ABSENCE OF THREE
Introduction by PEI-LING HO
I rebuild the complex relationship of three family members inside of my family, including father, mother, and myself. By using the video, recording from my parents’ love letter, and the interaction with viewers of melon seeds, those create a family scene in our daily life which everyone in the family just totally absent.
In the video, me as a daughter trap in a white curtain and keep calling the word ”dad” in the ocean who try to understand what is the meaning of the word “dad”, and why the word seems so unfamiliar with me. In the recording, the sound of it is mix from my mother and the male voice from google translation of a very mechanical feeling, reading the love letter, which my father wrote to her from Taiwan to USA when they got engaged.
During the performance, I act as my mother, an indifferent housewife. In Chinese tradition, tons of melon seeds that put in the red bridge symbolize to having more children in the future, and people usually eat melon seeds on a family union day. Performed as a housewife, she is really passive to the absence of her daughter and husband. However, to be hospitable, she invited the viewers to eat melon seeds with her, which is a symbol of interrupting the absence. However, things just hardly be changed and intervened, in the end of the performance, the construction of absence is still exist which makes viewers to rethink the family issue in our daily life.
Description written by PEI-LING HO
Performer: PEI-LING HO
Videographer and Editor: Youi Shih
