Films
Fragments of Memory
2024
Memories are unreliable. As time goes by, it becomes more faded and fragmented, lost in the stream of other memories. The footage used in this film is from my childhood videos, manipulated with the kaleidoscopic effect to enhance the perception of this particular piece of memory. Once again, it becomes more vivid than ever but this time in a different form. The visual is gradually mirrored over more planes, and it gets more and more abstract to the point that you no longer see it as a portrayal of particular events. Rather, you see this memory in a new way, as though it becomes only a brush stroke in another painting. The complexity and the fragmentation of the images contrast with the simplicity and the wholeness of the moment captured. Although the picture seems abstract, it is not just randomness. Every form and colour that composes it nevertheless results from the recorded instance of something that actually happened, just like how the different patterns we see as the kaleidoscope turns are made up of the very same beads. Each time we recall a memory from the past, we are reconstructing it from a whole network of feelings, senses and other related memories. Hence there is always variation in the new narrative, just like how no single frame is the same. Because of past experiences, sometimes we also find ourselves recognizing parts of objects or people that appear in the film despite them already being distorted and fragmented. The silly dialogue between two kids and a monologue of my young self brings us back to the childhood world. Similarly, the sound is increasingly manipulated and difficult to make sense of. The speed and pitch of each element are intentionally raised to create an almost overwhelming experience at the end.
-1
2024
No one lives forever. People who lived yesterday may not live tomorrow. This film is about the passing of time. As time goes by, people start to disappear one by one, leaving the rest of them who may be family, friends or strangers behind. The same scene becomes different when someone is missing. Eventually, only the landscape or buildings in the background remain. By only using still images, a sense of time passing can still be conveyed through a specific arrangement of sequence and changes among those images. In fact, the stillness is what amplifies the disappearance of people and the emptiness of space.