2015年10月18日 星期日

TAIWAN VIDEA & IMAGINING CRISIS @34th Asolo Art Film Festival

























































































The Video ProjectsTAIWAN VIDEA&Imagining Crisis

Staging at the 34th Asolo Art Film Festival with Avant-Garde Viewpoints

 
Close to the internationally contemporary art city Venice, the mountain town Asolo in the Northern Italy holds Asolo Art Film Festival, the oldest art film festival in the world. Founded in 1973, this film festival is famed for its special feature of Art and Artists’ Biographies. The ancient Asolo inspired the Old Masters such as Giorgione, Andrea Palladio, Paolo Veronese, Antonio Canova with its Arcadian paysage. As Venice Biennale is always the spotlight of contemporary art, the annual Asolo Art Film Festival is the conflux of art video creativeness and interdisciplinary art energies, as well as the encouragements of young video artists and the achievements of international cultural exchanges. The 34th edition of Asolo Art Film Festival will take place from October 30 till November 7 in 2015. The focal theme will be “BRICS Art”, including the curatorial projects of art films and performances from Brazil, Russia, India, China, Brazil and South Africa. The Taiwanese curator Yunnia Yang is invited by the 34th Asolo Art Film Festival with her curatorial projects-
TAIWAN VIDEAThe Taiwanese Avant-Garde Video exhibition,Imagining CrisisThe International Creative Video Exhibition. The former infuses the features of criticism, originality and diversity from the Taiwanese video art and experimental videos. These 13 videos have been awarded in the national and international film festivals, including video art, performance art, experimental videos, experimental animations, digital animations, MV animations, etc. The artists Tsui Kuang-Yu, Pu Shuai-Cheng, Wu Tzu-An, Wang Ding-Yeh, Zhang Xu Zhan, Wang Deng-Yu, Rau Kao, Chang Huei-Ming, Chen I-Chun, Wu Chi-Tsung, Chiang Iuan-Hau, Christian Rizzo, Huang Zan-Lun, and Ho Wei-Ming will subvert viewers’ given impressions on the Taiwanese culture and arts, crossing over the boundaries between fine art and popular culture. The issues of TAIWAN VIDEAare only concerned about Taiwan, but also about the globally contemporary situations. The universal values of creative thinking are the fundamentals of avant-garde images with subversive strengths. Imagining Crisis explores the origins of creativity ( death instincts, imagination about crisis ), the mutual influences between them and the contemporary survival crises, and the representations of multimedia related to the above-mentioned subjects, which interest Asolo Art Film Festival most. Since 2014, Imagining Crisishas toured around MOCA Taipei, and the contemporary art institutions in Poland, Serbia, Bulgaria and Colombia.



See more about " TAIWAN VIDEA':
http://yunnia.blogspot.tw/2015/10/taiwan-videa-imagining-crisis-34th_13.html



See more about "Imagining Crisis':
 http://yunnia.blogspot.tw/2015/10/imagining-crisis-34th-asolo-art-film.html



 Press Release (Chinese):
http://yunnia.blogspot.tw/2015/10/taiwan-videa-imagining-crisis-34th.html

Imagining Crisis @ 34th Asolo Art Film Festival (2015.11. 06 @ 21:30/ Eleonora Duse Theatre in Asolo, Italy)



‘Imagining Crisis’
The International Creative Video Exhibition
 
Curatorial Concept

Air crash, gas explosion, international conflicts are still vivid in our mind; global warming exposes the potential crisis of human living condition gradually. These catastrophic images are not movie scenes, but our reality lurked with ubiquitous crises. We thought we could control and prevent crises by means of technology; in fact, such dangerous daily reality is the outcome of which human beings always pursue the advanced technology and neglect the negative effects. The more civilized the world is, the more complicated the human soul becomes. What the progress of technology and the richness of material life create is not necessary a life full of happiness. Driven by the ‘Death Instinct’, human beings confront all kind of crisis and threats, imagining the death subconsciously. This imagination is an expression of creativity for an artist, as well as a contemporary memento mori. It deconstructs the given aesthetics. This video exhibition departs from the anxieties of the artists about the artistic creation and the art world, our society twisting the essence of an individual very much through all kinds of mass media (including religion), and the nature pouncing on human beings for their long-term destruction. From the concrete perceptible crisis to the invisible, metaphysical, imaginative crisis, these creative artists embody the eccentric aesthetics of imagining the death.
 
