Raw Soul

Taiwan. Thrust into being by plate tectonics millions of years ago, this island is like a blade of grass emerging forth from a crack in the stone. For centuries, various cultures arrived and departed, wiping away the remnant memories of those who come before as they engraved traces of their own desires. Today, this land has become an urban landscape of inhabitants disquieted by myriad of daily pressures.

What draws me in are these pressurized, undefinable transition zones where change and replacement occur, as daylight sets on the fringes of urban development. Competing forces seem to be hidden behind the chaos of people, objects, and landscapes: the sacred and the secular, hope and despair, decline and renewal.

 

Substantive yet apparently empty, half-dead but also half-alive, these states of life often confound me. Is this a manifestation of meaning in the world, or an external projection of my own inner self? I remain silent, waiting for the background noise in my heart to dissipate, to perceive the world without intention in an attempt to penetrate the margins of the Taiwanese collective consciousness. That elusive Taiwanese essence may well be concealed within the chaos and confusion.



I savor this confusion in darkness until the moment I hear the reverberation in my heart, and press the shutter.

台灣。百萬年前，這座島嶼從板塊擠壓間而生，一如雜草從石縫中奮力長出；數百年來，不同文化的人們來去，將前人遺留的記憶抹去，刻下自身慾望的痕跡；而今，這片土地則成為人們千種日常生活擠壓後，難以安定的城市風景。

吸引著我的，正是這些受著擠壓而難以命名的過渡地帶。在天光落下後、城市發展的邊緣，改變與交替於此發生。隱藏在這片混亂的人、物、景的背後，似乎有股力量相互抗衡著：神聖與世俗，希望與無奈，衰亡與新生。

這些看似無物卻感覺有物，雖是半死也是半生的生命處境，每每讓我感到迷惑，究竟那是世界的意義自顯，還是我自己由內向外的投射？ 我保持靜默，等待心中背景雜音散去，不帶意圖去感受世界，試圖潛航至台灣人的集體意識邊界 。那未知的台灣性，即可能蘊藏在混亂與困惑之中。

我在黑暗中品嚐著這困惑，直到聽見內心發出迴響的一刻，按下快門。