Blank

As soon as I turn on the video camera, I see her shadow. On the screen she moves all over the place. She suddenly charges at the camera, with a weird face, I reach out my hand towards her, resting it on her shoulder, soft and lithe. The life that is recorded is our life. Through the lens, my heart sporadically twitches.

You could say that she is more beautiful onscreen than she is in reality. I reflect: all of this I can enjoy on my own.

A detail reveals itself here. When I walk around to shoot her back, she suddenly freezer, stands as still and straight as a pen. I embrace her from behind, and press the lens tightly against her cheek. I

want to record everything about her but all I get is a blur.

She turns the lens towards me. I don’t like to see myself onscreen. It makes me feel unfree. What I mean is, I like recording others, but when I appear I feel like an ugly intruder, which is to say, I like only the half of life that doesn’t have me in it.

No wonder everybody, just like me, hates and minds that toy. My mother always told me, you have to put effort into remembering, and not use a dummy camera. She also said, I can’t keep on using this video camera to torment other people.

That’s right. Maybe life documented by a camera makes people feel hopeless: images right in front of our eyes, but belonging already to another world. All that has disappeared, impossible to experience directly, yet right in front of our eyes, is still so clear, as though it just happened.

Guangzhou, 1997

Untitled, No.1, 2003, New York