The Memorial (2019)
Stop motion animation projection on wax
16:9 | HD | B&W | 1’17” loop | Stereo
Photographic installation (Print on ceramics) ｜ 20L x 15W cm
During the Japanese occupation, the Imperial Japanese Army constructed monuments and shrines across its occupied territories and colonies—both to commemorate wartime losses and to assert imperial power. One such structure, a Japanese War Memorial, was built atop a mountain on Hong Kong Island, where the remains of Japanese soldiers, including the notorious Kamikaze bombers, were enshrined.
Following the British recapture of Hong Kong in 1945, the colonial government faced severe austerity, struggling with resource depletion from the war and the extensive reconstruction efforts that followed. Despite these challenges, the Public Monuments Committee unanimously approved funding for the destruction of the Japanese War Memorial. On 26 February 1947, at precisely 4:29 PM, the monument was demolished with explosives. Few official records of this event remain, as the British administration sought to erase what it deemed an embarrassment to its sovereignty and colonial rule.
In 2019, I unearthed a roll of 16mm film from a classified list of records—footage that had never been made available for public viewing. However, due to the mismanagement of the Hong Kong Public Records Office, no suitable equipment was available to screen the film. To navigate this bureaucratic failure and foreground the significance of these archival materials, I devised an alternative approach: transmediating the film into prints, meticulously extracting each frame, re-editing the sequence through printing, rearranging, and scanning.
