The Vanished "Future City"

Place [Ⅰ] 

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by Cia Hsinyuan Lee

 

                   

   After a-year-long residence in Germany, I came back to Taiwan at the end of 2013. With expectation and joy settled down in Xinying Tainan, where I've grown up. However, what I felt was “something wrong” and not a sense of belonging but alienation. The unfamiliar perception made me to start an new exploring-project that I haven't done before. The project is without deadline limit and both contain life and create. Initially I named it “Place.” The main and crucial motivation was a demolished event. A wall with children’s painting on it and named the "Future City” was vanished. 

 

  Three years passed by, what the life under the variations of a place is? What caused the disappearance phenomena? The discover is still in progress, but the project appear a phase point in ways, so Place〔Ⅰ〕is ready to release. The presentation of exhibition divides the project progress into two part: prophase and later period.

 

  The prophase started from discovering the context of urban development and local history. Following the path of the written documents, the oral narration of local elders, the life of the locals and the deserted buildings, I attempt to fill the empty memory that I was absence. To contrast what I read and heard to the live scene is disappeared and changed, extend to the idea of connection and disconnection. Thus to respond above status become the main concern of my prophase’s work in early two year of the project.

 

Then comes the deeper quotes question: what exactly the disappearance is, that I face and perceive?

Is the world behind vanished when Alice impulsively follows the Rabbit? 

Is the attack by the playing cards gone when she wakes up?

Or is the loss of my autonomy when following the command to paint in the way that’s not mine? 

 

   In the later period, I attempt to digging and opening the misunderstanding and mistaken reputation through the process of writing the monologue. Moreover reproduce the status between wondering and respond, back and forth, then transform into visual works.

 

   The vanished “Future city”-Place [Ⅰ] begin from seeing the vanishment in present. Through the digging and scanning process, further discover the power and consciousness behind, and how the system or collective consciousness control and shape my ideology during my childhood. In city so-called the “place” shows particular sense of human geography. For me, the Place in this project [Ⅰ] is a world that can heal the trauma in reality, can understand the virtual attraction, can everything be in its place and is the power that make the liberty awake. And this world can only be reached through narration and recreate.             2016/11/11

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