■ Cecilia® Chuan Jiang
Animation
(2022)
Yesterday Once More is a mixed-media animated short film about social media, attention, and the blurred boundary between reality and illusion.
The film imagines digital life as a kind of wind. A large fan sweeps ordinary life away, while a small fan tries to bring it back. Through soft hand-drawn textures, watercolor-like movement, and surreal visual metaphors, the film reflects on how social media consumes not only what we watch, but also our time, emotions, and mental energy.
In today’s interconnected world, we often think of ourselves as consumers, yet we are also being consumed. Surrounded by carefully constructed images of other people’s lives, we gradually lose touch with our own everyday reality and become trapped in distorted perceptions of ourselves and the world around us.
At the same time, the film suggests that what has been swept away can still be reclaimed through quieter and simpler means. The ordinary, mundane moments of life, often buried beneath the noise and chaos of digital culture, may still remain as real and vivid as the endless, scorching summers we remember from the past.
This project is also one of my early attempts to use animation as a critical system, not only to tell a story, but to visualise the invisible pressures of contemporary media.