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M+, Hong Kong, © Fiona Tan
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Mediatheque
Fiona Tan 陳金霖
May You Live in Interesting Times 願你生活多姿多彩
1997
May You Live in Interesting Times is an hour-long film Fiona Tan created for Dutch television. Following the artist as she interviews relatives in Europe and Asia, the documentary-style work narrates Tan’s family history as a means to investigate notions of cultural identity, including her own.
Tan, who was raised in Australia and lives in Amsterdam, was born in Indonesia to a Chinese Indonesian father and an Australian mother. In English voiceovers, she describes herself as a ‘professional foreigner’, the child of a ‘marriage of cultural influences’. Though she has many Chinese relatives, she does not speak their language or share their culture; she views them with a ‘distance’ that is ‘built into [her] soul’. The recorded conversations deal with themes of belonging and the persistence of Chinese cultural values and expectations in different contexts. Tan also explores the history of violence and discrimination against the Chinese in Indonesia, especially after the failed coup in 1965, when two of her uncles were imprisoned.
The work ends with Tan travelling to China, where she visits the Tan family’s ancestral village. In its sensitive handling of memory and doubt, May You Live in Interesting Times speaks to the multifaceted personal repercussions of global migration.
Tan, who was raised in Australia and lives in Amsterdam, was born in Indonesia to a Chinese Indonesian father and an Australian mother. In English voiceovers, she describes herself as a ‘professional foreigner’, the child of a ‘marriage of cultural influences’. Though she has many Chinese relatives, she does not speak their language or share their culture; she views them with a ‘distance’ that is ‘built into [her] soul’. The recorded conversations deal with themes of belonging and the persistence of Chinese cultural values and expectations in different contexts. Tan also explores the history of violence and discrimination against the Chinese in Indonesia, especially after the failed coup in 1965, when two of her uncles were imprisoned.
The work ends with Tan travelling to China, where she visits the Tan family’s ancestral village. In its sensitive handling of memory and doubt, May You Live in Interesting Times speaks to the multifaceted personal repercussions of global migration.
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