Video
Braiding Memories, 2023
Memories and experiences formed me. They shaped my identity and assisted my decisions. Using physical lines to connect with my body provides a concrete visual effect. The paintings are hanging by my side, which form an abstract space where I stand in the middle. The materials are suspended by hemp rope, fringed rubber band, jeans fabric, and yarn, from each painting, and are gathered in the middle. When I braid the lines on my dress, and as the rope and paintings sway as I move, the connection between my past and present self are revealed. In the end, I cut the dress and leave it on the floor, which symbolizes that I am stepping into a new life stage. Although the environment is changing as I grow, the memories are always there, and when I step back into this space, my memories will give me power.
Pouring Water
Pouring Water
2024
倒水
这个作品呈现出一种没有剪辑的状态，因为想要尽可能贴近无剪辑的现实生活。当我早上像往常一样把做开的水灌进我的水壶里时，我开始思考我这辈子花了多少时间在每天倒水做水喝水上呢？这些动作每天可能就花几分钟甚至几秒的时间。但如果每天都按一分钟计算，那在19年中的4.8天我都在倒水。
我们不会对下意识没有思考的行为有太多记忆，我甚至都不会太注意到我倒了几次水喝了几杯水重复了几次这让的动作。但当我把几次倒水的动作重复起来，中间不停歇时，我的手在几轮后会不受控制的颤抖。倒水不会花多少力气，但我可以清晰的感受到因重复而累积起来的重量。就像时间也一样有重量。
我认为水也是时间，是某一种时间的载体。当水从一个容器倒入另一个容器时，水流的过程是一种时间的记录，是时间在现实世界中的形状，是时间的流逝。
The question of how much time I have spent on pouring water, boiling water, filling my bottles, and drinking water in my life appeared when I repeated the action of filling my water bottle one day. Perhaps just a few minutes or seconds each day. If I just used one minute every day, then that is 4.8 days of me pouring water in the past 19 years.
We do not have much memories of the subconscious, thoughtless actions we did. I do not even pay much attention to how many times I've poured water, drunk water, or repeated these actions. While when I repeat pouring water several times without stopping, my hands start trembling after a few rounds. It doesn't take much effort for each action, but it accumulates over time, as weighty as time itself.
Water is also a form of time. When water flows from one container to another, the flowing process is like the physical form of time, in which the motion in the air is a recurrence of the passage of time.
.- ..- - .... --- .-. ... .... .. .--.
.- ..- - .... --- .-. ... .... .. .--.
Would You Be Willing to Give Up Some Extent of Authorship Because the Other Creator Is Your Partner?
2024
Collaboration with Frank Du
Would you be willing to give up some extent of authorship because the other creator is your partner?
Melissa:
No, but when differentiation becomes challenging, then yes. There's still individuality in a relationship, it is still two independent humans who have independent thoughts, and thus one's efforts should not be erased, overshadowed, or attributed by another entity only because they have a romantic bond.
Frank:
Unlikely, and unlikely under any circumstance. My conviction is that the ideas of authorship and relationship are not so intertwined as one has to make any form of sacrifice, and in fact, authorship should always remain well-defined within a relationship so that the acknowledgement goes to the right person.
In this piece, we explore the question around authorship collaboratively. We transform our answers toward this question as morse code and let the other person record the dots and dashes in the morse codes. Then we use our partner’s video footage to edit our own answers
By letting the other person took the video of your answer, the authorship of the piece is mixed. The answer is specifically created by one person while using another person’s footage and their view to present one’s answer, who can be identified as the “author” or “creator” of the project? If looking at the content of the piece, the one who wrote the answer is the creator, but if focused on the footage like the scenes, then it should belong to the other person.
By answering the question in the form of video instead of text, the distortion of authorship is presented. So this work is questioning authorship, but at the meantime we included our answers in the video too.