Issue 69 | The Unstable Archive: Imagining History, Nation, and Future

题引人 Writer / Moderator | 王凯帆 Kaifan Wang

对话嘉宾 Guest Speakers | 张明归  Minh Quý Trương + Haema Sivanesan

Online Panel Talk Time｜May 24th 10:30--13:00 @ZOOM Conference 

嘉宾座谈时间｜5月24日 北京时间22:30 -- 5月25日1:00 Zoom 视频会议

Program Overview | 专题概览 

Are those lie in the past absolutely irrefutable and unchangeable? Or those in the future, undetermined and therefore useless? When reflecting upon the history, we tend to seek guidance from the seemingly rational historical data or other distinguishable traces. Written records and visual documentations are often undoubted in their ability to represent historicity and the truth. Coupled with cultural hegemony, certain dominant interpretations of the past have fed us with a historiographic mindset of linear progression and relative static colonial imagery. The guest speakers of this issue have been trying to intervene in such conceptualization of history through their respective art practices. One draws reference from ancient legends while the other envisions a future in space, both questions the mainstream historiography about the objective and neutral gaze it sets upon and the boundaries it marks around the cultural and racial Other. By breaking away from the stable and one-way imagination of the history, the nation, and the future, they have found alternative ways to rethink the historical data, the (pre/mid/post-) colonial, the multicultural experience, and globalization. 

专题概览 | Program Overview

已经发生的是否就是确凿无疑的？尚未发生的是否又是虚假无用的？

回望历史，我们往往会向看似理性的史料、向过往留下的清晰痕迹寻求指导，而文字记载、影像纪录所携带的对表现“真实”的权威，佐以霸权文化对解释高地的占领，也时时刻刻使我们趋向单一线性的历史理解和相对静止的殖民意象。本期专题的两位嘉宾通过各自的艺术实践，以上古传说和科幻未来造舟，放入以“客观中立”凝视他者、限定他者的主流史观，并在稳定的、单向的对历史、国族和未来的想象外开辟出通往反思史料、反思（前/中/后）殖民、反思跨文化和全球化的新河道。

➤ 影片放映｜Film Screening 

✚ Screening Time｜ May 22nd 9am --May 25th 9am @ www.CathayPlay.com 

✚ 影片放映时间 ｜5月22日 北京时间21:30 -- 5月24日9:00 @ www.CathayPlay.com 

༄电影：平行叙事 Parallel Narratives | Francisco Camacho Herrera

✦ Synopsis ｜剧情梗概

Parallel Narratives hypothesises that Chinese sailors crossed the Pacific Ocean and had contact with American societies before the arrival of the Spanish. Observing the similarities between artefacts from pre-Hispanic America and Chinese antiquities and comparable technologies adopted by the different cultures, Camacho Herrera challenges accepted notions of history, reimagining it as non-linear; a fluid and changeable region of our memory and collective unconscious.

《平行叙事》（Parallel Narratives）假设中国的水手们在西班牙人到达以前就已横跨了太平洋，并与每周社会产生了接触。Camacho Herrera 观察了前西班牙殖民时期的美洲工艺品与中国文物的相似性，比对这两个不同的文化中采纳的不同技术，对已被广泛接受的历史概念提出了挑战，并重新想象一种非线性的历史、一种流动且不断改变着的地域，承载着我们的记忆与集体的无意识。

 

✦ Director Bio｜导演介绍

Francisco Camacho Herrera

Born 1979 in Bogotá, Colombia, living and working in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Francisco Camacho Herrera’s practice takes a deliberately political stance, operating at the nexus between social activism and participatory art. Using art as a platform for social change, Camacho’s works achieve real-world outcomes that impact communities in original and inventive ways. Identifying the objective of his work as imagining a future society, Camacho Herrera has noted, ‘It is important that as an artist I have an autonomy and flexibility to generate images depicting the problematic of social space, comment on what we are lacking in the present and show what the future might look like.’ Camacho’s practice is invested in evaluating current issues, anticipating future implications and generating creative and provocative responses.

Francisco Camacho Herrera

1979 年生于哥伦比亚波哥大，生活工作于荷兰阿姆斯特丹。

Francisco Camacho Herrera 的艺术实践里有一种微妙的政治立场，在社会行动主义与参与性艺术的连接点上。把艺术作为社会改变的平台，Camacho 的作品以一种原创与强烈的方式影响了不同的社群，实现了在现实意义层面的“输出”。Camacho 认定他作品的目标在于对未来社会的想象，并曾经这样写道：“作为一个艺术家，对我而言最重要的，就是可以自治且灵活地去生成图像，以描述社会空间的问题，并对现时社会缺少的东西以及未来可能是什么样子展开评论。”Camacho 的实践关注于评估当下的问题，参与对未来的刺探，并给出独具创意及挑衅意味的回应。 

༄电影： 树房子 The Tree House | 84 min｜Trương Minh Quý (张明归）  

✦ Synopsis ｜剧情梗概

A filmmaker lands on Mars in 2045. How could he make a film in a land where he has no memory of? “Home…Far away from home”, he recalls faces of people, thus a collection of moving images emerge.

一位电影导演在2045年登陆火星。他对这片陌生的土地没有任何记忆，他如何能在这里创作一部电影呢？“家园……远方的家园”，他回想起曾经熟悉的人类面孔，一组运动影像因此逐渐显现。

✦ Director Bio｜导演介绍

Trương Minh Quý (张明归）

Trương Minh Quý, 1990, was born in Buon Ma Thuot, a small city in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. In 2010 he quit Ho Chi Minh City College of Cinema and Theatre to follow independent filmmaking. Quý lives and works here and there in the vibrancy of memories and present moments, his narratives and images, lying between documentary and fiction, personal and impersonal, draw on the landscape of his homeland, childhood memories, and the historical context of Vietnam.

His films have been selected for international film festivals and international exhibitions such as Clermont-Ferrand, Oberhausen, Rotterdam, Busan, VideoBrasil, Les Rencontres Internationales Paris&Berlin. He is the alumnus of 2012 AFA (Asian Film Academy, Busan International Film Festival) and 2016 Berlinale Talents (Berlin International Film Festival). 

His latest film The Tree House, a collaboration with Chinese producer Guo Xiao-Dong, is the only Asian project supported by Berlinale World Cinema Fund in 2017, was premiered in Cineasti del Presente of 72th Locarno Film Festival, selected in international competition of Nantes 3 Continents Film Festival, Singapore International Film Festival and Taiwan International Documentary Film Festival, as well as showcased in New York Film Festival and International Film Festival Rotterdam.

张明归导演1990年生于邦美蜀，越南中部高地的一个小城市。2010年，他从胡志明市电影戏剧学院退学，开始了自己的独立电影制作生涯。他生活和工作的足迹遍布世界，带着他过去充满鲜活的记忆与现实的经历，他的叙事和影像，介于电影和文学之间，混合个人记忆与集体记忆，皆取材于他的家乡，童年的记忆，和越南的历史背景。

他的电影曾入选多个国际电影节展，如鹿特丹、克莱蒙费朗、奥伯豪森、釜山、巴西圣保罗视频博览会。他是釜山电影节亚洲电影学院2012年学员和2016年柏林电影节天才训练营成员。

他最新的一部电影是和中国制片人郭晓东联合制作的《树房子》，是2017年唯一获得柏林电影节世界电影基金的亚洲电影项目，于第72届洛迦诺电影节“当代影人”单元首映，在南特三大洲、新加坡国际电影节、台湾TIDF纪录片电影节进入国际竞赛单元，并于纽约电影节和鹿特丹电影节展映。