Single-channel video, 1’56’’
2023
Mistaking the Bloodshed for A Melodic Grassland Chase, Part III of the Constellation (2023) animation series, begins with found images of my childhood in a small township. The images record a past that occurred, but the drastic changes in my life while growing up created a distance between me and the child they depict.
In the animation, one childhood image occupies a hallway, tearing away from itself to the rhythm of sampled and remixed music. Within the virtuality, the memory bit acquires material qualities: a surface, a position, movement, and duration. The music, architecture, and atmosphere act upon it in turn, with the bit taking on a new situatedness.
This becoming-material is the central motif of Constellation. Across the series, animation exposes found bits to other sensibilities. Recollection works here as a non-narrative process of actualization in the Deleuzian sense: remnants of the lived past are given spatial form within an imagined virtuality and negotiate their relation to present reality.
Soundtrack sampled and remixed by Kristopher Yizhen Shi
Sample sources:
“Rêverie” by Claude Debussy, performed by François-Joël Thiollier
“Norman Fucking Rockwell” by Lana Del Rey
“グライド” by Lily Chou-Chou
“Modern Love” by David Bowie
“Claudia, Wilhelm R and Me” by Roberto Musci
“A&W” by Lana Del Rey
“葵” by betcover!!
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