2013 Residency Participants: Lin Li
Lin:
Lin’s Work:
About Lin’s practice:
Originally from Hong Kong, I now reside in Glasgow, UK. Coming from an academic and employment background in Social Sciences and disability service, I have taken courses with the Open Colleges of the Arts and have gradually shifted my vocation to fine art. My practice started fourteen years ago with a focus on painting, but over the years I have experimented with a diversity of techniques and media. In 2011, I began to use moving images in my work partly because it allows me to explore a subject I am particularly interested in – the interaction between image and sound. Last year I also started creating stand-alone audio pieces. My videos have been screened in a number of festivals in the UK, Serbia, Bulgaria, China, and Switzerland, and my audio work has been played in the Lights Out Listening Group meetings, including a recent event in the Camden Arts Centre in London. My practice is a form of meditative engagement with a wide range of subjects. Some of the recurrent themes in my work are the ephemeral elements of nature and the transience of human experiences, and a current direction focuses on the divergent interpretations of the concept of peace.
How Lin might use the residency:
I am open-minded about what I would achieve during the residency. Most of my videos were developed from clips which I had collected without any preconception of how they would be used. Similarly I am prepared to gather new ideas, images and sounds during the residency which may lead to unexpected outcomes. Whilst adopting such a flexible attitude, I would like to use a theme which I have been exploring recently as the creative starting point for the residency – the multiple and sometimes conflicting interpretations of the concept of ‘peace’, particularly in the context of a rural environment. I have always lived in cities but have longed to be closer to nature since childhood when I was influenced by traditional Chinese poems and paintings of idealized peaceful rural landscape. However, I am also aware of the complexity in the relationship between humankind and nature, which is not always harmonious. The isolated setting of Ettrick Valley will offer me an opportunity to experience my response to an environment which is conceived as peaceful, but which might also contain hidden disharmony or sources of angst. Of particular interest to me are those aspects in this environment related to water, an element I have explored in my artwork which still contains much more for me to discover. While I am open-minded about what I would learn during the residency, I hope the experience would enable me to have a better overview of moving image as an art medium and to position my own work in this wider context. I also hope to improve my production techniques and my understanding of conceptual issues such as the role of aesthetics in experimentation.
