Focus: Free Memory 2010 TIDF

Liu Min-chieh was one of the advanced students from the first season Gosh Foundation ‘Fruit Camp’. The three advanced students Family Story vs. Video Art installations, which were displayed in the middle of gallery street, the quintessence of their family story into one box; their huge boxes/makeshift homes to play with life-size toys from their childhood and with their video art works being shown in the middle. They had initially been asked to bring their works to be selected and refined previous, with the most talented young artists receiving one on one instruction from top artist in their chosen field. Liu Ming-Chieh's instructor was Yuen Kuang-ming.

In Childhood x Childhood, Liu Ming-chieh contrasted the childhood of his grandma with his own, for example cutting between footage of his younger brother innocently playing with a paper airplane, and that of fighter jets during the Japanese colonial period, which represented how airplanes were perceived in his grandmother’s memory. He contrasts the learning of the Japanese alphabet for his grandmother, with his learning of a Mandarin phonetic alphabet used in Taiwan.“Time is different now,” said my grandmother to me in a Taiwanese dialect as she recollected her past. I still remember these words profoundly. Two utterly different childhoods between my grandmother's and my own. They are more than half a century apart from each other. In my work I wanted to express what my grandmother wanted to say, but I couldn’t really hear what she could hear and vice versa. There seemed to be no connection between her generation and mine. Yet the two childhoods, 63 years apart are somehow connected by the changes and variations. Two memories; two memories in different childhoods. I wanted to reflect on the changing times with my work. Furthermore, I wanted to extend a hand to my grandma, the work to serve as a reflection on the modern environment.

Written by : Liu Ming-chieh Send a message to Liu Ming-chieh