In Chinese mythology, the concept of "Chaos" (Hundun) is primordial. It is found in the theories of space-time and, most notably, in the myth of Pangu creating the world. The earliest record of this appears in the Sanwu Liji
(Historical Records of the Three Sovereign Divinity) by Xu Zheng in the late Eastern Han Dynasty:
"Heaven and earth were chaotic like a chicken’s egg, and Pangu was born within. For eighteen thousand years, heaven and earth opened up; the clear Yang became the sky, and the turbid Yin became the earth... The sky grew ten feet high per day, the earth grew ten feet thick per day, and Pangu grew ten feet taller per day... Thus, heaven is ninety thousand li from the earth."
"Heaven and earth were chaotic and turbid." Taking this myth as my point of departure—specifically the rupturing of that chaotic sphere and the separation of the clear from the turbid—I developed my concept of rendering objects into "chaos." This manifests through blurred rocks and the traces of plants captured via long-exposure photography.
The eternity of time renders human labor futile, while the totality of chaos plunges humanity into bewilderment. Looking back at past eras, only the traces left by our predecessors remain for our gaze. As the stars shift and seasons change, this cycle repeats, generation after generation.
Yet, when I step into a forest, a city, or a beach—seeing vegetation swaying in the wind, crowds surging through intersections, or sea foam vanishing into the sand—I see more than just the unknown. While these scenes appear filled with randomness and chaos, what they reveal to me is akin to the Lorenz attractor: a pattern of tightly interconnected lines, inseparable and bound together.
"Bloody Memories" stems from sensitivity and reflection on collective traumatic memories. It does not refer to a specific historical disaster, but rather represents a contemporary, Asian, personal, and vague memory resonance. The work consists of videos and images. The video serves as the introduction for the entire project. I aim to achieve a similar effect to the intro in an album, serving as an extension and explanation of the main content.
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Tens of thousands of civilians, intellectuals, students, writers, and Taiwanese civil servants were accused of “radical thinking” or “collaborating with the enemy.” Many innocent individuals were detained for extended periods or executed without fair trials. These cases were often handled by secret courts, and families were left unaware of the whereabouts of their loved ones. The entire society was gripped by fear and silence. How Memory Survives... Like many traumatic histories, the memory of the White Terror could not be openly expressed for a long time, nor was it easily absorbed into the "official national narrative." As a result, it was passed down more through private channels: oral accounts within families, taboo conversations, music and poetry, metaphorical imagery, and so on. Music such as Longing for the Spring Breeze and traditional Minnan folk songs became “substitute vessels of memory” for a history that could not be directly spoken—when language was suppressed, melody became a hidden medium for carrying emotion, grief, and identity.
The White Terror was not a singular event, but rather a prolonged emotional condition within society: suspicion, silence, self-censorship, and emotional repression. This condition continued to linger in the deep psychological structure of Taiwanese society even after martial law was lifted, and it has inspired numerous literary, theatrical, and cinematic works that explore the “unfinished memory” of that era.
"Longing for the Spring Breeze"
The background music used in this work, Longing for the Spring Breeze, was originally composed in 1933 and is one of the most iconic Minnan-language popular songs in Taiwan’s local music history. Since the postwar period, it has been widely covered by numerous well-known singers due to its graceful melody, restrained emotion, and familiar language. Among these, Teresa Teng’s rendition has had the most profound impact and remains the most widely circulated version of the song across East Asia. In Taiwan, Longing for the Spring Breeze has transcended the category of a mere song to become a symbol of collective memory and emotional belonging. Especially during historical periods marked by social repression and blurred identity, such widely beloved melodies often served as carriers of intergenerational memory and cultural identity.
From the White Terror to the Flickr Era
My intention is not to recount a specific historical event, but rather to borrow a structure of familiar collective melancholy, one that has often been used to carry historical memory and relocate it into a memory system of my generation: one that is non-dramatic, non-monumental, and spoken in a whisper. I’ve come to realise that a similar experience of repression, blurring, and self-erasure exists in the shared perception of Chinese and Asian youth of my generation.
We grew up in a time saturated with digital images, where emotional expression is over-coded, and intimate relationships slowly dissolve. Platforms like QQ Space (an early Chinese social media), early digital cameras, and instant film were not nostalgic relics, but real containers of our emotional development. In Part 2, I try to approach a kind of non-figurative emotional history, one without a clear timeline, without enemies, without defined trauma, through visual fragmentation, drifting sounds, and disrupted viewer relations. This history is not monumental, but it quietly seeps into the fragments of our everyday life.
Though this work adopts the formal framework of “political memory,” its true concern lies in how people today struggle almost unsuccessfully to sustain intimacy, to gaze at one another, and to remain connected.
Inspired by the classic Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber (also known as The Story of the Stone).
Epilogue: The Birds Returning to the Woods (Excerpt from Chapter 5 of Dream of the Red Chamber)
The officials: their estates withered. The wealthy: their gold and silver scattered. The merciful: narrowly escaping death. The ruthless: meeting their clear retribution. Those who owed a life have paid it back; Those who owed tears have wept them dry.
The cycle of vengeance is no small matter. Partings and reunions are all predestined. A life cut short is answered by a past life. Wealth in old age is nothing but sheer luck.
The awakened retreat into the void, the obsessed throw their lives away in vain. Just like birds scattering into the woods when the food is gone— Leaving behind a vast, white earth, completely clean.
為官的、家業凋零，富貴的、金銀散盡，有恩的、死裡逃生，無情的、分明報應，欠命的、命已還，欠淚的、淚已盡。冤冤相報實非輕，分離聚合皆前定；欲知命短問前生，老來富貴也真僥幸。看破的、遁入空門，痴迷的、枉送了性命；好一似食盡鳥投林，落了片白茫茫大地真乾淨。
Is the journey of repaying tears also a process of dissolving karma?
Materials: Jade stone, silver leaf, silver powder