TONG LAM
VISUAL PRACTICES
ONGOING PROJECTS
UNREAL ESTATE is a visual anthropological study of the wastes and wreckages of our civilization. Images were taken from abandoned amusement parks, derelict industrial facilities, car junkyards, airplane boneyards, decommissioned military facilitates, dilapidated churches, and other neglected industrial and postindustrial ruins.
DELIRIOUS CHINA is an interrogation of contemporary China's hysterical transformation. Selected images from this series are featured in the ongoing China Blog of the LA Review of Books.
COUNTER PROJECTION is part of the larger collaborative project called "Changing Technologies of Film Projection in the People's Republic of China." The overall project (in collaboration with historian Tina Chen and filmmaker Thomas Lahusen) examines the historical and contemporary significance of film projection in rural China. For its part, COUNTER PROJECTION uses photographic and projection techniques as ethnographic and artistic interventions to draw attention to the blurred boundaries between traditional and new media, process and product, art and life, and to reflect on the technologies of projection and representation in China's rapidly changing visual economy. The larger project, which is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), will also deliver research articles and a documentary film.
ONLINE GALLERIES
SELECTED GALLERIES
UNREAL ESTATE uses special light effects, including lighting techniques commonly associated with theatrical production, to bring surrealist qualities to the reality of abandonment, desolation, and devastation. By creating an impression of anachronism and superficiality, as well as a false sense of beauty and excitement, these images seek to engage the questions of war and violence, consumption, environment, and, above all, economic and political failures.
LOST BATTLESHIP dissects one of the world's most epic modern industrial ruins. Located near Nagasaki, Japan, Hashima, also known as Gunkanjima or Battleship Island because of its eerie resemblance to the ill-fated Japanese battleship Tosa, was a coal mine facility owned and operated by Mitsubishi from 1890 to 1974. The island played a crucial role in Japan's early industrialization, colonial expansion, and postwar high-speed growth.
DELIRIOUS CHINA is a critical reflection on contemporary China's hysterical transformation and its ramifications.
CINEMATOGRAPHY
GUNKANJIMA: THE AFTERLIFE OF JAPAN'S HIGH-SPEED GROWTH (Length: 3:36 minutes)
GUNKANJIMA: THE AFTERLIFE OF JAPAN'S HIGH-SPEED GROWTH (Length: 3:36 minutes)