| I hate New York! From the day I stepped into the city, I’ve been feeling this way. This feeling has never left my mind, except for a few pleasant surprises. Good brownies or the dazzling lights of Broadway eased my loathness of New York. It’s as if I am repeatedly writing “I HATE NEW YORK” on a blackboard, and erasing it at the same time with a duster. Still traces of the words remain, as though I never had any intention to wipe it off. |
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Tseng Yu-Chin is a Taiwanese artist.
Tseng Yu-Chin, The Fever Dark. Photography. Courtesy of the artist.
I hate New York! From the day I stepped into the city, I’ve been feeling this way.
This feeling has never left my mind, except for a few pleasant surprises. Good brownies or the dazzling lights of Broadway eased my loathness of New York. It’s as if I am repeatedly writing “I HATE NEW YORK” on a blackboard, and erasing it at the same time with a duster. Still traces of the words remain, as though I never had any intention to wipe it off.
It is a very uninteresting game, a game where you can’t hide too far in, you can’t hide yourself completely, or camouflage yourself as any item in the darkness under the bed hoping that you wouldn’t be found, while listening to the noises outside, you feel safe as you hide. All because you want to be found. This is no longer an innocent game for children, where you could hide because of anger or simply because you wish to get away with a friend, just the two of you. You can no longer do that! You must be found, and you must show yourself, and face the music! This, indeed, is no longer a game for kids.
Ever since I came to New York, I’ve unconsciously begun to force myself to get along with myself, even though I’m pretty used to being alone. The solitary me in my own world has been forced to go out and face reality, and it’s been an ongoing process. Eventually, I took a 15-hour flight and arrived in New York, and I’m left with only myself. It is really a test of inner strength. When you’re all alone, the only thing you can rely on is the lingering scent of your country left in your suitcases. All I want to do is to curl up and go to sleep, enveloped in the scent. More often, I stay indoors, inside this temporary apartment of mine. My initial insecurity was overwhelming. Amidst the noise that goes on 24/7 in the city, there is no serenity. I can’t think. Freedom is a foreign concept. One thinks he can travel to many places, but the truth is, you can’t. The so-called traveling is merely a physical shift of territories, subsequently imprisoning oneself again. Pardon my word choice—imprisoning.
I’m imprisoned. By myself, by words and speech, by this conformity of a life that isn’t mine, by the responsibilities and obligations I need to bear. I am imprisoned. I was so perturbed in the winter of New York that I couldn’t even be sure how much this major illness I was going through was affecting me. I only recall the endless nights when I had a fever and a serious bad cough that kept me awake. I groaned with a slight growl, but still I could feel the subway trains coming and going beneath my apartment.
Then I saw a kid, facing me, all curled up, and watching me uneasily, or at least I thought he was watching me. Perhaps. His gaze wasn’t at all on me. He might simply be staring straight, like he’s watching a beast approaching. Or like he’s peeping through a hole, or maybe not. I was unable to decipher his feelings. A sense of complexity was preventing him from focusing. Like he wanted to speak up, but couldn’t. The urge to speak up made his lips tremble.
Kids are often the theme of my works. It is a habit that I find difficult to shake off. I always picture a child standing before me, like a storyteller, a character. I let this child speak as I set a scene, time, and space, but I’m always absent. I invite the child as the narrator to tell the story.
The Fever Dark series reflects my emotions and thoughts I had when I visited New York for the first time. I extracted directly the images from my mind. I selected 21 kids from various parts of New York, from Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and Bronx, each representing a different face of New York, coming from diverse family backgrounds. 21 kids to tell a tale—my tale.
I’ve always felt that digital imagery is a simple form of presentation. This time, I utilized a digital pen to doodle on digital pictures, continuously overlaying the images from my head. The various layers are just like those on an oil painting, where layers and layers of paint go on a sheet of canvas. This imagery is like a painting where the background color has just been painted on, and I add my emotions and instincts to the image, presenting a seemingly familiar and warm, yet strange and chilly feeling.
Every kid hides in his/her own bedroom, gazing at the outside. They know they cannot hide too far in. They know they have to be found. But the outside world scares them like dark shadows in their own bedrooms, as they watch the world with curiosity and apprehension at the same time, while waiting for something to happen, or waiting to make something happen. This is what I want to relay.
