The work by LAU Wai, which leverages the viewpoint of one of her family members to thread together the travelogue footages shot by her grandparents around the mid-1960s, could be considered a response of some sort to the stand-alone imaginary of ‘Hanako’ the elephant from Japan. Originally from mainland China, Lau’s grandparents relocated to Hong Kong and used their 8mm camera to document their trips home and overseas at a time when the People’s Republic of China was experiencing tumultuous years of political radicalism. These home videos, sometimes interwoven with a glimpse into the grandparents’ business trip overseas, have nevertheless proffered a precious opportunity for us to grasp the technovisuality of diasporic Sinophone subjects at a time when it is rare for people from the mainland, Hong Kong or Taiwan to get hold of a movie camera and turn it to their own private, daily life and itinerant experiences. The ‘banality’ underlying these home videos has then become something highly inspiring in shedding light on the genealogy of amateur moving image and filmmaking across Sinophone communities within and beyond Asia.
-Ma Ran

Kuandu Biennale, ‘Seven Questions for Asia’, Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei, Taiwan, 2018
Section: ‘Can Asia Produce Universality Through Diversity?' Curated by Pan Lu