Tang Er Duo Feb 28, 2014
Several days ago, mum talked to me about her cough it still bothered her after her cold. She said the Beijing smog was worse than before, I typed "beijing" on Google directly and clicked on the image. Bright blue sky, red wall, spring green leaves pictures coming up to my eyes. Generally I grew up with Beijing had been 26 years,
Studying in the United States it has been almost 2 years, this has been the longest time I have been away from home. When I was an undergraduate, I like taking photos on film, I learned film photography from my father, the most impressive thing is he took me to the old summer palace garden, we took many lotus flower photos, a delicate lotus shape with blurred background. Mum alway like film photos, because she always said digital photo is too clear for showing her wrinkles.Yes, film photo always looks good for it’s little ambiguity, and let things happen and appear not that quickly,
Having a little time for waiting, ....
I took a lot of pictures with Lomo cameras in daily life. Most places I shot are near my grand parents home and my home. At that period of time I did not like these photos I took very much. So I just kept them on my hard drive until in this year, one day in the United States, I went through those photos again, after such a long time we faced with each other again, there was a strong feeling about them.
I just played with those steady images like moving moments from my memory about home in Beijing. I was not trying to imitate what’s really in Beijing. In these photos there is no symbolic Beijing symbols. But I strongly believe it is a real life picture from a corner of Beijing.
I feel even just some symbolic pattern really doesn’t let me feel Beijing. It seems things keep developing and are never going to stop. I could not remember when I started to have such a strong feeling. In an exaggerated way, I, as a native always lost in this city; found a little tasty dumpling soup restaurant, no more than one month had just gone.
This kind of changing without control let me feel unsafe.
Tang Er Duo starts from the photo I took of my mother’s narcissus. This is a series of photos arranged by my memory and visual harmony in a non narrative way. In this kind of unrealistic and idealic sequence, I feel I found a certain steadfast feeling.
There is not only visual memory about Beijing, but also about an organ in hearing. After I edited these images into flowing time, I was playing them again and again. In my deep hearing memory, something that can be recalled might be older than these photos. When I was around elementary school, my family lived in a typical 1980’s apartment. The neighborhood more like a real neighborhood, many people like raising pigeons.They put a little wood hand made instrument tag to pigeons legs. And let them make sounds during their flying in the sky. I remember mum avoided hanging clothes in the morning, because the pigeons would do exercises in the morning and feathers would fall on clean clothes.
I also really miss the time when I was little at my grandparents home, in the summer noon time, I could hear very clearly noisy boring cicadas singing, and my grandmother woke me up from a noon nap.
Like crickets sounds in the evening. When I used the Soundtrack Pro to mix theses sounds together, the steady images round by the sound from old people doing exercises with Chinese Yo-Yo at the playground, that spinning toy is not in the video but some actually daily life capture appear in our eyes. The real and unreal parts mixed together to create the feeling of lost moments. Peddler, small businessman selling their goods in a shouting voice for their small business, such as helping people grinding knives.
But today, it’s hard to hear these typical sounds that clearly again,
Pigeons could not be flying around as skyscrapers’ speed.
It’s hard to find a lazy noon time again. Comparing with cars horns, cicadas’ songs sounds like such inability.
In work Tang Er Duo,
I don’t think it’s about nostalgia. It is more like I closed my eyes, had a deep sigh in a little box.
In the end of this video, I let it back to that narcissus. It might be just that same narcissus, but just a little different.
With the beating drums in ceremony as the ending,
After a long sigh, I left a deep breath for that.

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