Single channel video projection, essay film, 16 min, 2021
Directed, written, and edited by Ting-Chia Wu
Camera : Ursula Enke, Tilman Asmus Fischer, Ting-Chia Wu
Performed by Ursula Enke, Tilman Asmus Fischer, Jan Hohmann
In 2015, I captured photos at a construction site located in the marsh area near my apartment in New Taipei City. Returning to the site five years later, I was taken aback to find that the entire marshland had been transformed into a new urban zone.
Witnessing the rapid pace of construction and the consequential impact on the ecosystem, I embarked on a mission to document construction site images in diverse locations: the rural/natural areas of New Taipei City (Taiwan), the suburban regions of Paris (France), and the former mining-industrial zone in Dortmund(Germany).
Drawing inspiration from Chris Marker’s film ‘La Jetée’ (1962), a science-fiction photo-novel depicting survivors navigating between past and future in an attempt to salvage their lives from the aftermath of World War III, I harnessed the photos taken during my journeys across these three cities—New Taipei, Paris, and Dortmund—to reimagine ‘La Jetée’ within the context of another global conflict. In this envisioned scenario, the natural areas worldwide face dire threats from the breakneck pace of development resulting from human activity. As this new disaster emerges amidst the ongoing war, survivors must once again traverse time to rescue their present from the clutches of historical reckoning.
Ting Chia Wu 