Tozer Was Not Here (2016)

Frame-17-02-2016-11-37-13

As part of the IIAS-CSEAS Winterschool “Mapping the Aesthetics of Urban Life in Asia: A Dialogue with the Arts” that took place in Kyoto from 25-31 January 2016, we made jointly some creative works. I made this movie, which is a copy – or better: shanzhai version – of the work of Pak Sheun Chueng (Tozer Pak), but now set in Kyoto, rather than Hong Kong. The two artists (Zoénie Liwen Deng and Shinya Akutagawa (also in the still above)) at the end copy sentences taken from an interview with Pak Sheun Chueng. Both the ‘original’ work – titled a Zebra for Five Persons (五個人行的斑馬線) – and that interview can be found here. Earlier I wrote a piece on the work of Tozer Pak, that can be found here. The work is informed by my reading of Rey Chow’s chapter on translation, the last chapter in Primitive Passions, her reading is inspired by Walter Benjamin’s essay “The task of the translator” whose essay is inspired by… and so on and so on and so on…