 
 
About Curator/ Yunnia Yang
Yunnia Yang has received the Master degree in Art History from St. Petersburg State University in Russia in 1997, and Doctor degree in Arts from National Taiwan Normal University with the thesis ‘Study on “the Paranoiac-Criticism” of Salvador Dalí’ in 2009, with which she was awarded S-An Aesthetics Award in 2010. During this period, she managed all kinds of exhibitions, performances, and art events for the institutions of arts, literature and culture in Taiwan. Since 2011, she has launched the long-term curatorial research on “The Postmodern Condition in the contemporary art of Russia and Eastern Europe” in cooperation with the following art institutions: National Center for Contemporary Arts in Moscow(Russia), the Executive Committee of “Night of Museum in St. Petersburg”(Russia), Agency for Contemporary Art (ACAX) of Ludwig Museum in Budapest(Hungary), Opekta Ateliers Köln(Germany), contemporary art institutions in Balkan region, Contemporary Art Foundation(Taiwan), National Culture and Arts Foundation(Taiwan) and Department of Cultural Affairs, Taipei City Government(Taiwan).This project will be realized in form of thematic exhibitions and monographs. Moreover, Hong Kong World Cultures Festival 2013 has been devoted to the focal theme “Lasting Legacies of Eastern Europe”, and has organized the exhibition “East+Europe: Eastern European Contemporary Art Exhibition”. Yunnia Yang has been invited to its international symposium “Imagination of Eastern Europe” as a guest speaker to share her two-year research and observation on Russia and Eastern Europe. Since 2011, Yunnia Yang has written several articles on the contemporary arts of Russia and Eastern Europe for Taiwanese art journals “Art Investment” and “Art Collection + Design”. The Chinese University of Hong Kong has invited her to write the keynote article “Constructing the National Mythology of Utopia: Development of the Russian Art in the Twentieth Century” for the University’s Bimonthly Review “Twentieth-First Century” of February 2014.

Besides the curatorial project “ The Apocalyptic Sensibility: The New Media Art from Taiwan” (WRO Media Art Biennale 2013, Taipei Fine Art Museum in 2015) introspecting our technologized civilization, Yunnia Yang concerns particularly about the influences of the contemporary visual culture and curates various creative video exhibitions. In 2014, she curated the International Creative Video Exhibition “Imagining Crisis” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei. This video project has toured around the contemporary art centers in Poland, Serbia, Bulgaria and Colombia. In 2015, Yunnia Yang is invited by the 34th Asolo Art Film Festival to curate the two video projects “ Imagining Crisis” and “ TAIWAN VIDEA: the Taiwanese Avant-garde Video Exhibition”.
 

 
1.     The Contemporary Art Festival
Albert MerinoSpain201120 min. 20 sec.

                           


This video is a fiction about the development of a hypothetical Art Festival which is conceived through the concept ‘The crisis of reception’ in the artistically context. Using techniques belonging to the mass media, the festival is organized with the scale of a large popular event. Some agents who works outside of the creative process; Gallerists, Curators, Collectors, and Employers will analyze the different contributions of the participants which constitute at once a proposal of daydreams and utopias.

 

2.     The Curator
Shahar MarcusIsrael20114 min. 35 sec.


Structured like a Hollywood trailer with rhythmical editing and multiple effects, Shahar Marcus's video piece depicts a curator's "rise to power" with a measure of grotesqueness, sketching a map of the art world, with the curator reigning supreme. Mapping external signs and cultural codes, Marcus traces the activity of the curator and his multiple functions, ponders over the skills required for this coveted position, and analyzes the mechanism of self-glorification which makes the conductor of art's orchestra tick. In passing, he also criticizes the superficiality and pretense in the art world, the "celeb" culture which crowns objects of admiration and imitation, and the yearning of patrons—powerful tycoons—to establish their high status by means of art works and artists.
3.     The Holy Beauty Project Volume III
Rossina BossioColombia |2012 |6 min. 26 sec.

