Blindspot Gallery is pleased to present Play and Loop VI, the sixth iteration of our summer video screening program. The program will be divided into two scenes, each scene lasting for three weeks
Scene 1 | 23 July – 10 August 2024
Featured artists: Leung Chi Wo + Sara Wong, Benjamin Li, Charmaine Poh and Yu Shuk Pui Bobby
Scene one of the program brings together compelling works by four artists that delve into the intricate themes of identity, self-image, body politics, and the multifaceted meanings of home. Charmaine Poh’s and Yu Shuk Pui Bobby’s works discuss gender expectations related to queerness and femininity, drawn from personal experiences; while Benjamin Li and Leung Chi Wo + Sara Wong adopt a detached and observational approach of phenomena and processes shaped by history and cultures. These works invite us to reflect on how societal standards, upbringings, and personal narratives intersect to shape our perceptions of self and belonging.
Charmaine Poh’s GOOD MORNING YOUNG BODY (2021-2023) employs AI-generated deep fakes to digitally resurrect the character E-Ching, a character whom she played on television as a preteen actress in the early 2000s in Singapore. The video confronts the criticisms she had received online, specifically targeting her body shape. Poh is currently participating in the Main Exhibition of the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, “Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere”. Yu Shuk Pui Bobby’s My dream is to become a vase (2019) is an autobiographical film which makes a commentary on the image the mainstream often compels us to conform to. The video takes Yu’s childhood aspiration to be a Miss Hong Kong as a starting point. Through the process of ceramic making set against the backdrop of her confessional narration, Yu addresses her failure to conform to these standards. The sculpting of the vase becomes a metaphoric reconstruction of her self-image, showing her acceptance of these perceived imperfections. Born to Chinese parents close to Rotterdam and adopted into a Dutch Caucasian family, Benjamin Li creates a three-channel video In Search of Perfect Orange (2016) that embodies his hybrid identity, mixed cultural background, and bifurcated upbringing. These notions are conveyed through the layering of food, specifically a European-Chinese chicken chop suey dish served in his biological parents’ Chinese-Indonesian restaurant in Amsterdam. Piece by piece, ingredients of the dish are transferred from one plate to another by multiple hands belonging to his birth and adopted parents. This raises a philosophical paradox akin to the “Ship of Theseus” — is the dish still the same when its very composition has been completely altered?
Leung Chi Wo + Sara Wong’s The Woman Carrying A Basin Over Her Head (2023) presents the interlocking narratives of a South Korean woman in 1970 Seoul and her modern-day reenactor, Park So Young. The video depicts a woman carrying a basin, a character drawn from a photograph taken by Kim Ki-chan near Seoul Station in 1970, which is from the archival collection of Asia Culture Center. The character is one of four women in the photograph, she is singled out and suspended in a motionless tableau in the video. Commissioned by the Asia Culture Center, this multilayered video conveys the evolving roles and sociocultural frameworks that have shaped women’s experiences over time. This is the first video developed from the duo’s ongoing project Museum of the Lost which examines anonymous individuals captured in news photographs and archival images.
Scene 2 | 13 – 31 August 2024
Featured artists: Chu Chun-Teng, He Zike, Hsu Che-Yu and Santiago Mostyn
Scene two explores how our lives are shaped by geopolitical, historical, and technological contexts. It conveys vulnerability in an individual against a larger system due to bureaucratic inertia, humans’ collective dependency on technology, colonial migrations and intergovernmental relations. Hsu Che-Yu and Santiago Mostyn’s expansive lens focus on transnational power dynamics across different timelines. Chu Chun-Teng and He Zike’s videos capture the experiences of communities and individuals grappling with the realities of their living circumstances, using specific localities as backdrops. He Zike’s Random Access (2023), commissioned by VH AWARD of Hyundai Motor Group, follows the journey of a
passenger and retired taxi driver who are the personifications of the server keeper and the cloud system in the city of Guiyang the day following the collapse and reboot of the city’s central data center. Guiyang is the Chinese data capital, hosting the iCloud data center and the FAST telescope. The two protagonists encounter ancient memories stored in the cloud, symbolizing interconnected data which contains fragments of history, personal recollections, and collective consciousness. The fictional narrative conveys society’s overreliance on digital systems in storing our memories and information, leaving us susceptible to the malfunction of these infrastructure.
Chu Chun-Teng’s three-channel film EEL (2021-2022), supported by the Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab and commissioned by CHAT, comprises mundane scenes of residents on Shezi Island near Taipei City, a time capsule forgotten and isolated due to government restrictions on urban development in the area. One channel of the film shows two young men carrying a local deity “⼟地公” (the Land Duke) on a palanquin; another depicts island residents wandering with their gazes fixed on Taipei City; the last channel shows a woman burning foraged objects for departed spirits. The inherent notion of “drifting” strings together the three scenes, showing local residents’ embracement of their environment.
Hsu Che-Yu’s The Making of Crime Scenes (2021) centers upon Wu Dun, a Taiwanese filmmaker, gangster, patriot, and killer who was involved in a 1984 assassination in the US. The assassination was deemed a political murder executed by the Taiwanese Military Intelligence Bureau and United Bamboo Gang which Wu was a member of. Wu went to jail for six years but was given amnesty, and went on to leverage his mafia influence to found a film company which was known for producing “wuxia” movies, a genre of Chinese swordplay films. Hsu delves into Wu’s fascination with producing “wuxia” films wherein nationalistic ideologies, brotherhood, and loyalty are embodied by the martial heroes. Hsu cooperated with a 3D scanning team whose job is to provide forensic scanning services at crime scenes to make a digital replication of Wu. The film shows through an individual, the convergence of power dynamics across time between countries, government and triad, and the triad and film industry.
Commissioned by Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Santiago Mostyn’s Language Against Identity (2024) video essay is a montage of archival images and present-day footages. The work highlights exploitations in Africa by European settlers, specifically focusing on the historical elephant trade between Southern Africa and Northern Europe. The film points out the elephant as an exotic symbol of colonial power, with its mass carnage by European traders impacting the local ecosystem.