ART SG FILM: EMBODIED PRESENCES

Launched in 2023, the ART SG FILM program is a curation of film, video art and moving image artworks, submitted by ART SG participating galleries, with an emphasis on showcasing new film-making practices, experimental film, or art historically resonant works, particularly by artists and practitioners from around the Southeast Asia and Asia Pacific regions.

For ART SG’s second edition in January 2024, curator Sam I-Shan has created a series of four hour-long programs, revolving around the theme of the body and featuring an exceptional line up of established and emerging film artists, including the founder of video art Nam June Paik, Su Hui-yu, Korakrit Arunanondchai, Yeo Siew Hua, Hsu Chia-Wei, Chulayarnnon Siriphol and more.

ART SG FILM is co-presented by ArtScience Museum, and is screened daily between 18 – 21 January at the ArtScience Cinema, Level 4.

For more information https://artsg.com/film/

Panel Discussion | Expanded Practices: New Ways of Creating and Presenting the Moving Image

Sunday 21 January 2024, 3:30PM | ART SG TALKS Theatre L1

This panel brings together practitioners with expansive and alternative approaches to conceiving, producing, commissioning and collecting video art and artists films. Artists Su Hui-Yu (Taiwan) and Yeo Siew Hua (Singapore) will speak about their respective practices, which are inter-disciplinary and deeply collaborative. Aside from exhibiting in museums and gallery settings, they also present their work in film festivals, performance festivals and theatrical productions. Collector Han Nefkens (Netherlands, Spain) is the founder of the non-profit Han Nefkens Foundation, which funds and supports video art commissions in collaboration with international art institutions, and acquires artworks expressly for long-term loans to museums.

Speakers

Su Hui-Yu – Artist, Taipei

Han Nefkens – Collector and Founder of Hans Nefkens Foundation, Barcelona

Yeo Siew Hua – Artist, Singapore

Moderated by

Sam I-shan – ART SG FILM curator, Singapore

About the Artworks

Su Hui-Yu | Future Shock: The End of Eternity
2023 / Taiwan / 63min / colour / b&w / sound / video

Schedule
FUTURE SHOCK: THE END OF ETERNITY | DAILY SCREENING AT 3:30PM

Synopsis

A, the last human on the planet. X, the god, demon, or the future in A’s nightmares. In 1972, a futurologist book which precisely predicted the human’s destiny manifested in East Asia. In an unknown era, the last human found the mysterious message from an electronic device, so he decides to look for it. The film looks like a TV variety show; in ten chapters, the audiences will travel in this dream-like prophecy of “the future from the past”.

Introduction
In recent years, artist Su Hui-Yu has employed the approach of “re-shooting” as his method to create new works, which revisit past, unfinished, tabooed, and misunderstood figures, events, and things. Through his work, he is able to achieve new revelations or unveil active historical viewpoints. Sing Song-Yong, the Taiwanese researcher of the feature, thus comments on Suʼs work in his essay written for the work: “The key to the uniqueness of Su Hui-Yuʼs work, in my opinion, lies undoubtedly in the fact that he acutely captures potential meanings of past cultural events in relation to his own generation, through which his works become bold statements about what has not been expressed in the past.” After being re-interpreted by Su and through his lens, a new life of controversial or seldom discussed works from past eras emerge. The title of the film is inspired by American futurologist Alvin Tofflerʼs book, Future Shock (1970), which was translated into Mandarin and published in 1972 during the cold war era. In Suʼs homonymous work, Future Shock of 2019, he utilizes the approach of re-shooting to re-interpret Tofflerʼs masterpiece, from which he applies keywords from new terms and notions proposed by Toffler to the narrative. Four years later, Su presents his latest work, the same name feature, which continues the creative concept of re-shooting -in contemporary Taiwanese ruins. However, different from the previous video piece that has a narrative based on chapters, the feature version shows an endless road trip of a last survivor on Earth, accompanied by Oliver, a smart computer from the original book, invented as an aid to humanity. The labyrinthian style of visual expression prompts the audience to piece together the otherwise fragmented images by themselves, allowing them to choose their own viewing angle to approach and understand the work. Combining the old school folk tales and supernatural mysteries, the story sails through modern cityscapes, religious fields, scenic spots and ruins around Taiwan to create psychedelic and glamorous scenes for the viewers.

Su Hui-Yu (b.1976) currently lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan.
(also participated in FOCUS Sector – FC15 (Digital Spotlight)

Hsu Chia-Wei | Huai Mo Village
2012 / Taiwan / 8min 20sec / colour / sound / video

Schedule
VOICE AND BEING | DAILY SCREENING AT 12:30PM

Synopsis
Huai Mo Village focuses on the Huai Mo Tzu Chiang House in Chiang Rai, Thailand. The founder of this house is a priest who served as a secret informer for the CIA during the Cold War period for thirty-nine years. His identity indicates the sources of this period of history and the change process. Starting from the 1980s, this region has turned into a world drug centre facing severe issues of smuggling and trafficking. Currently, there are around 70 children, most of whose parents have been killed or jailed due to drug trafficking or smuggling. Owing to the local drug problems, these kids have become orphans.