                             

The Holy Beauty Project Volume 3 is the final installment in a series of videos that examine the seductive power of images and the representation of women as a means to communicate and consolidate social norms as well as ideals of beauty and morality. The artist portrays eight different characters that represent various aspects of feminine identity. Set against an epic musical score, the characters dance in the middle of a rain forest and in a studio, wearing costumes inspired by catholic iconography, Latin American indigenous attire and contemporary feminine icons. The choreography alternates stereotypical movements of feminine sexuality, such as those found in advertisements, music videos and fashion, with hieratic, violent and animalistic movements. The Holy Beauty Project is a satire of seduction and the arbitrariness of societal behaviors and values among women. It aims examine the constant need for idols and deities and the need to make sense of life’s apparent absurdity.
4. Efímero Festín
Ernesto Pombo &Chimene CostaArgentina20138 min. 20 sec.

This dance video was conceived to be done in Antarctica. It is part of the Culture program of the National Directorate of Antarctica in Argentine. The artists intend to raise awareness about the danger of the destruction of nature and to expose human selfishness at the same time. EFIMERO FESTIN is the story of the self destruction of a livening being - a surrealistic women trying to possess the environment where she belongs to.
5. Ant
Kimmo Alakunnas Finland201024 min.



An Ant is a short contemporary dance film which tells the story of a workaholic Man whose sense of reality begins to fail. Because of his actions, his coworker falls into imaginary worlds from which it is almost impossible to escape. What is real and what is fantasy? And what, exactly, is the enigmatic Ant which keeps disturbing the main characters? The film deals with the disability to give and receive love, and the way we give it doesn’t feel right. If we don’t understand right from wrong, we take what we want by force.
 
6. The Death of an Insect
Hannes Vartiainen& Pekka VeikkolainenFinland20107 min.
 
In a lifeless urban landscape where time itself has stopped its crawl, a mad ballet is commencing and a newly hatched butterfly is about to die. This tragic story was constructed using dead insects gathered from forgotten attics and tool sheds, between window panels and cobwebs. It combines a number of animation techniques from classic stop-motion animation to animated 3D models of x-ray CT-scanned insects.
 
7. Glucose
Mihai Grecu &Thibault GleizeRomania &France20127 min.

There is a place where fish and food are stuck in an indeterminate quantum state. This film is a reflection on our familiar surrounding space. Based on the “quantum indeterminacy” principle of the quantum mechanics, it depicts a place where physical “bugs” happen: some surfaces are unexpectedly penetrable, while the scale of beings and objects is inverted or misplaced...
 
8. Between the Regularity and Irregularity
Masahiro TsutaniJapan2012 7 min. 50 sec.


 

                                  
Masahiro Tsutani interprets the pleasure born of his brain stimulated by the improvisal music during his appreciation. He perceives strong joyness as he abstracts himself slightly from his psychological time and enjoys himself entirely in the duration of sounds. Sometimes a large amount of informations are transported to the sound module with a buffer so that the machine cannot function well, but the artist still perceives the similar pleasure in this sonal duration. This phenomenon occurs between the regularity and irreguality of the Nature. With the non-linear system of many situdations, we cannot explain such pleasure with concrete words. Tsutani represents his pleasure with his original sound-image aesthetics, inviting the audiencce to his brain universe of musical perception.
 
9. Blood
Oliver PietschGermany20113 min. 20 sec.

In a montage of film scenes accompanied by a score, blood becomes the main protagonist of its own aesthetic drama. It flows, squirts and drips. The red color is mixed with water, is absorbed by textiles and finally conquers the whole room.
 
10. Confusion
PROVMYZARussia200922 min.

The film begins with the scene of a shaking crystal chandelier, then a kind of inexplicably strange ambient spreads all over among the party of the young people, recalling some kind of ambiguous, curious, fearful, even confusing perceptions. This mysterious ambient becomes so stronger that the young girls cannot help but fainting. Their vertigo looks like a long performance. As time goes by, the scene remains the same and time freezes human flesh into a sculpture. The boys’ confusion transforms into aggression for being infected by a withered bush. The Confusion focuses on an individualized natural object – the bush – which was originally believed to pose potential threat to the people but fell victim to the feeling of confusion after suffering the unexpected aggressive will of the crowd.
11. From Here to Eternity
Oliver PietschGermany201040 min.


