GOLDEN

susan pui san lok

San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, often invoked as an emblem of possibility and prosperity, stands also for despair: a suicide landmark. Golden (Vistas) (2005) approaches this symbolic frontier, both of diaspora and the West, from three perspectives: ‘before’, ‘beside’, and ‘beyond’, over bay, strait, and ocean waters.

From an interior on the shore, the threshold, gateway and portal appears both concrete and elusive, at turns shadowy and solid. Shrouded by clouds or skimming sheet-metal waters, it recedes into a series of romantic skies, redolent of Whistler or Hollywood. A boat trip in the bay brings the hard structural edges into view, which dissolve as the image doubles and disappears. Beyond the bridge, the Pacific lies in wait, the placid waters seen from afar displaced by crashing waves.

All above images (c) susan pui san lok, Vistas, 2005, DVD, triptych,
5 mins looped (stills)

susan pui san lok, Vistas, 2005, DVD, triptych,
5 mins looped (installation views)
Above, top: Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester (c) susan pui san lok 2006
Above: Beaconsfield, London (c) Julian Stallabrass 2006

Vistas was originally shown as a 15 minute single-screen projection, and subsequently developed into a three-screen piece, as recently featured in Golden, a solo exhibition at Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester (12 May – 2 July, 2006). To view more stills, click here. To view split-screen stills, click on the following galleries: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Acknowledgements

Golden (Vistas) (2005, DVD projection) was commissioned by Beaconsfield, London, for the group exhibition, ‘Lightsilver’ (23 February – 8 May 2005), and developed during Electric Greenhouse, a 3 month artquest and b3 media ‘Electric Greenhouse’ digital arts residency (February – April 2005). For the black:creativity showcase at the ICA, London, Golden (Vistas) was shown in alternation with Golden (Songs I, II, III), three audio pieces in an ongoing series that extracts and arranges sung utterances of the word ‘golden’ from Western songs featuring ‘golden’ in their title, the resulting ‘songs’ a series of strange interludes at once plaintive, joyful and wistful.

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