LAURIE McDONALD VIDEO
  • Video Art
    • A Dedication to Lee Choon-Sop
    • Androgina, from Generic Video Art
    • As profecias da Orixá Oxum
    • Body Images
    • Dreamtime
    • Eyeopeners
    • Hydroglyphs: Early Morning Drift
    • John Cage, from New Music America
    • Private Parts
    • Sadie Curtis Navajo Weaver
    • Spinning Ballerina
    • The Death of the Lotus
    • The Dying Swan
    • The World's Largest
    • Twenty-Eight Years of Cadillacs
    • Uncle Umbrella
  • Installations
    • What It Means
    • Beyond the Shadow
    • Highway Shoes
    • Hydroscapes
    • Prime Time
    • Surveillance
    • Sylvanscapes
    • The Video Nickelodeon
    • The Wonderful Stone
  • Audio Art
    • Telephone Dating
  • Archive
  • About
    • Biography
    • Selected Works
    • Selected Exhibitions
  • Electron Movers
    • The Video Maze
  • Contact
Picture
Uncle Umbrella, 1998
with Sam Ho
excerpt 04:15; original running time 16:03

Friends and acquaintances called him Umbrella Boy when he started his business.  After repairing umbrellas on the same city block for over fifty years, he is Uncle Umbrella, a man who has earned the respect and affection of his neighbors and customers.

Hong Kong is a throw-away society.  When it rains, umbrellas are discarded everywhere and some  of them are not even broken.  Hong Kong is also a society of conservationists, stubbornly holding on to values seemingly incongruous with its modern
façade.  In a land where new umbrellas in department stores often cost less than an umbrella repair, Uncle Umbrella is at once an anachronism in a culture of consumption and an embodiment of Hong Kong's amazing ability to assimilate the old and the new.  In the humble act of tinkering with torn fabric and rusted metal, he represents a way of life challenged by the forces of modernity.  Uncle Umbrella and his customers are partners in a quest for that fabled province where past and present, East and West converge.

Uncle Umbrella was filmed during the reunification of Hong Kong and mainland China, on July 1, 1997, and during the prior week.




Exhibitions/Awards/Press
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1998.


Picture
Picture
Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Video Art
    • A Dedication to Lee Choon-Sop
    • Androgina, from Generic Video Art
    • As profecias da Orixá Oxum
    • Body Images
    • Dreamtime
    • Eyeopeners
    • Hydroglyphs: Early Morning Drift
    • John Cage, from New Music America
    • Private Parts
    • Sadie Curtis Navajo Weaver
    • Spinning Ballerina
    • The Death of the Lotus
    • The Dying Swan
    • The World's Largest
    • Twenty-Eight Years of Cadillacs
    • Uncle Umbrella
  • Installations
    • What It Means
    • Beyond the Shadow
    • Highway Shoes
    • Hydroscapes
    • Prime Time
    • Surveillance
    • Sylvanscapes
    • The Video Nickelodeon
    • The Wonderful Stone
  • Audio Art
    • Telephone Dating
  • Archive
  • About
    • Biography
    • Selected Works
    • Selected Exhibitions
  • Electron Movers
    • The Video Maze
  • Contact