FOUR COMRADES, ONE ECHO
From Non-fiction To Fiction
From Cinema To Theater
From Collectivity Back To Individuality
FROM POLITICAL TO PERSONAL
“The White Hair Girl” is one of the “Eight Model Operas” during the Cultural Revolution in China.
The piece I naturally played was the theme song from The White-Haired Girl, a play written in 1945 and dedicated to the Communist Party. In the story, a girl was taken from her father by a landlord, then escaped to a cave in the mountains, her hair turning white from a lack of salt, and was eventually rescued by Communist soldiers. The play is still performed in China today as a historical tribute to the Communist Party.
I recorded the sound as I tried to improvise. At first, there were repeated attempts to recall the melody until it slowly returned to me. Then, anger began to rise through my fingers. I punched the keys like it was a long-awaited protest, only after that I became calm enough to improvise something soft to comfort myself.
I started to wonder, in what way do memories, especially traumatic ones, live on in one’s body? When we try to forget the pain, are we merely remembering it in another way? Or perhaps, within what is believed to be pain, more complex emotions got intertwined?
Alongside an archival video of the 1971 ballet adaptation of The White-Haired Girl, performed during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), I began to research what exists between my body and this melody, through the editing process on a timeline. I layered this archival footage with a recording of my own piano improvisation, and a melody my mother sang and sent to me remotely.
By intervening the images from the White-Haired Girl musical play, I displaced the work from its political message:
(3 minutes 28 seconds)
By intervening the images from the White-Haired Girl musical play,
I displaced the work from its political message.
By intervening the images from the White-Haired Girl musical play,
I displaced the work from its political message.
My mother’s singing wasn’t only a voice that once overwhelmed the house and filled every corner of my space, but also a thread of connection, guiding me back to a moment: me playing, her singing along. A moment of harmony. A quiet conversation. What my body remembered wasn’t just pain. It was sentiment too. For my mother, the song and the images held memories of her youth, which more often than not has been personal rather than political.
Since then, I became interested in how this seemingly revolutionary song could be guises that hide very private sentiments and desires. I started to explore the complexity of what is political versus what is personal, and what propaganda can do, and more importantly, what it cannot do in shaping personal memory.
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