As a Drifting Labyrinth Becomes a Daily Perception-- On the Variable Dimensions of To Martian Anthropologists by Chun-Yi CHANG

Unusual Reading of the Space: Virtuality Comes Before Reality

Although it has long been known that there is another venue online which is in fact the main venue, I still attend the physical exhibition area quite seriously with a focus on the first exhibition room. The tiles on the floor and the ceiling of lattice-shaped frames of light steel have provided a large amount of individual containers where are hidden and interconnected all objects / symbols / strength of feelings, which implies a much vaster frame of space positioning.

A Curatorial Strategy to Make Art Drifting

People might easily miss this square LED panel light on the ceiling, which happens to be I’M LITTLE BUT I HAVE BIG DREAMS by Wan-Jen CHEN. Doesn’t the work really convey any messages? In the online version of the same work, a group of young people on vacation are looking down playing their mobile phones. The screen of a mobile phone is not just a smooth frame, but a different space, a living world both connected and isolated. Fish Tank on Live by Chi CHIEN is a rectangular magic lamp, with a black bottom and the other five transparent sides, installed on a white pedestal.The transparency permits the surrounding images to be framed, and the framed images, with some bizarre effects of glare, seem to be isolated from the outside. The two works at the door make visitors more or less aware of the positions or shapes of many works related to the idea of an exhibition venue full of geometric grids. In addition, in Hammer Price, Claude Closky forces the audience with almost no background knowledge of art auctions to quickly choose from a pair of works the one with higher auction price. There will definitely be an encouraging sound effect for the right answers; on the contrary, when the audience is wrong, there will be a sound effect similar to an electric shock. We cannot help but start to think, in the constant sound of electric shock, how exactly the price of art is produced and the marketing logic behind. The uniqueness of the Northern Renaissance master Pieter Bruegel the Elder lies in the fact that he showcases a rich, peculiar spectrum of lifestyles in the bottom of social class at the time. Collaborated with the curator Chun-Yi CHANG, the artist Eric WATIER pays homage to Bruegel in Discreet Works (thanks to Bruegel), in which the complicated situations of the characters in the painting of Bruegel are simplified into highly literal descriptive texts, arranged on the wall in the venue according to the corresponding positions in the original painting. In the meantime, the curator accepted the commission of the artist to translate, intuitively, the French texts into Chinese with slight inaccuracy. And it is the way of the two artists to pay tribute to the master of painting by constant misreadings open for all.            

During the exhibition, the audience is invited by Dorian GAUDIN to select the ugliest ceramic on the website, and the one with the highest vote will be smashed on the floor in the physical venue (Pharmakos). The scene where the ceramic is broken can be described as thrilling, which is a heart-wrenching ritual to execute the death penalty commissioned by the artist to the curator to pull the trigger. Those anonymous voters are accomplices of this absurd slaughter without responsibility. Could the mass media be a machine that constantly searches for scapegoats to satisfy the strange desires or anxiety of the public? The work Is it a Bathroom? by Jui-Chien HSU is closely related to the aforementioned works I’M LITTLE BUT I HAVE BIG DREAMS by Wan-Jen CHEN and Fish Tank on Live by Chi CHIEN. A long folded thick towel unfolds itself by hanging down from the ceiling, under which, not far away, there is a slightly dirty, soapy, rock-like gray cube under. A tube falling down from the ceiling aims at the hold in the cube. The arrangement creates a connection between the ground and the grid system of the ceiling: it seems that something passes through the tube from the ceiling, through a body mixed with soap and dirt, and, while leaving some sediments, through the sewer. The tube is similar to an ever-changing line that seems to echo the ever-changing misreading in Discreet Works (thanks to Bruegel).       

The particularity of how Jui-Chien HSU disposes objects could be roughly experienced from the above-mentioned work. In collaboration with Yannick DAUBY, he proposes another online work entitled Material Store, composed of the clumps of different materials and objects. Only with the sounds from Radio by Yannick DAUBY can foreground the subtle multi-sensory connotations conveyed in Material Store. Radio is a simple portable stereo placed on the ground and plays some unfamiliar and unrecognizable sounds, i.e., vacant signs which need to be completed in the online work Material Store, and the audience will see that these strange sounds are inspired from the different clumps. In other words, one creates new objects to be translated into different sounds by the other as a departing point. Starting from Is it a Bathroom?, the ever-changing multiple axes become more and more clear, which permits a constant combination and transmission of different energies / substances / messages. The phenomenon further develops itself in the works of Joyce HO.

