12:59 minutes
Stones and Elephants by Chia-Wei Hsu derives from the Malay literary classic The Hikayat Abdullah . The author Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir, who once served as the secretary of Major General William Farquhar, chronicled his life in Malaysia and published his writings in 1849. Hsu’s video installation excerpts two chap- ters from this classic. The artist invited a Malay shaman to read these two stories as a voiceover and to pray for a peaceful filming trip. The chapter “Melaka Fort” depicts how the British destroyed the strong fortress to weaken Malacca and return control of the region to the Dutch East India Company, while the other describes the locals, William Farquhar, and his interest in ecology. The perspective offered by the drone creates a unique relationship between the human and the non-human. The artist can only use technology and the internet as a vessel for memories. As stated in the narration, “all these have passed, showing that everything is so fragile.” Algorithms ensure that every keyword search will show different results, presenting elements of truth among the uncertainty of this work. Through this, Hsu attempts to retrace historical scenes that have been lost to time.
Embarking from myriad audio-visual narratives, Chia-Wei Hsu pursues imaginative interrogations of cultural contact and colonization in Asia, oftentimes amalgamating his primary narratives with non-human actors including technologies, animals, gods, environments, traditions, and material objects. Bringing these diverse subjects together results in a bumpy ontological bleed between them, forming the topography of a historical geography without a straightforward objective position. By reinterrogating what histories and relations coexist within a given locale, Hsu’s work manifests new imaginative potentialities for their revitalization, an uncertain, profound terrain throughout his films and installations. While his work has consistently probed regulatory systems including religion, science, architecture, and military action, Hsu’s work has increasingly explored digital ontologies and the Internet of Things, in which previously luddite household objects have become connected to the internet. The digital, as a territorializing field produced by components largely manufactured in Asia, allows Hsu to attempt the detournement of western knowledge-bases to formulate new, imaginative archipelagos.
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Finding Common Ground In Street Photography - Photographs by Joep Hijwegen, Julie Hrudová, Bart Koetsier and Rolf van Rooij | Essay by Erik Vroons | LensCulture Feature Finding Common Ground In Street Photography What makes a great ‘street’ photograph? Erik Vroons explores the infinite possibilities of the genre while reflecting on the diverse work of five Dutch photographers...
Under the bonnet: €300,000 Ferrari-funded restoration completed on 13th-century Cimabue fresco Art market Museums & heritage Exhibitions Books Podcasts Columns Technology Adventures with Van Gogh Search Search Conservation news Under the bonnet: €300,000 Ferrari-funded restoration completed on 13th-century Cimabue fresco Maestà di Assisi, located in the saint's home town, which survived a deadly earthquake in 1997, has been returned to its original luminosity James Imam 8 February 2024 Share Cimabue’s Madonna Enthroned with the Child, Four Angels and St Francis underwent two previous restorations: in the late 19th century and again in 1973 Tecnireco A fading fresco by the 13th-century artist Cimabue that survived a deadly earthquake 25 years ago has been returned to its original splendour following a €300,000 restoration funded by the luxury car manufacturer Ferrari...
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Images of an El Salvador Town Transformed by Migration - The New York Times Lens | Images of an El Salvador Town Transformed by Migration https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/lens/images-of-an-el-salvador-town-transformed-by-migration.html Give this article Share Advertisement Continue reading the main story The political has long been the personal for those who decided to abandon all they knew in El Salvador to search for a safer, but uncertain, future up north...
European masterworks from the Phillips Collection share a modern vision for art with Milwaukee | The Milwaukee Independent European masterworks from the Phillips Collection share a modern vision for art with Milwaukee Posted by Editor | Nov 16, 2019 | The Milwaukee Art Museum hosted a preview exhibit tour for the local media on November 13 for their blockbuster exhibit “A Modern Vision: European Masterworks from the Phillips Collection” which runs until March 22, 2020...
You have given the world your songs by Francisca Benítez is a poem in American Sign Language (ASL)...
Jeep Comics is based on the second of only two issues published by RB Leffingwell and Company in 1944–45...
SEE WHAT SEE (May 2021): SOUTHEAST ASIAN DOCUMENTARIES | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Viewpoints May 15, 2021 By Joel Tan To borrow and distort the title of David Shield’s lyrical manifesto against fiction: I’ve been HUNGRY for reality in the month of May...
Hybridized drawing is a continued exploration in Moshekwa’s practice, integrating elements of graffiti, thread and yarn to enrich his abstract drawings of maps and space...
The Enigmatic Bolivian Artist Who Centered Indigenous Workers’ Rights Skip to content Alejandro Mario Yllanes, "Estaño Maldito (Cursed Tin)" (1937), oil on burlap, 60 inches x 77 1/2 inches (all images courtesy Ben Elwes Fine Art, London) The Bowdoin College Museum of Art has acquired a painting by Indigenous Bolivian artist Alejandro Mario Yllanes, the first by the enigmatic artist to enter the collection of a museum in the United States...