Mnemonic Translation 2011 collaborative project with João O Bruno Soares Multi-media installation text,sound,model structures,painting,videos.
In this
collaboration, the Portuguese architect Joao and I attempt to collaboratively
create a spatial project based on scenes from our own memories with merely a
textual description of details provided to each other. We receive our own
interpretations based on these texts of rooms and translate them into virtual
structures or installations. These final installations contain texts,
exchanged documents, circulated sound,videos, architectural component and model structures and will provide
audiences with imaginative parallels within their associations. Images showed below only included Ho's part which are two videos,one landscape painting made of cork, two landscape models based on the question of "how to define a bridge."
I
woke up one day with my head facing the pillow. I slowly opened my eyes and saw
the corner of the pillow out of focus. Then, suddenly the pillow-corner slowly
turned into a butterfly. The beautiful creature flapped its tangerine wings and
flew away. I never knew if that was a dream or reality. It never happened
again.
In
the south part of Portugal there is this vast region called Alentejo. There, the swollen dry land
with its sparse olive trees and spherical blue sky entails the veritable
pigment of our imagination. There, lies the inception of landscape painting;
where the true Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Olive Green and Prussian Blue exist
in their living state. There, time is relatively slow; the air is hot and
thick, and the lonesome highways seem to melt over the distance. That is the
summer.
People
are scarce and scattered over punctual villages that are usually made of one
main street and a roundabout with a totem, which makes the center. The few who
live there work in the field. There are three main incomes: first is oak trees, technically called Quercus suber, from which the cork – a
layer of the bark - is extracted to make wine bottle stoppers (nowadays with
the ecological trend this material is used in fashion and construction
industries); the other is olive trees, called Olea Europaea, for the production of processed olives and the
premium olive oil from which Portugal is widely recognized; the last but not
least is the shepherd, who is typically dressed with fur garments and holds a
wood stick while drifting around the land, guarding sheep. João O Bruno Soares 的文字
Several
years ago I used to live in an awkward siamese flat located in Fai Chi Kei. It
was made out of two mirroring apartments.
By coincidence, this happened because the landlord told me he had these
two tiny adjacent apartments for rent. Then, I suggested to rent both of them
and tear down the splitting wall that separated both living rooms. This came
with the condition that I would repair it whenever our contract ended.
The
mergence went on smoothly and after a while I was living in a symmetrical flat,
i.e. it consisted of two opposite bedrooms, two kitchens, two bathrooms, two
entrances, two balconies and finally one living room.
One
lethargic weekend, I woke up and looked out from one of the mirroring balconies
and saw a strange murky view. That morning the fog was so dense that the view
from my 35th floor looked like heaven. I never got used to this
siamese apartment. João O Bruno Soares 的文字
the descriptions are based on the rooms Ho previously lived in last 7 years.
ROOM
1-Los Angeles, 2010
This bedroom is
located in a loft apartment in a brick warehouse that has two big windows and a
high ceiling. It is very dark inside, almost as dark as in a prison. The
ceiling consists of big wood blocks in a geometrical
arrangement. The room is just right at the corner of the living room. In this
room, one side is metal shelves
and the other is a wood screen, they are both there as temporary walls. The
entry is a hung bed sheet. After entering the room, a self made working table
is in the front. With its special height, the chair is extraordinarily high as
well. The double bed is right next to the working table. And further,there is an automatic sprinkler system that looks like a giant red
steamer or water valve attached on the
brick wall. There isa wood
framed octagonal mirror on the back of the screen, facing the worktable. There
are only two lights in the room. One is a white, round lamp, and the other is a
typical type of desktop light. The floor is concrete painted orange. A black
and white cat named Bourgie is always on the bed. Her feet look round, like
four tiny white balls.
In the living
room, there is a swing hung from the ceiling and a standard pool table. This is
the most energetically dispirited room I have ever stayed in.
ROOM 2-Sheffield, 2005
This room was very
cold and was white with a grey wood floor. It had two big windows. Although it
was the attic room, the ceiling was folded flat. There was a bird nest inside
the ceiling. They flew in and out through the gap in the window frame. In the
springtime, I heard birds singing from the nest every morning.
This room was at
the back of a Victorian building, with a staircase in the middle and light
coming in through a skylight. My German flat-mate, who lived in the front room,
painted her room in pink-orange with “Ready to fly away” written in white
script on the wall.
The house had both
front and back gardens. My room was facing the back garden, which was full of
spiny berries. Two tall trees could be seen through the window. They were bald
when I moved there in February. As soon as spring came, they blossomed with
white flowers that had a sweet aroma.
This house was a
prostitution house in the 70s. The attic room might have been used then. After
being taken over by city hall, the house has only been available to immigrant
families or students. The rent was cheaper than in Taipei, so a lot of friends
thought I was living in a ghost house. Years later, I feel it was the most
peaceful room I have had.
ROOM 3-Sheffield, 2004
This room was
located in a traditional English house. There was only one big window in the
room with its light blue velvet curtains. The colorful striped carpet made the
room very bright.
The single bed was
at the left when entering the room, and it faced the window. On the right-hand
side there was a tiny storage room. The ceiling of the storage space was
oblique. The room was so small that only a chest of drawers could be placed
there. Below the storage room were the stairs from the first floor to the
second. There was an attached white closet next to the bed. Along the closet
was a brown chest of drawers.
This room was very
cold in the winter due to its corner location on the street. My German
flat-mate Susanne gave me a single armchair. I put an old print cloth on it and
it became my favorite corner in the room. I often sat there and drank English
milk tea and read throughout the whole afternoon. The room was not big, but it
was indeed my favorite single room ever.
ROOM 4-YOKOHAMA, 2008
This house is
called Sakula so (cherry house) and is renovated from three former erotic bars
in a famous red-light neighborhood. Two-thirds of the first floor was the
living space and kitchen and the other one-third was for a police sentry. The
pink stairs to the second floor were outside of the house. My room was at the
end of the second floor, right above of the living room. This room was very
tiny, approximately the size of three pieces of tatami. There were only three
pieces of furniture, which were a single bed in front, a coffee table, and a
chair at the left. There was also a traditional Japanese cabinet. Two levels of
storage space were behind the cabinet door, exactly like Doraemo’s room.
Through the big window in the room, I could see the river Oookagawa and rows of
cherry trees. It was about the season between winter and spring when I arrived.
One morning, I woke up and realized it was snowing outside. It was very quiet
at that moment.
ROOM 5-YOKOHAMA, 2008
It was an
extremely huge room, as it was a former sales department of a company. It was
on the third floor in an office building and was big enough to place eight
desks in it. But as a temporary room for resident artists, there was only a
single bed and a worktable. The room was narrow and very empty. There were
windows on three of the walls. A simple kitchen was in the middle of the room.
Next to it, a Japanese all-in-one bath was built into the former storage room.
This resident’s
room is bigger than the whole floor at Sakula so. It was a lonely space without
a connecting room, a neighbor, or a sense of life. The room was very temporary.
The toilet was even outside of the room next to the stairs. The bath was also
built in the last couple of days before I departed. This office building is
right next to a love hotel. Every evening, I saw a transsexual woman dressed in
black. She smoked and sat in front of my door, and seemed to be waiting for
someone. The more I saw her, the more I felt sorry for her.