In 20200529 by Joyce HO, in the pocket of a white shirt is a smart phone set as a metronome keeps ticking. This flow of ticking time might be a heartbeat from a distance; it could be a time bomb about to explode. Closely related to the large wall designed for the key visual (KV) in the venue (where the curatorial statement and floor plan are posted), Joyce HO’s another work 20200804 starts with a red wire, extends along the edge of the KV wall to the ground, cuts a diagonal line, and then develops vertically to the ceiling. Therefore, this is a red wire of tension, like a boundary with magical power, dividing the venue into two parts. It eventually hangs down from another part of the ceiling, with a small light bulb at the end just above the surface of the water in a transparent glass. The light bulb seems to be about to explode as long as it falls a little bit lower. The two works have concretized, in a rather thematic manner, all the visible and invisible lines that connect and transmit various dynamic energies and messages of uncertainty--perhaps of warmth, or of dangerous features or concepts.

Chih-Sheng LAI’s Letter echoes to some extent the flowing figure of Jui-Chien HSU’s Is it a Bathroom?: the latter proposes a water-like posture and the former softly drops down from the ceiling. The airflow from a nearby fan disturbs the light toilet paper, transforming it into a graceful dance, which  echoes the inexplicable sound waves from Radio by Yannick DAUBY. The juxtaposition of Letter, Radio (plays inexplicable sound waves ), 20200529 (exudes all sorts of strange messages and energies) and (dangerous) white short creates a poetic scene of surrealism. Home Theater by Yung-Chun SHIH is a house composed of frames only, including those of some old windows, but actually, it is an open frame for all. Between the two walls is inlaid a semi-enclosed triangular space where an old chair with a folded fabric is installed. When I compare it with the online work also entitled Home Theater, I realize that the old folded fabric in the venue originally serves as the canvas to wrap the wooden frame in the online work. As far as artistic works are concerned, is the online Home Theater a complete work? Or is it Home Theater that has been dismantled in the venue is comparatively richer? Have we already drifted in all directions?

A Great Turbulence: If I were an Anthropologist from Mars

At the very moment when I am proud of the accepted custom--offline (the physical) as primary, online as secondary--to produce a richly persuasive reading, am I further consolidating the inertial reading and perception of the old earthlings? 

When I enter the online exhibition To Martian Anthropologists, I become more or less a Martian for this is not a space I am familiar with. The homepage is an interface of a 720-degree panorama that allows me to roam around. With the icons on the bottom of the screen, including tiny white frames, ↑ / ↓, + / - and a moving mouse, I am able to become a body, floating in the air through the operation on the screen. I can move forward quickly and easily reach to the works--almost to the recognizable details. In the same manner, I can move backwards quickly to see most of the exhibition venue. What’s more interesting is that I can roll up and down, forward and backward to go beyond the limits of gravity. I can put my nose on a tile on the ground to see its texture clearly and float to the ceiling to see much better the details of the works. I can as well turn upside down the exhibition venue, so that the ceiling can become a vertical wall. What interests me most is when the mouse moves to the side screen, coupled with the rolling movements, the very important reference of space in front as a cube will suddenly fail as the space is curved.

I strongly believe that if I start with the online exhibition, my understanding of the works in the exhibition will be quite different. In other words, what I am writing here is an understanding in a narrow framework of space and time. If, as a Martian, my body is less restricted by gravity, and I am not so inclined to the absolutely vertical and horizontal references of space, how would I rewrite this article? During the early preparatory stage of the exhibition, the curator might more or less plan an exhibition in response to the restricted measures caused by the pandemic, and employed some accepted mode of perception for easy understanding and usage. However, the details and inter-references of the works, distance visiting and brand new immersive perception of the body have indeed triggered quite a change.

Hai-Ming HUANG

Ph.D in Aesthetics, University of Paris VIII and former director of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. He has been an important observer, art critic and reviewer of contemporary art in Taiwan since 1990.