Feature Image: LIU Ding, KARL MARX IN, 2013, 2014, single channel video,13’40”

Screening Program 2, Curated by Carol Yinghua LU
Venue: The Queens Museum Theater, 2nd Floor

As part of the Community Partnership Gallery exhibition inToAsia: TBA Festival 2015,  we are proud to present our second screening program.

The title of this program is taken from the title of a short-lived journal, Cause Commune, (1972 to 1974), which was published by French cultural theorist and urbanist Paul Virilio, socialist and humanist Jean Duvignaud, and French writer George Perec. The mission of the publication was described as seeking to search for the thoughts and beliefs that were the foundation of our civilization and cultural operation and to raise questions about them. The editors call for a desire to carry out investigation into everyday life on every level, especially looking into those layers of folds, caves and undercurrents that were neglected or repressed by existing social orders and organization of life.

This screening program invites artists and presents works that embody a dissatisfaction with and an incessant curiosity and urge to inquire into given orders of life, phenomenon, common experience, assumptions and established historic accounts and power structure. They advocate, manifest, and act on an unstoppable thirst for hidden truths and unseen realities, and their investigative gaze towards objects, cultural practices, consumer products, shared understanding and cultural characteristics, events, historic constructs, surroundings, awareness, ways of organization, and ideologies that fulfill our immediate desires and expectations.

Participating Artists: Bo Kyung SUH, CHANG Wen Hsuan, GUAN Xiao, LIU Ding, Manny MONTELIBANO, Meiro KOIZUMI and Yuichiro TAMURA.

Summer Vacation
Bo Kyung SUH, Korea, 2013, HD Color video, 14’44”

Summer Vacation is a video work in omnibus format in which I use my body to interact with a natural environment to question the boundaries of daily life and art. €The actions in the video highlight interaction between the basic natural elements of water, fire, earth, and wind, and the artist’s body; the female body. €Examples include walking in parallel with the horizon while walking across a field, making the movement of the wind visible, exposure to water poured from above, climbing over and around a large rock in various directions, blowing a conch, and running across the visual field of the rectangular screen from left to right. €These actions might seem trite or simply an arrangement of standardised symbols. €However, through this work I try to defamiliarise such archetypal situations that equate nature with the female body and to transcend the fixed identity for the female body. €In this video work, through actions repeatedly played out in a series of situations without specific narrative or description, I challenge myself with these unfamiliar situations to overcome my own physical limits. €Also, as a performer, I highlight the video medium’s attributes by staring at the camera or fully utilizing the angles of perspective; €thus viewers can recognize the camera outside of the screen and distance themselves rather than only concentrating only on the performance. €Based on the evidence from their own analysis about the archetypes between a body and nature, viewers can experience and interpret the performances in their own ways.

Four Wax Cones
CHANG Wen Hsuan, Taiwan, 2013, Single channel video, 8′ 40″

There is a stage model and several “things” in the scene. The “things” have characteristics but not faces. An incident (or more than “an” incident) happened here. The things, with its neutrality are open to interpretation. Hence, in these possibilities of multiple interpretations, the personal pronouns of the thing/things “it/them” become versatile metaphoric vehicles. They allow every incident, thing and people to insert into them, to intercept them, or to intermediate between them. Consequently, grand narratives can be folded into small narratives. The flexibility of things becomes the expected object on the way of finding our right of discourse.

David
GUAN Xiao, China, 2013, 4’38”, Courtesy the artist and Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin

I got this ideal accidental. At that time I just wanted to find a video material of Renaissance sculpture. I thought David is a famous one, it should be easy to find on Youtube. However things went to opposite situation, after browsed more than 100 pages I still can barely find at least one material i can use. Instead of finding useful material, I downloaded over 50 “trash” materials. I started thinking about why can’t I use these “trash” videos? It’s a very interesting situation. 95% users who uploaded David videos, have no idea what they were shooting . Even they already know their goal at the very first: Go to Piazzale Michelangelo and see David! But when they really standing in front of it, they completely lost. They were not seeing and had no idea how to see. They took videos only have one peppers: To ‘register’ theirs presence. No one actually see/feel them. So I decided to take these “trash” materials, to make a somewhat ionic video.

