Jen Liu

Project: D.D. in the Year 0000
A new video inspired by the location of Weisses Haus / paraflows 7 2012, a former technical school in Vienna.

Thanks to paraflows organization, I was granted a studio and a stipend within the framework of the quartier21 Artist-in-Residence program at the MQW, for August & September 2012.  I used this time to conceptualize, shoot, edit, and present the results in paraflows 7, festival for art and culture. 

During my period of conceptualization, I wandered through the buildings and grounds of the technical school, and found a piece of graffiti from years ago: the initials “D.D.” burned into the wall.  This formed the center of my “narrative”.  I collected several other leftover materials from the space: a framed photograph of flowers, and a photocopy of a photograph of a man from the early 20th century.

I used these materials, as well as footage from the space, to create a video exploring issues of identity and memory in situations in which neither is possible to construct properly – because there is no one left to attest to them, or too much time has passed, or because no one cared in the first place.  Recall is necessarily a failure, and evolves into subjective reconstruction, and poetry becomes not only a necessity, but aggressive and overpowering in relationship to flimsy reality. 

I presented this video alongside the objects that were generated during the filming of the video, during the paraflows @ Weisses Haus exhibition from September-October 2012.  This included: 4 “0’s” made out of stone clay, encasing torn images, flowers, and raw meat; the framed photograph of flowers, with glass that was shattered in repeated transit between Vienna and New York; and a series of 3-dimensional photographs tracking the movement of the photograph falling out of the picture frame.

This video will be the basis of a future series of videos, the “Nobodies” series – which track impossible-to-find people and places, those ones that have left a tiny bit of a trace, but not enough to constitute a proper history.  In other words, a tribute to the things and people that fall in between the cracks, an attempt at retrieval of that which is already nearly gone. 

My time in Vienna was enriching and inspiring, and I look forward to continuing the ideas that I developed while in residence.  Further, I would like to express my gratitude to both paraflows and quartier21, for supporting me in my time in Vienna.