Up : the video < An Hour In 2014/07/03, My Mom Is Waiting For Me In 2014 Taipei SAT Exam Hall> in < HOUR HOUR > project
Description
< HOUR HOUR > is a multi-channels video installation. The duration is one hour, divided into ten parts of six minutes clips. All videos would project in a huge dark room to create a tour that talks about some specific hours which happened in my and my friends’ life.
All the hours are about some activities we participate in and follow tutors / guides / rules. By filming those hours, such as a one hour after school course in cram schools, or a whole hour waiting in a long line for famous restaurants, the project < HOUR HOUR > is trying to focus on those hour activities that help to construct an experience of Taiwanese society and culture, and the way Taiwanese are educated and socially shaped. At the same time, there is also a focus on the individual’s act of participation as a response to these hours, showing the way the individual shapes one’s life and expresses one’s values within the social order.
Up : the video < An Hour at 2015/01/27, My Mom and My Nephew Who is Wearing My Old Baby Suit Are Napping > in < HOUR HOUR > project
Concept
The idea of filming the project < HOUR HOUR > comes from the observation of contemporary society in Taiwan, and the interaction and reaction between the citizens and the island’s unique political status and complicated history.
As a society, Taiwan seems to be in a state of waiting. Due to the international political situation and the colonization history, the public issue always is distant from the everyday lives of citizens. And on a personal level, I see my friends, my family and myself often in states of waiting, the admonitions from earlier generation are always about holding your decisions and working hard, anticipating the better future to come. This idea of waiting seems to be enforced in the social institutions and cultural experiences of Taiwanese people. We are spectators, observing in a perpetual state of waiting.
< HOUR HOUR > is a quasi-docudrama, quasi-portraiture, and a quasi-tour. All the clips I’m going to film are from my past and current experiences as a Taiwanese citizen. Working with my friends and family members as the characters, we join various one hour activities in Taiwan ( and join some activities here in Chicago as the “ Tourist Part “ ), participating them again and again to build a strange relationship between narrative fiction and documentary. The re-enactment, re-interpolation, repetition and recording of the filming progress constructs an interface about how the subjects of the videos are portrayed as spectators in their own society, or how society turns its subjects into spectators. There is no dramatic story in all the clips, but the clips become different layers in the multi-video installation in the dark space. When the audiences enter the space, it turn into another one hour tour that shows how this experience gets doubled inside the viewer - two experiences of watching and waiting happening in parallel.
Up : the video < An Hour In 2015/01/27, My Dad Is Going To Meet My Mom At Their Meet Point Near Taipei Bridge In 2014> in < HOUR HOUR > project
Up : the video < An Hour In 2013/10/15,10/17,10/23,10/25,10/27 My Friend Hsinyen, Chen Chen and I in Chicago Art Museum One Hour Tour> in < HOUR HOUR > project