I got an idea on how to direct the video. I will show two of my performance videos first then add some explanation videos into them. The scene will be the sea. The camera will at the back of me, just showing half of my back and then through my back showing the whole sea. I will not face to the video during my whole talk. I think it is a meaningful scene linked to my other two videos.
The theme of my performance video is about choices. The choice is a state of life that is continuous and constantly changing. In the face of the crossroads of options, we can only choose one path. The other roads will become parallel worlds that we can never truly see. The same rule is in the entire human society. People also like to make assumptions behind the conclusions of the history book: If anyone does not do this, what will happen. But this assumption will never occur.
The whole thinking process reminds me of a metaphor: life is like a dream. It is what we have chosen and have not chosen that make our own lives and the development of the entire human society. And those regrets will be the delusions after waking up from dreams. Finally, I chose the sea as a background element because it represents the origin of life and the concept of infinity. I wear black clothes with barefoot to show a natural state of life. In the beginning, I climbed from the beach to the beach, reflecting the origin of life and exploration. Then I crawled hard along the footprints of my predecessors on the beach, that is, I was careful in the experience of my predecessors. Finally, I stood up and could see more choices. In the end, I slowly walked out of the scene and walked toward the farther beach, representing the qualitative change in life by choices.
Time/Moments
My project is about time and moments. I inspired from Edward Hopper, who is an America realism painter and Chinese filmmaker Karwai Wang. Through Their artworks, I always impress by a sense of loneliness through simple street scene or people. They are both good at conveying feelings and capturing moments through ordinary stuff.
In my photos, I also care about uncatchable feelings and focus on light and composition. I always know that time is just there. We can’t grasp it. All I can do is just enjoy and record moments that impress me a lot.
The light and angle remind me of Hopper’s paintings.
I always find that there are some beauty and harmony in these simple structures. Even if one day, no one will come and see the artworks in this building, the building itself is a piece of art. It records time and beauty.
The old underground subway brings me a sense of flow in time.
A sense of urban life.
And these are my paintings of last year.
Processed with MOLDIV
Processed with MOLDIV
Processed with MOLDIV
Robert Adams
Possibly this is what Adams means by “untranslatable mystery”: not merely that the world is mysterious but that a photograph can be, too, not as a translation but as a new statement, faithful to its own form. This is one part that touched me from Teju Cole’s article. We can see that what Adam pictured are usual scenes like natural environment in California and Highways. But they are unique in a way. They are hopeful and peaceful within the gray tune created by Adams.
“What Can We Believe Where?”: “Along the way, however, the camera also caught evidence against hope, and I eventually concluded that this too belonged in pictures if they were to be truthful and thus useful.” And this talks about a new question on what if pictures cannot bring us hope. And it talks about the truth showing in photos. And I felt that the real power of hope. No matter what the themes are, these photos will shine in their unique way only if they express real power.
We See the World without Seeing
When I was doing my research, I realized that the world of the blind people I imagined before is very different from their real world. This is the first time I have truly entered the world of the blind. Two of the truths deeply shocked me.
The first one is the awareness of “black”. “I would be happy if I knew what black is.” This is what a blind person said in an interview. The world of the blind is colorless. For congenital blind people, they don’t have the ability to “see”. they can never really understand what “black” is. “Black” is the visual perception of an environment without light and is the result of a “seeing”. People who completely lose their visual function do not know what is black. The person whose eyes has no ability to the light, has no sense to black, except sound, smell, and so on.
The second point is the perception of the blind person to the world. For example, when I was watching an interview, the host asked a blind girl how she imagined the hot of summer. She said she would think of a telephone pole under the sun, it must be very hot. Based on these two points, I took a set of photos to show the world from the “view” of the blind.
A leaf fallen
The snow is melting
Feeling the cold of winter
I had a really good experience on the Art Crawl. I found some interesting things that I never know before this trip.
In Wang Center, I explored the Chinese Buddhist Art and Architecture in the Digital Era. It is much more vivid when traditional art meets modern technology. Visual reality brings interest to the art. And I also want to say that the design in wang center is really aesthetic. I notice that the is really peaceful and the light is perfect.
And then I had a wonderful gallery experience in Zuccaire Gallery in Staller Center. “Faculty Exhibition 2018” is going on. I saw these brilliant artworks carefully and got a lot of inspiration.
And after that we went to the library, where we are very familiar with. But from a different angle, we as a visitor, I had some new experience. In North Reading Room, Stony Brook University Libraries and the student Fine Arts Organization proudly announce the newest installment showcasing eco-friendly artwork created by SBU students. And in Central Reading Room, the show “Deported: An American Division” is going on. Rachel Woolf is a Detroit-based independent visual journalist and winner of the 2018 ART WORKS Emerging Lens Mentorship Program. She specializes in documentary photography, videography and portraiture. Her work aims to intimately show aspects of humanity intersecting with economic and social issues. This exhibit depicts the experience of Lourdes Salazar Bautista and her children as she was deported to Mexico.
And the last destination is Simon Center. I rarely went to this center and this time I had a full-scale view of Simon Center. The Simons Center for Geometry and Physics Art and Science Program at Stony Brook University is an ambitious outreach program connecting artists, scientists, and the community at large. The Simons Center Gallery goals include hosting intellectually inquisitive art by internationally acclaimed artists and scientists working at the intersection of art, science, and technology. The exhibitions and events at the Simons Center Gallery feature unique artistic and scientific concepts accessible through a broad range of media for meaningful experiences that ignite imagination and inspire ideas.
Processed with MOLDIV
Processed with MOLDIV
Processed with MOLDIV
“Photography is about a single point of a moment. It’s like stopping time. As everything gets condensed in that forced instant. But if you keep creating these points, they form a line which reflects your life.” – Araki
When I really started shooting, I found that taking portraiture was different from what I had imagined before. I used to think that portrait should make people look beautiful, whatever face or body angle. And it is like magazine style. Later, I find that the most important thing is to record an instant moment which can reflect a certain characteristic of the person.
Portrait photography does not necessarily reflect beauty, but it must reflect reality. That’s what I learn from the portraiture study. At the same time, portrait photography is not only the body of a traditional person who is in a stereotype, but also a part of the body. It can also be something related to this person or a scene that indirectly reflects this person and what he wants to express
Part 1: Friends
Zed Li
Siyi Chen
Part 2: Strangers
Part 3: Self-portrait
