Object-Subjectivities 重塑：東西遊戲 (installation + performance)

(中文版)

Object-Subjectivities (2016) // Linda C.H. Lai (installation), Linda Lai + the Floating Projects Collective (performance)

At "NO REFERENCES: A Revisit of Hong Kong Video and Media Art from 1985," curated by Su Wei and Phoebe Wong / Videotage / Cattle Depot / 19 May - 15 June 2016 (satellite exhibition of ISEA 2016 Hong Kong /official website: full catalogue [...] / announcement [...]

Press [Art Radar] / Press [明周 Ming Pao Weekly] /

FULL PROPOSAL in pdf [...] / Performance: VIDEO DOCUMENTATION [...]

 

Artist's Statement, concept, synopsis

[see other documents and links]

Object-Subjectivities (2016) is Object-activity (1989) and LOOK: Object-act-ivity (2006) deconstructed and re-fabricated, an attempt to re-frame the cultural history of the city of Hong Kong as her media-art history. It attends to the hidden lives of objects and technics.  It openly experiments with discursive formation as the practice of historiography, producing self-consciously selective but factually grounded accounts pertaining to lived experiences.
 
Object-Subjectivities is a mixed-media installation using a compound chronology as its main body. It asserts facts, no matter how fragmentary the documents are. As a chronology that seeks the many linkages between Hong Kong’s social-cultural history and that of media and art, it is fractured and elliptical, with distributed yet uneven pockets of thick descriptions. My chronology seeks out isolated local details as much as postulates a longue durée (long duration) broad view across centuries and continents. The multi-lateral time-line in the exhibition connects elements of music culture prompted by wars and battles in 19th century Europe, festivities in the cities of late Qing Dynasty, an annual custom in the northeastern part of China, the beginning of electricity supply in Hong Kong, vinyl fads due to the popularization of Cantonese opera songs in the 1920s and experiments of radio broadcasting in the 1930s, television broadcasting in late 1960s, Sony-Walkman in the 1980s and so on. Taking an organological view, multiple levels of reality discourse will be assembled in the work, from personal to institutional, from artistic to survival, visionary to tactical, from grand stories to mediated memories, and, cutting through the diverse strands, the various ways media and technology are mobilized or turned into strategic interfaces.
 
Chronology is at once a historiographic and creative exercise. The aesthetic strategy of the work is to key in on the disparate isolated moments as individual phenomenon, via diagrams, maps, video footage, photos, newspaper cuttings, sound-bites and so on to give the chronological narrative a varied perceptual texture and density of information.
 
Object-Subjectivities the compound chronology embodies several stories: “the Story of Light,” “the Story of the Finger,” “the Story of Grammatology,” “the Story of Presence” and “the Story of the Decline of the Expert.”

(Guest) Videos shown as part of the chronology:

1. 1988 - As Slow As Possible極之慢 (Zuni, video documentation of a performance)
2. 1989 - Object-Activities東西遊戲 (Zuni, video documentation of a performance)
3. 1996 - Hong Kong Road Movie 香港公路電影 (color / original format: Beta / 20 min. / Makin Fung 馮炳輝)
4. 2006 - Look: Object-Activity 看：東西遊戲 (Ryan Chan, Dan Fong, Josie Lam, Lo-ching Lam, Suki Lui, Bonnie Yeung, Mo-yiu Hui)
5. 2012 - Reverting Spectacles: Performing Space 回轉狀觀 。空間實活。(22m 19s / Linda Lai, with footage from Hector Rodriguez and Terrence Chan)
6. 2010 - YHA 30+ Young Hong Kong Artists Dialogue YHA+香港青年藝術家對談錄 (color / 96m / Cantonese with English and Chinese subtitles / Ma Chi-hang馬智恆) - interviewed artists include s.t., Samson Young, Lee Chi-hoi, Jessie Tsang, Beatrix Pang and so on
7. 2014 - Night 夜 (55m 33s / color+b/w / 4:3 / Liu Tao廖韜)
8. 2015 - [Two Exercises - I] Tear-Shedding Exercise (6m16s / Kenji Wong王偉健)
9. 2015 - [Two Exercises - II] Exercises in Violence (33m48s / Kenji Wong王偉健)

