exist in any time and space and hides only in human’s memory for matters.

Reflected by the stainless steel plates, the projector light diffuses and occupies the room as it flows, making an interior space that is not disturbed by external things. It’s a space that cannot be intervened by other natural phenomena and one that has its own time. Human beings perceive the flow of time through wind, light, and tides, but there is no wind in this space, but only artificial light and unmoving tides. The entire indoor setup renders the exhibition “staged.” The time in this space is no longer perceived in an objective way, but it becomes an imagination and a fragment of memory; in other words, a theatrical futile reproduction without any reference.

With unmoving pictures and flowing sounds, time is frozen in this space, but with the illusion of it still running by.