01_LOVE@DAC
Curatorial Statement
With the appearance of the dating apps, data matching has created a huge number of encounters on the Internet. As mobile devices have a deeper impact on our life, more ups and downs due to the Internet are happening around us. As users, we upload personal data and wait for the data to calculate into great results. However, what is not seen behind the algorithm is an eternal debate between crisis of personal information, image and love…Digital Art Center curates the exhibition “01_LOVE.” The exhibition invites four video artists to tell stories about human and the future, human and computers, and love scams in different film styles, in order to echoes the connotation of “01_LOVE” of Taipei Digital Art Festival.
Artists
SuperMeowMeow
BadBadMeowMeow was born in Taiwan. A child of the internet century. She graduated from Taipei National University of the Arts, majoring Theatre Director. She is now a freelance video artist. Her works contain video art, experimental film and theatre, and have been presented at several art fairs. Most of her artwork springs from personal emotions, as well as the unusual experiences that day-to-day life offers. Her work makes use of the bizarre and crafts a unique way of telling stories, with her signature wicked black cat making a recurring presence.
She has been devoted to researching how to combine animated film with video games for the last several years, as shown by her work. BadBadMeowMeow have been trying a form of audience participation that is more direct, i.e. interaction through video games, and thus have begun to develop and combine video games and video narratives. Her recent films “Super MeowMeow” and “My Vagina Labyrinth” both extend the narrative of the animated film through an accompanying video game (both films have a seperate game) that can be operated and experienced. The audience is no longer just a bystander, but can roam freely in the setting of the story.
BadBadMeowMeow’s artworks have been featured in the Poetry film competition at the Taipei Poetry Festival, Nuit Blanche,Taipei Free Art Fair,CUVO video Art festival (Spain), Southern District Literary Trail (Hong Kong), URBAN NOMAD FILM FESTIVAL (Taiwan), Diametrale. Experimental Film Festival (Austria), Montreal Underground Film Festival (Canada), LA Underground Film Forum (Los Angeles), SUPERNOVA Digital Animation Festival (Denver), Portland Unknown Film Festival (Portland)…etc.
Yun-Jieh WU
WU graduated from the Department of Visual Communication Design, now studying at the Institute of New Media Art of Taipei National University of the Arts. She is good at graphic design and video creation. Right now her concern is about issues related to media counterattack human independent thinking, and is interested in who will control the torrent of personal data collection in the future.
Yu-Ming CHEN
Born in the United States in 1996, Master of Arts in New Media, National Taiwan University of Arts. The motive of creation comes from the digital age where she belongs to. She integrates and transforms the daily experience of the Internet, virtual communities, mobile apps and real life into her works. She tries to use a seemingly relaxed and humorous dialogue content in dating app as the medium, which reveals she is serious about the mode of viewing contemporary issues. Her work has won the “2020 YILAN AWARDS-Photography and New Media” selection. She also participated in group exhibition such as “Bard—Experimental video Art” and “Covid-19 V.S. ART.”
Lin-Woywod YUYEN
Born in Taiwan, Taipei based in Berlin, Germany.She received her Master’s degree in visual art from Kassel Kunsthochschule and Bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Taipei National University of the Arts.She interested in subjects like political identity, queer theory and cultural exchange.Except from her curational practice she works with video installation and moving picture. Yuyen has been invited to several projects, film festivals and international residency programs. She has been nominated by 2019 Stuttgart, 30th Stuttgart stuttgarter filmwinter — festival for expanded media (DE) and 2019 Berlin, 69th Berlinale international Film-Festival Hochschule Talent in Markt Place (DE), also 2018 Cassel, 35th Dokfest Kassel Film-Festival (DE). The residency project in 2018 “ Move Art Japan ” Art Residency(JP).
Works
SuperMeowMeow《Game of LOVE》
Listen up Pro Gamers, this will be your Love Fable! Let’s load both love and hatred into this video game, and play the Game of Love with SuperMeowMeow.How many broken hearts have been taken by DemonMeowMeow? With flirting message bombs, pools of lover’s tears drowning you, and the pain from breaking stone-hard marriage vows, we will find out how many lovers’ heart is still under the control of this DemonMeowMeow.This journey only embarked after the sound of a heartbreak, and in here, we will slaughter all love birds, cut off roses in their hands, and clear their eyes off those pink illusion love bubbles. We now invite you to get evil and start this Game of Love to take back all lovers’ hearts.
Yun-Jieh WU《Anna Dogg》
The work is inspired by the history of the development of computers. As a tool for multiplying performance, “computers” range from simple mathematical operations to applications such as communications, consumption, entertainment, and information analysis. Modern technology products have developed too fast, and becomes the most influential medium to human being.
In 1982, “Computer” was selected as Time Magazine’s representative of the year. Microcomputers began to spread to thousands of houses, which actually brought positive innovation to life, but they also gradually controlled the consensus of all mankind through data collection and viral media transmission.The video explores the computer through characters, watching the relationships between the computer, and the change of computer addicts under the intervention of the system.
Yu-Ming CHEN《Money Before Love》
Today, the new era is full of various online dating apps, forming a generation dominated by fast food love. Born with the popularization of new technologies, the way of communication and the consciousness of existence between people gradually separates from the world of senses and has been reconstructed. In the virtual world, it is easier for people to hide their true motivations and emotions, and to conduct conversations that are difficult to distinguish true or false in daily life.
The artist collects the experience of using online dating apps from herself and her friends, attempting to present the non-linear and time-difference connection dialogues across time and space recorded by digital software, showing the interesting plots of users being hypocrisy on the dating platforms. This work simulates a fake dating app “LoveYou.” The viewer looks at two strangers chatting to each other from a third person perspective. Through the decentralized behavior of the community to discuss the content of each other’s chats about various modern social phenomena.
Lin-Woywod YUYEN《stilluntitled—Way of listening》
Found footage material shows quick and unstructured sequences of images. Some are coded “cultural” such as an indigenous choir in Taiwan, some are educational lessons about Taiwan’s history and children’s language learning ability.
Simultaneously, a google language box pops up and begins to translate a story about the loss of a language over one generation to the next. We also see hands flipping through vocabulary cards and hands spelling out sentences in sign language. A voice tells us another story in unusual grammar structures but otherwise native sounding German:A woman with bilingual background meets a mysterious person of undefined gender and background. Her ramblings about her boring translation job and arrogant comments towards her aunt make her unsympathetic and although she claims the video as her own work, we learn that she hired her aunt to do it for her. From her perspective, the video is a way to escape her monotone life and get back in touch with the person she desires.
Through the dynamic of these characters I can propose the ambivalent and multi-faceted nature of my experiences.The protagonist is an idealized but repelling projection of myself, if I would come from a different background. She is also a moralizing mirror image of privileged people around me.The aunt is a stand-in for me as someone who is suffering under the international, liberal economy that she struggles to live up to.Lastly, the mysterious person is a symbol for a “new consciousness” that has the potential to open up the protagonist’s horizon.
The whole video is using different written and oral languages that accumulate into a confusing and overwhelming experienc.
2020.10.24-11.08
Venue
DIGITAL ART CENTER, TAIPEI
(No.180, Fuhua Rd., Shihlin Dist., Taipei City)
Opening & Guide Tour
Date:2020.10.24 Sat. 15:00
Special Screening & Talk
Date:2020.11.06 Fri.
16:00-18:00 「Her」Filming screening
18:10-19:30 Discussion Wei-Yung MAXAndy Huang
Commentators Introdution:Andy Huang、Wei-Yung MA