Haunted by the Past: Wang Tuo’s Introspective FilmsThe relationship between inaccessible archives an
Haunted by the Past: Wang Tuo’s Introspective FilmsThe relationship between inaccessible archives and historical memory preoccupies the artist’s larger project. Symptomatic Silence of Complicit Forgetting (2019) goes even deeper to examine individual and collective memories that have been repressed. Troubled by his past, an aging writer wanders through the different rooms of his house. At his desk, he types on his laptop. […] In a mesmerizing vision, the writer watches as a woman performs on the stage of an abandoned theater overgrown with vegetation. […] The older man deletes the words on the screen, then the file itself, which is labeled “Amnesia,” in a deliberate act of forgetting. The erasure of history, whether personal or political, can also be observed in the beautifully composed shot of the youth who, with tears streaming down his cheeks, burns pages of a book. Wang seems to avoid prescribing how an individual or society should deal with trauma. But the film’s sense of grieving suggests that if we don’t confront our past, we will continue to be haunted by it.Image: Wang Tuo, “Symptomatic Silence of Complicit Forgetting,” 2019, single channel 4K video (colour, sound), 26’15”. © Wang Tuo -- source link
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