Wed 15 Jul, 9PM HKT
In English
Hosted by Rafi Abdullah and Joseph Chen King Yuen, participants in the Workshops for Emerging Arts Professionals 2020
Poor Imagination (2019) at Sullivan+Strumpf, and continues to live and work in Singapore.
Joseph Chen King Yuen is an artist and curator based in Hong Kong, and currently the Senior Project Coordinator of Videotage. During his incumbency at Videotage he curated .gif Festival: Left Right Right Left Movement, a moving images project experimenting generative interactions as the curatorial framework, and other curatorial projects collaborated with Eaton HK, Hong Kong Design Institute and GoetheInstitut Hongkong. His artworks have been shown in Manchester, Shanghai, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo and beyond. He is a member of a Hong Kong video art project, Video Cypher. He recently received the Media Arts Emerging Artist Scheme of Project Grant from Hong Kong Arts Development Council.
The American poet Sylvia Plath composed her well-known poem Lady Lazarus in the autumn of 1962, a few months before her suicide on 11 February 1963. Lady Lazarus and other poems of that period were collected and published in Ariel, one of her most famous posthumous poetry collections. My work’s title I have done it again is the very first line of Lady Lazarus. In this work I am inspired by the imagery of this poem: the antagonistic attitude, the depressed inner-self, the obsession with death, and the rebirth from ashes. I attempted to rebuild and reinterpret this imagery through incorporating the vocal technique of extreme metal music, without quoting the original poems.
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the army
comes back and forth
searching for the smell
the smell of the dust
comes with the fiery ashes
Unveil the mask
Alas thy faces
Do you tremble?
Blood sheds
on the land of white flower
and I a man of nothing
same as Sylvia
to measure the hight of grief
All numbers
are the same
with the slander of thy name
Wrap me up from my head to my feet
All I want is piles of meat
Grinding
is a sin, like nothing else.
They do it exceptionally well.
They do it so we feel like hell.
They do it so we feel real.
They guess we could tell we are meant to be
The juice of the man
So did Sylvia said,
“do it in a cell”
the greatest drama of all time
The blood dries
so as the light dies
Where’s my knife
with a hint of pride?
Herr General
Herr Chairman
I am your guts
I am your aorta
The pure mercurial rain
It smells like a bone
I break and wick
Do not think I overestimate your small mistake
Burn, burn—
I pour and lit.
Screaming, moaning, there is something there———
Under the flesh
I speak the magic word
and I vanish like a turd
Play. Boredom. Worship.
玩樂。 無聊。 崇拜。
Opening reception 開幕：19/10
Exhibition period 展覽：20/10 - 24/11
Co-curated by Alex Yiu & Suze Chan
由姚少龍和陳凌欣聯合策展
關於展覽 About the exhibition
德籍韓裔哲學家韓炳哲藉著一個事例，延伸了來自意大利哲學家阿甘本所提出的「瀆神」（profanation）概念：在希臘受緊縮政策影響後，一些小孩在一間荒廢的大屋裡發現了一團鈔票，但他們不但沒有把現金據為己有，還把那些鈔票作為耍樂的玩具，將之撕碎，去除鈔票本來的意義。「瀆神」本義解作將神聖（屬於神）的物質，轉化為世俗的用途，同時亦解亂用和惡意使用；韓炳哲用以上事例說明了當世界化成頹垣敗瓦的將來，金錢將失去意義，成為我們用以撕掉的娛樂，就如小孩們的「瀆神」行為。
藝術上，「瀆神」可以比擬為藝術家創作的手段，諸如挪用和概念轉換，均給予已有事物新的意義。是次展覽由姚少龍和陳凌欣聯合策展，展覽《Play. Boredom. Worship.》將展示香港六位新晉藝術家的作品。藝術家們通過和策展人之間的討論和辯證，他們的作品將以不同的態度和角度去演繹展覽的主題。
South Korean-born German philosopher Byung-Chul Han once quoted an example to explain the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s concept of ‘profanation’: During the recession period in Greece, a group of children discovered a large amount of banknotes in a ruined house. Instead of using them in the way money is supposed to be used, they played with them, tearing them to shreds. Profanation is the act of taking sacred things from gods and using them by mortals. In this example, Han portrays a post-apocalyptic world where money has lost its meaning, and we are shredding paper for fun.
