Vowels & Consonants

Asanoha–which translates to “hemp leaf” from Japanese–is a film projection performance and materialist film intervention utilizing the traditional geometric pattern of the same name. The six-star shape that forms the basis of the pattern is said to symbolize growth, vigor, resistance, and prosperity. The pattern is drawn and carved directly into 16mm film and presented with two film projectors.

Conversations explores the colors of the landscape through the palette of digital color, and is a reconnection with my past narrative films. A mix of home videos, captured sounds, and unpublished films are assembled here to make a digital mural. As the date suggests, I have no plan yet to end the work.

"While in art college in Chicago, I interviewed five of my college mates who are of Chinese heritage. Being in a foreign country, one’s ethnicity becomes more apparent and one has to face it all the time. In the film I asked, “How do you feel and what do you say when someone asks are you from China?”. Watching it again after two decades, I find the feelings said then are still relevant today."

"Changes in the autumn colors in my garden were filmed on a day of gentle breezes. I captured close-ups of the dramatic reds, oranges, and greens of the foliage with their shadows moving in this environment of light wind. The original piece is presented as a two-projector performance, one showing negative film and the other a positive print of the same film. The two images are superimposed. Working with filters and hands as masks, I perform a color play between the two worlds of positive and negative color." –L.L.

The original work End Rolls is a performance for three 16mm projectors. A color negative film was exposed directly to different sources of light (candlelight, stove, fire) with the intention of creating fluctuations of color throughout the reel. Three copies were made, each printed at a different level of light. In the performance, sounds are extracted through the lens of each projector using light-sensor microphones. Since mechanical film projectors don’t run entirely in sync, the three films play together in a dance—echoes of movements and sounds—to which I make further changes in performance by working with the projector controls. End Rolls #2 is a digital adaptation, for two fixed screens, that was made for a program at Arnolfini, Bristol.

A video documentation of a live performance at LUX in London, 2017. In 2003, I saw Drawings for Expanding Permutation (1969) by the UK artist Mary Martin at a gallery in London. Paul Martin, Mary Martin’s son, kindly gave me a book with pictures of her drawings that I constantly refer to for my Washi Series. This is a set of films and performances, made in response to Martin’s work, that uses the patterned colors of adhesive Japanese washi tape applied directly to clear 16mm film. These patterns are also responsible for the optical soundtracks of the films. In Washi MM three 16mm projectors are used as live instruments of performance to explore rhythmic patterns of color and sound created by the overlays of washi tape.