Muttering in a vacuum box X ART FUTURE / 真空盒子裡的呢喃
January 18, 2019
Curator: Shih-Hsiang Tsai
Artists: Shih-Hsiang Tsai, Yu-Sheng Lin, Chih-Hsing Sun, Che-Chih Lin
A Box in the City, A Room of One’s Own
When movement and change become reality, and when they intensify at a speed almost impossible to measure, the individual seems inevitably drawn into an external logic of repetition: movement, migration, stations, passersby.
The imagination and projection of dwelling appear and disappear at certain moments and in certain places. Lights turn on, lights go out. Return. Projection. What is projected is a figure, and a desire that has not yet arrived. The regular act of going back and forth becomes a predetermined and hazy reality, between the interfaces of the city and those beyond it.
What connects these interfaces is the bridge: bridges that cross this shore, the other shore, and the heavy river water in between. Yet a bridge is not merely a passage to the opposite side. It is also a form of longing for what is sought. As a medium connecting the other shore, it also functions as an instruction, briefly allowing the reality one inhabits to intersect with what one desires. The premise is simple: get on the bridge, then obey the traffic rules.
When someone asks why I get on the bridge, I think that rather than offering an evasive and ambiguous answer, it might be better to honestly admit the desires that exist beyond necessity, however sentimental they may sound. Standing here, I no longer intend to speak of capitalism, social justice, systemic failure, and so on. I only see figures flowing past me, while I, too, flow into an image.
And so we get on the vehicle, get on the road, get on the bridge.
These everyday moments are written crookedly, transcribed into a colorless city and a colorless room, scattered and fragmented, barely enough to count the days, barely enough to place one’s feelings.
Inside the box, what could possibly sound pleasant?
There is something.
There is the symphony of rumbling machinery.
“ ”
I ask myself: is this hesitation, this stammering, this unnatural speechlessness, caused by some form of desire?
“ ”
So I can only pretend to be profound, making a statement too difficult to utter, presenting silence instead.
Is that right?
“No answer.”
Here, a guest room; a city.
I try to dwell here, to settle my body.
That is all.
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video Installation, Dimensions Variable, 2017
The movement of individuals between day and night constitutes the back-and-forth motion between the edge of the city and what lies beyond it. This is everyday life. As the site where the everyday takes place, the process of return continuously projects the afterimages of individuals, moving between this shore and the other shore, endlessly and without interruption. In the process of movement, no one truly remains.
Nor are they allowed to.
Through this same mode of movement, I sketched the geographical edge of the city as a background layer through which the everyday could be translated.
Theoretically, an Impact / 撞擊
SUN, CHIH-HSING
video Installation & CRT TV, 42X45X49 cm, 2018
The work follows an ornamental aquatic plant living inside a fish tank. The water around it is frequently disturbed by impacts from the outside world, producing waves and vibrations. Since the plant cannot see what lies beyond the tank, it can only imagine the causes of these disturbances by observing its owner watching television.
Car Artist Village / 國道駐村計畫
LIN, YU-SHENG
photography,video,doccument, Dimensions Variable, 2018
Why the Freeway?
Competitions based on speed are usually not limited by time, but by distance.
Artist residencies are one of the primary ways in which cultural institutions around the world support artistic creation. They have cultivated many artists with considerable potential. Yet within this format, certain restrictions and regulations imposed on contemporary artists are often hidden. From the outside, residencies appear to offer artists freedom, space, and time to create; however, within a limited space and a limited period of time, they also restrict artistic development to a certain extent. This is a deeply contradictory condition.
More broadly, contemporary art institutions and systems seem to provide vast space for artistic practice. Yet in terms of power, they remain controlled by certain structures of interest and relations of authority. Is art truly free, or is it not?
This project attempts to establish an artist residency institution initiated by an individual. With limited resources, it seeks to construct a complete residency program, following the open-call and grant-based models commonly used today to recruit artists-in-residence from around the world.
The residency site is a van: a mobile residency space that travels along Taiwan’s freeways. Through an open call, three “artists-in-residence” are selected to create within a limited space. Within this confinement, creation is imagined as unlimited; the movement of space becomes a way to extend time. Yet the interior of the vehicle itself does not move. The labor, emotional collisions, and energies generated throughout the process remain embedded in the exhibited objects, becoming the result of a collective creation by the artists.
I am the artist, the curator, and the navigator. I lead the resident artists from north to south and from south to north, carrying out this road-based residency project through a clearly defined mission. The sharing of aesthetics and emotions takes place within the first artist residency vehicle as it completes a cycle across Taiwan. This journey from north to south and back again symbolizes the circulation of Taiwanese art, like red blood cells being transported through blood vessels to sustain the life of Taiwan’s artistic ecosystem.
The exhibited work is a vehicle. It carries art, exhibition, artwork, artists, and curator. What it presents is the result of collisions produced by movement, transportation, and vibration on the road.
In this project, I participate through multiple roles. In addition to being the project initiator, I am also the curator and an artist. Within this limited space and time, four artists interact inside an enclosed environment, collectively exploring the restrictions and possibilities of the site while examining the relationship between time and space.
Through this creative project, I attempt to follow, as closely as possible, the forms of “support” that contemporary art systems offer to young artists. Yet this limited “space” and “time” also reflect the predicament, or challenge, faced by contemporary artists. The Freeway Residency Project seeks to reveal the environment that global art systems provide for artists: although it may appear as if one is freely driving along a spacious freeway, those inside the vehicle can only carry out, or confront, their projects from their assigned seats.
Through seeing or participating in this project, I hope that those within related fields may reflect on the current ecology of artists and contribute to its meaningful evolution.
As for creation, we are still on the road.
It Will be Counted Down for Five Hours / 五個小時的倒數
LIN, ZHE-ZHI
Video Installation, Dimensions Variable, 2016
Through these images arranged within space, I attempt to trace back the bodily, visual, and temporal sensations that were once flattened by differences in visual speed. The rapid flow of images within the present spatial arrangement creates a visual disparity in speed between the moving images and the space itself, allowing those compressed sensations of body, image, and time to resurface.
