▒ Admission Information ▒
Date: 2025.01.03 (Fri.) — 01.05 (Sun.)
放映時01.03（Fri.）12:00-20:00
放映時01.04（Sat.）12:00-21:00
放映時01.05（Sun.）12:00-19:00
Venue: C-LAB Art Space I, 2F
Ticket Info: Free Admission
❇︎ The organizer reserves the right to make any changes.
▒ Programs ▒
What is your favorite primitive?
LI Yi-Fan
Single-channel 4K HD video｜37’05’’
2023
LI Yi-Fan is an artist who describes his production process as staging a death match between artist and software until a narrative work quietly unfolds from the decaying corpse of their confrontation. The artist laboriously develops his own software tools for video production: a personal, DIY system that nonetheless rivals capabilities in the resource-intensive digital special effects industry. Incorporating a video game engine that allows him to improvise in real time with detailed 3D animations, LI reflects on both the strange suspension of time and space within games, but also on the increasingly detailed desires that arise from increasingly complex technical tools.
Presented as a parody of a tech keynote, What Is Your Favorite Primitive (2023) depicts a protagonist wrestling with social and ethical questions that arise from software tools designed for image production. How have images changed the way we communicate? How can emoji convey emotional content beyond one’s own perceptions of a feeling? Describing human life (and death) in intimate detail, the film speculates that video technology could construct a new politics of life by projecting a totality yet to come.
Mt. Eliza
WU Sih-Chin
Single channels video｜10’12’’
2016
Mt. Eliza is in the Southwest national park of Tasmania, Australia. I climbed the mountain in February, 2014. In the video I repeat the route I climbed that time with 3D model of google earth. I display it with diaries and dialogues, and pile up an absent experience through different types of records.
Black and White – Malayan Tapir
HSU Chia-Wei
Four-channel video installation｜6’55’’
2018
The development in Southeast Asia progressed when the British East India Company chose Singapore as a commercial base and started its modernisation. At the same time, Europe also rapidly began to gather data and initiate the study of plants and animals, as well as the establishment of museums. William Farquhar, the first commandant in Malacca, hired a Chinese painter to do large-scale mapping and sorting of species in the Malay Peninsula. As a result, a black and white creature, Malayan tapir, was recorded. Due to the rapid development of biology, the naming and data recording of animals and plants became a competitive field for many naturalists. However, Thomas Stamford Raffles, the commandant of the British East India Company in Penang, and William Farquhar stayed engaged in political competition and started scientific disputes. Their recorded collection of animals and plants at the time then returned to Singapore to the National Heritage Board.
Black and White – Malayan Tapir hopes to apply an encyclopedic narrative style to deal with the equality between people and non-humans, as well as man and nature while exploring the changes regarding how modern people view images. The scenes switch from the National Gallery Singapore, the National History Museum, and Singapore Zoo to search engines and multiple windows. The political relationship between the zoo's history in Southeast Asia and the colonial era leads to the drawing of a scientific illustration, biology, civil division, and the local legend of Malayan tapir.
Déjà vu: Illusions and Memories
HUANG Yong-Hsin
Single-channel video｜6’00’’
2024
Déjà vu: Illusions and Memories is a single-channel video work exploring the themes of AI and role-playing. AI introduces highly efficient mechanisms for automatic generation and simulates various images capable of altering memories. These reconstructed images, derived from real information, create a captivating sense of déjà vu, yet they also evoke a conflict as people yearn for authenticity. The piece begins with a monologue by an actor. Throughout the discussion on “role-playing,” the actor’s image is gradually replaced by AI-generated visuals and sounds, blurring the lines between reality and illusion. In our daily lives, we replicate vast amounts of personal data—can this be considered a “database for role-playing oneself”? Does it establish a persona that signifies our synchronous existence with AI?
File:\New_Order\Normal_Life\Fire_Island
CHANG Wen-Hsuan
HD｜Color｜Taiwanese｜Mandarin and English subtitle｜14’35’’
2023
Since we often regard the practice of creation as an activity that is bestowed to “people of abundance,” those political prisoners who dedicate their physical labor to any outcome irrelevant to survival seem to dissipate their time and strength. However, the deprivation of social role, the coercion of total authority, and the abolition of existing order, all accumulate to a drastic need to establish an alternative order of one’s own. After carefully selecting five objects created by political prisoners, the artist invited photographers to capture archival and artistic photographs of each piece. The semi-artistic practice performed by political prisoners could be seen as a leverage to redeem their “normal lives.” New Order is an ongoing project launched by the artist in 2023. Adopting the configuration of the filing system, this long-term project aims to delve into the dichotomized manipulation of the “new order” narrative. This work featured in the art festival is filed under “Normal Life.”
2025 C-LAB Contemporary Art Platform Annual Plan
Project Manager｜CHUANG Wei-Tzu
Executive Team｜Casper CHEN, HUANG Yi-Hsuan, WU Yi-Zhen, CHEN Wei-Lun
Marketing｜LIU Yu-Ching, HUANG Yu-Hsin, TING Sheng-Feng
Graphic Design｜Manufactured Landscapes, CHUANG Teng-Hsiang, TSAI Ching-Hua
Photography｜One Work Guoway LU、Etang CHEN
Translator｜Tony YU
Supervisor｜Ministry of Culture
Organizer｜Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab
Executive Organizer｜C-LAB Contemporary Art Platform