The installation of Object-Subjectivities (on display 19 May 2016) has one performance (21 May) as its live annotation. A series of structured improvisation in three acts with a coda, it builds upon cleansing via water as the overall metaphor and algorithm as the proto-script of action. Object-activities; (1989, the precedent of Object-Subjectivities, originated as a cross-disciplinary art experiment in the light of the American Avant-garde, and performed in July 1989 a month after the June-Fourth massacres, was a mourning space volunteered by the artists involved. When reworked in 2006 as a one-long-take tableau-vivant video work, LOOK: Object-activity, the focus was on the musicality of multi-linear parametric visual narration and multi-stranded actions on a single theatre space for its pictorial and formal effects. The piece suggests a time and a mind at ease. Object-Subjectivities in 2016 asserts communication via doing things together. The principle of “collective co-individuation” manifests in a play with objects – each performer following his/her own self-made routines to create a meditative space that also invites sharing and exchange.
 
Act One: ”automation, emergence, artificial intelligence, programmed democracy”
Act Two: ”hardworking algorithms”
Act Three: ”collective co-individuation”
Coda: ”relentless remembering”

	Documents for the performance 有關演出的文本 Automatic writings from rehearsals不假思索現場書寫[15th May][21st May] Projected Chinese texts (HK stories) in the performance 演出中投影的香港故事 See also FULL PROPOSAL for flow of improvization 請參看「完整計劃書』瞭解即興演出的構思和流程

NOTES

Installation

Research and chronology: Linda C.H. LAI; Production Assistant: Kel LOK (LOK Man-chung); Research Assistant: ZENG Hong, WONG Chun-hoi

***The research of this work is partially supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong SAR, China [project no. 9042111] ***

Performance

Concept/structure: Linda LAI; Producer: WONG Chun-hoi; Water closet (design): WONG Chun-hoi, Wing CHEUK; Chinese text: LAI Wai-leung; Performers: Linda LAI (live automatic writing), WONG Chun-hoi, Andio LAI, WONG Fuk-kuen, Hugo YEUNG, Fiona LEE, Kenji WONG, Anna CHIM, DING Cheuk-laam, and Wing CHEUK

《重塑：東西遊戲》

「沒有先例：一次重塑香港錄像和新媒體藝術敘述的嘗試」／策展：蘇偉、黃小燕（錄影太奇）／牛棚藝術村／2016年5月19日至6月15日

活動官方網站：場刊足本 [...] / 新聞發報 [...] / 媒體報道 [Art Radar] / 媒體報道 [明周 Ming Pao Weekly] /

《重塑：東西遊戲》（2016）// 黎肖嫻（裝置）/ 黎肖嫻＋句點藝術群體（表演）

作品計劃書足本 pdf [...] /

 

藝術家陳述／概念、本事

《重塑：東西遊戲》關心器物和技術於我們生活歷史中默默的存活，意識到我們身處趨向大講特講、迷失於意識形態、有理說不清、在語言遊戲中易衝動偷步的年頭。
《重塑：東西遊戲》是一個多媒體裝置作品。一個橫跨多個世紀，充滿斷裂、無端省略的年表，卻突出了局部高密度的發展圈。十九世紀的歐洲，清末都市的節慶，二十世紀初中國東北的呼蘭河，二十年代的粵曲唱片發行，三十年代的香港廣播活動，七十年代的音樂噴泉，八十年代的SONY－WALKMAN，電子藝術的命名，九七錄像日記，手提… …。
 
