Us and the Night statement
The other week, a new friend gifted me a book -- City Slivers and Fresh Kills: The Films of Gordon Matta-Clark. In our happy chatter getting to know each other, we realised we both loved his work. In a way, I'd forgotten about Matta-Clark, but only in a way. I first discovered his work twenty years ago, and like other key discoveries in my early twenties, it felt like one that could unlock all sorts of possibilities about what art could be: where to look, what to play with, how to live. Turning the pages, I remembered how vital his work had been to me. And thinking about the library film now (I called it the library film for years, as a slightly anonymous, embarrassed moniker for something I helplessly felt like I couldn't finish), I could see how Matta-Clark's influence lurked about: that vertiginous empty shelf in the library stacks was my version of Matta-Clark's building cuts; Umi's digging about the books was my way of sorting through stuff, the way Matta-Clark played with records and catalogues, gaps and contingencies. Then there were all the possibilities with collages and puns, order and entropy, all that's present but that can be left unsaid.
I think all films have many beginnings, but if I were to name the practical beginning for this film, it would be when I came back to Brisbane in 2014 after some time away and I got a big tax return. Returning to Brisbane made me extra attentive to its subtropical temperament, and the unexpected sum of money led to a happy, solid film stock order. And I received another stroke of good fortune: Umi arrived in town for a visit. I didn't know her at all but I knew I wanted her in my film. I'd seen a snapshot of her somewhere -- from memory, it was her in a kitchen with her head bowed, her face was almost hidden. But there was something about how she held herself, still but moving, subtle but vital. She was the spark that lit it all up.
Vague ideas of the library film had floated about in my mind for years but it wasn't ever a concrete thing. My thoughts were bitsy and daydreamy, silly, melancholic, anecdotal. I had some sense of how the film could move, its ebb and flow, and then there were the feelings of boredom and thoughts of fun. I used to work as a shelver in this university library where most of the film was made. I remember at the job interview, they asked 22-year-old me how I would deal with the dull, repetitive task of shelving. I like boredom, I said. (I'd first worked as a shelver when I was 14 years old at the local council library.) I worked at the largest university library branch for a while. But, after a few months, I got (mildly) reproached for "wandering": the senior staff were concerned they couldn't find me amongst the endless, multi-storey stacks. I was moved to the smallest library branch, where I was the only shelver. This also delighted me.
I filmed with Umi and Xiao on and off at the university library for a few short weeks over the summer of 2014-2015. That beginning was not without its hiccups: a powerful storm dropped in on Brisbane, flooded the library, forcing its closure and delaying our filming. So Umi and I wandered outside the library at night, filming the detritus and waiting for the library to reopen.
Why did it take ten years for me to finish the film? It seems pointless to try to explain. But long after I filmed Umi and Xiao (Umi for that summer, and Xiao for a couple more years, at the university library in Brisbane as well as one in Melbourne), I returned again and again to the university library in subtropical Brisbane. I didn't really know what I was doing. But it was a place so familiar to me that I thought that there must be a way for me to give it a form through film. That said, the library was also becoming unfamiliar because the stacks were disappearing. I hope all these thoughts and events are in the film somehow.
Audrey Lam, 21 July 2024