Anchor and A Loose Thread — 錨，和懸絲
2019
Two-channel video installation
Dimensions variable
Dancers: Tso Han-Jie 左涵潔 and Mimi Chang 張心瑜
Sound Design: Supina Bytol and Conor O’Hanlon
Installation view at Young Art Space, Pier 2 Art Center
This project was created during an artist residency at Pier 2 Art Center, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Supported by Pier 2 Art Center, Bureau of Cultural Affairs, Kaohsiung City Government and Ministry of Culture (Taiwan)
︎︎︎please contact artist for online screener
To remember is to have an anchor for your belonging. Anchor and A Loose Thread explores elements of memory, its condition within the body and its image when materialised. In collaboration with dancers Tso Han Jie and Mimi Chang, Nikki Lam’s two-channel video examines the contradictory and entangled relationships between memories, the body and their records, both from within and through image documentation.
Anchor and A Loose Thread continues the artist's research into post-colonial hybridity through personal and collective memories. The work describes an exchange of memories between artist Nikki Lam and dancers Tso Han Jie and Mimi Chang. Lam drew on her personal histories of a multi-faceted identity (Hong Kong / Australian), and her ongoing investigations into the concept of belonging and remembering. Using elements such as object, site and poetry as provocations, Tso and Chang were invited to respond with movements from the past, reimagined, as well as gestures developed then and there, improvised.
Through rigorous translations at every part of the process—from English to Cantonese to Chinese, Lam is particularly interested in the untranslatable details. Repeatedly framing and re-framing Tso and Chang’s movements, either through shooting or editing, fragments of their memories are constantly re-considered. Between the artists, this process of materialising memory become a group exercise of recordings and translations. Of these records, historical sites such as Cijin Fort and Zongye stood quietly in reference to Taiwan’s past, while Tso and Chang personal stories informed their movements in relation to these locations. Stitching together a disjointed narrative, these elements question our ways to remember and to forget. A sort of remembering that echoes our/my/their memory through the looking glass.
Such is the post-colonial condition of memory.
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記憶是怎樣在身體裏面發生的
我的記憶，是在翻譯再翻譯之中忘記了的
一些很幼細的小動作丶
一些在關折之間磨擦著的
已忘記了的感覺。
How does memory materialise within the body?
After multiple translations
My memory is left with small, delicate gestures
Familiar sensation within my joints
Sensation, that is forgotten
記憶活在身體裡，
身體是記憶的延續
影像浮游在中間，
只有一條線在輕輕的繫着……
<錨，和懸絲> 這件作品探索組成記憶的元素，它如何存在身體裡，又如何透過影像具現。藝術家本次與舞者左涵潔、張心瑜合作，以雙頻道錄像形式呈現，透過畫面及影像紀錄，檢視記憶、身體與其留下的紀錄之間矛盾糾葛的關係。記憶，去記住些什麼，就能為自己歸屬何處下錨。但記憶是會變的。這件作品就是那兩者之間發生的一切。
在這空間裡，沒有什麼算是傳統的
因為傳統只是一些對過去的想像。
一些浪漫的情感
一些斷片，似有非無的是怎樣發生的？
像那紅當當的燈，是過年的還是中秋的？
記憶沒壞
眼前的卻似是而非。
記不起是誰的傳統，
都一樣。
那些身體上的矛盾，早已消失。
是同化了還是不記得，
我不清楚......
—
我們以過去時光殘留的分子組織記憶的團塊。那是氣味、聲光集結，隨時間在我們心中裹裝成形的破碎匯合。那些畫面不是可靠一致的，而是反映每一當下的心思─每一次的回想，我們身心會產生一組新的、符合當下形式的記憶，產製出一組組可隨用拋棄的版本。事實究竟為何、如何發生，已非關鍵；記憶是每一剎那。當我們試著從鏡頭捕捉那些畫面，那些被框定的、調動的、定義的，都成為自身的實證。
As you try to remember, molecules from the past find each other to form a cluster. A compilation of fragmented elements such as scent, sound and colours gather, and warp in our minds as time passes. Instead of a solid and consistent image, the cluster reflects only with your thoughts in the now. Every time you recall an image, your body and mind create a new, current form of that memory. The current form off that memory is a version that is almost disposable, an unique one-off. How it happened is no longer relevant. It is temporal and impermanent. When we try to capture such image through the camera lens, it is at once framed, shifted, defined, becomes its very own record.
Never repetition, only imagined records of the many pasts.
那些畫面並非復現，而是對諸繁昔日時光的想像。
Translation assisted by Betty Yang.