Kennedy Town堅尼地城
Documentray Film / 1:07:20 Above video is a short preview only
LUK Sze Ling 陸思伶
2020 BA Creative Media graduate
Abstract
Kennedy Town is an experimental video about drawing a map of Kennedy Town with my own memories judging the authenticity of one’s experiences and the credibility of ‘map’.
Description
I collected a hundred more hours of materials which allowed me to finish this video, and it is definitely the most important part of work which sum up the experiences of me being here in the past and also the adventure of me wandering in this place in the past few months. I separated the video into 6 chapters: Rainy school days, A maze, Under the tree-wall, Paper planes and as usual. These 6- chapter names are symbolising the key object of my memories and reflecting to a specific place in Kennedy Town. The first 5 chapter are mostly referring the past, I try to erase the things that wasn’t there before. But the chapter 6, the longest part of all, mostly are ‘real’ comparing with the last 5 chapter. I have my audio message included, it sounded like I’m having conversation with friends when we are walking around which I used to do this with my friends a lot. I hoped to show what I felt with my audience and bringing them to explore my childhood place at the time.
Artist Statement
I had never felt the sense of belonging for any places and think about how to define a ‘home’ places. I realised that you have to understand, having experience and threat the place as a life being to form your own feelings and emotions. Experiences making us to feel familiar, at the same time, it is also about our life instinct to remember. The reason of me starting this project is that I was not so sure about how is it important to have the sense of belonging. Kennedy Town is the places where I was born and raised when I was little, and so I am choosing it to be the object of the work and develop the whole idea from this place.
It included a video with sound and poems and will be played by a classic TV. It was not that site specific and can be placed anywhere which audiences found like ‘home’. Within the 2 months about of material collecting, I will be wandering around Kennedy Town with my DV and writing poems which are based on my memories of this place. I am trying to explore the possibility of creating a map with a timeline, also to see the credibility of the map when it is made subjectively.
Those maps which people consider dependable because it is related to collective memories. What I think is that each one of us got our own ‘map’ and it is formed by what we have experienced in the places. ‘Objective map’ is a tool which make people’s life a lot easier for sure, and they could seek for their identity of being inside a group. So it is reasonable to think only ‘objective map’ are real.
But how do we define real when there are objective but also subjective maps? Those poems written will be my landmarks in the video map and helping me to seek for the answer.
