A Song
Digital images, black & white, silent, single channel
3’15”, continuous loop
2017
When creating A Field of Non-Field, I was hoping to find a contemporary love song to play at the end of the video, but didn’t find anything appropriate.
During a dress rehearsal, the women workers kept repeating, “Nameless, what can we do? What can we do? Nameless.”, which is a line they came up with in a previous discussion. Hearing this, former Hualon Corporation employee Chen Yueh-chiao started to think about the women factory workers’ long and bitter protests against the shareholders of the company and burst into tears. Huang Chiu-hsiang, who had long been involved in labor movements, and some other women workers went over to console her. They started singing the Hakka folk song A Floral Scarf.
I don’t understand the Hakka language, but was able to make out the refrain, “The scarf tells of our never ending love.” They sang this in rounds, which reminded me of a mandala. In an era when individual feelings are easily manipulated and put to use, their singing still fused together lived experience and voices to create what I call a “bodily song.” Finally, I decided to use their singing at the end of the video.
A Song
Digital images, black & white, silent, single channel
3’15”, continuous loop
2017
When creating A Field of Non-Field, I was hoping to find a contemporary love song to play at the end of the video, but didn’t find anything appropriate.
During a dress rehearsal, the women workers kept repeating, “Nameless, what can we do? What can we do? Nameless.”, which is a line they came up with in a previous discussion. Hearing this, former Hualon Corporation employee Chen Yueh-chiao started to think about the women factory workers’ long and bitter protests against the shareholders of the company and burst into tears. Huang Chiu-hsiang, who had long been involved in labor movements, and some other women workers went over to console her. They started singing the Hakka folk song A Floral Scarf.
I don’t understand the Hakka language, but was able to make out the refrain, “The scarf tells of our never ending love.” They sang this in rounds, which reminded me of a mandala. In an era when individual feelings are easily manipulated and put to use, their singing still fused together lived experience and voices to create what I call a “bodily song.” Finally, I decided to use their singing at the end of the video.
A Song
Digital images, black & white, silent, single channel
3’15”, continuous loop
2017
When creating A Field of Non-Field, I was hoping to find a contemporary love song to play at the end of the video, but didn’t find anything appropriate.
During a dress rehearsal, the women workers kept repeating, “Nameless, what can we do? What can we do? Nameless.”, which is a line they came up with in a previous discussion. Hearing this, former Hualon Corporation employee Chen Yueh-chiao started to think about the women factory workers’ long and bitter protests against the shareholders of the company and burst into tears. Huang Chiu-hsiang, who had long been involved in labor movements, and some other women workers went over to console her. They started singing the Hakka folk song A Floral Scarf.
I don’t understand the Hakka language, but was able to make out the refrain, “The scarf tells of our never ending love.” They sang this in rounds, which reminded me of a mandala. In an era when individual feelings are easily manipulated and put to use, their singing still fused together lived experience and voices to create what I call a “bodily song.” Finally, I decided to use their singing at the end of the video.
