賀瑋玲 Weiling He

To use video as a diagramming medium. To experiment with phenomena generated from interaction among material attributes. Through visual representations, to explore one idea both from a horrifying and from a beautiful point of view. Define an idea that arouses opposite feelings. Register such feelings through catching sensations derived from materials.

Work Credit: Paul Alvarez.

A Transient Death translates a scene from the German film Vitus. The purpose of this project was to diagram transience, more specifically, though, death and the perception of it. I have chosen to diagram the emotion and taking a conceptual approach rather than taking a strict, and rational stance. The method was to take frozen ice and pour melted way on top of it. The wax would meet the surface of the ice and chill instantaneously. I was studying the effects of the wax on the ice. The most popular comment about the form’s aesthetic was that it was grotesque. I would agree. The wax acts as both skin and structure. It has a raw, fleshy
features. It flows like a stream of blood collecting, and solidifying on the skin. Adding more layers of blood, flesh; it falls warm, but cools to the touch. The warmth leaves it, transferring from one medium to the other. The mass of ice absorbs it. Keeps it for itself. Hoarding it. Stealing the essence of what makes the liquid wax hot in the first place. The concept began with the realization the the water cycle is transient. The clouds are a gas, the
clouds shed water, and the water sometimes freezes. Then, I began to think about death, followed by the excogitation of the dichotomy between life and death. So, I associated death with coldness, and
life with warmth. That is how the concept rested in my mind.

I also set out to suggest a different view of death. One with a beautiful aesthetic. An aesthetic that offers hope and the prospect to love a loved one who has been seized by death. I froze a small flower in distilled water. Frozen distilled water offers an unobstructed view of the flower. No contamination. Pure. Clean. Beautiful. The project Indelible Beauty corresponds to this concept. The methods were the same. I froze ice, and dripped hot wax. The only factors that changed were the color of the wax, and that a flower was now frozen inside.

Indelible Beauty reminds us that beauty is the object of our desire. We long for it. And its everlasting mark rests within us.