| Videos
A major component of this project is four linked experimental videos.
Three of the videos investigate significant points in a journey:
departure (Mother/Land), passage (Movements East—West),
and arrival ([os]). The fourth video, Myth(s) of Creation,
is an examination of the travelogue itself, and acts as an index
to the other tapes.
Myth(s) of Creation
(1997) 17 minutes, Betacam SP Video
Myth(s) of Creation is a conceptual road movie that not
only travels between cities and countries, but language and identities
as well. This experimental video combines diary accounts of family
trips to China, Europe, and the U.S. with excerpts from travel writing,
testimonies of political exiles and refugees, and quotes from theoretical
discussions on nomadic subject positions. Read
more
Mother/Land
(2000) 25 minutes, Betacam SP Video
Mother/Land takes off from a series of interviews Ma conducted
with his mother before and after her departure from Hong Kong in
1996. This event triggers an exploration of other departures—such
as Ma’s own journey back to the United States seventeen years
ago, and the turnover of Hong Kong from British to Chinese rule
in 1997. Read more
Movements East—West
(2003) 17 minutes, Digital Video
Movements East—West is structured as a composite
timeline of sixty dates and places, starting in 1841 and ending
in 2001. In this chronology, significant dates in Ma's personal
and family history mingle and intersect with world historical events,
showing the larger social and political forces behind his migrations.
Read more
[os]
(2007) 57 minutes, Digital Video
The fourth and final video in Ma's Xin Lu project,
[os] excavates the personal and the collective, the colonial
and the transnational, the traumatic, the wistful, the queer, and
the spectral to tell intersecting stories about our desires to return
to the past. Its title represents the etymological ‘ghost’
that haunts the creation of the word ‘nostalgia’, which
combines the Greek word nostos (return home) and New Latin
algia (akin to Greek neisthai to return). Read
more
Video
Bus Tour
Los
Angeles, Saturday May 3rd and Sunday May 4th, 2008
The four videos are shown on tour buses equipped with VHS or DVD
machines and monitors (now a common feature on tour buses). A
site-specific route is designed for each site, in consultation
with local artists, community organizers, cultural historians,
and other collaborators. The aim of the site-specific tour is
to link issues raised by the videos with local history and communities,
thereby “siting” these videos to where they are shown.
Examples of issues and communities include Chinese American experiences,
queer social formations, haunted locales, and the many transnational
sites created by “legal” and “illegal”
migrants. Local performance artists are invited to collaborate
and participate as unconventional tour guides. Ma also participates
on the tour, introducing and discussing the videos as they are
screened. Videos can be screened in the order that works best
with that specific tour. The duration of each tour is approximately
three to five hours, depending on the distance traveled and the
number of stops.
DVD (2008-9)
A two-DVD set of the series will be produced, the first DVD will
contain the four videos, and the second will present additional
material from the series:
i. The four videos: Myth(s) of Creation, Mother/Land, Movements
East—West, [os]. The interface of the DVD will allow
multiple viewing options—tapes viewed individually and as
a complete series in different combinations.
ii. Additional material include: scripts of the videos, diagrams
and storyboards for each project, interviews with the artist and
collaborators, critical essays (both published and new commissions),
documentation from the video bus tours, and other relevant content,
Installations
etc.
Myth Fragments
(Slide projection and web site)
1998-1999
Myth Fragments presented still images from Myth(s)
of Creation in two different contexts: one, at Projections:
intermission images, a slide show of images projection in between
films at Laemmle Grand FourPlex Theater in downtown Los Angeles.
This exhibition was curated by Karen Atkinson for Sidestreets Projects.
And two, as a part of the on-line exhibition Home, curated by Allan
de Souza for LA Culture Net. This version also incorporated text
from the script of Myth(s) of Creation.
PAN (Video
installation)
PAN is a large scale, multi-channel video installation. Read
more
Writings
About The Xin Lu Project
Feng, Peter, Tongue Twisters: The Travelogue Videos of Ming-Yuen
S. Ma, in Queer and In Color: Race and Sexuality in Media
Criticism, eds. Ernest Hardy and Eve Oishi, forthcoming.
Garcia, Roger, ed., Out of The Shadows: Asians in American Cinema,
ed. Roger Garcia, Locarno: Festival Internazionale del film Locarno/Olivares,
2001.
Ma, Ming-Yuen S. Untitled (Dear Ma Liuming), X-TRA:
Contemporary Art Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 2, Winter 2006. pp.
36-39.
---, A Conversation About Women, Gay Men, and AIDS, with Richard
Fung and Ming-Yuen S. Ma, in Corpus, Vol. 4, No. 1,
Spring 2006. pp. 64-71.
---, Arrivals/Departures, artist pages for X-TRA: Contemporary
Art Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 3, The Travel Issue (2001).
Profile, in RES Magazine, vol. 6, no. 5, October/November,
(2003). p. 17.
Willis, Holly, Taking Place: Yau Ching and Ming-Yuen S. Ma and
the Epoch of Space, Filmmaker On-line, August, (1997).
Zhou, Xiaojing, Migration, Displacement, and Movements in the
Global Space: Ming-Yuen S Ma’s Multi-Media Project Xin Lu:
A Travelogue in Four Parts, in China Abroad: Travels, Spaces,
Subjects, Spaces, eds. Julia Kuehn and Elaine Ho. Hong Kong:
The University of Hong Kong Press, forthcoming.
---, Decolonizing
Desire, Denaturalizing Identities: Videos
by Richard Fung and
Ming-Yuen S. Ma, Jouvert, vol. 4, no. 3, Spring/Summer
(2000).
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