I think I’m homesick, 2021.
Single channel, 5 minutes 42 seconds.
‘I think I’m homesick’ (2021) is a moving image consisting of imagery sourced from Google Street View, satellites, and personal archival images. This video work is an expression and exploration of the feeling of homesickness. As I revisit my hometown Banchang, which is located in Rayong, Thailand, through different lenses, I take the viewer to multiple locations that are significant to me. ‘I think I’m homesick’ (2021) consists of dynamic imagery, voice over, and subtitles of myself telling stories of each location, in both Thai and English. I revisit my childhood hometown through a variety of lenses, gathering fragmented still images both digitally and personally. I begin skipping through timelines, creating a sense of familiarity; clicking, zooming in and out, and spinning the camera rapidly on Google Street View and Maps. These places of significance are simple yet sentimental locations; family home, dad’s favourite hainanese chicken shop, and where I had my first motorbike accident. This revisiting seemed to fill the void temporarily in times of longing for what was my ‘home-base’. The process of revisiting my hometown started during the pandemic when travel restrictions were restricting and it had been four years since I last saw my parents and childhood bedroom. When I first started exploring this concept, I had found Hito Steyerl’s, In defense of the poor image (2009). Through Steyerl’s work I discovered that it was the best way to convey my experiences with memory and memory loss. Coming to the realisation the details of a location that once were vivid now had slowly started to fade, similar to the way pixels blend and fade after each act of reproduction.