一九八九年七月，《東西遊戲》來自不同界別的藝術家（搞裝置的、寫詩的、舞蹈的、實驗劇場的、拍錄像的、搞音樂的…）在六四民運流血懸空的驚愕震蕩之中躊躇。籌備了三個月即將面對觀眾的演出該如何承接民運的脈搏？這個帶先鋒取向的跨媒體藝術實驗計劃忽然給一大堆迫切問題沖著：「我們搞藝術是為了甚麼？搞藝術還有甚麼意義嗎？」從來沒有太多的元素叫香港人「入骨入肉」的思量自己是中國人。那是個扎心、卻叫人異常清醒的時刻，行動的迫切超過理念。沒有勸人愛國的需要，因為都「愛國」。一九八九的《東西遊戲》是個哀哭悼念的空間，是喪禮，用藝術的方法，透過物件（東西）的擺設和演出，去梳理無法言喻的創痛 。二〇〇六年的《看：東西遊戲》，依《東西遊戲》的錄像檔案騰寫出來的動作流程的文字記述化成錄像作品，一派安逸無憂，雕塑著視覺構圖的一分一秒精而準。純看。
 
於二〇一六年的香港搞《重塑：東西遊戲》，是理直氣壯的擺出「歷史」證物來，開宗明義的帶選擇性，創造論述，玩弄東西和符號。年表、時間線看似客觀，都是論述，辯證法的體現，以（多）線性挑刃線性。香港的媒體創作歷史牽連覆蓋的是個怎樣的大故事？沒有單一的故事。論述的構成，也源於眾多的獨立個人行動、事件、辛勤記述所出的檔案文本，以致有關的器物。

《重塑：東西遊戲》的裝置故事∶

1. 「光的故事」
2. 「指頭的故事」
3. 「文法學的故事」
4. 「活現此刻的故事」
5. 「專家已死的故事」  

被納入《重塑：東西遊戲》裝置時序譜的（被邀）錄像作品∶

1. 1988 -《極之慢》（進念，裝置演出的錄影）
2. 1989 -《東西遊戲》（進念，裝置演出的錄影）
3. 1996 -《香港公路電影》 （彩色 ／原作格式: Beta／ 20分 / 馮炳輝）
4. 2006 -《看：東西遊戲》 （陳瀚恩、方曉丹、林凱欣、林鷺靜、呂少鳳、楊曉嘉、許慕瑤）
5. 2012 -《回轉狀觀 。空間實活。》(22分19秒 / 黎肖嫻, 作品內部分錄像片段由羅海德和陳坤浩提供)
6. 2010 -《YHA+香港青年藝術家對談錄》（彩色／96分／廣東話，中英文字幕／馬智恆）－被訪藝術家包括周凱兒、蔡世豪、劉學成、李智海、呂永佳、彭倩幗、楊嘉輝、由零開始、曾翠珊等
7. 2014 -《夜》 (55分33秒／彩色＋黑白／4：3／廖韜）
8. 2015 - [兩個練習之一] 《流淚練習》（6分6秒／王偉健）
9. 2015 - [兩個練習之二] 《暴力練習》（33分48秒／王偉健）

 

《重塑：東西遊戲》的裝置（2016年5月19日）也引來一次有結構的即興演出（5月21日），是注腳，更是活化「東西遊戲」的體驗，同時繼承「據點。句點」群體近一年以來數度摸索的表演／陳述模式。我們一同演出的是「淨化」的實踐，共謀相約的大方向的同時，各自各的精彩，是協作和申述主體的弔詭嬉戲。八九年的《東西遊戲》多少披帶著美國前衛藝術的影子，同時強調詩意、音樂性、形式化。二〇一六年，身處黑盒化的編碼年代，我們朝著「演算法」(algorithm) 作藝術性的想像，使之人性化，尋找另一種的詩學、另一種的美學。

《重塑：東西遊戲》的演出∶

1. 「自動化。衍生序。人工智能。被設計的民主。」
2. 「勤勞的演算」
3. 「集體個別化」
4. 「無休的追憶」

年代譜裝置

研究、年代譜創作：黎肖嫻；製作助理：駱敏聰；研究助理：曾泓、王鎮海；製作統籌：王鎮海

作品創作局部由香港行政特區大學研究資助 [project no. 9042111]

現場演出

／概念、即興演出大綱、結構流程／黎肖嫻；／監製／王鎮海；／水櫃製作／卓穎嵐、王鎮海；／中文文本／黎偉亮；／演出／黎肖嫻（現場不加思索書寫）、王鎮海、黎仲民、卓穎嵐、丁卓藍、楊鳴謙、李詠珊、黃福權、詹可瑩、王健偉