Perhaps in art, ‘profanation’ could be described in the way artists create through appropriation and conceptualisation. Both ways are giving new meaning to pre-existing objects and subjects. Curated by Alex Yiu and Suze Chan, ‘Play. Boredom. Worship.’ will present new artworks from six emerging artists from Hong Kong. Through dialogue and discussion with the curators, the artists interpret the idea with different perspectives and angles with their artworks.
六名創作者均來自於不同的背景，包括建築（陳滿）、平面設計（陳凌欣）、電影（陳嘉浚、黃紫嫣）、當代藝術（譚煥坤）和新媒體藝術（朱文雅），而在是次展覽《玩樂。無聊。崇拜。》裡，他們以「藝術家」的身份把弄著媒介中各種概念的交錯和流動。
- 陳滿的裝置融合多種現成品，以建構世界（worlding）的方式「創造」一個類宗教的信仰，指涉現實世界人類宗教信仰的荒誕。
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陳凌欣的錄像裝置紀錄了自己在一所酒店內二十多天的生活，監控己身的行為和與人的互動，自我審視之餘亦包含對房間外各種發生的回應。
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陳嘉浚的攝影作品以商業攝影的手法，把立體的人和物平面化，呈現出後網絡時代的超真實（hyperreal），動搖影像的真實。
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黃紫嫣的繪畫不單止遊走於虛幻和寫實，其近乎於自動書寫（automatic writing）的創作模式反映了畫者內在的精神世界。
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譚煥坤的裝置結合了物料和文字，展示媒介之間的對比和對話，並藉此指涉藝術家的情緒。
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朱文雅的平面裝置充滿幽默感，以輕鬆的姿態對抗嚴肅世界的喧鬧。
在日常不再平常、而平常似是從不存在的日子裡，六位藝術家各自以不同的手法，實視「瀆神」的各種面向。
Coming from different backgrounds, architecture (Chan Moon), graphic design (Suze Chan), cinematography (Harry Chan and Wong Tsz Hin), visual art (Vunkwan Tam), and new media art (Mia Chu), for ‘Play. Boredom. Worship.’, each artist manipulates the interferences and flows in between concepts and materials as ‘artists’, departing from their own practices.
- Chan Moon’s installation ‘creates’ a pseudo-religion by combining multiple found objects and medium, commenting on the grotesque quality of institutionalised religion and dogmatic belief systems.
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Suze Chan’s video installation is a documentation of her twenty-day stay in a hotel. Surveilling her intimate habits and interactions with people, the video is not only self-examination but also captures her subtle responses to the events and encounters both inside and outside the room.
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By applying techniques of commercial photography, Harry Chan presents a flattened version of real objects and delivers the ‘hyperreal’ quality of the post-internet era, making ambiguous what reality we are representing.
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Wandering between illusion and reality, the paintings of Wong Tsz Yin demonstrate an ‘automatic’ mode of creating, reflecting her inner spiritual world.
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With different combination of materials and words, Vunkwan Tam highlights the dialogue and contrast that exists between the media. In their juxtaposition and contrasts, the artist’s emotion are unveiled metaphorically.
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Humour is the central topic in Mia Chu’s installation, resisting the noise of this serious world through light-hearted gestures.
When days are unsettling and mundaneness disappears, the six artists incorporate different methods and practices to realise the multi-dimension of ‘profanation’.
