THINGS I SAID I’D DO: Exploring the Gap Between Aspiration & Action
written by Ella Monnerat
These days I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about unkept promises – the friend who said she’d be there but wasn’t, the dream jobs that never materialised. I think about them as I consider my ageing body, noticeable in how my vision blurs when I stare too far into the distance. Mostly I have been considering all the promises I made to myself; how easy it was to say I’d quit smoking by twenty-five and how hard it feels to stay true to it now that I have reached that milestone.
Where do I go from here? I was asking myself and asking my friends, one of whom invited me to Meantime, an event at Rich Mix Shoreditch advertised with the tagline, “Don't miss out on the opportunity to make some unforgettable memories.” How could I resist?
On a plinth sitting near the entrance was Kevin Lee’s THINGS I SAID I’D DO, its perch somewhat reminiscent of a closed circuit TV setup. Part confessional, part living obituary, THINGS I SAID I’D DO is a video installation in which recordings from friends and family of the artist play, listing promises and plans and imagined futures, all while a dim video flickers from behind frosted acrylic.
A Chinese-American artist from Northern California, Kevin Lee grew up surrounded by the classic meritocratic myths, truly believing if you just worked hard enough you could get anything you want. Kevin started to reconsider after getting a job at Facebook straight out of university. “Everyone else my age was very excited about the pay and the free dinner but I was worried. My mother worked in tech and was always working late and on weekends, constantly complaining about her job. I was sitting there thinking ‘all I’m gonna do is write code for boring shit until they inevitably fire me at 55.’”
Mentions of this job are endless in THINGS I SAID TO DO, from a friend saying ‘I remember you telling me you were gonna quit Facebook, travel the world and get a girlfriend’ to another’s mention of ‘the Facebook days.’ It’s worth noting that the various mentions of the social media platform strike differently for those unaware of Kevin’s relationship with the company. As the concept of ‘quitting Facebook’ gets repeatedly brought up, I think of all the times my friends and I have sworn off social media only to return to it a week later.
Don’t let the video fool you – while Kevin might not have started a design studio in Tokyo (‘I was meant to move there to study but then COVID-19 happened’), he has kept himself very busy. His portfolio ranges from an interactive piece interrogating whether or not we should treat AI humanely to a 60-minute video titled Summer Love “meant to invoke nostalgia about Asian-American experiences” screened at Land to Sea in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. An interdisciplinary artist at heart, he has also worked on various zines and photobooks exploring third cultural experiences as an immigrant returning to the country your parents have left. Kevin stands out for his blend of media, working with art and technology on often interactive work which he describes as “meditative inquiries on identity.”
It’s been almost a month since the screening at Rich Mix but THINGS I SAID I’D DO has stayed in my mind on loop. By the time I sit to write this article, I have watched the film seven times – perhaps to my own detriment as it is an incredibly intense experience. As I listened, I couldn't help but reflect on my own litany of unfulfilled intentions, the small and large promises that have slipped through the cracks of daily life. THINGS I SAID I’D DO serves as a mirror, reflecting our collective struggle with the gap between aspiration and action.
The blurred visuals and their distance behind frosted glass call to mind the countless moments of others' lives glimpsed digitally – always partially obscured, always slightly out of reach. In a way, it was a strangely indirect way to experience human connection: through the reflection of remembered hope, regret, and shame. It ponders many questions and provides few answers; the pixelated image provides an opportunity to fill in the gaps yourself.
While there was also something decidedly morbid about Kevin’s decision to paint a picture of an unachieved future, THINGS I SAID I’D DO is a beautiful way to repurpose and pay homage to all his past dreams. This is the kind of art piece which might just haunt me until the end of my days – but I’m not complaining about it. I’ll end with this quote from one of Kevin’s many anonymous friends:
I remember you leaving your initial job out of undergrad and you were talking about how you were going to pursue this freelance artist/designer route. You were going to just like be this– let this creative nature of yourself out and you were going to make a living that way. You were gonna fly out to East Asia basically. I was so excited to hear that from you because I feel like so much of your life has been spent just following this ideal of what you should be when there is this person inside of you that fights against this grain. … I was excited to see you pursue this creative endeavour but every time I visited you—and I loved visiting you—but every time I visited you it felt like you were just… I guess in a way you were dialing it in, you were doing just enough to say to yourself ‘hey I’m pursuing this freelance career’ but not enough to dedicate yourself like heart and soul to it. As if you were like afraid of actually pursuing this thing to make you happy. Which, to be fair, we’re all afraid of being happy.
Oh fuck, yes. Here’s to hoping with time we will all be a little less afraid. If not, rest assured great art can be created in the middle of all this chaos; Kevin Lee surely proves as much.
Take a deep dive into Kevin’s work on his website: http://mngyuan.com, or via Instagram: @mngyuan