Permeate:
Two channels video installation | 02'00" - 08'00" | 2020
Video, watercolour and pipes
Artist Statement
Permeate is an interactive video installation, exploring metaphors on permeation. It aims to create an immersive atmosphere which changing slowly to describe a process of permeation which is changing slowly and unconsciously that is hardly realizable. It is just like formless matters permeates into an object gradually. Humans are impacted by a kind of thought and intangible things unconsciously. In short, it is common that something happen around you, but you might not notice it immediately. But, indeed, it has changed something even it has impacted us already.
Artist
Florence Tan Xingyu
Director and researcher
Florence Tan Xingyu
Camera
Machina Xing Tong
Producer and Special Thanks
Florence Lee Yuk Ki
Supervisor
Warren Leung Chi Wo, Alvaro Cassinelli
Cast
Mitchell Wong
Screenings & Exhibition
2020 Paid Studio Visit, public program of Para Site, Hong Kong
2021 SCM V+ Gallery, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Permeate#1·There (Video)
In Critic as an artist, Oscar Wilde mentioned a theory that when you look at a painting for a long time, the painting will affect and reshape the way you seeing nature gradually. Beigium writer Jean-Philippe Toussaint also wrote in his novel Urgency and Patience that different rooms impact on his growth and writing environment. Even if they leave these rooms and spaces in the future, they will still accompany him in his thought all the time. The influence of the environment mentioned by Wilde and Philippe on their creation and life is an invisible infiltration. This provoked my sensations of observing a city I lived. Those difficult to detected and unobservable changes happen all the time in the space we are most familiar with. Although it is easy to neglected as happened in a familiar situation, those changes in space and environment have already caused subtle influences on persons unconsciously.
Permeate#2·They (Video installation)
Permeation is a process in which one (formless)matter repeatedly affects another over a long period of time. Just as a liquid eats away at a wall and leaves a trace during a long period. Wind erode stone is the same reason. So I think irrigation and cultivation are same with this idea, that one person or a group of people has impacted on another person's behavior over a long time. But the processes hard to describe exactly how it behaves, and it's hard to generalize. For me, the act of watering flowers is chosen as the main performance element because "irrigation" and "cultivation" are closely related to plants. Another reason is that flower farmers nurture plants with the similar mentality of cultivate children.
The installation is made to be a large canvas, and the fluid flowing out of the pipes would create different effect over time. And the pattern on the canvas, the result of the liquid "painting", can be pretty or ugly, conveying the uncertainty of the outcome of this permeation process.
Please contact artist to watch original videos if you are interested in.