Dorothy: proposal 2nd draft

Grad Seminar: Project Proposal (2nd draft)

The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. - Milan Kundera

The project would look into the notion of the archive and personal memories in the context of Hong Kong.

Context:
The archive has been fascinating to me, in the sense of its historical value, but also the fact that it gives us an exit or escapes to imagine an alternative history. On the internet, many Hongkongers react to these findings by asking “What if…” Being hopeless about the future under PRC rule (and believe that the present situation is the worst outcome of all possibilities), many people see looking back a better option to tackle the present. Other facets of such a phenomenon can also be seen in all those nostalgic social media pages, i.e. pages with historical images from colonial time, or pages featuring celebrities’ images from the 80s and 90s.

Note: Great reference for context about the act of archiving: Lost and Living (in) Archives: Collectively Shaping New Memories by Annet Dekker http://neural.it/2018/08/edited-by-annet-dekker-lost-and-living-in-archives-collectively-shaping-new-memories/

I see these as ways to fabricate an imaginary or alternative future, and reflections of the time we live now. Ultimately it is a quest for identity, just like national myths in other countries, Hongkongers are now also reinventing these myths in order to reinvent an identity. The identity issue has been always underlining in Hong Kong’s popular culture and art but only in recent years, it has been explicitly discussed in the public sphere.

Why:
Alternative history is a universal interest as that reflects very much our fantasy and discontent towards to world we are in now. These archives and findings challenge the legitimacy of memories and perceptions, often from what authority tells us, and question the essence of memories.
Kundera is often being quoted in Hong Kong and Taiwan’s social movements as we both experience histories (or presence) of censorship, thus memories become a public thing in the case– and yet personal memories in a way still intertwined (e.g. the June 4 Tiananmen anniversary vigil in Hong Kong – as a way to remember and also create new memories related to an incident), the project would be exploring how these two types of memories are working together or against each other, and in what ways they would echoes.

Content:
The project will begin with the Hongkongers scanning archives in London. These archives are often previous confidential files on UK government’s policy on handover. With the act of scanning and studying, these people hope to shed light on the hidden history in Hong Kong.
Other research focus would be from old books, often written by foreigners in Hong Kong, narrating history or fictions related to the city. As well as other urban myths related to the city, one would be moving the whole Hong Kong population to North Ireland (ref: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/03/uk-officials-discussed-resettling-55m-hong-kong-chinese-in-northern-ireland ).

Form:
These materials would form an essay film, alongside with my own narrative (in form of voice-over) that talks about my own memories and the uncertain side of it. It would have reference to the form of metafiction in literature, thus the narrative itself would be personal and sometimes inconsistent.
Visually it would also show the materiality of the archive as a physical form of memory, and the process of it being transmitted to a digital device (via scanner), as a metaphor of transformation and transference of memories.

Note: It might be interesting for you to read this text on Performative Materiality: http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/7/1/000143/000143.html

In the editing, it would be non-linear, yet I would be interested to explore how memories work for the audience when they watch a movie – that is, how do people perceive images and put them together in order to make sense in their mind.

//