How 'Memory' influenced my works
The concept of Memory palyed a significant role in determining the direction and topics of my works in the first and second self-initiated projects.
Memory, as a part our essential cognitive ability, is crucial in shaping our life patterns and identities, which estalishes the continuity between the past, the present and the future. Individual and collective memory interact with each other and altogether provided a unique archiving resource for the traces of our personal and social life. The preservation of memory cannot be realized without documentation throguh certain media, which could be texts, still and moving images, audio recordings and so on.
I conduct one of the resolved works in my first self-initiated project through photocopying the body parts of me and my partner, particularly the facial features. The increasing popularity of photoshop and beauty modes to remove the facial and bodily imperfection perceived by people before they publish them in the social media in order to draw attention and get 'likes' and comments from other people made me reflect whether the photographyic images are still reliable in presenting figures with originality and authenticity. Photography is gradually losing its absolute power in capturing the very moment and preserving our memories. I shifted my attention to photocopying since the images from the printer will not be subject to any intentional modification at least during its production. Why not use photocopying to create a series of images of the human body parts? In a completely dark environment? The images might be partially vague due to the limitation of the printers in terms of the high requirement that the copying and scanning objects have to be closely attached to the surface of the printer, however, the beauty and ugliness of the body parts will have the equal opportunities to be produced and revealed. The preservation of memory is in a dynamic and constanly changing process owing to our unconscious selection of forgetting and remembrance and also the renewing and updating interpretation of the same event. Could we still entirely preserve a piece of memory? Probably not. I hope this practice of body photocopying can authntically document how the body really looks like, even just for that moment.
In the second project, I decided to explore the theme of commonly shared contemporary social life, which will constitue our collective memory in the future. For so many people, their life is locked into the socially acknowledged norms and standards, and their daily routine and schedule made up an endless repetition and unsolvable loop of actually just 'one-day' life. Although we move on to the next day with the definite sameness, but the feeling of 'never really lived' is real and intensive in its existence. Modernization is killing diversity! The standard life styles created by modernization is homogenizing people who originally have different definitions of happiness and well-being. Consumerism deprived us of the rights to enjoy the spiritual advancement, and we are materialized by the commodities we exceedingly purchased. In other words, it is not shopping, entertaining and consuming brought us the sense of happiness and fulfillment, but it is us who are enslaved by the materialism-doninated world. We conquered the nature and established the human society, but we are in a dangerous process of alienating ourselves from nature, which eternally provides the very foundation of our survival and existence, by environmental pollutions, endangering biodiversity, breaking the ecosystem balance and so on. What shapes our collective memory of the modern society probably will be an unconscious process of self-destruction. Although most of us is currently experiencing this process, however, we are completely blinded by what we achieved and what we are temporarily.
Memory, as a part our essential cognitive ability, is crucial in shaping our life patterns and identities, which estalishes the continuity between the past, the present and the future. Individual and collective memory interact with each other and altogether provided a unique archiving resource for the traces of our personal and social life. The preservation of memory cannot be realized without documentation throguh certain media, which could be texts, still and moving images, audio recordings and so on.
I conduct one of the resolved works in my first self-initiated project through photocopying the body parts of me and my partner, particularly the facial features. The increasing popularity of photoshop and beauty modes to remove the facial and bodily imperfection perceived by people before they publish them in the social media in order to draw attention and get 'likes' and comments from other people made me reflect whether the photographyic images are still reliable in presenting figures with originality and authenticity. Photography is gradually losing its absolute power in capturing the very moment and preserving our memories. I shifted my attention to photocopying since the images from the printer will not be subject to any intentional modification at least during its production. Why not use photocopying to create a series of images of the human body parts? In a completely dark environment? The images might be partially vague due to the limitation of the printers in terms of the high requirement that the copying and scanning objects have to be closely attached to the surface of the printer, however, the beauty and ugliness of the body parts will have the equal opportunities to be produced and revealed. The preservation of memory is in a dynamic and constanly changing process owing to our unconscious selection of forgetting and remembrance and also the renewing and updating interpretation of the same event. Could we still entirely preserve a piece of memory? Probably not. I hope this practice of body photocopying can authntically document how the body really looks like, even just for that moment.
In the second project, I decided to explore the theme of commonly shared contemporary social life, which will constitue our collective memory in the future. For so many people, their life is locked into the socially acknowledged norms and standards, and their daily routine and schedule made up an endless repetition and unsolvable loop of actually just 'one-day' life. Although we move on to the next day with the definite sameness, but the feeling of 'never really lived' is real and intensive in its existence. Modernization is killing diversity! The standard life styles created by modernization is homogenizing people who originally have different definitions of happiness and well-being. Consumerism deprived us of the rights to enjoy the spiritual advancement, and we are materialized by the commodities we exceedingly purchased. In other words, it is not shopping, entertaining and consuming brought us the sense of happiness and fulfillment, but it is us who are enslaved by the materialism-doninated world. We conquered the nature and established the human society, but we are in a dangerous process of alienating ourselves from nature, which eternally provides the very foundation of our survival and existence, by environmental pollutions, endangering biodiversity, breaking the ecosystem balance and so on. What shapes our collective memory of the modern society probably will be an unconscious process of self-destruction. Although most of us is currently experiencing this process, however, we are completely blinded by what we achieved and what we are temporarily.
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