Personal Story
Chloé Lee, the director and producer of the project, is an artist and producer based in Berlin.
“Much of who we are is shaped by the place that we are in, I wanted Inter(mediate) Spaces to empower people to also shape the place around them.
I first used VR to explore a new way of remembering. My mom is Singaporean and listening to stories firsthand from people unable to root themselves in their country’s rapidly developing landscape, I learned the issue wasn’t change itself; change is inevitable. It was the pace at which it changed. People didn’t feel they had agency in shaping the landscape.
In 2021, I left New York City, a place I called home for 10 years, on a Fulbright Scholarship to make a virtual reality project in Berlin. I wanted to understand what it meant to create meaning in a place where I had no personal history. My family has a history of migration. Like my ancestors, many migrate today not out of choice - as it was for me - but because they are forced out by war and other external circumstances. Yet, they create community despite constraint.
In Berlin, I found a community in the process of creating, and I wanted to bring this process to aspects of my life where there was disconnection. As a Chinese-American woman living in Berlin, a city without a Chinatown, I have found myself longing for the connection to Chinese community I had in New York City. At the same time, my curiosity about technology has brought me closer to other cultures and people in Berlin. This project is a way I can bridge these gaps while questioning the ways in which technology is developed and adopted into our daily lives.
I felt empowered to use new technology in a different way and I hope that Inter(mediate) spaces empowers others’ to do the same.