STROLL
STROLL is a video essay that reimagines my grandfather's ambiguous disappearance not as an accident, but as a poetic exile. The work refuses a definitive closure, actively transforming the tragedy of loss into a space of open imagination.
The film bridges family history and performance. I utilize archival research to trace his life from an orphan to a professor, specifically reenacting a survival tactic he devised during the Cultural Revolution: covering his body with portraits of Mao to shield himself from violence, as no one dared to strike the leader's image. Then, anchored by a volume of Byron's poetry he gifted me, I re-enact his final walk using water calligraphy.
In this way, I construct a romanticized counter-narrative, granting him the autonomy in death that history attempted to strip from his life.
《散步》（STROLL）是一部影像散文。它将我爷爷充满不确定性的失踪，重新构想为一次诗意的流亡，而非一场单纯的意外。作品拒绝给出一个确切的结局，而是主动将悲剧转化为一片开放的想象空间。
这部影片融合了家族历史档案与身体行为表演。我通过档案研究，重构了他从一名孤儿成长为大学教授的人生轨迹，并特别重演了他文革期间总结出的一套生存策略：将毛主席像贴满全身来抵御暴力——没有人敢对领袖的肖像动手。随后，以他曾赠予我的一本拜伦诗集为锚点，我用水书法重演了他生命中最后的那段“散步”。
通过这种方式，我构建出一段浪漫化的“反叙事”，赋予他在死亡中的自主权——而这，恰恰是历史曾试图从他生命中剥夺的东西。
When Time, or soon or late, shall bring
The dreamless sleep that lulls the dead,
Oblivion! may thy languid wing
Wave gently o'er my dying bed!
......
No band of friends or heirs be there,
To weep, or wish the coming blow:
No maiden, with dishevelled hair,
To feel, or feign, decorous woe.
Ay, but to die, and go, alas!
Where all have gone, and all must go!
To be the nothing that I was
Ere born to life and living woe!
Visuals
