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Better Life Analysis

Decent Essays

Within Isaac Julien Playtime exhibition that is presented by Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture with the Kramlich Collection and San Francisco Art Institute, there is a film called Better Life (Ten Thousand Waves). This film is located in the Gray Box Gallery, within the San Francisco Art Institute. Based on Isaac Julian’s essay entitled “The Multilayered Storytelling in Film Installation”, Better Life conveys Julian’s style of “incorporating different artistic discipline”to create a unique poetic and visual language that is within the ‘art context’. By repeating 1000 waves the form of calligraphy and poetry, it conveys loss and separation ; The movement of Mazu and the lover convey the Chinese perspective of the tragedy. conveys the theme of migration that the Chinese cockle pickers did in search for a better life. The experience conveyed focus and darkness in the meaning of the work . With the repetition of 10000 waves in the form of a poetry and calligraphy, it conveys the loss and death of the tragedy . To pay homage to the inspiration for the film, Isaac Julian incorporated sections of the poem of the same name in the film by having a narrator recite particular sections. While the female narrator states, “I have no time to make love to my wife” the woman head and eyes are facing down. The visual and audio of the still is a paradox; even though the narrator is stating an infinitive verb of ‘to make’, the woman is lifeless. Her eyes are lifeless By

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