Drive In

Drive in is my happy island childhood in Hong Kong. My childhood is getting further and further into the past and so has become like a movie to me. It is a place I never wanted to leave; it was only when I was told that Britain was also an island that I felt a strange curiosity rising. It was a journey into the unknown. Green Giant Mushroom Genie is also about anticipation. The anticipation of excitement to come; of settling down comfortably and watching trailers before a movie starts, or before biting into a mushroom, and travelling into the unknown. The calm before the storm.

They say the past is like a foreign country and I imagine the future could be like Blade Runner with its giant screens in the sky. The half-sunk cinema seats could be likened to memories slowly drowning in the sea of the eternal present in which we tread water, trying to keep our heads above for fear of being pulled down into the ocean of deep time.

Childhood is a place of wonder with possible danger around the corner. Past buddhas are like genies. The cinema screen is an image within an image, a mise-en-abîme in the manner of the 1,001 Arabian Nights. The mushroom – delicious yet dangerous – evokes the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland tempting us to eat different sides to varying outcomes. In a similar vein, once in Wonderland, or Neverland, we do not want to leave but eventually grow up.