When thinking about this piece, I break it down into three types of circulation: the circulation of capital and goods around the world (“import, export”), the circulation of images via online networks (“poor copies in motion”), and lastly, the circulation of myself around the globe as my family moved to follow my dad’s job (“home”). Implicitly I am always discussing a sense of home, whether that is site-specific, or portable and seemingly divorced from geometric space. Home and memory are inextricably linked, and what dictates our access to memory may by extension also dictate our access to “home”. Format, location, and maintenance are all important aspects of memory.
Almost more important than the content of the piece, is its presentation: three CRTs stacked on top of a moving cart. With the inclusion of a spotlight, the piece is meant to feel sculptural, monumental, and singular – yet at any moment, the cart can be moved. The fictional character may return to gather their things and keep moving.
The overall tone and atmosphere of this piece is one of dissociation: dissociation from place, culture, time zone. For a journey to be as frictionless as possible, places of transit must be clear, efficient, and fit industrial standards. Cityscapes shift so rapidly and blend together to the point where you cannot distinguish Paris from Los Angeles, or Hong Kong from Toronto. There is a clear routine to emigration: check in, go through security, line up at the gate, wait to board. I was drawn to the aesthetics of airports, which are vast and sterile, and how one might find a sense of home in sites of transit. The visuals are overwhelmingly blue, black and white, registering as cold and depersonalized. At the same time, there are subtle moments of embodiment, through the presence of hands and fingertips, which compress space and time with hand-tracking models. A glimpse of a familiar movie DVD might ground you for a second. The double meaning of landmarks, on the body and in the world, continues through the mapping of cities I’ve lived in. Space is represented through lines and points, which are forever shifting in scale. Despite the attempt to make sense of the world through maps and numbers, these distances cannot be felt from an airplane; the body does not register how far it travels. There is cognitive dissonance.