Exhibitions.
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Through the narration of three parallel stories from the same time period, ‘孕/yùn/’ attempts to engage the visual and auditory senses in order to create different tactile sensations in the imagination. Life is constantly being reawakened through the prism of the imagination, and as new lives longing for freedom, countless lives fallen at the same time. Every life has been conceived, and there is also the possibility of giving birth to the other.
Throughout the film, we try to explore the relationship between giving birth and being conceived from different perspectives. Mother, as one of the important identities of women, takes on the responsibility of the family, while the shackles also appear.
Now, we have seen countless women break through these layers and regain their relative freedom as ‘mothers’. They are nurturing life, but also nurturing the self under new identities.
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Tibetan monks are called Zaba for men and Juemu for women. Juemu Island, located in Baiyu County, Sichuan, China, where all practitioners are women. Family, relationship, environment, and personal beliefs are the main reasons for them to become monks. Become Juemu, means they will lived far from the world. They studied scriptures, prayed devoutly, abide by the commandments on the island, to be closer to their ideal world with a holy heart.
Juemu is isolated from the world at a certain time every year, and practice in seclusion alone. Isolation practice can be as short as 32 days, and the longer practice can be three months or more. Some Juemu even prayed in seclusion for life until they passed away. They are praying in thousands of red boxes standing in the mountains. For them, these tiny houses built by their own hands give them the possibility of isolation and the sustenance of their beliefs. The space inside is a world of peace and no disturbance, a world outside of freedom.
The red ladder points to the direction of belief. Like Juemu’s praying, she sits quietly in the space, allowing her consciousness to transcend the space and float to the distance where belief is located.
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The short film <Yesterday Once More>, is based on the imagination of future Cyber world and advance technology, combine with the emotions existing in the current world. In the process of human development, man-made disasters are unable to prevent. Due to inability and despair in front of disasters, the company YOM in the Cyber world gives people the opportunity to go back to their memory again.
The combination with AI allows people to freely make different choices and imaginations in their memory scenes. This can be regarded as a way of yearning, but at the same time, it cannot change the real past. Even if people have the chance to go back to the past to make multiple choices, they still cannot change the results that have occurred. This is the sorrow given by Cyborg from our understanding.
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Many times, in the process of confiding, what we need is not the respond, but to listen. Just knowing there is someone listening.
Like a baby in mother’s womb, the sound in the first nine months of life is the sound of the mother’s heartbeat, which is the first and only sound we hear before we come into the world. In a space with only the sound of heartbeats, it is easier for us to let go of our defences and confide with the sense of safety. These heartbeats are not only a signal to listen, but also a kind of encouragement without any judgements. They are minimal responses, because any thoughtful words can bring opinions, and can amount to taking a stand.
In the process of self-discovery, just confiding itself can reconnect us with the real self and allow us to find back our voice.
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“The technology that connects us also controls us” (The Social Dilemma, 2020).
In the modern digital world, personal data is no longer private, it has become merchandise that can be traded. Our information circulates in the digital world which has been clearly marked with a price. We are the merchandise itself. Whenever we open a website, it requires us to constantly accept “cookies”, hoping to obtain our personal privacy data, and monitoring us in the background, all the time. We receive promotion emails, advertising letters, spam, etc. These are all “cookies” made with our privacy as the raw material.
Thus, we hold a funeral for the phone, to escape the surveillance of the digital world, delete all software and information, wipe our privacy from the phone, reset it to factory settings, and everything goes back to its origin. The mobile phone without this software and information is no longer needed by us.
We can only be completely free by breaking away from the phone and the digital world that resides in it.
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