Visible vs Invisible





Wuhan｜London

No longer were there individual destinies; only a collective destiny, made of plague and emotions shared by all.
— Albert Camus, The Plague, 1947


Keywords


Eco-feminism, non-human species, personal experiences, critical-space, situated knowledge


Abstract


Visible vs. Invisible is rooted in Wuhan, China – the world's first city to be locked down due to COVID-19. As a Wuhan citizen, I personally lived the world's first COVID-19 lockdown and I have incorporated this experience to my research.Visible vs. Invisible set out to interrogate this simplistic narrative – in which Wuhan becomes the guilty epicentre of a global health crisis.

This work builds on the ongoing and important work of eco-feminist writer, anthropology writer and artists such as Rachel Carson, Margaret Atwood, Donna Haraway, Fei Cao, amongst others.

The project is presented as a set of artist’s book and situated video. Through poor image presentation, the book draws on Donna Haraway's concept of "situated knowledge" to celebrate and recognize the importance of personal experience, and examine the broader concepts around the construction of myth through media discourse to explore the relationship between humans and non-human specials. The film contains two key spaces: the Huanan Seafood Market and the isolated interior spaces of the home. In the way of double screen coupling, I constantly switch between ego, id and non-ego to complete the dialogue with seafood market. Used a combination of personal experience and the sound of media coverage to complete a mixed and fluid narrative of the event. Also explored the multi-spatial boundaries of the image and sonic landscape. The aim is to inspire audiences to rethink and encourage them to participate and create our own collective memories.


References


Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015).

Cao Fei, Isle of Instability, ( 2020).

Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Duke University Press, 2016).

Hector Macdonald, Truth:How the Many Sides to Every Story Shape Our Reality (Bantam Press, 2018).

Margaret Atwood, The Year of the FloodNan (A. Talese, 2009).









24–09–2024