From Here to Eternity explores the theme of death in the history of cinema; the artist addresses with a hint of humour the idea of immortality interpreted by actors through the course of time. Pietsch deconstructs and remystifies. His "encyclopedia" of dying in the cinema shows kitsch and escapism, and the inevitability of death.
 
 


2015年10月13日 星期二

TAIWAN VIDEA @ 34th Asolo Art Film Festival(2015.11.05@21:30/ Eleonora Duse Theatre in Asolo, Italy)



"TAIWAN VIDEA"
The Taiwanese Avant-garde Video Exhibition

Curator: Yunnia Yang

Curatorial Concept 

Film art is an important artistic expression in the contemporary visual culture. The charms of images dominate the lifestyle and way of thinking of our new generation. Among the Taiwanese contemporary arts, video art and experimental films enrich the visual aesthetics and symbolic meanings with their own critical character, originality and diversity. The internationally-awarded creative videos from Taiwan might become a fleeting glimpse of beauty. The curatorial project ‘ Taiwan VIDEA’ is to converge the creative energies and aesthetic features of film art, including video art, performance art, experimental films and animations, digital animations , animated MV, etc. The depth of these videos refer to many facets of human beings’ living conditions: the social roles and survival relations of the contemporaries (Tsui Kuang-Yu’s “The Shortcut to the Systematic Life: Superficial Life”), the spatial imagination of an individual searching for the freedom of his body and mind (Pu Shuai-Cheng’s “Secret Plane-Immense Floating”), the danger and paranoia of overexpanding self-consciousness (Wu Tzu-An’s “Disease of Manifestation”), a nutrition taken as a metonymy to criticize politicians devouring people’s future dreams with empty promises (Wang Ding-Yeh’s “Beef-Wonderful Promises”), the seriousness of the collective consciousness manipulated by the contemporary media (Zhang Xu-Zhan’s “Ritual of Cathode Ray Tube”), the representation of the poetic relations between human existence and urban enchantment by means of a imagery poem (Wang Deng-Yu’s “Character Creator”); and showing humorously the worries of a new generation of parents about raising children with an oriental folk custom (Rau Kao’s “Pick a Future”), exploring subtle transformations of  the landscape of our lives (Chang Huei Ming’s “Fragment Series”); singing the elegy of the gradual disappearance of the Taiwanese OEM factories caused by the transformation of Taiwanese economy (Chen I-Chun’s “Goodbye Little Factory”); with a new way of seeing to explore aesthetic possibilities of representing the oriental landscape painting (Wu Chi-Tsung’s “Landscape in the Mist”), with moving images of paysage to activate a viewer’s body and its spatial perception (’Paysage’ created by Chiang Juan-Hau & Christian Rizzo); criticizing the desire law of chasing after the ‘Progress’ deteriorating humanity(Huang Zan-Lun’s “Double”), and analogizing the images of the New Year’s Eve fireworks and a candle as a metaphor of the contradiction between the celebration of a country’s future and the sacrifice of martyrs (Ho Wei-Ming’s “Over My Dead Country”). The 13 creative videos from Taiwan will subvert the international audience’s impressions on the Taiwanese culture and arts, crossing over the boundaries of fine arts and pop culture. The issues of ‘ Taiwan VIDEA’ are not only related to Taiwan itself, but also to the contemporary problems in the world. Creative thinking with universal value is the fundamental necessity of avant-garde images with subversive power.




