Technical Difficulties, Solo Exhibition. Maxwell Graham, New York, NY. May 1 - June 22, 2024.
A Child Already Knows, 2024
Video
Journey From North to South, 2024
Video, 3-channel rackmount monitor
21 hrs, 39 min.
An Image on Air, 2024
Video, display monitor with security foil
2 min.
Technical Difficulties is an exhibition about a film that hasn’t yet been made, or perhaps never will be, given scenes that cannot be reconstructed in their original place and too costly to make. This is an assemblage of tableaus beyond reenactment. The title suggests a euphemism on interrupted screenings, a conceit of low fidelity image-making, a confession of an autodidact, and a disturbance of any direct narrative.
A Child Already Knows is a short film that describes a child’s retelling of an escape from Shanghai disguised as a sojourn through the south. Half-remembered scenes of a historical cusp are recalled alongside a montage of appropriated early Mao-era children’s animations of the same period. Train sounds whir.
Journey From North to South is a road movie, configured on a 3-channel rackmount monitor, filmed through interstates over a 22-hour long drive southward. Partly tracing the Mississippi delta, the car takes a brief detour in a Chinese cemetery in Greenville and ends in Biloxi. The title takes inspiration from wuxia (martial arts) cinema.
An Image on Air is a description, shown on a surtitle board (typically used for translation during live performances), of scenes in which public figures on live broadcast reflect on the then novel experience of being “on air.”