My friend sent me this because she knew I was doing Soho. I wouldn’t start my research towards Soho’s gentrification if I haven’t seen that, and how I realised I can link my postcode project to the work I like by other artist might be totally different. I had an idea of a utopia world before that, it’s quite cliche and I’m so lucky I have other ideas because of this magazine page.
I was going through a magazine the other day, and this came to me. Pop culture. With all those products and prices. Is that the pop culture? Shopping and shopping all the time? And that’s why I would do this video, everything is becoming commercialised, all about money, all about fame, people and places are losing their personalities, losing their uniqueness, which is not cool at all.
I picked up some printed work that people don’t want in the library, and distorted some old pictures of Soho using photo copier, then created this. It seems angry, well, not just because I made it in 20 minutes, but also because I really am. Angry. I know that people are always talking about how good old time passes and the world we’re living in is getting worse, it’s cliche, but I kind of feel the same. The internet makes our life much easier but it also ruins a lot of things. I can’t help thinking that things are not pure anymore. Not just Soho, way beyond Soho, it’s just a perfect sample of this unfortunate.
This is a scene from the final video, the part the girl changes her image to become a pop star and acts in stupid shampoo commercials. Well I didn’t mean to make this fake ad look THAT stupid but my Photoshop skill is just, too bad. But surprisingly it kind of creates the ridiculer contrast from her previous image, so I kept this.
I spent a lot of time thinking about how I can show the gentrification of a place through making a film, and my friend said casually one day that I can turn the place to a person. That reminds me of the film Agora I watched recently, which shows how Roman Empire fell by telling the story of how a women scholar was first honoured then killed as a witch. And I was so touched after watching that, not only feel sad for the character, but also how an era ended. Which means the method of projecting a place, a period of time to a person works well, so I created the story of the two girls.