無中生有的那個有 | That Something Out of Something Out of Nothing

無中生有的那個有
(一組九封裱框書信) 墨水紙本 / 2013

二零一三年何倩彤在美國佛蒙特的傑森小鎮。冬日，她分別以左手和右手謄抄鍾玲玲的《愛蓮說》中，齊正和蓮生的通信。何倩彤並在另一作品中〈十七年的重量〉中透過天秤去量度雙方書信分別的物理重量。

九封書信是香港和美國波士頓的兩地書。這一對分開了的戀人，十七年後重遇並在分別後重新通信。他們反覆重述他們當初的愛、經歷過的各種事情。齊正和蓮生於一九七一年分別，在蓮生於同年七月七日參與保釣運動於維多利亞公園的示威被捕之後。一九八九年十一月二日，蓮生寫給齊生最後一封信，聯絡再度中斷。一九八九年六月一日蓮生寫給齊正的信上，有這麼一句︰「我不知道應該怎說這一年的五月。還有接著下來的六月七月和八月，我不知將會發生怎麼樣的事。」

生於上世紀四十年代的鍾玲玲是極為低調的香港作家。鍾玲玲在數十年的寫作生涯裡，一再重新書寫自己生命所經歷的痛楚，言說無法言說的。

That Something Out Of Something Out Of Nothing
(A set of 9 framed letters) Ink on paper / 2013

In 2013, Ho Sin Tung spent some time in Johnson, Vermont, United States. It was winter, she alternately used her right and left hand to copy out a series of letters written between the protagonists Chi Ching and Lin Sun from Zhong Ling-ling’s novel Ode to a Lotus. In a related work, The Weight of Seventeen Years, Ho uses a pair of scales to measure the difference in the material weight of the letters written by each of them.

The nine letters were written in Boston and in Hong Kong. After seventeen years of separation, the two former lovers had met again and then parted again, and it was after this second parting that they began to write to each other. In their letters, they reminisce about the love they had shared, and the things that had happened to them. Chi Ching and had first separated in 1971, after Lin Sun was arrested during the Defend Diaoyutai Islands demonstration held on July 7th of that year, in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park.

On November 2,1989 Lin Sun wrote her final letter to Chi Ching, after which all communication between them was broken off. In her letter to Chi Chin dated June 1, 1989, she writes: ‘I don’t know how to describe the past five months of this year. There is still June, July and August, but I have no idea what the future will bring.’

Born in the 1940s, Zhong Ling-ling is a Hong Kong writer who has always maintained an extremely low profile as a Hong Kong writer. In all the books she has written over the decades, including My Brilliance, The Lover, Ode to a Lotus, Rosary and Being Human, Zhong writes about the pain she has experienced in her life, speaking of those things which are unspeakable.

---"Everyone Says I Love You" Wong Ching

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Close-up

        (Lin Sun to Chi Ching, 1st June 1989.
       Copied on 3rd November 2013, 10:19am at Vermont, US.)

      This letter was copied with the artist's right hand.