Screening pathway: It’s about the space

“It’s about the space” by Howl Yuan

Pathway: Displaced — Sleeping in between Tehching Hsieh and On Kawara, but at home — In Virtual Return We (can’t) Dehaunt — A New Experience of Love

2020, for obvious reasons, is very unusual for many of us. International travel has been frozen, globalization shown to have been challenged, the daily routine is interrupted – the only certainty is uncertainty. It’s a break, a painful break. It’s a process of reflecting, reshaping, and re-acting. Among all these factors, I like to take this screening pathway to stress one of them, the ‘space’.

There’s a slight difference between ‘space’, ’place’, and ‘site’. According to Yi-Fu Tuan’s book Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (1977), ‘space’ refers to an abstract idea – the prototype. This pathway builds upon this prototype in relation to different parameters. Displaced reminds us of the space shared with different species; Sleeping in between Tehching Hsieh and On Kawara, but at home unfolds the experience of space in time; In Virtual Return We (can’t) Dehaunt utilises virtual space to bridge returning and belonging; and A New Experience of Love explores the space between people, including ourselves.

This pathway doesn’t prescribe an order for viewing, so please feel free to reshuffle them, or even add films within the program to make your own pathway that is about the ‘space’. Let the prototype develop to your own narrative.

You can also access this screening pathway through our VR space.