Installation (Installation)

Addressing the 1966 XVII World Chess Olympics, Pataki 1921 by Ulrik López continues the artist’s interest in chess as a subject and as a symbol for various world affairs and political confrontations. Pataki 1921 is an installation that derives from and expands on Cuban choreographer Alberto Alonso’s ballet piece titled La partida viviente (The Living Match) which opened the Olympic. The choreography recreates the 1921 World Championship chess match where the Cuban player José Raúl Capablanca won the world title against the German master Emmanuel Lasker, becoming the first Latin-American, but more precisely Caribbean, player to win this title.

Installation (Installation)

In the nine-channel video installation, Against Step by Yim Sui Fong, a phantasmagorical image of a male dancer appears on a large-scale video projected on a floating retro-projection screen. His cathartic sequence of movements is based on an index of the bodily behavior of random people previously recorded by the artist while observing thousands of Hong Kong citizens in public space. Some of this recorded footage, done in poor mobile video quality, is played on loop in a set of TV monitors placed below the large projection.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Imjingawa is Hwayeon Nam’s first foray into borrowing from the documentary form. The root of the work is a Japanese song with Korean diasporic connotations, which the artist heard inadvertently years ago. While tracking the inception and history of the song, her research explored the song’s potential to live beyond “legal, national, ideological, and geographical barriers.” The song earned its fame when it was introduced to the Japanese band, the Folk Crusaders.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Through the language of dance and choreography, Void by Joshua Serafin narrates the creation of a new God, the birth of a futuristic deity. Serafin’s research into the making of this dance video is centered around creation myth stories of pre-colonial animistic religions from the Philippines, which were suppressed by the Spanish imposition of Catholicism. Through movement, the materiality of his bodily presence on the screen, and the accompanying sci-fi soundtrack, this work proposes the foundation of a queer mythology; the nascent moment of a ‘queer spiritual force’ coming out of an apocalyptic era, perhaps our current one, that has arrived to refund a new kind of humanity.

Falling Wall is choreography consisting of a wall, three performers wearing uniforms, and a short ritual. The performers stand aligned in front of the wall, which suddenly falls, menacingly, in the direction of the viewers. The synchronicity of collapse echoes the possibility of transgressing borders such as state frontiers, or even the museum wall.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Like many Asian countries, Vietnam has lost an immense amount of natural environment and rural landscape to economic growth and industrial development. The single-channel video Waltz of the Machine Equestrians is a response to the overwhelming number of motorbikes and scooters overtaking the streets of Vietnam as small agrarian communities have been displaced by the construction of skyscrapers. The video shows 28 “equestrians” on motorbikes and scooters arrayed into a rainbow cavalcade held together by strings clipped onto brightly colored ponchos.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Lightning Dance by Cecilia Bengolea is a black and white video that considers the relationship between extreme weather and the body. Alongside the artist, the work features Craig Black Eagle, Oshane Overload-Skankaz, and their dance teams, performing solo and group routines. Dancing on the side of a busy road, their choreography is inspired by popular Jamaican dancehall, a sexualized style of dance that the artist believes to have restorative properties.