Narrated by Chinese Malaysian singer Fish Leong, the project “March 14, Hong Kong Coliseum” follows her tour through different cities in Asia, including Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei, Singapore, Malaysia, Beijing, Guangzhou, Kunming, and Chengdu. Shooting the tour involved a lot of time spent traveling. The traveling and shooting did not create a self-evident world of images or events. Instead, it resulted in the discovery of extraordinary locations. By focusing on a time or location unknown to the public, I am introducing it to them. And although the time and the spaces are real, the video slightly distorts reality, and the moments themselves become myths or legends.

Here was a huge entertainment industry with a pan-Asian approach. The tour moved from city to city, and wherever it went, the stage, lighting, and songs at each event were similar, and each concert scene was also a confrontation between globalization and local cultures. As an experienced singer, Fish Leong’s voiceover describes various sounds, which she interprets as metaphors for the cities she visited. Even though they hold real events, the filmed, empty concert venues seem enormous and fictional. Here, the concerts represent globalization, but the video work makes this connection drift apart.

“March 14, Hong Kong Coliseum” consists of two channels. One is a single channel video directly projected onto the screen. Shot in Hong Kong, this more narrative-like video is presented with quick cuts, subtitles, and Fish Leong’s voiceover. The other one video is projected onto both the front and the back of the screen. This video, shot in Shanghai, feature longer cuts, and are projected onto lithe and soft screen material. Compared to the narrative images shot in Hong Kong, the Shanghai videos are more like “image objects.” The exhibition space is lined with a red carpet, and the screens display empty concert scenes. Within this setup, the audience responds to the narrative and meditates in a real space (with two images from different cities inside the exhibition room). These two different images of cities presented in one exhibition space introduce the off-screen -- a larger world beyond the images themselves (i.e., the whole world off-screen).