About Curator/ Yunnia Yang

Yunnia Yang has received the Master degree in Art History from St. Petersburg State University in Russia in 1997, and Doctor degree in Arts from National Taiwan Normal University with the thesis ‘Study on “the Paranoiac-Criticism” of Salvador Dalí’ in 2009, with which she was awarded S-An Aesthetics Award in 2010. During this period, she managed all kinds of exhibitions, performances, and art events for the institutions of arts, literature and culture in Taiwan. Since 2011, she has launched the long-term curatorial research on “The Postmodern Condition in the contemporary art of Russia and Eastern Europe” in cooperation with the following art institutions: National Center for Contemporary Arts in Moscow(Russia), the Executive Committee of “Night of Museum in St. Petersburg”(Russia), Agency for Contemporary Art (ACAX) of Ludwig Museum in Budapest(Hungary), Opekta Ateliers Köln(Germany), contemporary art institutions in Balkan region, Contemporary Art Foundation(Taiwan), National Culture and Arts Foundation(Taiwan) and Department of Cultural Affairs, Taipei City Government(Taiwan).This project will be realized in form of thematic exhibitions and monographs. Moreover, Hong Kong World Cultures Festival 2013 has been devoted to the focal theme “Lasting Legacies of Eastern Europe”, and has organized the exhibition “East+Europe: Eastern European Contemporary Art Exhibition”. Yunnia Yang has been invited to its international symposium “Imagination of Eastern Europe” as a guest speaker to share her two-year research and observation on Russia and Eastern Europe. Since 2011, Yunnia Yang has written several articles on the contemporary arts of Russia and Eastern Europe for Taiwanese art journals “Art Investment” and “Art Collection + Design”. The Chinese University of Hong Kong has invited her to write the keynote article “Constructing the National Mythology of Utopia: Development of the Russian Art in the Twentieth Century” for the University’s Bimonthly Review “Twentieth-First Century” of February 2014.

Besides the curatorial project “ The Apocalyptic Sensibility: The New Media Art from Taiwan” (WRO Media Art Biennale 2013, Taipei Fine Art Museum in 2015) introspecting our technologized civilization, Yunnia Yang concerns particularly about the influences of the contemporary visual culture and curates various creative video exhibitions. In 2014, she curated the International Creative Video Exhibition “Imagining Crisis” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei. This video project has toured around the contemporary art centers in Poland, Serbia, Bulgaria and Colombia. In 2015, Yunnia Yang is invited by the 34th Asolo Art Film Festival to curate the two video projects “ Imagining Crisis” and “ TAIWAN VIDEA: the Taiwanese Avant-garde Video Exhibition”.

1.  The Shortcut to the Systematic Life: Superficial Life
Tsui Kuang-Yu200210 min
2003 The 1st Taishin Arts Award “Jury’s Special Award”

Tsui Kuang-Yu transforms the idea of the biological term on mimicry into systematic adaptation and measurement toward various life circumstances in this work. To change one’s outfit according to the outside environment is like a chameleon-like camouflage, and it is also the shortcut to penetrate different living circles. The work connotes the absurdity of reflection on reality, and mocks on the schizophrenia caused by the changes of living environment.

2. Secret Plane-Immense Floating
Pu Shuai -Cheng20115 min 31 sec
2011 The 6th Digital Art Festival Taipei Digital video, First Prize
                          
Pu Shuai-Cheg is meant to create multiple transparent planes for his video. It depicts a space where the main character moves and shuttles around. Remnant images of these motions come from daily routines, which accumulate to form another ego. It is a complete non-self who enjoys partial control over the body.

3. Beef-Wonderful Promises
Wang Ding-Yeh20114 min 42 sec
2015 Asolo Art Film Festival, World Premiere
                          
Beef is a metaphor for the political promises that politicians give during the election. Those promises are often made to bring benefits to people, however, how many of them will really accomplish after the election? How much beef can we actually get in the end? 
  
4. Disease of Manifestation
Wu Tzu-An20119 min
2013 The 35th Golden Harvest Awards for Outstanding Short Films, The Best Experimental Film

The passionate political manifestos or the small scale manifestations in our everyday lives, can be considered as the compulsory desire to maintain, to repeat, and to reproduce the manifestos, aiming to achieve an unachievable substance. The act of manifestation is to rupture with the present world and the compulsion to change it. Here comes the paradox between outward-looking and inward-looking perspectives of the notion of revolution, which is the initiation of this project, manifestations as the infectious psychosis.


5. Ritual of Cathode Ray Tube
Zhang Xu Zhan2011-20135 min
2012  The 7th Digital Art Festival, First Prize
                          
Zhang Xu Zhan uses hand-drawn animation to express his views on contemporary Taiwanese media.The implied symbols in work are embedded in a torn open CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) screen. The screen is laid out to serve as a musical score allowing the conductor to lead the people in the performance of a nonsense chant. United by a meaningless collective consciousness, they seem to suggest a passionate and ebullient orchestra, but they are actually an absurd and bizarre gathering. The artist mocks the incredible influence the media has over contemporary society and the way it stirs the emotions of the public.

