Field Recordings, 2016
Video Installation, various durations
Five channels colour film
Chinese and English subtitles
Let the Water flow records lives that share a connection to the waters of Shanghai’s rivers. Where they might ordinarily be set apart from one another this video installation brings them together– The apartment dweller doesn’t read of the gravel boats making their way across the Yangze and these sailors, on their way to Hengsha Island, don’t display an interest in the city as they travel through the night but both experience an environment shaped by its rivers.
Life on the water produces a different view of the world. Those interviewed talk of how the river has produced idioms, or ways of seeing the world. Let the Water Flow cuts between the sounds and images of ship life, the cityscape as viewed from the water and interviews so that geography provides a context for personal stories. In presenting these stories the installation suggests work as something that might be usefully understood through attention being given to subjective experience but at the same time the scale of the landscape gestures toward the systemic or broader view.