The Soul is Drifting

The Soul is Drifting

灵魂在漂流

A film by Yi Zhou
2023, 1080P HD, London, UK, Approx. 4min.

A short film is working in progress. Artist feels more like a nomad on the cultural map in his new environment, a perspective through which he wishes to see the new environment. The artist connects with his surroundings and objects through wandering, touching and gazing, and the film visualises this process as the narrative language provides an outsider's perspective and Satie's music gives a sense of cyclical floating, as if it were his own current state. From the interior of a bedroom, to a river, a beach and back home again. In this journey, the search for second-hand objects mirrors my journey to the 'second-hand house'. The novel Never Let Me Go by British-Japanese author Kazuo Ishiguro suggests a similar perspective of the outsider from the East and my attitude to fate. As someone who is 'on the move', I feel that the movement of life's coordinates so far has been mostly a chance encounter in a state of directional uncertainty, a feeling that has become more pronounced in the past during the pandemic. When many decisions became out of my hands and yet I had no choice but to move on. In the new environment, my hometown is fading, I saw some familiar landscapes and felt as if I were a heterogeneous presence in my current environment, from the river to the sea, each journey seemed unrepeatable, was this journey the one I was expecting to see? I do not know.

Special Events & Exhibitions:

Tate Lates 2023
The project was first presented in Tate Film Unit, Tate lates, Tate Modern, London, UK, 2023.