Revenge Scenes
Curatorial Statement
Revenge Scenes by artists Su Hui-Yu and Cheng Hsien-Yu can be considered as a live art and installation work developed from Su’s earlier work, The Women’s Revenge. The work utilizes live streaming, augmented reality, and machine learning among other techniques, to lead the audience back into the history of social realism films and (female) exploitation films in the 1980s, where it highlights the ambiguous similarities between social media culture and exploitation films through the juxtaposition of the two. The work depicts the contemporary media society’s portrayal of the body and further questions the issue of body politics under new media technology. Revenge Scenes features live performances with augmented reality elements. Through the audience’s assistance in broadcasting, the images are shared on social media platforms and other locations where the videos are redeployed in real-time. As a performance, Revenge Scenes features four levels: human performance, augmented reality experience, real-time broadcasting, and redeployment of broadcast images. These are in an ascending structure, the first level is the purest and simplest, and the last level is the most elaborate and convoluted. Through the four levels (viewing conditions), no one can claim to have the best viewing position, effect, timing, and interpretation perspective, but they will have a limited degree of freedom to alter and combine, where they will be able to collaborate with others to a certain extent. In its passive exhibition form, Revenge Scenes is transformed into the form of a crime scene instead of its performance version, where it continuously raises various questions about our history and future, such as:
How long or how heavily have humans desired or depended on contents being “live”?
Since the dawn of imaging technology, how have “messages” collaborated (or challenged) with reality?
What is the current state of “mediatization” of our bodies? How else can we train our bodies?
Search engines altered the act of memorizing, so follows, how can the mechanism of machine learning and algorithms alter judgment and cognition?
Under the assistance and influence of contemporary technology, can we further ease the tension and predicament in issues as gender, sex, and physical body (even soul)?
Or, we who have been expanded but also compressed in the fantasy/environment created by new technologies, do we withdraw to a certain human/barbaric naturalistic state?
Following on the reasoning above, if we further question our body, after this transitional process involving body/signal, linear/non-linear, analog/codes, and followed by the targeted placement and manipulation at the end of the process; where will this finally lead us (and our desires) to? Can a future “technique of desire” be expected? Can this be a calculated spiritual transcendence, or become yet another self-surveillance, exposure, and betrayal of The Transparency Society?
Regardless of the answers to the questions above, as a new form of experience, Revenge Scenes intends to lead the audience as best as possible to all possibilities.
Artists
Su Hui-Yu
After graduating from the Graduate Institute of Fine Arts, Taipei National University of the Arts, Su Hui-Yu continued to explore the influence of mass media on everyday life and ideology through video, photography, and installation; and appropriates the “re-shooting” technique used in the film industry as his creative process. Su believes through “re-shooting” we can reinterpret the unfinished, forbidden, and misunderstood ideas from the past, hence developing creative interpretations of history. In recent years, Su has been featured in film festivals and exhibitions, including the IFFR (Netherlands), the Videonale (Bonn, Germany), Performa 19 Biennial (New York, USA), Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival, Spectrosynthesis – Asian LGBTQ Issues and Art Now (MOCA Taipei and BACC Bangkok) Wuzhen Contemporary Art Exhibition (China), Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (Shenzhen), etc. In 2019, Su won the Visual Arts Award at the 17th Taishin Arts Award. His works were collected by the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, JUT Foundation for Arts and Architecture, Sunpride Foundation, and White Rabbit Gallery among others.
Cheng Hsien-Yu
Born in 1984, currently lives and works in Taipei. Graduated from the Department of Theatrical Design and Technology at Taipei National University of the Arts, Cheng received his Masters in Arts at the Frank Mohr Institute, Academie Minerva. Most of Cheng’s works are electronic installations, software, experimental bio-electronic devices. His works are concerned with the relationship between human behavior, emotion, software, and machine. Cheng attempts to provide signs of life and meaning of existence in his works in a humorous way, while also metaphorically expressing his experience and observation of the surrounding environment.
