“Place is security, space is freedom: we are attached to the one and long for the other.”
Yi-Fu Tuan, a human geographer, explores these concepts in his book Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (1977), arguing that space and place are deeply connected to human experience, perception, and meaning-making. Space is an abstract environment of potential, while place is a space enriched with human meaning and experience—a shift that shapes personal identity, culture, and geography.
Tuan's work has inspired me to reflect on my own journey as a migrant who began in China, moved to the Netherlands, and later travelled across the world, where the boundaries between space and place continuously shift and evolve. Yet Tuan didn't mention the digital world. Today, digital spaces such as social media, online communities, and virtual worlds also become meaningful places when people form connections, memories, and attachments to them. The fluidity of space and place Tuan describes might be even more relevant in the digital age, where people navigate both physical and virtual landscapes.
Space and Place is a scene from the film Mum in the Pocket (working title), part of a work-in-progress autobiographical short-film project that began during the COVID pandemic. The project has evolved following the loss of my grandfather, witnessed only by my eighty-year-old grandmother during a time of restricted movement and profound silence, prompting me to reflect on kinship within the diaspora. What happens to kinship when the fluidity of movement is restricted, and only digital space remains? How does this shift affect everyday acts of care at a distance, intergenerational caregiving, and forms of situated surveillance (Hjorth, Richardson)?
SPACE AND PLACE | Video FullHD | 10’33’’ | 2023 | Production Country: Belgium
Created and written by: Biyi Zhu
This video work has been shown in Het Bos, Antwerp and Filmhuis Den Haag
Work
Exhibition View
This video has been screened in an intimate room,
Exhibition We Who Are About To... at Het Bos, Antwerp (2024)