© 2024 C. Liu
Sumatra
2014
08:04 minutes
colour digital video, sound
'Sumatra' is an artist video about the artist's father's early experience in Sumatra, Indonesia before he moved to Taiwan due to the turbulence in the 50s.
The work's narrative is structured with inspiration from Lewis Carroll's 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' and tells a, though seemingly fictional, factual story about rural Sumatra, the turbulence, the subsequent diaspora and the lost identity. It also explores memory and its substitute, representation, and the exotic that blurs the boundary between reality and fantasy. The video's output consists both archival still images from the Internet and film scenes from 'In the Mood for Love' and 'A City of Sadness' and the famous Indonesian song 'Bengawan Solo'.