Film & Video (Film & Video)

Taking the same name as their most recent solo show at the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen in Düsseldorf, siren eun young jung’s video work Deferral Theatre intertwines various threads from the last decade of the artist’s research into the Yeoseong Gukgeuk theatrical form, in which all of the roles are played by women, as well as performance-based modes of queer resistance in South Korea. The radical and temporally border-crossing qualities of gender fluidity, and lineages of queer subversion within performative spaces, animate Deferral Theatre through a critical deconstruction of Korean history, tradition and gender norms. One particularly powerful scene depicts a young drag king performer tearing at their suit and tie as they lip-sync passionately to a song in English, while the frame lilts with an ecstatic languor, as if the operator of the camera were staggering feverishly.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The Théâtre de poche video is inspired by Arthur Lloyd / “Human Card Index”, a magician who was famous for being able to take out of his pockets any image requested by his spectators. His coat hid over 15 000 different prints. In Aurélien Froment’s work, a magician presents images by making them appear, disappear or move in space.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Created for the Seventh Shanghai Biennale at the Shanghai Art Museum, Zhou Tao’s 1,2,3,4 records morning staff meetings in over forty shops and companies in the immediate vicinity of the People’s Square. Regardless of occupation, the employees count off and move in step to the rhythms of their companies’ corporate songs or chants, which are meant to build team spirit and corporate loyalty. Zhou’s practice alchemizes the ordinary surroundings into a theatre where his camera is not simply a recording apparatus but an extension of existence.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

PANGKIS by Yee I-Lann is a looped video performance. The work is named after the triumphant warrior cry, an animistic guttural call, which punctuates the traditional Dusun Sumazau dance. For this work, the artist collaborated with Tagaps Dance Theatre, a group of young dancers whose practice merges traditional and contemporary styles.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The Battle of Karbala was a military engagement that took place on 10 Muharram, 61 AH (October 10 th , 680) in Karbala, situated in present day Iraq, when Hussein, the grandson of the prophet Muhammad, was killed. This battle is central to Shia Muslim belief in which Hussein’s martyrdom is commemorated each year, in a celebration called Ashura which symbolises the birth of Muslim division still at issue today between the Shia and Sunni. During Ashura , the artist worked in close collaboration with the people of Zeynebiye (referring to Hussein’s courageous sister, Zeyneb), documenting their preparations for the ceremonies, which involve a mass theatre performance and the isolated, weeping ritual at the end of the Ashura day.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

For over five months, Zhou situated himself in an underdeveloped village surrounded by the high skyscrapers of Guangzhou to produce South Stone . Interweaving footage of a village’s landscape, residents, and animals with his seemingly absurd interventions with the place, South Stone indicates the equally incoherent social reality. Fluctuating between documentary and fiction, the film catalyzes alternative connections in time, and the emergence of imaginative spaces.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Gary-Ross Pastrana’s video installation Rewilding consists of three large-scale projections placed across the exhibition space. The poetic footage filmed by the artist portrays three interconnected worlds: a colony of termites; a piano repair workshop in the outskirts of Manila; and an empty concert theatre. Their interconnectivity is shaped by the voice-over of three narrators: a musician discussing the balance between order and chaos found in classical music; a piano repairman describing termite infestations in an instrument of European origin; and a scientist describing the unique social structures of this tropical parasite.

Installation (Installation)

For the exhibition 1440 sunsets per 24 hours at KADIST Paris in 2017, Haig Aivazian presented a sprawling installation, which sought to enact various instances of the deployment of light and darkness within public space and sports, reflecting on the double-edged abilities of lighting systems to expose, highlight or dissimulate subjects. For the installtion 1,2,3 soleil ! the space was structured like a material index, posing limbs and skins from stadiums and public spaces —namely floodlights, electric poles and asphalt— alongside abstract drawings inspired by policing and sporting data visualization iconography.

Photography (Photography)

Composed of three photographic panels, Three Times at Yamato Hotel by Luka Yuanyuan Yang is a part of the artist’s ongoing project Dalian Mirage , a seven act play in a theatre staged as the city of Dalian. This modern city was built by the Russian Empire in 1898 and occupied by Japan between 1905 and 1945. Based on historical investigations, Yang created ten characters, including a Dalian-born Japanese writer and a Dalian-born American immigrant.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The video work Japan Syndrome is a continuation of his lines of inquiry, taking post-Fukushima Japan as a case study. The work constructs a theatrical space in which the conflict-filled life sphere of post-Fukushima Japan, and perhaps beyond it, is reenacted in a minimal yet condensed fashion. To conceive this work, the artists has recorded real conversations he had with shop employees in Kyoto, Yamaguchi and Mito from 2011 to 2013, which have been then reenacted as performances in a studio, and recorded as the final form of this piece.