Introduction
In this video work, the artist invited these children to form a filming team and jointly used the camera, sound recording equipment, lights, and other filming facilities. Children could visit the priest in person and listen to him tirelessly talk about the past of the Intelligence Bureau. The artist’s customary style is extended in this work – the people telling the stories, the people listening to the stories, the filming crew made up of orphans, with the artist standing furthest back, observing it all and exploring a complex history of this region.

Hsu Chia-Wei (b.1983) currently lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan.

Tsubasa Kato | Woodstock 2017
2017 / Japan / 4min 07sec / colour / sound / video

Schedule
VOICE AND BEING | DAILY SCREENING AT 12:30PM 

Synopsis
The medium for the collective action in this performance is the US national anthem. As Benedict Anderson has made clear, national anthems experientially tie together the nation and its citizens. The national anthem can also satirize an era, depending on the context. Jimi Hendrix’s performance at the Woodstock music festival in 1969, where over 400,000 people gathered, attests to this reality.

Introduction
In this work, four white men perform the anthem while tied together by ropes. This constricted performance turns each performer into an obstacle for the others. In other words, there is an inverse relationship between the degree of ease of carrying out the performance (goal) and the number of performers involved. This performance had these four musicians attempt the anthem inside of this contradiction.

Nowadays, we are always connected to someone via social media, and while being privy to their daily life, we are aware that we our lives are likewise being monitored in return. Although these platforms offer us a way of direct and instantaneous self-expression, they also cause us to increasingly regulate ourselves. This work satirizes this dilemma of connection and restriction, while presenting an image of us resisting in the process.

Tsubasa Kato (b.1984) currently lives and works in Tokyo, Japan.
(also participated in FOCUS Sector – FC15 (Digital Spotlight)

Hu Ching-Chuan | That‧This
2018 / Taiwan / 6min 37sec / colour / sound / 3D scan / video

Schedule
VOICE AND BEING | DAILY SCREENING AT 12:30PM

Synopsis
For “That ·This” Hu Ching-Chuan’s used a downloaded 3-D software to scan spaces with her mobile phone, producing fragmentary and blurry images by moving the lens arbitrarily when recording. Hu then put the images of different environments scanned at different times in a new, virtual, artificial space coordination. As such “that space and this space” becomes “here and now” and appears in the same virtual time-space. 

Introduction
The artist’s mother emigrated from Myanmar to Taiwan in pursuit of an ideal life. She often contacts her family who emigrated to United States on video call. After Hu taught them how to make panorama scans with their mobile phones, they scanned their local area and living space and sent the images to Hu via the Internet. Hu then juxtaposes those images with her living space in Taiwan. The voice in the VR video is a dialogue of ten years ago between her mother who has immigrated to Taiwan and her aunt who has immigrated to the United States and they still spoke in Burmese. They have not seen each others for a decade but keep in touch through technology on the weekends. Their daily conversations are shifting through different spaces in the VR world. “There” and “here “ become closer to each other yet still far away. The fragmentary and blurry images represent the real appearance of sense and memory.

Hu Ching-Chuan(b.1990) currently lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan.

About Chi-Wen Gallery

Founded in 2004 by Chi-Wen Huang, Chi-Wen Gallery is one of Taiwan’s leading galleries, showing the best of contemporary Taiwanese art with a focus on video and photography. The gallery is dedicated to supporting emerging artists with curatorial projects that explore the most cutting-edge subjects and has been actively participating in local and international art fairs. As such Chi-Wen Gallery is very much connected with today’s art and represents artists whose work continues to grow in historical importance.

Over the last decade Chi-Wen Gallery has fostered the careers of a diverse group of internationally renowned artists, both emerging and established, whose practices transformed the way art is made and presented in Taiwan today. These artists include Chen Chieh-Jen, Chang Chao-Tang, Chang Li-Ren, Hu Ching-Chuan, Jawshing Arthur Liou, Lin Yu-Sheng, Peng Hung-Chih, Paul Gong, River Lin, Su Hui-Yu, Tusi Kuang-Yu, Su Misu, Sin Wai Kin (fka Victoria Sin), Wang Jun-Jieh, Yao Jui-Chung, Yuan Goang-Ming, Yu Cheng-Ta and among others.

In 2020, Chi-Wen Gallery established Chi-Wen Productions during the global pandemic and released its first title God-Men: Episode I in 2021 in which five artists were appointed as film directors. The recent film production “Sin Wai Kin, A Dream of Wholeness in Parts (2021)” was touring for British Art Show 9 and nominated for Turner Prize 2022.

Chi-Wen Gallery has been an active participant in local and global art fairs and festivals, including Art Basel Hong Kong, Frieze Art Fair and LOOP Barcelona.