VMAC Article

Ryan Chan, Manufactured Miracles

__Videography consists of miracles that hold audiences and artists together.
a. The recording function of the camera enables videography to make portraits of reality. It recaps related moments of the world for us to re-experience.
b. Videography is the signifier of our local culture.
c. The broad room of temporal visual and sonic combinations contain unlimited possibilities for artists to experiment with.
d. The craftsmanship of video creations is amazingly and surprisingly attractive.
e. The forms of intermedia for showing video works are flexible and compatible with today’s environments.

__Explore videography through different treatments and notions of what moving images and sounds are.
a. Making “animated moving images” is one of my key approaches to discover the visuals of videography along the way.
b. Musique concrète is my major method to imagine the existence of sounds in videography.

__All of my video works are just works in progress.
a. Videography becomes a non-stop process of art creation due to continuous revisions, reflections and criticism.
b. Re-experiencing past video work allows me to re-think the whole previous picture of video productions so as to push myself to do better.

__The methods of appreciation are the doors for getting into different levels of understanding videography.
a. A respectful and open mindset is needed when seeing video works.
b. It is time to escape the ideology of standardization.
c. Critiques on a video work are only welcome after watching the video work completely.

__Audiences act as an important role in the video-making processes.
a. Intention, when making video works, is audience-driven.
b. Videography can be a kind of cooperation between both video artists and audiences.

__The sharing of personal archives of video footage for collaborative video-making might be the good way to enrich videography against homogeneity.
a. Videography could be a kind of participatory art.
b. Videography could be initiated and motivated by more human resources.
c. Videography could be a tool to relieve the uniform standards of art with the aid of social networks.

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Since I published my first manifesto on videography in Videography: Micro Narratives. Temporal Beings. Our Manifesto in 2018, I have come to believe that a manifesto is a checkpoint for clarifying one’s mind. It is also temporal; a manifesto on anything will change over time. Flashing back through the previous few years, I think I am still on my way, walking through the journey of studying videography.

Rewriting a manifesto is a good opportunity to express my keen interest in videography and exchange different views with other companions. I expect that most video artists and video lovers share the same idea that videography delivers some very special miracles for them to uphold. That the meaning of anything is eventually formed in front of the lens of a camera through documentation is like magic to me. Videography signifies collective cultural memories to us. Each day we are fueled by our obsession with stunning craftsmanship in micro narratives, the possibilities for experimentation with time and space, and the many different forms of presentation.

Videography creates a cognitive model of perception for people to think of the world through their attentiveness to moving images and sounds. This is actually the main element within video works that I explore. The Flashing (2019) is my latest video work that examines my approach to videography. I tried to animate moving images captured from my surroundings to bring forth the illusion of life, and to create more potential artistic practices within movement-images.

I call this motion I made with moving images “animated moving images.” The use of acousmatic sounds build up an atmosphere for immersively seeing the artificial world and draw the imagination of the existence of these sounds. Musique concrète becomes the dominant sound composition in a form of montage.

“I know I can do more.” “This is no good!” … These are the sentences that come to my mind when I watch my video works again and again. I guess it is very common to have hard feelings for one’s own artwork sometimes. However, when I heard Norman Reynolds, the 83-year-old Art Director on Star Wars, talk about his journey of art-making, it helped me to try to accept that all of my video works are just works in progress. “I hesitate to say I’m proud, because I always feel it could have been better. I always look at my work and think what else could I have done,” Norman Reynolds said modestly. The continuous revisions, reflections and criticism are the roots of striving for excellence and make videography a non-stop process of art creation. That is why I will keep revising The Flashing with different versions, as a part of my long-term practice with videography.

