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M+, Hong Kong, © Linda Chiu-han Lai
On View
Mediatheque
Voices Seen, Images Heard 看得見的聲音，聽得見的形象
2009
Voices Seen, Images Heard assembles archival and fictional film clips, photographs, and sound into a collage-like history of Hong Kong, one that experiments with and reflects on its own construction. The artist’s thoughts appear as text on a black background or superimposed over the images, providing conceptual scaffolding for the sequences. Audio and video clips play in isolation or layered together; abrupt edits reinforce their fragmentary nature.
Linda Chiu-han Lai explains that she is ‘looking for the sights and sounds of Hong Kong’, including ‘small things’ ‘on the ground level’. At the same time, she acknowledges the impossibility of bridging our distance from the past, even through images. Several visual sources involve water: the floods and landslides that followed the 1966 monsoons; boats in harbour; and the architecture of the coastline, which Lai scans from a jet foil. Near the work’s close, Lai turns to the Star Ferry clock tower, a symbolically resonant modernist structure in the Central district that was demolished in 2006. She includes audio of the bell’s chimes and video of protests against its destruction, calling attention to an act of disappearance in progress.
Linda Chiu-han Lai explains that she is ‘looking for the sights and sounds of Hong Kong’, including ‘small things’ ‘on the ground level’. At the same time, she acknowledges the impossibility of bridging our distance from the past, even through images. Several visual sources involve water: the floods and landslides that followed the 1966 monsoons; boats in harbour; and the architecture of the coastline, which Lai scans from a jet foil. Near the work’s close, Lai turns to the Star Ferry clock tower, a symbolically resonant modernist structure in the Central district that was demolished in 2006. She includes audio of the bell’s chimes and video of protests against its destruction, calling attention to an act of disappearance in progress.
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