Karl Marx in 2013
LIU Ding, China, 2014, 13’40
I got this ideal accidental. At that time I just wanted to find a video material of Renaissance sculpture. I thought David is a famous one, it should be easy to find on Youtube. However things went to opposite situation, after browsed more than 100 pages I still can barely find at least one material i can use. Instead of finding useful material, I downloaded over 50 “trash” materials. I started thinking about why can’t I use these “trash” videos? It’s a very interesting situation. 95% users who uploaded David videos, have no idea what they were shooting . Even they already know their goal at the very first: Go to Piazzale Michelangelo and see David! But when they really standing in front of it, they completely lost. They were not seeing and had no ideal how to see. They took videos only have one peppers: To ‘register’ theirs presence. No one actually see/feel them. So I decided to take these “trash” materials, to make a somewhat ionic video.

Sorry for the Inconvenience
Manny MONTELIBANO, Philippines, 2013, multichannel video installation, 5’17”

Sorry for the Inconvenience is originally a multichannel video installation showcasing, speeches of different personalities in history and the present. Adjusted to a single channel for presentation, it is a collage of video speeches sourced from YouTube, TV news, and footages shot in Negros Occidental Philippines. Inspired by a road sign which the local government apologizes the public with its road repair expands to concept of the use of media to influence the public. The simultaneous exposure of the speeches creates confusion, as to refer to the state of a person living in today’s world.

Trapped Words
Meiro KOIZUMI, Japan, 2014, single channel video installation, 11’57”

Mr. Harada was only 7 years old at the time of the bombing of Maebashi. He was one of the only few survivors from the bomb shelter by the Hitone Brigdge. His parents could not get inside the shelter as it were fully packed, so that he asked for a help to an unknown madam. His body was found under this madam. He was pulled out of the shelter and was brought back to life by artificial respiration. The madam was already dead, and till today, Mr. Harada doesn’t know who this unknown madam who saved his life by covering her body around him is.

Nightless ver.11
Yuichiro TAMURA (Japan, 2013, HD color, 15’07”

NIGHTLESS is a movie composed entirely from Google Street View. For each occasion the artist makes a new version, and this version 11 has been created especially for Art Basel HK using images only from Hong Kong. As the entire audio is also excerpted from You Tube, the artist himself has neither filmed nor recorded. History and fiction are weaved together beyond time and space into the movie wandering around Hong Kong. Even a segment of the scenes reminds viewers of stories. Hong Kong has an image of night views, however, the night never comes in this movie as Google Street View photographs are taken in daylight. A dream you see in Hong Kong, without the concept of night, is only a daydream.

ABOUT inToAsia: Time-based Art Festival
Based in New York City, founded by CHEN Wei-Ching, Joanne, inCube Arts is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering new forms of cultural exchange and creative expression through exhibitions, art festival, workshops, public lectures and year-round public programs. To boost the visibility of Asian contemporary art, inCube Arts launched inToAsia: TBA Festival in 2013, a public event for new media art. inToAsia: TBA Festival is the bridge for Asian media arts to more effectively reach Europe and America, providing Asian perspective through multi-disciplinary media including videos, animations, kinetic installations, net arts and real-time sound art performances.
The second edition of inToAsia: TBA Festival will take place on 1–31 October 2015 at various location in New York City including the Queens Museum, The Sylvia Wald and Po Kim Foundation and inCube Arts SPACE .

For further information on the artists and works, please check our website: www.incube-arts.org, or email to inCube Arts info@incube-arts.org

Organized by｜inCube Arts

Sponsored by｜Ministry of Culture, R.O.C. (Taiwan), Taipei Cultural Center of TECO in New York, The Taipei City Department of Cultural Affairs, Jim Thompson Foundation, Rhema Events and Arts Services, DCA Art Consultant, 100 Tonson Gallery, Taiwanese American Arts Council

Exhibition Support｜The Queens Museum, The Sylvia Wald and Po Kim Foundation

Media Support｜Singapore: Inside Out

Thanks to｜SA SA BASSAC, Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler (Berlin), Brooklyn Artist Studio, Mr. Jeremy HU