photo/ Kwan Sheung Chi
The Days Before The Silent Spring is a newly commissioned project from Hong Kong-based artist Lo Lai Lai Natalie. This multi-channel video installation sees the artist weave together a spectrum of footage shot from different points of view in an homage to the decade-long journey of the farming collective Sangwoodgoon, to which she belongs, while reflecting on the multitude of worlds tied together and myriad of life-forms germinated by the practice of farming.
Founded in March 2010 amidst the Anti-Hong Kong Express Rail Link (Anti-XRL) and Protect Choi Yuen Village protests, Sangwoodgoon is a group of activists from different walks of life: photographers, designers, art and cultural professionals, educators, journalists, researchers, and writers. Over the years of their farming practice, they have all cultivated a deeper sense of
connection and personal relationship with the land, and tasted the pride of new growth—as well as the exhaustion of a harvest. Expanding beyond the writing and observation of crops, flora and fauna, which is a hallmark of her past work, Lo now turns her gaze to
her fellow farmers, whose divergent demands, hopes, experiences and struggles are not only testaments to the exhausting nature of negotiations, but also fuel for the collective as a whole. In the work, conversations among the members of Sangwoodgoon are interlaced with clips Lo shot in the field throughout the past decade, transforming the busy hubbub of daily life into a rustic
polyphony across the field and its universe. From the interaction and fermentation of microorganisms to the various entanglements of flora, fauna, and the farmers, from the dissent and cooperation among group members to the correspondence and democratic cohabitation of communities, these overlapping sounds of the field
together form a sonata set to a rhythm of sowing.
The idea of an impending ‘silent spring’ comes from late marine biologist Rachel Carson’s warning about a forthcoming crisis of species diversity, penned in the 1960s. In her eponymous book, Carson anticipated a gradual erasure of life- forms and sounds caused by pollution from pesticides. And today, in fact, decades
of environmental deterioration and global conflicts have brought us to a most appalling present. In this unprecedented chaos we still hear talk of vanishing diversities, lost autonomy, and the danger of silencing.
Farmland may seem old and feeble, and the bacteria, species, and communities it nourishes may also feel trivial, but in precarious times their symphony could sound the beginning of a new act.
Text by Quchang (Translated by Alvin Li)
Press
by Caroline Ha Thuc
https://ocula.com/magazine/insights/lo-lailai-the-days-before-the-silent-spring/
by Liu Mankwun
Exhibition Brochure: https://issuu.com/lolailainatalie/docs/lo_lai_lai_the_days_before_the_silent_spring
Dependence 02 依存02
未來仿如日蝕忽晴忽暗 The future is like an eclipse, it keeps flickering
except of The Days Before The Silent Spring