Fields of Memory
2016, Two-channel video installation, sound, color
A collaborative work by Ivetta Kang, Matthew Wolkow, and Kevin Park
Fields of Memory is an attempt to visualize how personal memories ‘are’ in the passage of time. The visual realm of personal memories - constituted of images from each artist’s personal archives, presented with narrations in their respective mother tongues (English, French, and Korean) - is disrupted by the repeated, powerful action of the metallic pounding used in construction. Yet, the archived memories ultimately becomes alive within the audiences’ nowness, experiencing the physical impacts of the piece - glitched images and audiovisual pounding.
Stills of the first-channel video, Insomnia
2016, Installation view, Ignition 12, Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery, Montreal, Canada
The credit of the still image of the installation: Courtesy Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery & Paul Litherland
Public presentation text written by Edel Yang, curator of Homecoming, Homegoing: Into Heterotopias
Fields of Memories is a two-channel video installation that juxtaposes different slices of time by pairing a neighbourhood construction site video fragment with low-fi, glitched video monologues drawn from works by three filmmakers: Matthew Wolkow, Kevin Jung-Hoo Park, and Ivett Sunyoung Kang. The long takes represent different cityscapes with a kind of loose, intimate narrative, in a stream-of-consciousness fashion, soliciting dream-like effects, yet dogged constantly by the banal, larger-than-life image of mechanical hole-pounding by its side. Respectively narrated in Korean, French, and English, the monologues complicate the audience’s aural comprehension, and stimulate a variety of psychological experiences, channelling their psychological states from remembrances to blank states. Altogether, the work evokes the reflection of the world whereby one experiences a phenomenological relationship to their environments. [Written by the curator, Edel Yang]
