The Soul is Drifting

The Soul is Drifting

灵魂在漂流

A film by Yi Zhou
2023, 1080P HD, London, UK, Approx. 4min.

A short film is working in progress. Artist feels more like a nomad on the cultural map in his new environment, a perspective through which he wishes to see the new environment. The artist connects with his surroundings and objects through wandering, touching and gazing, and the film visualises this process as the narrative language provides an outsider's perspective and Satie's music gives a sense of cyclical floating, as if it were his own current state. From the interior of a bedroom, to a river, a beach and back home again. In this journey, the search for second-hand objects mirrors my journey to the 'second-hand house'. The novel Never Let Me Go by British-Japanese author Kazuo Ishiguro suggests a similar perspective of the outsider from the East and my attitude to fate. As someone who is 'on the move', I feel that the movement of life's coordinates so far has been mostly a chance encounter in a state of directional uncertainty, a feeling that has become more pronounced in the past during the pandemic. When many decisions became out of my hands and yet I had no choice but to move on. In the new environment, my hometown is fading, I saw some familiar landscapes and felt as if I were a heterogeneous presence in my current environment, from the river to the sea, each journey seemed unrepeatable, was this journey the one I was expecting to see? I do not know.

一部短片正在制作中。在新环境里，艺术家感觉自己更像是文化地图上的游牧民族，他希望通过这个视角来观察新环境。艺术家通过徘徊、触摸和凝视与周围的环境和物体建立联系，影片将这一过程视觉化，叙事语言提供了一个局外人的视角，而萨蒂的音乐则给人一种循环往复的漂浮感，仿佛这就是他自己当前的状态。从卧室内部到河流、海滩，再回到家中。在这段旅程中，寻找二手物品的过程也反映了我的 “二手房 ”之旅。英籍日本裔作家石黑一雄的小说《Never Let Me Go》提出了一个类似的视角：来自东方的局外人和我对命运的态度。作为一个 “在路上 ”的人，我觉得迄今为止人生坐标的移动大多是在不确定状态下的偶遇，这种感觉在过去的新冠大流行期间更加明显。当许多事情变得不在我的掌控之中时，我别无选择，只能继续前行。在新的环境中，我的故乡逐渐消失，我看到了一些熟悉的风景，感觉自己仿佛是当前环境中的一个异质存在，从河流到海洋，每一段旅程似乎都不可重复，这段旅程是我期待看到的旅程吗？我不知道。

Special Events & Exhibitions:

Tate Lates 2023
The project was first presented in Tate Film Unit, Tate lates, Tate Modern, London, UK, 2023.