Expanded Media Ausstellung
Internationaler Wettbewerb Expanded Media
https://filmwinter.de/ausstellungen/expanded-media-ausstellung


Landscapes in Zurich, 2024 
Moving image | 11:07

‘Landscapes series’ is a series of video works that currently includes two pieces: ‘Landscapes in Furka’ and ‘Landscape in Zurich’.
These works explore the concept of 'becoming', and transforming, which can be seen or unseen.
The two pieces address different themes: ‘Landscapes in Furka’ centres on non-human beings while ‘Landscapes in Zurich’ addresses social and political issues within a societal setting.
‘Landscape in Zurich’ is the sequel to the series. In this work, the landscapes are replaced with cityscapes.
Again, I am becoming something, immersing myself in the scenery, in the social context of Zurich. As a foreigner, integrating into the community is always crucial.
When I blend into the cityscape and disappear in sight, does it mean I have integrated successfully?
When the viewer cannot notice me, and that I become part of the cityscape, does it signify societal acceptance of someone from the third country?
Or does it mean I have involuntarily disappeared, that my existence is insignificant to anyone?
In various situations, identity can be imposed or chosen, just like when I am in the crowd captured in a wide shot, I am small enough in the frame to lose all recognisable features, and no one can tell that I am Asian or that I do not speak Swiss German.
My work is not simply to demand visibility, to be noticed, but to imagine why someone might not be seen.

The winner of International Expanded Media Competition

In “Landscapes in Zurich”, Tsz Hei Fung invites us into everyday scenes of the Zurich cityscape. In eight static panorama shots, Tsz Hei appears and then disappears again as just one body among many: at the tram station, by the municipal office, in the park, on the Ferris wheel. In each new image, we as viewers look for him, blending in just enough to no longer be recognized in the crowd as an “other” to the majority society. Meanwhile, we hear what Tsz Hei heard when he entered the picture and left it again - image and sound do not share the same perspective. A booklet identifies the individual images as places of the artist’s biography as well as exemplary parts of a cityscape of many. The work is further complemented by a scenic installation of self-exploration, all of which makes “Landscapes in Zurich” expanded media in the best sense.
“Landscapes of Zurich”'s play with appearing and disappearing in the urban environment touches upon questions of identity and belonging, it asks what it means to integrate into a community - what such integration depends on, who decides about it, what there is to desire, to gain or to lose in the process. Often, political discourse surrounding integration is dominated by societal ascriptions, prescriptions and assertion of identities, by questions of visibility and numbers.

We chose “Landscapes of Zurich” because Tsz Hei Fung manages to ask about all this in a different way: in a poetic, gentle and accessible form that opens up very personal impulses for a wide range of experiences with feeling a stranger and inhabiting a space between desires for visibility or invisibility.

- JURY: Dagmar Schürrer, Arne Vogelgesang & Nataša Vukajlović