I think the best way to study anything deeply is to first learn the methods of appreciation for matters. Training myself to be humble and accepting differences are the ways I have a respectful and open mind set. It is understandable that we might feel confused when we watch a video work with narrative strategies we have never seen before, but the uncertainty of videography we experience is actually the greatest thing. It keeps us tuned in and arouses our curiosity. These unknowns are the starting point to study and learn more about videography. Eventually, as we experience more and more video works, our acceptability to new matters will be enhanced. This is crucial for escaping the ideology of standardization. It is our obligation and self-discipline as audience members to watch the entire video work with patience and respect, so that we have a better understanding of the micro narratives of videography in a fair and critical way.

Videography is a language for starting a conversation. The different video-making processes become different ways of speaking a language. At this point, the intention for making video works is audience-driven, seeking better communication. The selection of materials for video creations also depends on who the author would like to talk to. Of course, every video work has at least one audience, the author himself/herself. Surprisingly, my work, The Flashing, which is just a personal study on videography, affected some of my friends’ ways of observing in their own lives and intentions when recording videos. They continued to capture some moments related to my video work and sent me their footage. I’m glad to include their efforts in my work. It somehow proves that my video work is recognized for the purpose of communication with the audience.

Videography is a kind of participatory art. With the aid of human resources, it expands the scale of studies and pushes against stereotypes. Video artists and the audiences play a give-and-take game in terms of conversations and action etc. Both video artists and audiences can be initiated and motivated to contribute in the form of sharing video footage for video creations. The pleasure and credits gained from helping others accomplish video works encourage more contributions. An eternally incomplete video production like The Flashing can be boosted by engaging public participation in the creative process, allowing the formation of co-authors, editors and viewers. The more diverse and interdisciplinary the contributors are, the more abundant the varieties of approaches to video-making become.

All this, videography needs the spirit of experimentation providing more insight for its sustainability over time. Thus, more and more ongoing video projects and hypotheses of studies are necessary for execution and determination as well as our publication of manifestos on videography. I know we may be on different roads, but it is time to meet.
(Originally published in Our Manifestos 2: Videography, Documentary Impulses, HK: Floating Projects, 2021. Copy-editor: Zach McLane)

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author/s. They do not necessarily represent the views of VMAC.

 

Staff Pick 01

VMAC Forum highlight – Case study of ‘The Light of Historical Ending’
Click to Watch

How can techno-art be collected and preserved? How to take advantage of Virtual Reality (VR) to tackle the issue of techno-art preservation? How does it help to preserve element that was formerly intangible such as movement? What exactly do preservation ethics entail?

Joyce Chen (from Taiwan) unpacks these questions through a project on preserving media artist Tao Ya-lun’s 2009 site-specific kinetic installation ‘The Light of Historical Ending’. As an inaugural project for ‘Save Media Art’, initiated by Taiwan Digital Art Center’s Concept Museum of Art, Chen and Lin Tzu-chuan were commissioned as curators to research and revisit Tao’s work with the help of the Virtual Reality. The resulted exhibition in 2018 was titled Archive or Alive? – Crossing Through the Light Wall as they were probing into this fundamental question: ‘Is this exhibition to be deemed as another version of work, a reproduction, or archive of the original?’.

Chen is now an independent Media Conservator.

*Chen’s presentation is part of the VMAC Forum 04: Preservation & Extended Reality, organised by Videotage. Documentation of the original programme: Here

 

Staff Pick 02

The World of Hong Kong Independent Film and Video ‘97 showcased the videos produced by Hong Kong Arts Centre, Videotage and Ying E Chi. In Hong Kong early video art history, the Zeman Media Centre housed in the Hong Kong Arts Centre provided space and editing equipment at nominal prices for independent filmmaker/ video artists, thus facilitated the post-production of their works.

 

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VMAC, Videotage’s collection of video and media arts is a witness to the development of video and media culture in Hong Kong in the past 35 years. Featuring artists from varied backgrounds, VMAC covers diverse genres including shorts, video essays, experimental films and animations. VMAC Newsletter provides an up-to-date conversation on media arts and their preservation while highlighting its collection and contextual materials.

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