Extrastellar Evaluations III: Entropy: 25800
2018 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
16:50 minutes
Yin-Ju Chen
Extrastellar Evaluations is a multimedia installation produced during Yin-Ju Chen’s residency at Kadist San Francisco in the spring of 2016. Chen’s project departs from a 19th century theory popular within Western biogeography that posited the existence of a “lost land” or ancient continent called Lemuria that had sunk beneath the Indian and Pacific Ocean due to cataclysmic geological change. As a result, its inhabitants, the Lemurians, found refuge in Mount Shasta, California. Through a semi-fictional approach, the video component of the installation Extrastellar Evaluations III: Entropy: 25800 envisions a version of history in which the Lemurians lived among humans in the 1960s under the guise of various renowned conceptual and minimal artists (Carl Andre, Mel Bochner, and James Turrell to name a few). The video proposes that humans interpreted and appropriated the geometric-shaped objects the Lemurians created as conceptual and minimalist artworks, when in fact, the objects were transmission devices used to report human actions to their mother planet. Key to understanding the entire installation, the video component takes the form of a channeled message from Adama, High Priest and spiritual leader of the Lemurians. In the video Adama attempts to give viewers clues to decipher the history of the Lemurians, the purpose of their existence on earth, and information about the identities of their agents (artists). The work questions our understanding of our past, while raising consciousness toward our existence on earth. In this context, the installation highlights the risks of human activities, echoing today’s anxieties toward issues of global warming, ongoing conflicts, and exploitation of resources. Addressing earlier signs of humans’ loss of faith in the reality of life, Chen’s work suggests a larger, long-term phenomenon rather than a recent trend linked to the development of media and information technology.
Yin-Ju Chen is a multidisciplinary artist, working in video, photography, drawing, and multi-media installation. She interprets social power and history through cosmological systems, using astrology, sacred geometry, and alchemical symbols to consider themes of human behavior, nationalism, imperialism, racism, state violence, totalitarianism, utopian formations, and collective thinking. Recent works illustrate the inevitability of cycles of history, developing the scope of Chen’s long-term consideration of notions of power and collective (un)consciousness. Chen was in residency at KADIST San Francisco in 2016.
Colors:
Related works featuring themes of: » Film/Video, » United States, » American & Taiwanese
» see more
© » KADIST
Jason Meadows
2009The Striation Scrap Lamps (vertical and horizontal) although functioning as utilitarian objects also represent Jason Meadows’s interest in a certain kind of crafted sculpture...
© » KADIST
Kristen Morgin
2008Donald of Doom Tank (2008) is a replica of a vintage metal toy with Donald Duck’s image one side and a soldier on the other...
© » KADIST
Haegue Yang
2010In addition to Yang’s signature drying rack and light bulbs, Office Voodoo includes various office supplies like CDs, paper clips, headphones, a computer mouse, a stamp, a hole puncher, a mobile phone charger...
Other related works, blended automatically
» see more
© » KADIST
Yin-Ju Chen
2011This work includes sketches for Extrastellar Evaluations , the project she produced at Kadist...
© » KADIST
Jason Meadows
2009The Striation Scrap Lamps (vertical and horizontal) although functioning as utilitarian objects also represent Jason Meadows’s interest in a certain kind of crafted sculpture...
© » KADIST
Kristen Morgin
2008Donald of Doom Tank (2008) is a replica of a vintage metal toy with Donald Duck’s image one side and a soldier on the other...
© » KADIST
Trisha Donnelly
2007Untitled is a black-and-white photograph of a wave just before it breaks as seen from the distance of an overlook...
Related works sharing similar palette
» see more
© » ARTS EQUATOR
“Peter and the Starcatcher”: An Invitation to Suspend Disbelief Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles October 22, 2018 By Casidhe Ng (1,100 words, six-minute read) The final show of Pangdemonium’s 2018 season, Peter and the Starcatcher is this year’s equivalent of Fun Home or RENT , an exuberant and expensive production intent on ending their year with a bang...
© » KADIST
biarritzzz
2015biarritzzz is interested in how the development of the internet, and experimentation in the virtual world happens simultaneously with the experimentation in the material world of the human species; and how these developments reflect the precariousness of life within neoliberalism...
© » ARTS EQUATOR
Weekly Picks: Indonesia (4 - 10 March 2019) | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Weekly To Do March 4, 2019 Top Picks of Indonesia art events in Jakarta, Surabaya and Bali from 4-10 March 2019 In order to understand the contemporary art and society, we have to take our understanding beyond the principles of modernism...
© » KADIST
James Welling
2006Welling employs simple materials like crumpled aluminum foil, wrinkled fabric and pastry dough and directly exposes them as photograms, playing with the image in the process of revealing it...
Other works by: » Yin-Ju Chen
» see more
© » KADIST
Yin-Ju Chen
2011This work includes sketches for Extrastellar Evaluations , the project she produced at Kadist...
© » KADIST
Yin-Ju Chen
One Universe, One God, One Nation was inspired by Hannah Arendt’s analysis of space exploration and by the astrological horoscope of Chinese political and military leader Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975)...
© » KADIST
Yin-Ju Chen
2016Through a semi-fictional approach, Extrastellar Evaluations envisions a version of history in which alien inhabitants, the Lemurians, lived among humans under the guise of various renowned conceptual and minimal artists in the 1960s (Carl Andre, Mel Bochner, and James Turrell to name a few)...
Related works found in the same semantic group
» see more
© » KADIST
Xiaoyun Chen
2006State Terrorism in the ultimate form of Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood features a portrait of the artist wearing a zipped utilitarian jacket reminiscent of a worker’s uniform, with one arm behind his back as if forced to ingest a bundle of stick—a literal portrayal to the definition of fascism...
© » ARTS EQUATOR
The working processes of artists: Nam Hwa Opera | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles August 23, 2019 In this video, LASALLE students Cherie Tan Yan Zhen and Lee Jia Jing speak to opera performer Chen Yu Zhi from Nam Hwa Opera, a Singapore-based Teochew opera troupe founded in 1963...
