41/ Stay Calm

2019
By Tsui Kuang-Yu
Duration: 3:20 min.
Recommended by Hoi Leung

How does this work investigate “hope?”
”Tsui Kuang-Yu’s Stay Calm surfaces a collective wishful thinking to a potential unknown and danger. For the work’s setting in San Francisco Chinatown, a neighborhood with a complex contemporary everyday, political, and immigrant culture, the practice of hope is as uplifting as it is habitual and unyielding.” —Hoi Leung

About the work:
“This work-in-progress was created during my residency at the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco, which is part of the 2018 Asian Cultural Council Fellowship Program. The video content is an experiment I conducted at Portsmouth Square in Chinatown, San Francisco. Particular social and cultural factors created a unique social sphere in this Square—pigeons, homeless, tourists, Goddess of Democracy, gamblers, children playing, crazy people, playgrounds etc. in comparison to the energetic words of blessings on the traditional buildings in the square. These elements that appear on Portsmouth Square every day are like a microcosmic projection of the real world. We can clearly see a contrast between the two but are unable to point out the problems. When contradictions develop into a habit that is part of everyday life, any absurdity doesn’t seem to be so strange anymore.

This experiment does not prove anything. We only see people firmly fulfilling their own lives and calmly coping with daily life.” —Tsui Kuang-Yu