PACIFIC LIMN
2013 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES
Pacific Limn weaves together three narratives that comment on hyper-capitalism pan-Pacific cities that San Francisco exemplifies. Each of the large works comprise of moving images overlaid with giant text, all synched to a stealthy, up-tempo jazz soundtrack. In The Secret Life of Harumi, a Japanese woman fantasizes escaping her job and living a temporary dream life in San Francisco. Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries (YHCHI) uses locally sourced virtual products such as Adobe Flash animation and Apple’s Monaco or Menlo typeface to create a whimsical and indirect commentary on the psychology of the working class in an information society within postindustrial imperialism. For two months, YHCHI inhabited the economically polarized South of Market neighborhood, where a variety of socioeconomic realities overlap and coexist, from Facebook employees to the homeless. The Flash animation is influenced by realist cinema and depicts the tediousness in commuting by air and ground combined with the kitsch of an “Asia-town” window display. Overlaid with text-like femslash prose in a semi-coherent style of karaoke lyrics, the sensory cacophony disrupts a viewer’s thoughts and alludes to a desensitized boredom mixed with the desires of the alternative persona of a fictional Japanese woman.
YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES, a partnership between the South Korean artist Young Hae Chang and the American poet Mark Voge, is widely known as a pioneering net art project. However, this label in many ways limits the breadth of their work, which simply took the early internet as a productive medium for a more expansive practice. Their signature, flash-animation form hasn’t varied much since their formation: in a practice parallel to concrete poetry, text-driven narratives are flashed sentence by sentence over a colored backdrop, oftentimes set to jazz compositions. Drawing comparisons to propaganda and advertising strategies, YHCHI draws into an ethical limn between representation and oppression, truth and fiction in the digital era, by way of their inhabitation of perspectives beyond their own positionalities. Rather than propose the internet as a potential realm for the imagination of new narrative futures, pasts, and stories, YHCHI actualizes these practices, the viewer rendered helpless under their visual onslaught: their work is oftentimes difficult to watch, and in its original flash-animation form was not pausable. Harnessing a jazz aesthetic, traditionally a black music of improvisation, YHCHI proposes an unapologetic appropriation in order to realize aesthetic and critical rewards. Increasingly, the world YHCHI constructs has become tenable, any “objective” position compromised as digital ecologies become emergently infected by interests and power, whether for better or worse.
Colors:
Related works sharing similar palette
© » ARTS EQUATOR
Burning Questions: Can Critics Criticise during a Pandemic? | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Viewpoints August 5, 2020 As the work of artists evolve with the restrictions of COVID-19, do critics also need to reassess how they look at performance? Four critics, Loo Zihan, Teo Xiao Ting, Jocelyn Chng and Germaine Cheng discuss their responses as more and more performances go online, and whether it has led to a recalibration or softening of their critical eye...
© » KADIST
Köken Ergun and Satyam Mishra
2022Nepal and China signed an agreement for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2017...
© » RANDIAN ZH
(English) The Bunker art space announced Thursday that its landlord, Renmin University Of China, has decided to convert the entire courtyard into a ‘patriotic education base’ and was resuming all premises in the adjacent courtyard, particularly those with historical significance, such as the former bunker....
© » SLASH PARIS
Biennale de Lyon — 2024 — Usines Fagor — Exhibition — Slash Paris Login Newsletter Twitter Facebook Biennale de Lyon — 2024 — Usines Fagor — Exhibition — Slash Paris English Français Home Events Artists Venues Magazine Videos Back Biennale de Lyon — 2024 Exhibition Mixed media Upcoming © Biennale de Lyon 2024 Biennale de Lyon 2024 In over 1 year: September 1, 2024 → January 1, 2025 (Dates provisoires) Créée en 1991, la Biennale de Lyon est l’une des plus importantes biennales d’art contemporain au plan international et la première manifestation artistique d’envergure au plan national...
© » ARTS EQUATOR
Burning Questions: Traditional Arts: The Forgotten COVID Casualty? | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Viewpoints July 28, 2020 While the pandemic has resulted in losses of jobs in the arts, less has been said about the fate of craftsmen, artisans and masters of intangible heritage and traditional arts...
© » ARTS EQUATOR
Burning Questions: Is There Still Hope for Integrity and Intimacy in Online Performance? | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Viewpoints August 4, 2020 Artists today have to grapple with being true to their creative integrities while dealing with the limitations of tech platforms and live delivery methods...
© » ARTS EQUATOR
Weekly Picks: Indonesia (26 November - 2 December 2018) | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Weekly To Do November 26, 2018 Top Picks of Indonesia art events in Yogyakarta and Solo from 26 November – 2 December 2018 We have two film festivals happening this week in Indonesia...
© » ARTSY
The Data Behind Artsy’s Online Art Fair, Foundations | Artsy Skip to Main Content Art Market The Data Behind Artsy’s Online Art Fair, Foundations Arun Kakar Feb 8, 2024 5:39PM Underway through February 14th, Artsy’s online art fair Foundations spotlights 130 tastemaking galleries from more than 35 countries worldwide, united by their ability to uncover fresh and underrecognized artists...
© » HYPERALLERGIC
Beauty and Danger in the Art of Ambreen Butt Skip to content Ambreen Butt, "Arsenal of Ambiguity" (2023), tea, coffee, watercolor, and collage on tea-stained paper, 44 x 30 inches (all images courtesy Gallery Wendi Norris) SAN FRANCISCO — Ambreen Butt: Lay Bare My Arms at Gallery Wendi Norris combines collage and text with traditional South Asian miniature painting to create energetic works that radiate delicate beauty, underpinned by a pervasive threat of violence...