In my film permanent war (2019), I explore this relationship more specifically and understand everyday objects as the traces of wars between people everywhere in our society. In permanent war two separate screens that broadcast at the same time, audiences can see a variety of items like exit signs, doors, a clock, etc. I selected part of Michel Foucault's speech at Collège de France in 1976 as the film’s voice-over and used repeated monotonous music to constantly strengthen a cold and uneasy atmosphere.

 

War is not only in the margins of peace but also in every corner of daily life. Precisely, everyone is facing with a disorder, eternal contradictions, and struggles. In permanent war, I concentrate on these orderly corners, gazing at those industrial mass-produced or handmade objects, trying to track the traces of the disorderly wars that are going on or have been forgotten.

 

There are two scenarios in the film: a company’s dormitory for the staff and my grandmother's house. It was when my grandmother was still alive and about to die that I filmed the staff dormitory. When I filmed her house, she was already gone. The presence and absence of my grandmother were incredibly combined in these two irrelevant scenarios owing to me as a middleman. 

 

The zooming stairs, the fluttering curtains, the wooden chairs, the human-shaped bathtub, the remnants of burnt clothes in an iron basin, and the Shentai (used to worship gods), are all metaphors of my grandmother’s presence. Her friend sang an emotional song in Cantonese at the funeral that describes her happiness during the afterlife, which was later utilized as a part of background music in the film.