Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening S戈中日尸ilas Fong
Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
雪夜林邊 S戈中日尸ilas Fong
方琛宇
The Freedom to Be Still Hera Chan The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. — excerpt from Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening The text of the poem was written in one fell swoop after Frost stayed up all evening till sunrise. It describes the internal musings of a lone rider, taking pause to watch the snow drifting in the woods. This pause can only be kept for a moment, with the rider reminding himself of his promises to keep. Often used in eulogies, this poem captures the spirit of Silas Fong’s work, which acts as a soft reflection of the possibilities of slowness within urban life in Hong Kong. In mobilizing the trappings of expanded cinema, Fong produces an installation that creates breathing space and experiments on the feeling of being in time. As a prime example of where accelerationist ideals can be taken to its maximum, the fantasy of stillness becomes a radical gesture. Fong describes his creative process as one that emerges from boredom, where one’s mind is not directed by neon signs but by nuances in shifting sunlight. It is a quest for the freedom to be still.
In speaking of duration, it is always referred to as a deeply felt time. Duration is time embodied, usually in a feat of endurance. The differential temporality and differentiation of time will be taken up by privileging the embodied rather than finding its clarity in spatialization. The confusion of temporality – defined more hegemonically in its quantification, and more nebulous and unrecognized in the form of qualitative heartbeats – is that in all that, it still marches forward. Then, to resist the spatialization of time would be a refusal in bracketing off the past, present, and future as separate ropes, for they actually form an entanglement. In a banal conversation, duration becomes a form of endurance, giving the semblance that for time to be felt, it must be a form of suffering. People are deemed to be ‘taking up space’ in discourse, yet what they are really doing is taking up time. Historical memory and trauma is attached to the materiality of physical space, yet the vocabulary for describing the sense of shared time remains evacuated. Space is considered to be given and and taken up, yet time must be managed and harnessed. As Adrian Heathfield asks, “what does it mean for an artwork to present life, to be a life, or to remain in the present tense?” Through slow-moving videos, images, and objects that are oft missed, Fong creates an encounter with the everyday in a controlled environment to allow the visitor to be with the urban in a different way. Many of the images are personal to Fong, and he brings in three textual perspectives (including this one) to obscure this narrative of his memories, opening them up to be shared. Bringing in media art theory into more traditional image-making practices, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening employs a light touch in a grand gesture toward a place where we can choose to be still.
Silas Fong (b.1985) is a contemporary artist born in Hong Kong. He furthered his studies in Academy of Media Arts Cologne from 2013- 2015. He received his MFA from Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2012 and BA from Hong Kong Baptist University in 2008. His video, installation and photographic works have been invited to be presented in exhibitions and festivals including Hong Kong Museum of Art, Goethe-Institut Hongkong, Alternative Space Loop, Seoul International New Media Festival 2011, Taipei Soka Art Center, City Gallery Wellington, ZKM, Saatchi Gallery London, Liverpool Biennial 2010, Dresden Cynetart 2013, Microwave International New Media Festival and Animamix Biennale. Fong is invited to work as Assistant Professor in the Department of Photography, College of Arts, Chung-Ang University in Seoul starting from September 2017. He currently lives and works in Hong Kong and Seoul. 方琛宇生於1985年,是香港土生土長的當代藝術家。2013-2015 到德國科隆媒
體藝術學院進修。2012年於香港中文大學藝術系取得藝術創作碩士學位。2008 年於香港浸會大學視覺藝術院畢業。他的錄像、裝置及攝影作品受邀參與多個 展覽及藝術節,包括香港藝術館、香港歌德學院、Alternative space Loop、首
爾新媒藝術節、台北索加藝術中心、威靈頓市立美術館、卡爾斯魯厄藝術與媒 體中心、Saatchi Gallery London、利物浦雙年展2010、德累斯頓媒體藝術節
CYNETart、微波國際新媒體藝術節2013及動漫美學雙年展。於2017年9月開始, 方琛宇受邀於韓國首爾中央大學藝術學院攝影系出任助理教授。 他目前在香港及首爾居住和工作。 www.silasfong.com
Published by
S戈中日尸ilas Fong
方琛宇 on the occasion of the exhibition FUSE Artist Residency:
Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
雪夜林邊 2 February - 11 March 2018
T反he artist would like to thank: Hera Chan Joseph Chen King Yuen Leo Cheng Ken Chung Hye Kyoung Kwon Isaac Leung Fei Liu Kelvin Yiu 錄映太奇
Unit 13, Cattle Depot Artist Village 63 Ma Tau Kok, To Kwa Wan, Kowloon Hong Kong 12:00-19:00, Mon木日卜day - Sunday
Supported by
資助
「香港藝術發展局全力支持藝術表達自由，本計劃內容並不反映本局意見。」 “Hong Kong Arts Development Council fully supports freedom of artistic expression. The views and opinions expressed in this project do not represent the stand of the Council.”
© 2018 The artist and the authors All rights reserved.