Intergenerational Dialogue in a Home Space

Xioayan Li

A short film screening and participatory exhibit encouraging you to explore family memory

This installation is a part of Inside Voices: An Oral History Exhibition, showcasing multimedia projects and stories recorded by the 2016 cohort of Columbia University’s Oral History MA program. This event will take place at The Social Hall at Union Theological Seminary on April 27, 2017, from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m.

Kuowei Chang is an 84-year-old veteran of the Kuomintang, living in Queens. His young daughter, who was born in the U.S., has never heard his war stories. In this participatory exhibition, Xiaoyan Li will curate an intimate family space to present Day and Night, a short documentary film based on interviews with Kuowei and his daughter. She will use this film to trigger the audiences’ own family memory and pair them up to record each other’s family stories.

Xiaoyan Li is an international student from China. Before her study in OHMA, she worked in the Cui Yongyuan Center for Oral History at Communication University of China for over two years and took part in the "Oral History in China Project".This year in OHMA, her project for her thesis, Veterans of the Kuomintang in New York, documents the life stories of nationalist soldiers originally from the mainland who fled to Taiwan after the Chinese civil war. Xiaoyan is a 2016 Davis Fellow.

To hear a clip from Xiaoyan's recent projects, please visit our OHMA student website Oral History Works.