The Wandering Deities 游荡的神明(2023)

The Wandering Deities是我对于自己童年时代每天经过的民间宗教寺庙-相王庙的重新发掘了解。在文本调研中，我意识到这些地域性的民间文化在近100年间的文字记载的缺失于是开始了长达两个月的田野调查。在聊天中得知这些信仰有几百年的历史但在 50年代的几次浪潮之后一度消失，空间被侵占，到现在和旁边的学校还有产权上的争端。看庙的奶奶们带我一起重新回溯了回忆中的信仰空间的构成，在反复地走访确实之后，我参考了传统制图学完成了第一张remapping，一方面是对于没有文本记载的消逝的记忆的捕捉。另一方面这张看起来很仿古的地图也可以成为这些老年人在寻求自己的空间正义时的佐证。

在和奶奶们的聊天中，我也发现了很多她们自己创造的今日神话也了解到她们最近十年正在为过去被销毁，被消失的神重新塑像。所以我的另一处田野地点在冲山村的神像场，在对于造神过程的观察，拍摄与工匠的聊天中我开始思考对于神话的创造creation of myth，并且制作了第二张关于神像流转的mapping。


The Wandering Deities is my rediscovery and exploration of Xiangwang Temple, a vernacular religious shrine I passed by every day during my childhood. Through literature research, I became aware of the lack of written records about these regional folk cultures over the past century. This realization led me to conduct a two-month field investigation. In conversations with local elders, I learned that these beliefs have a history spanning several hundred years but nearly disappeared after the Cultural Revolution. The temple space was encroached upon, and today the local people are still running a pentition for the land owndership against a nearby school. The elderly from the temple guided me in retracing the components of this sacred space from their memories. After numerous visits to verify the details and research on Chinese traditional cartography, I created the first remapping. This map serves as both a capture of fading, undocumented memories and as potential evidence for these elders in their pursuit of spatial justice.

In my conversations with the elders, I also discovered myths they have crafted in the present day. I learned that over the past decade, they have been reconstructing statues for deities that were once destroyed. Thus, my second field site became the statue factory in Chongshan Village. Through observing the statue-making process, filming, and conversing with the craftsmen, I began to reflect on the creation of myth and produced a second mapping, focused on the creation and circulation of these deity statues.