SEEN

Fredric Jameson Gallery
Duke University Friedl Building, East Campus
On View:  March 22 – April 9
Artist Walkthrough:  April 8, 3:00pm

Rubenstein Arts Center Film Theater Screening
March 24, 2:00pm

SEEN is a two part MFA thesis which includes a short experimental essay film and an exhibition. The film and exhibition are related in theme but presented as two separate works. Both concern how still and moving images can visualize displaced memories.

The film, follows Han, a photographer, discussing the reemerging “ghost” from his past with his lover Ann. The “ghost”, which can only be seen by Han, is an indescribable existence that always escape the camera lens. The discussion around it shifts between real-time conversations and monologues in both English and Chinese. Meanwhile, the visuals change between still and moving images, past and present footages. With images unable to capture authenticity and language struggling to convey cultural identity, the film, as a result, becomes the incommunicability itself of the displaced memories.

The exhibition, includes a series of photography works and a one-channel video. It showcases fragments of urban recollections that one fails to place. These fragments are discrete, out-of-context and removed from geological, chronological, and cultural frameworks. The still and motion images function in different manners of shaping our impressions to the urban landscape but both fail to connect us to the real memories. Eventually they linger as pieces in between the reality and fantasy, past and present, places and non-places.

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Tianming Zhou (Alaric) is a Chinese filmmaker and photographer currently based in the USA. His work focuses on mental health, displaced memories, and the Chinese diaspora. Alaric grew up in Mainland China and completed his bachelor’s degree in Hong Kong, where he developed a passion for street photography and film studies. Before pursuing his MFA at Duke University, he worked as a documentary editor and independent filmmaker for fictional films. His MFA experiences convinced him to further experiment with the boundary between fiction and non-fiction, frequently expressed through meta-films and docu-fictions. During this period, he also expanded his artistic practice into video art and expanded cinema installations.