text by Yuan Goang-Ming
The first time, the students occupied the Taiwan's parliament for 585 hours in 2014.
Two days prior to the students' withdrawal from the Legislative Yuan, a graduate student gave me a telephone call, inviting me to film a documentary on the student movement. She expected me to capture some eye-catching images in the form of video art, and told me that these images will be turned into the material for editing the English version of "Island's Sunrise," a music video dedicated to the student movement. I slightly hesitated at that time, but eventually agreed to her request. My concern was that I have to drop my insistence on creating new realities of "viewing" and objection against the "illustration-based narratives of issues" if I am asked for representing the original scene. With the consent from and security check by the students on-site, I installed a steel wire rope and a video camera to record the scene before the eve of students' withdrawal.
The chamber of the Legislative Yuan resembles a stable triangle composition or half of the Colosseum. The perspectival focus of this place locates on the rostrum and the portrait of Sun Yet-Sen, below which the hours of students' occupation is marked. The soundtrack of this documentary is derived from our national anthem, a song symbolizes the eternity of our country. I slow down the playback speed of the anthem and reverse it, turning the chamber into a church pervading a sacred and sacrificial atmosphere. As a result, time flies back and forth among the past, present, and future, as well as among abundance, dilapidation and void.
The linear scan of the unoccupied chamber enables and compels us to review the objects that previously do not belong to this place, for example, the video cameras on tripods, backpacks, jackets, food, drinks, banners of declarations, and posters and oil paintings created on-site. These objects that outline the background of this venue, exhibit the pattern and odor of the movement all inspire the imagination of the future development after the withdrawal. In other words, this space fosters non-linear senses of time and history. This vanishing ephemeral scenery transforms the chamber which is made familiar to us by the mass media into a spectacle soberer or more magnificent than the media spectacle. |
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