海邊的異鄉人The stranger by the sea

 海邊的異鄉人

The Stranger by the Sea

(single channel video, 09:42 , 2017)

2014~2016年這段期間，我在南半球的紐澳，旅居了長達一年又七個月的日子，漫長的異國生活，最初的衝擊也隨著時間轉為極其平凡的日常，這段紐澳的旅居生活中，有一整年的時間都滯留在澳洲昆士蘭省的海邊小鎮-Bundaberg，在那裡認識了一位來自義大利的老人，他為我說了自己的故事，從他那充滿思鄉情懷的故事中，我瞥見自己的身影，去除時空背景與經歷，在靠海小鎮的我們具有同樣的鄉愁，然而這個故事不僅是讓異地的遊子，帶入自身的情境的範本，回憶因時代成為不同的形狀，身長在這網路時代，快速連結的去身體感、穿越時空的即時性，讓我常有不在異鄉的錯覺，縱然我對家的依戀是真實存在的情感，卻也讓人懷疑沒有經過科技網路洗禮的對象，回憶的質量與濃度是否有所不同。回到台灣的一年間，我依然無法忘記南半球的生活，卡在兩者之間的矛盾情結，在異地時思念家鄉、回到家鄉後卻又思念異地，對家的認知已逐漸模糊，宛如老人的故事般，這是一個關於離別的故事，記憶中無法重逢的故事。

 

During 2014 and 2016, for the period of a year and seven months, I traveled to the south hemisphere, between New Zealand and Australia. Through the time passing, the experience of days aboard for me has transformed from exciting to a settled ordinary-everyday-life feeling. For a whole year during this trip in New Zealand and Australia, I stayed at a seaside village called Bundaberg in Queensland. There I acquainted an elderly man came from Italy. He told me his story. His story was filled with the feeling of homesickness. I saw myself through his stories. We shared the experience of homesickness, situated at the same seaside village, with different time and experience background respectively. However, this story is not only an example of a rambling traveler projecting her own experience onto the other. In different era, memory take up different shapes. As a member growing up at the Internet age, instant connection seems to erase the boundary of time, space and bodily feeling. This sometime gives me an illusion that I was no longer traveling on a foreign land. Even though the sentiment of homesickness I experienced was true. It makes me wonder, whether or not the memory would be more profound or earnest without the influence of internet. After coming back to Taiwan for a year, the days spent on the south hemisphere still lingering in my head. Missing home while being aboard and missing the foreign land while being back home, I am often entangled in these conflicting sentiments. The ways I acknowledge the idea of home became vague. Parallel to the elderly man’s story, this is a valedictory, to stories of parting memories.