You are now looking at a project on "Estrangement and Imagination of Home". The project, started by three Beijing girls who have been traveling, living abroad and returning home under COVID, has shed light on a new understanding of what it means to be "foreign" and what it means to be home. Can there be one's hometown in a city? Where does the sense of home come from when we are not in our own hometown? Does it come from memories of the past, or is it an imagination, a mismatch between the ideal and reality? To find out the answers, we presented a documentary and a collaborative project for the city around Beijing.
Ushering in a pandemic era with regional wars breaking out, the world has once again seen what Hannah Arendt described as “homelessness on an unprecedented scale, rootlessness to an unprecedented depth.” Never has our future been more unpredictable, nor has the meaning of home been more vital. “Estrangement and Imagination: Urban Memory of Home”, started by three Beijing girls traveling and living across borders, hopes to shed light on a new understanding of what it means to be elsewhere and what it means to be at home.
Can urban dwellers define a city as home? Where does the sense of home come from when we are not in our familiar place? It might come from the memories of the past, displacements of the ideal amid reality, or a kind of imagined truth that we hoped to hold … To seek the answers, in this piece, we present a documentary and a collaborative project revolving around Beijing.
Having been through the impact of COVID in the past two years, the three girls from Beijing traveled across borders, lived elsewhere, and saw as much displacement as we could imagine. We went back to the compilation of old images and videos of our own families to seek answers - what changes have taken place in our family and our hometown during the years? What made a space home?
Knowing the individuality of each and having solidarity in the understanding of Beijing, we each develope our own focus on the concept of home and urban memory. Using Beijing's urban and historic environment as a vehicle, we take on a feminine perspective and archive old images of our families to compile the memory of home.
Hello Again, Beijing screening poster
Never Again zooms in on the notion of family reunion and gathering - an essential concept of the Chinese family - and discusses why a family would often shrink while its branches.
Where Is Home invites not only family members but also a friend, using conversations to capture the nuanced moments of urban life and answer why there seems to be a glowing and transparent film between a person and their hometown.
Not Yet, Not There reroutes and spotlights how mother-daughter reltionship copes with leaving one’s hometown. A mother who fought all the way to Beijing in her youth fears losing her family to megacities twenty years later, on which she and her daughter take on different paths.
Program for the screening
The screening event was held on November 9, 2022 at NYU Shanghai.
The project sprouted from our sense of detachment to our home city. We encourage the audience to find the moment of either temporal or spatial detachment in the city. When we walk around the places we are familiar with, do we find anything new? When we walk past the unfamiliar ones, do we feel detached?
In the first part, participants are asked to visualize the hometown. They can use graphs, text, illustrations, or their own way of marking to visualize their neighborhood.
The second part of the city walk program is a guided tour. In the guide, the audiences will apply universal instructions to go beyond the knowledge of their own neighborhood. We expect the audience to take on their own perspective to observe and experience the urban space. Below is the brochure we designed for the participants to reduce the use of digital navigation. We have also held two pop-ip events in the city to encourage passengers to take a brochure and go on theirown tour. After the tour, the audience are encouraged to map out their route using their own way of mapping and compare it with their former knowledge of the area.
Living in the pandemic era and the aftermath of regional conflicts, the concept of home has never been as important since the last world war. As young female artists that live across the world, we not only care about our own nearby neighborhoods but also the people from elsewhere. Discussion around finding a home, especially in the city, can provide a space where we could communicate beyond borders. As we are continuing to let the project grow, your interest and participation are always welcome.