Participating artists 參展藝術家：
Chan Moon 陳滿
https://chan-moon.org/
Vunkwan Tam 譚煥坤
http://www.vunkwan.com/
Harry Chan 陳嘉浚
https://halstudio.info/
Suze Chan 陳凌欣
www.suzechan.com
Mia Chu 朱文雅
https://aim121mia.wixsite.com/herhome
Wong Tsz Yin 黃紫嫣
https://www.instagram.com/du_bist_eine_kleine_maus/
開幕演出 Opening performance: 龢wo4、阿杰 ahkit、Teeda @ Play. Boredom. Worship | 玩樂。無聊。崇拜。
February 10, 2018 @ 8pm
Alex Yiu (HK): The Chinese Hill Billies
Based on his previous artwork “Song to Daphnis”, Alex Yiu furthers his research on the relationship in-between sound and identity in Vancouver, where he investigates the soundscape in the area of Chinatown and Richmond. The previous artwork “Song to Daphnis” is a personal manifestation of Alex Yiu’s journey as a sojourner in the city of London, dealing with personal relationship and Asian identities. Now, Alex Yiu is going to summarize his research here with an audiovisual lecture-performance.
This is going to be an audience participatory performance that the audience will be required to join and do some singing exercises.
This project is fully funded by Hong Kong Development Arts Council
Para Site
August 8 | 7:00pm
Chinese Hill Billies
Lecture performance by Alex Yiu
This session will be conducted in English. The lecture performance investigates the relationship between sound and identity in Richmond, Vancouver’s Chinatown. It departs from the uncertain origins of the song Red River Valley, known under different titles and sung in different languages throughout the decades. In his performance, Yiu focuses on a particular event, when the song was performed in the largest Chinese restaurant in the city in 1939, by a band formed by Chinese immigrants, the first of its kind.
Lecture performance by Alex Yiu from Parasite on Vimeo.
You Millions, I Embrace You! (2017) from Alex Yiu on Vimeo.
《擁抱吧，萬民！》姚少龍的參與演出
‘You millions, I embrace you!’ A participatory performance by Alex Yiu
策展人：陳子澂
Curator : Andre Chan
About the performance
As Slavoj Zizek once described ‘Ode to Joy’ as an ‘Empty container’, this music itself is being used by people in almost any forms of celebration. Written in the summer of 1785 by German poet Friedrich Schiller, the poem ‘Ode to Joy’ celebrates the heavenly joyfulness of mankind and expresses the idea of unifying people in mysticism. While Schiller remains one of the most important poets of Germany, it is Ludwig van Beethoven’s setting on this poem with his Symphony No. 9 marks the historical monument of Western classical music.
The verse ‘You millions, I embrace you!’ from ‘Ode to Joy’, which is also the title of this work, is a participatory performance by the Hong Kong sound artist Alex Yiu. In this performance, audience is invited to participate a rehearsal, which is lead by the artist himself, to learn how to sing a section of Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ in its original German texts. As music provides an aesthetic experience through a process of reinforcing and incorporating our body’s movement and memory, the artist attempts to re-enact the aesthetic experience of singing in practice, and he also questions about the purpose of music in our contemporary society.
表演簡介
哲學家齊澤克曾形容《快樂頌》為「真空的容器」，因為這樂曲曾經被無數人引用並成為各種慶典的音樂。於一七八五年，德國詩人席勒寫下了《快樂頌》，歌頌人類崇高的快樂以及團結世人的理念，當中不乏神秘主義的色彩。雖然席勒被喻為德國最重要的詩人之一，但真正令到《快樂頌》家傳戶曉的，是作曲家貝多芬用了席勒的《快樂頌》的詩文，譜寫了人類歷史裡最重要的音樂——D 小調第九交響曲《合唱》。
由香港聲音藝術家姚少龍所創作，《擁抱吧，萬民！》為今次作品的題目，也是《快樂頌》裡的一詩句，這作品是一件參與演出的表演。藝術家本人將會帶令著觀眾，進行一次正式的合唱團排練，並學習如何頌唱貝多芬《快樂頌》原版的選段。音樂通過強化和協調身體和記憶，給予演奏者和聽眾美學經驗，藝術家企圖通過歌唱行為，去重演其美學經驗，以及質問到底音樂在當代社會的政經意義。
