Grad Show 23

Zeyuan Ren

Coast to Coast

I perceive myself as a storyteller who engages in ‘mapping’ rather than merely ‘using’ a map, as a way of building and retrieving my own narrative—in this I retrace my steps and those of my ancestral predecessors, who once lived their lives in proximity to and guided by the ocean.

Coast to Coast is a multi-chapter project that examines the possible entanglement between displacement, forgetting, optical devices, and oceanic representation. As the prologue, the video essay Coast to Coast (Preamble) combines travel shots with retrospective narration, serving as a visual capsule awaiting retrieval by my future self.

The first chapter, Wayfinding to the Past is an ongoing work that attempts to excavate and reinterpret the accumulation of (hi)stories along the San Francisco coastline. To date, photographs have been made in the Sutro Baths and the Angel Island Immigration Station—a key facility for processing and detaining Chinese immigrants between 1910 and 1940, both of which were subjected to suspicious fires.

A cargo ship appears on the distant horizon

Coast to Coast (Preamble)

Single channel HD video (color, sound), 9’50’’
Mandarin voiceover with English subtitles
2022

In the summer of 2022, the complexity of the quarantine policy in China rendered traveling between my homeland and the United States unfeasible. As a result, I abandoned the notion of returning home and departed from the East Coast of Rhode Island, where I reside, for San Francisco. I intended to trace remnants of the past and find a possible sense of belonging along the Pacific Coast. Halfway through my journey between the camera obscura and the lighthouse, a chance occurrence drew me into the narrative of the ruined baths.