2018

Making News Making History - Live from Tiananmen Square

Martial law was declared in China on 20 May 1989. On 21 May, CHEANG flew from New York to Beijing with a tourist visa and a video camera endorsed by Chinese film director CHEN Kai-ge. This is a collection of videos made during her two weeks in China, reviewing the media frenzy that led to the inevitable military action on 4 June.

Channel 1-4: 30 min, Channel 5: 3 min

Green TV's Inaugural Film

For a long time the KMT government has held a monopoly over Taiwan’s TV channels, using the lack of channel bandwidth as an excuse for its stranglehold. During the build-up to the elections at the end of 1989, Green Team set up a satellite transmission channel on its own, poking a hole in the KMT’s argument.

How Was History Wounded

Three commentators sit in a news studio in front of a TV discussing the Tiananmen Square massacre as reported by local and foreign media. This film aims to examine the politics of image and the image of politics through commenting on the topics of democracy, media control, consumption and commercialism.

FACE／TV

After the martial law was lifted in the nascent democratised Taiwan, WANG, without any source of reference, created five video artworks including FACE/TV, addressing criticism against mass media and political hegemony. Using a satirical approach, he questioned if the images we saw on TV are identical to the objects being captured.

Out of Position

YUAN is highly adept at combining symbolic metaphors with technological media. His works vividly illustrate contemporary human conditions. Despite its original emphasis on the dialectical dialogue between moving image and sculpture, Out of Position will be re-represented as a single-channel video work in this exhibition.

東／West

East/West is a video with two channels of sound, based on the artist’s citizenship interview. It shows a mouth split in half, with one half speaking English and one half speaking Chinese. Occasionally, the two halves come together to create a whole. The half-mouths reflect the artist’s struggle and conflict in reconciling two cultures.

Flash

After the first bank robbery in Taiwan happened in 1982, the three oligopolistic TV stations repeatedly screened the surveillance video of the robber LEE Shih-ke carrying a gun and crossing the bank counter. To the director, LEE’s action symbolised the transgression of law and the reclamation of his right of name.

Memorandum of the Rock

YUNG superimposes 4-letter idioms on the bright and colourful image of a parade at the Tiananmen Square. The idioms dissolve one after another and become more and more irrelevant and even vulgar. YUNG appropriates the aesthetics and rhetoric of the Communist Party of China and puts them into a hilarious play.

re-touch (1)

A woman picks up and starts reading the book The Hero in History: A Study in Limitation and Possibility by Sidney HOOK. Her image juxtaposes with found footage of the 1967 riots showing thousands demonstrating on the streets as if it was a carnival. Truthfulness and limitations of recorded images are brought into discussion.

Ninety Five/Two or Three

Six years after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, FUNG uses a ping-pong to symbolise the fact that Hong Kong is merely being pushed from one side to another, leaving one coloniser only to find herself in the arms of another. Decidedly blank and expressionless, men in the video are nothing but transporters of the ping-pong.

You are here