- The cities, portraits and homes, and fields and sandbanks in the images are laid out in front of us. They are from a fantasy dream / reality. - text from Ta Liu
In the spring of 2009, they carried a tone of a surveyor and a traveller, with a clue that’s smaller than a palm, each travelled to a land that has a faint connection to their own lives.
Humming familiar songs, Hsu Chia-Wei flew to Shanghai and Hong Kong to film singer Fish Leong’s concert tour. He saw large mechanical monsters and the girl who was surrounded by them in these cities.
Lee Jo-Mei arrived in Ishigaki Jima, Ryukyu Islands, Japan, folloed the trace of a family story by her grandfather. Many elders speak Hokkien in this strange yet familiar land. It also has connection to the mangroves forest in Dan-Shui, Taipei where she passes everyday.
Finally, they both returned with some images. In sorting through, editing, and interpreting the images, their approaches are apart. While facing Hsu Chia-Wei’s videos, we fall into a fixed-lense false image. It is to shine light on what has happened, and unintentionally to include the dream-like view behind the lense. While facing Lee Jo-Mei’s image slices, we see fragments of living easily coming from the film. However, this is an in-family game that excludes others.