From fragment to fragment (2023)
2-screen video installation
Animation / Sound: Lei Lei
In 2016, my father and I traveled to Ningdu by bus to do preliminary research for my animated feature film SILVER BIRD AND RAINBOW FISH.
We did the field recording and looked for the house where he lived as a boy and the bridge he walked on to the school.
During the trip, we talked about his childhood memories and things he wasn't good at.
Artist Statement
My father is among the first generation of book designers after China's reform and opening up. Now he is 67 years old and already retired.
In his leisure time in daily life, he would paint with watercolors as a hobby.
My father usually doesn't smoke and doesn't drink often. Also, he rarely goes out to socialize with his colleagues. In my impression, my father loves reading in the room and has the typical image of a Chinese intellectual. He is even a bit introverted and unfamiliar with the social code of conduct. Therefore, until his retirement, he had nothing to do with the "prosperous official career" in the secular world.
In 2016, my father and I took a bus back to Ningdu, a small country in the south of China where he lived in childhood, to do some preliminary research work for my feature film "SILVER BIRD AND RAINBOW FISH".
We recorded locally and looked for the house where my father lived as a boy and the bridge he walked on to the school.
During the trip, I chatted with my father, and my father talked about his childhood, his youth in the countryside, and things he was not good at.