He was nominated for the Dutch Young Talent in 2011, won First Prize at the Taipei Digital Art Awards in 2013, First Prize of New Media Art at the Kaohsiung Awards in 2017, and awarded the Tung Chung Art Award in 2019. Cheng recently participated in Guangzhou Triennial, Hong-Gah Video Biennial, and Taiwan Biennial, and as well as exhibiting in the Netherlands, Slovenia, Norway, Italy, and France among other places. In addition to the work Revenge Scenes, Cheng is also simultaneously showing his latest solo exhibition Injector After Null at Taipei Fine Arts Museum.
He was nominated for the Dutch Young Talent in 2011, won First Prize at the Taipei Digital Art Awards in 2013, First Prize of New Media Art at the Kaohsiung Awards in 2017, and awarded the Tung Chung Art Award in 2019. Cheng recently participated in Guangzhou Triennial, Hong-Gah Video Biennial, and Taiwan Biennial, and as well as exhibiting in the Netherlands, Slovenia, Norway, Italy, and France among other places. In addition to the work Revenge Scenes, Cheng is also simultaneously showing his latest solo exhibition Injector After Null at Taipei Fine Arts Museum.
Monbaza Chang
Born in 1966, currently lives and works in Taipei. Graduated from the Department of Physics at the Chung Yuan Christian University, Chang received his Master in Arts at the Department of Communication Arts at the New York Institute of Technology. Most of Chang’s works are based on electronic music and installations; the content of his works explores the juxtaposition of sound and human emotions. In 2004, Chang participated in the “NAVIGATOR- Digital Art in the Making” at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, held his solo exhibition Multi Existence in 2008, and solo exhibition Emptiness in 2009. Recently Chang participated in the 2017 Nuit Blanche Taipei and Taipei Digital Art Festival. Released his music album by The Endless Light in 2019 and the music single The Light of the Future-Dr. Chen Wen-Cheng Memorial Song in 2020. His latest work is the original soundtrack album for Revenge Scenes, which will be released simultaneously during the exhibition.
Lists of actors
Chen Ching
Currently in her fourth year majoring in Performance at the Department of Theater Arts, Taipei National University of the Arts. Chen works in theater, film, dance, modeling, and art-related fields. Recent performances include the 2020 TNUA graduation production The Goat or Who is Sylvia? In 2020 she starred in The Women’s Revenge, 2019 in The Jade Eyes’ music video Whenever You Want.
Mai Wu
Born in 1994. Wu studied at the Department of Theater Arts, Taipei National University of the Arts. She currently works as an actor, music arranger, singer, dancer, and illustrator.
Shu Wei-Chieh
Shu received his Masters of Arts in Performance from the Department of Theater Arts, Taipei National University of the Arts, and has participated in many films, music videos, commercials, and stage plays. Shu is currently represented by Lok Yu Film.
Fly Wu
Wu attended the Department of Drama and Theater at the National Taiwan University, currently works as a freelance performer, writer, and reporter. Most of Wu’s works are collaborative creations, particularly skilled at non-script-based performance forms, he has seasoned experiences performing in drama, dance, film, and video-art works.
Creative Team
Artist/Writer and director: Su Hui-Yu, Cheng Hsien-Yu
Musician: Monbaza Chang
Actor: Chen Ching, Mai Wu, Shu Wei-Chieh, Fly Wu
Producer: Huang Jing-Han, Cookie Chen
Software and system development coordination: Cheng Hsien-Yu
Video installation and technical coordination: Chang Huei-Ming
Stage and lighting design: Chang Huei-Ming
Visual design: Gina Li
Software development: Mars Huang, Ian Wu
Costume design: Huang Jing-Han
Action choreographer: Teddy Ray Huang
2021.04.06-04.24
Venue
DIGITAL ART CENTER, TAIPEI
(No.180, Fuhua Rd., Shihlin Dist., Taipei City)
Events
Opening & Guided Tour
Date:2021.04.03 Sat. 14:00/19:00