The question of who decides which memories a site preserves is never innocent.
States erect monuments to enshrine official versions of the past, and developers rejuvenate cities, sometimes sweeping away the communities that once lived there. Adapted from an essay by Evelyn Char and directed by Steve Chen, In the Space of Trauma asks what these forces feel like up close as a daughter and her father return to an old neighbourhood, a woman sells visions of home built over demolished ones, and a parable of fathers and sons is offered in a language its listener may not share. Only at the film’s close do four works from the M+ Collections surface.
Wang Dahong’s architectural model for the National Dr Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall (1965–1972) reveals a design quite different from the building that now stands in Taipei, which ultimately gave way to political demands for a more traditionally Chinese appearance. Chen Chieh-Jen filmed Military Court and Prison (2007–2008) at a decommissioned court that was in the process of becoming a human rights memorial. Its nameless political prisoners drift through the space, raising the question of whether what happened in those rooms truly ended when martial law did.
We came here together this morning, but I can’t find him now.
Hsu Chia-Wei’s Ruins of the Intelligence Bureau (2015) travels to Chiang Rai, Thailand, the site of a Cold War intelligence facility. A Hanuman puppet play echoes the fate of Kuomintang veterans abandoned between nations. Sopheap Pich’s Compound (2011) takes another approach: bamboo, rattan, and metal recycled from bomb shells evoke both high-rises and weaponry, materialising the violence within Phnom Penh’s rapid redevelopment.
Together, the film’s fictional lives insist that no demolition is ever complete.
About Cross-Cuts
Cross-Cuts is a video essay series from M+ that cuts across curatorial disciplines—visual art, moving image, and design and architecture—to draw unexpected connections between works in the museum’s collections. Each episode pairs a writer from outside of M+ with a video director, weaving objects together under a shared theme.