After my discussion with Katarina, we have finalized some main ideas of our work.
Our concept is doing ‘city similarity’ of Hong Kong and Zurich. We will shoot the footages in our own city separately. Though it is very risky but it is believe that we will find something beyond our imagination in this kind of cooperation.
The definition of ‘city similarity’ is finding the visual similarity of Hong Kong and Zurich. What we would like to discover is not only the similarity of cityscape, people’s behaviour, but also the culture, politic condition and social issue behind what we see and record. Personally it will be amazing to see the non-similarity or similarity in ‘city similarity’.
For me the video sources may not included first-handed footages only, but also the source from broadcasting media too. It is because I believe that people’s culture is strongly affected by media.
Furthermore, We thought about how to present the piece. We got a first rough idea, which is present our work as a video installation. Personally, I prefer use programming to match the footages from Hong Kong and Zurich, then present them in two separated screen. And of course, we are still thinking another way to present. we still discussing about it.
p.s. I’ll start to shoot some footage in the middle of December.
I like the “randomness” in your project, at some point I am interested to see how you guys exchange found footage, because the communication is already an art making process, that will affect your partner taking next video clips. I personally think you can set some rules or discipline during the process.
Finding similarities could be a nice task. You will find them, I convinced.
You write “We will shoot the footages in our own city separately. Though it is very risky but it is believe that we will find something beyond our imagination in this kind of cooperation.”
Like Chung writes, there is something very unspecific and randomly in your plan. That can be full of surprise or lead to a rather unreflected “banal” result. It’s a risky game.
May be it would be interesting to be more specific: You could shoot material which you think is “universal” to be found in the other place too. Or the opposite. Or you just shoot what you are getting asked by your partner (for example Shoot met some images of a shopping mall). And then work with this images, describe what you see, how you interpret it, reflect on them. Hans with images from Switzerland shot by Katarina, Katarina with images from Hongkong, shot by Hanz.
In this experimental series of images: You may bee discover very likely something new, something you are surprised of. Your own city can hardly surprise you (without the perspective of the other).
I wouldn’t think too early on the final result. Now it is the time to experiment, shoot, exchange, reflect images.