 6. Character Creator
Wang Deng-Yu20064min 41 sec
2006  Single from Summer Lei’s album “The Light of Darkness”
The animated MV created for the Taiwanese singer and songwriter Summer Lei is a experimental creation of sound-image poetry. Wang Deng-Yu’s images imply that there are still endless stories in urban ruins for stories of human beings give a city life. Human beings are the most important element of a city. The more creative, imaginative human beings are, the more hopeful a city is.

 7. Pick a Future
 Rau Kao20107 min
 2010  The 5th KT Creativity Award Animation, Golden Prize
                         
A young couple practiced the ancient "ZHUA-ZHOU" ceremony in order to find out the future of their child. With the subjective influence of the parents, what would the child pick?

8. Fragment Series
Chang Huei-Ming20122min
2013  The 8th Digital Art Festival, First Prize
                         
“Fragment Series” consists of 5 single-channel video. The 5 segments of the screen include the burning candlelight among the scattered lilies on the ground, black hair and one foot covered by a pile of dry leaves, a walking clock on pieces of glass, curved-up animal fur hidden in the bush, and a dying fish lying down on the pile of rock by the riverside. The five scenes are endlessly sealed into a circulation of birth and death through the repeated flow of lighting and shadow on the scene. For the artist, all time represents the beginning and the end without ceasing. The artist transforms the birth, life, memories, and time into poetic sceneries through the images of the work. 


9. Goodbye Little Factory
Cheng I-Chun201010 min
2011 National Taiwan Museum of Fine Art "Digital Ark", Digital Art Creation Project
                         

"Goodbye Little Factory" is a triptych of endlessly scrolling images of OEM facilities that Chen filmed to record the dying days of this kind of industry. Their mechanical whirring and thuds are combined with simple childish notes to create something between a soothing lullaby tinged with Chen’s childhood memories, and a requiem.


10. Landscape in the Mist
Wu Chi-Tsung201210min 17 sec
2012 The 6th Shanghai Art Fair Int’l Contemporary Art Exhibition
2014 Solo Exhibition “Recalibrate”, Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art in Manchester, UK
                          
This artwork is highly indicative of Wu Chi-Tsung’s thoughts on Eastern art, interjecting a little individualist imagination amidst the fluid lines and misty mountaintops of a traditional ink wash landscape.

 11. Paysage
Chiang Iuan-Hau &Christian Rizzo (France) 20103min 12 sec
2011 “Christian Rizzo + Chiang Iuan-Hau Joint Exhibition” , Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei, MOCA Studio

                          

In our life, we move around in our living space. Although our body move around in a three-dimension space, but our senses are not free without limitation.  During the process of moving, we can only focus on the passage in the way of a line.  Scene after scene like the backdrops on the stage, or scene board in the photo studios, maybe it is reasonable to doubt that besides this linear passage, other parts might benihility.  However, this could be just a second thought.  Most of the times, we are used to watch the scenes one after another in front of our eyes.  When some usual sight between the changing scenes happened rarely, we might be distracted, and stayed for a moment, and then back to the linear passage. 

12. Double
Huang Zan-Lun201512 min 55sec
2015 “The Apocalyptic Sensibility: the New Media Art from Taiwan” , Taipei Fine Art Museum
                         
Double came into existence from the old Chinese food culture commonly uses animals’ organs into recipes to complement the corresponding organs in human’s bodies. The idea of this video is to question the belief of these organs could enhance weakened parts of human bodies and even spirits because they carry out similar functions in animals? Should we human beings multiply these powers as much as possible? How much do we need and what would we become once we started such an infinite complementary form?

13. Over My Dead Country
Ho Wei-Ming201311 min 11sec
013 “MADATAC 06” Award, Spain

                         
This work transforms a fusion of the tragedy and the celebration; it also reflects the concerns of media monopoly, social and political predicament. Through the revelation of flame, will you see the historical process, repetition or ending? In the end, politics dominates art or art can transcend politics?