Those Vanished Sensitive Words
Taiwanese poet Hung Hung talks about “vanished sensitive words” in his video. At the start, he points out that people in Taiwan, China, and Hong Kong all write in Chinese. This can be refined further. Traditional Chinese characters are used in Taiwan, as in Hong Kong, and speaking for myself at least, there is an affinity borne out of the similarity and familiarity between the two places.
Hung Hung’s own parents were originally from China, and he admits that as a young boy, he “yearned for a cultural China.” However, the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, a chapter in contemporary Chinese history so horrific and heart-breaking, led Hung Hung to reflect deeper on issues of oppression, control, and the Chinese Communist Party.
Life Scenes in Iran-
for Jafar Panahi
“Life Scenes in Iran” is dedicated to filmmaker Jafar Panahi, whom the Iranian government has frequently persecuted, placing him under house arrest and banning him from filming.
The work is a found poem—Hung Hung copied lines from a Persian primer called Three Hundred Persian Sentences and rearranged them to craft the poem, without adding a single word of his own.
Ask Heaven
“Ask Heaven,” questions our obsession with certain religious images, literary figures, cultural icons, celebrities, video games. Why not pay attention instead to migrant children, lost while trying to cross the sea, or protesters on the streets, or those in internment camps? The poem ends powerfully, with an answer to the question “Why ask why?” Asking, Hung Hung writes, is “our last weapon.”
Visit to the Empty Chen wen-chen's Memorial on Children's Day
“Visit to the Empty Chen Wen-chen Memorial on Children’s Day,” is ostensibly about the inscriptionless memorial slab commemorating a Taiwanese independence activist who died after being interrogated by the Republic of China’s Garrison Command in 1981, but it is also a poem for all who have felt stifled by power, been silenced, terrified at midnight, and those whose names are “erased and then deleted.”
June Fourth Has Never Ended
On the 30th Anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, Hung Hung wrote the poem “June Fourth Has Never Ended,” hoping it would help keep the memory of the democratic movement and the subsequent crackdown alive. The poem emphasizes how the massacre is ongoing: the metaphorical tanks and fires have never stopped. The famous Beijing square seems peaceful now; tourists in knock-off sneakers lightly tread the, ground. Still, people are expected to dance in neat, neat lines.
Screenings: Bergen, Norway.
Throughout opening hours, the videos will be played in loop on several screens at the Bergen Public Library, the University of Bergen’s Humanities Library, KMD: Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, and the UiB campus screens.
Poem by:Hung Hung
Video Artist:Yong Hsin Huang
Music: Federico Mompou (Piano)
Khazan: Nader Bazzazieh (violin)