World of One: the Indecisive Battle

The Indecisive Battle (from the series World of One)

Above is the picture I had originally envisioned when I was shooting Painful Pleasures.

Internal Destruction

This image, Internal Destruction, was shot about two weeks earlier and is a previously failed attempt at creating the snowball fight of my dreams. When I completed the collage (after 12+ hours of work), I found myself grossly disappointed. Although I do see redeeming qualities about the picture, I feel like it is lacking what I like to call a "leading man," a central figure in the picture to pull in the viewer; also, I wanted there to be more of a mix of the two sides in the middle of the picture; more chaos, less order. Basically, I didn’t get the picture I wanted because I didn’t try hard enough.

On Monday 3/18, when I heard that we were going to get 4-12 inches of snow in Boston, I knew that this was my chance. I sent out an SOS on Facebook for volunteers to assist me with an early morning shoot the next day. I got one single volunteer, my buddy Dave (who also writes an awesome blog here), and I also got in touch with Henry, my assistant from Narcissus and Yin Yang Whisper. They agreed to wake up early and help me press buttons and chuck snowballs at me in the middle of a blizzard.

here's Henry, probably wondering why he volunteered to come on this shoot.

The morning of the shoot 3/19, the last day of winter, I woke my ass up extra early so I could shovel myself out of my driveway and pick up my friends. I had barely slept the night before, as thoughts of different scenarios of how the shoot would go kept running through my head. After having picked up Henry, I called Dave to let him know I was almost there, to which he replied, "Okay, I'm finishing a poo. I'll probably be out by the time you get here." At this point, I knew this was going to be a fun shoot.

Testshot when we arrived

By the time we arrived at Lars Anderson Park in JP, the weather had changed from heavy snow to hellish hail with gusty winds -- later, it would change again to freezing rain. So one of the first things Dave did when I picked out a spot to shoot was to put up a snow wall.

(Photo courtesy of Dave Shi)

But, as you can see in this picture, the snow wall behind me, while an appreciated gesture, didn't go up very high. So the winds still felt miserable. But I didn't give a shit. Sometimes that's how I know when I'm onto something good -- when I don't care about how much work I have to do to achieve my goals.

What followed thereafter were the two most painful hours of my life. During our first take, as soon as I yelled "action," Dave let out a war cry, screaming and running towards me with snowballs in hand. For a minute there, I was legitimately scared – his level of commitment to playing the character of the “attacker” was totally unexpected. I screamed back and let go a volley of snowballs. This continued for the first three rolls, until it was time for a wardrobe change. By the end of the shoot, my body felt so numb that I didn't even feel cold – but it was worth it.

After an hour of getting my ass kicked, it was time for a wardrobe change. (Photo courtesy of Dave Shi)

While this work is similar to Painful Pleasures, I think Indecisive Battle has a very different tone to it. I see Painful Pleasures as a picture that is more about self-destruction, particularly how self-destructive behavior is often fun; on the other hand, Indecisive Battle is a picture about indecision and personal conflict. For me, it illustrates how I feel when I'm trying to make tough decisions in life.

Henry and I checking the frame before shooting the White figures (Photo courtesy of Dave Shi)

Dave destroying his snow wall after we finished the shoot (Photo courtesy of Henry Lee)

On Craneface

Craneface

Craneface has been (and remains) one of my most successful images to date, which is why I shamelessly use it for just about everything. Because of its ambiguous elements, it is also one of the pictures about which I get the most questions. The practical function of a portrait is to show a person's face, an element that acts as an emblem of individuality. However, by masking the face, as I have done in this image, one’s individuality is removed or suppressed, and exchanged for another’s.

The Craneface, to me, is a juxtaposition of two different notions of work. I purposely used a suit as the basis of the figure because it connotes images of the modern worker and is the uniform of choice for bureaucracies around the world. I see the suit as representing this faceless notion of work, one in which we all just become squirrels fighting for the largest nut beneath the corporate tree. The origami cranes, on the other hand, represent an intimate notion of work, as origami is something that must be made by hand. There is no machine that can fold origami for you. Anyone who has ever folded even simple origami knows it can be frustrating process that requires a human’s touch.

When I shot Craneface I was in the midst of trying to decide whether or not I wanted to walk the paved path of a nine to five, or if I wanted to cut my way through the jungle that is fine art. This is a question I am still grappling with today, and perhaps the act of hiding my face behind the cranes reflects on my indecision. Alternatively, one could also read the image as a statement that says, “I have become my work and wish to be recognized for my art (that which I have created with my hands), rather than with my face.”

World of One: Painful Pleasures

Painful Pleasures (from the series World of One)

For months now, the idea for this picture has been dancing around my brain chamber, taking up space like a chubby elephant. However, since the level of snow in Boston has pretty much been shit for most of the season, I’ve found myself sitting on my hands for most of this winter, waiting for it to either start snowing or get warmer so I could move onto other ideas. Earlier this month, my family started planning our annual Tang Family Vacation Expo. This year we decided to go up to Lincoln New Hampshire, for a weekend of skiing/snowboarding and 6 - 8 hours of me sliding on my face. At the time of planning this trip, it looked like it wasn’t going to snow anymore this year, so I decided that I might as well head north to where the snow was guaranteed. We had planned our trip for this past weekend to coincide with the Lunar New Year (yay fireworks!), and, just as we were leaving town, low and behold, my prayers were answered! As I was leaving Boston in search of pristine fields of snow, the second biggest snowstorm of a decade comes rolling into town. I felt silly.

This was by far the most painful shoot I’ve ever done. The snow up that dropped in New Hampshire over the weekend was of the dry, light, and fluffy variety, which makes it absolutely terrible for making snowballs. I circumvented this problem by making the snowballs with my bare hands, using my body heat to melt a bit of the snow and to create enough moisture to make the snow adhere to itself. Since I was using my family as the crew on this shoot, I also had to deal with my mom and her safety concerns, as well as my dad and his obliviousness to what we were doing. The moment that sums up this experience for me is when my dad asked me, “But how are you going to hit yourself? There’s nothing there!”

“Magic Dad, magic.”

While I would have preferred to shoot more frames for this image (I usually shoot at least 5 rolls), after shooting only 3 rolls, my cold resistance had reached its limit. While I don’t usually need 500 frames to make a World of One, shooting more will provide me with more options, and will usually improve the quality of the work. That being said, Painful Pleasures actually ended up being a simpler version of what I originally had in mind. Maybe if I get lucky I’ll have a chance to make another snow picture before the winter fades away.

Painful Pleasures is dedicated to my high school English/Film teacher, Mr. Brown. I learned more about art in the year I spent in his class than 3 years of college. I will always remember him teaching us that “All Truths are paradoxical,” and “The things that make us laugh, also make us cry.”