Memoir of a Classroom 班房回憶錄

ETCHED IN MEMORY

Although it has been a long time since Kacey Wong left primary school, he still retains fresh memories of it: the games he played at recess, the teachers meting out corporal punishment and more. He believes the little titbits in the past make up what he is today. In the process of getting to know Koon Man School, he projected his own memories onto this old village school, and through intuition imagined a monkey bar at a slope behind the school. It turns out that there was indeed such a playground facility – his sixth sense connected him whimsically with the space. The old village school is a place full of history and memories. Wong creates a familiar-looking primary school classroom on the playground. Steel desks and chairs at various heights are scattered across the ground between the school gate and a blackboard, creating a space full of embedded analogy.

‘Every desk and chair has a different size and height. They are like the rising and sinking memories, just like the bitter-sweet school days.’ The rusty surface of the desks and chairs creates the feeling of fading memories through texture. This sense of traces of time suggests that the era of educating the village children by the school has passed. ‘The steel surface of the desks has been etched with heat from a plasma cutter, and nostalgic graffiti is created.’ This intense method of production is analogous to the etching of memories from primary school days in the mind. When you sit among the rusted desks and chairs, and stare at the silhouettes of the graffiti cast on the ground, do you still remember your place and role on the campus in the past? How much of your childhood persona still remains in the present ‘you’?

記憶的烙印

黃國才的小學時代雖然已過去多年，但他對舊日在校園發生的往事，例如小息時的小遊戲及被老師體罰的經歷，仍然記憶猶新。他認為過往的一點一滴，拼湊出現在的自己。在認識貫文學校的過程中，他把自身的回憶投射於舊村校，憑直覺猜想校舍背後小斜坡上的空地曾出現馬騮架。果 然， 早 年的校舍確 實有此 遊 樂設施，他的直覺巧妙地讓他與舊村校建立聯繫。

舊村校 是充滿歷 史回憶之地，黃國才在操場上塑造一個似曾相識的小學課室。一高一低、半浮半沉的鋼鐵書桌和椅子，由校門散落至樓梯旁的一塊黑板，創造了一個充滿隱喻的空間。「每張書桌和椅子的尺寸、高低都不一樣，就如浮沉的記憶，悲喜交集的校園生活一樣。」他希望從質感上塑造記憶遺跡的感覺，桌椅鏽蝕的表面帶著時間的痕跡，象徵這所村校春風化雨的時代已經逝去。「桌面以等離子切割的方式熱溶劃破鋼面，刻畫似曾相識的塗鴉。」這種強烈的製作方式如小學記憶深深地烙印在腦海裡，揮之不去。當你坐在被鏽蝕的桌椅上，凝視著地上不同塗鴉的光影，你會記起從前在校園的位置和角色嗎？今天的你還保留多少兒時的影子？

Text credit: Yan Yan Lo

Welded steel & plants

2018