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Can’t Live With or Without You (2018)

In 1948, one year before the founding of the People’s Republic of China, a 10-year-old kid’s mother took a small jet in Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong, where was occupied and significantly expanded by the Japanese during the Occupation period. The kid saw her mother off to Shanghai, thought she was on a mission assigned by her party and might return to Hong Kong after a few days.

 

In 1998, a lady was about to retire. She learnt photography from a local amateur photography club run by a communist society. The lady documented the last days of Kai Tak Airport with a film camera.

 

By employing a Latin phrase used in the Italian edition of Introduction to Communist Manifesto, which was originally written by Roman poet Marcus Valerius Martialis, Can’t Live with or without you (Nec Tecum possum vivere nec sine te) draws attention to the connection of objecthood and personal history with Dialectical Materialism discourse. The project sheds light on a private collection that survives important social movements in both China and Hong Kong, including Cultural Revolution, 1967 The Leftist Riots, and Umbrella Movement. The installation is juxtaposed with a lecture recording, which is extracted from one of the first education paradigms on Materialism Dialectics after the Cultural Revolution.

Can’t Live With or Without You (2018)