The collage of photographs, “E-mote,” is from a larger multimedia work: “Emote, a time capsule,” an experimental performance installation of the sounds, images, and words of a fictional heroine, Sophie. Living in an experimental society, Sophie is a cynical yet idealistic romantic trapped in her own paradoxical and self-deprecating ruminations. She works in a corrupt industry that commercializes the experience of emotions through the enactment of live actor simulations. As a writer for Ataraxia, a company specializing in selling ‘sentimentality,’ Sophie creates personalized fairy tales and medieval romances for her clients. Beneath the surface of an elegant and collected professional, Sophie struggles with an erratic temperament of severe manic-depressive episodes. The installation represents the digital memory box in which Sophie scatters her collection of music, voice, and sound memos, journal entries and poems, short films, and sketches and photographs.
Under the element of ‘images’ in this installation is “E-mote,” a collection of photographs featuring Sophie’s shoes and shadows, which traces her journeys and memories during the three years of her life when she writes the horror-romance script for Nick, a sarcastic and apathetic law student, and subsequently discovers her sexual fluidity in a disillusioning relationship with the rhapsodic actress of her story, Eudaemonia. The photographs are juxtaposed with words and short poems. The story contains a total of 107 photographs arranged in a collage across 52 pages.
Tong Wang’s fiction, poetry, artwork, photography, and essays have been published in journals including The Penguin and Hear Here!. Her projects include sound novel The [blank] Journal, tours “Homecoming” and “Song of Praise”, research on Studio Ghibli, and arts initiative “Zenkora Studios”. Tong is a member of Lincoln Center Stage and TAG Duo, promoting works by Chinese-Canadian artists. She graduated from the New England Conservatory and McGill University.