(text by artist)
Approximately two years ago, I concluded this series for pragmatic and theoretical reasons. In light of what was happening in Hong Kong, it didn’t make sense to make artwork whose material context invoked an entanglement of negligent geo-political state violence, and its relationships to aerial optics and geo-engineering, on a technologically extensive monstrous scale. To work with these materials and reference the roles of these technologies in making something beautiful was an issue that I was grappling with internally at the time despite my inclination and need to make them. Should artwork about atrocious events caused by heinous people be as aesthetically odious as the event itself? What does it mean to make work about stories of conflict amid actual conflict?
In hindsight, I think I made the right decision to end the series, but I am glad I was able to make them when I did. I like to think these seemingly meditative artworks draw on optics that were once thought to be relegated to supernatural beings; but were then extended to robotic spacecraft and war criminals, and further demonstrate the filtering down of these optics to the rest of us, forever altering cognition of landscapes near and far, but more importantly recontextualized the surface of our home planet we have so unmercifully damaged. Art work is not about problem-solving. It is a form of problem-setting, and its a way of communication. In doing so, creating something that causes people to meditate on and stay with these troubling optical and material narratives for a while, may be positive, and may contribute to a reorientation of our role in the universe.
(translated)
大約兩年前,我出於務實及理論上的原因為這一系列作品收尾。縱觀香港當時的狀況,以大型而又領域廣泛的科技去製作藝術品並不合時,尤其當作品的物境(material context)與地緣政治當中被草率地行使的暴力息息相關,而牽涉在這種暴力中的航空工學和地球工程也難以被撇除。即使我有著創作的傾向及需要,對於使用這些具有含義的物料與科技去制造美麗的事物,我的內心仍然抱有掙扎。敘述由惡人造成的可怖事件時,藝術品應該在美學上反映出它可憎的本質嗎?實質的災難發生時,創作以災難故事為背景的作品有甚麼實際意義呢?
回望過去,終止這個系列的決定是正確的,但我仍然慶幸在當刻能夠將它們實現。這些表面沉靜的作品借鑑的視覺元素原先被認為屬於超自然的生物;其後的想像則被延伸至機械太空船或戰犯。這些作品示範了如何將種種視覺元素傳遞到大眾之中,永久地改變人們對風景的理解,更重要的,是將飽受人類摧殘的地球表面再次情境化。藝術品的作用並非在於解決問題。它們的作用在於設置問題,也是溝通的方法。透過創作令人不安的畫面與物質敘事,人們的思想可以暫時流連在其中,也有機會能協助重新定位人類在宇宙中的角色。