Self-Portrait Documentary Script (Please click to open)

00:00 – 00:40) Opening Section

(00:00 – 00:40) Part 1: The Core Question & The Artist's Origin

“How does an artist translate the most private of experiences—anticipatory grief, the failing body of a loved one—into a shared, public space? For Hong Kong multimedia artist Michele Chu, the answer lies in creating fragile architectures of intimacy. But this was not her starting point. Long before crafting spaces for private grief, Chu began as a public investigator of human connection.”

(00:40 – 02:48) Part 2: The Intimacy Project – TEDx Talk 2017, Three Public Experiments.

Voiceover (V.O.):
“In her 2016 TEDx Talk, she asked, ‘Where has the human connection gone?’ and set out to design answers. She conducted playful, provocative social experiments: testing the power of sustained eye contact, using mistletoe to create moments of shared surprise, and scripting conversations with strangers through glass panes. These were not just performances; they were prototypes. Chu was learning how to use simple frameworks—a glance, a ritual, a barrier—to engineer moments of vulnerability and trust between people. She was designing the blueprints for connection.”

(02:48 – 04:05) Part 3: You Trickling, in 2023

Voiceover (V.O.):
This foundational work makes her 2023 solo exhibition, ‘you, trickling,’ all the more powerful. Here, the artist turns the tools she developed for public connection inward. The playful social framework becomes a sacred, personal ritual. The gallery transforms into a meditative journey through personal and collective loss. It invites us to consider how art can function as both a private excavation and a public manual—offering a language, a space, and a method for navigating emotions for which we often have no words. 

To understand “you, trickling,” we must place it within Chu’s artistic evolution and Hong Kong’s recent cultural climate. Her early work used physical barriers as “safety nets” to engineer intimate connections between strangers. However, the compounding crises of family illness and the pandemic catalyzed a profound shift. Her work turned inward, using art-making to process looming personal loss. “you, trickling” emerges from this pivot, representing a move from facilitating. 

(04:05 – 05:38) Part 4: Style of Michele Chu's artwork

Voiceover (V.O.):
Chu’s exhibition is a masterclass in using multimedia to make the intangible tangible. We can analyze it through the Somantics of Grief—treating the body as both subject and material. The repetitive act of hammering metal to trace her mother’s chemotherapy blisters is not just representation; it’s embodied processing, a ritual of care and witness.

As Chu describes, the process itself is a form of cognition. This manual ritual encodes time, care, and the physicality of anticipation directly into the object. The artwork becomes a tangible archive of a psychological state, allowing a viewer to physically encounter the artist's labor of grief.As Chu describes, the process itself is a form of cognition. This manual ritual encodes time, care, and the physicality of anticipation directly into the object. The artwork becomes a tangible archive of a psychological state, allowing a viewer to physically encounter the artist's labor of grief.