[jico.]

 

Another combination of images to result in a connection - or friction.
The film, Mother and Child, was originally just an image of a pleasing parent and her child that one of my friends shot long time ago. I re-shot the film with reversed colors, and that gave kind of a negative impression. Also, by projecting it with a slow rotation, it even became a cruel scene as if the mother was pushing her child. I thought it was really interesting that one thing could give a totally opposite impression or meaning.

 

Stills from ‘Mother and Child’, re-shot in reverse colors.
Lee: That is totally what DRIFT is like, because you kind of drift through it. Different things come to the surface and drift away, then others come up… I think it is a sort of meditation. Each person has both a different vision and a background that gives him/her different feelings or ideas when coming across something. In short, one thing might be understood in millions of ways depending on who you are.
Leah: I want to ask the audience how they felt about our work. I’m interested in what story they would create as our works don’t have any certain story. The important thing is what you think and feel about it.

 

Lee Ranaldo and Leah Singer.
In DRIFT, the 9/11 motif you used gives almost the strongest impression. What was your personal experience with that event?
Leah: When it occurred, we were sending our children to school. Our home is only three blocks away from the site. Therefore, it was possible that the building could fall on us. It was a really horrible experience and also so real. But we managed to drive away to a safe place. And because of the huge impact, I was unable to take any pictures for a while except the one I took when we escaped.
Lee: We returned to New York from my mother’s place a month later. There was still fresh evidence the event left in the city: buildings had collapsed, smoke was still going up, and there were a lot of soldiers with guns… But people tried to live their usual lives in such a situation…. One day afterwards, I went out to buy the paper, and I looked at it: it was, in fact, September 11th. Memories of the fearful experience flashed back to my head, and I thought: Who would read the paper when people are desperately trying to survive?
New York is our home, the place where we live. Many things were written about it, but nobody mentioned a pile of shoes left there. I wanted to write something from a different point of view and created a poem based on this experience.

 

The ticker-tape parade gave Leah a horrible 9/11 flashback.
Leah: We live on Broadway, famous for its ticker-tape parade. It’s a celebration parade where confetti is scattered from buildings. You might have seen it on TV when the Yankees win the championship, for instance. We live close to the street, and I usually shoot the parade while sitting on our roof. One day, I was looking over the pictures I had taken. Suddenly I had a 9/11 flashback. One reminded me of a scene on that said day where a lot of paper was whirling in the air. Then I thought of combining Lee’s poems with this image. Humans often experience this: something works as a trigger and they remember an incident in a completely unrelated situation.