Project: bist du japaner
multi channel moving imager, sound tracks work
Date: 2024
„bist du japaner“ is an attempt to reflect and resist the simplifications enacted upon the encounters of the others as a plural and non-fixed others. What to be told about you when the interest of knowing you is close to none? What language should be used to tell whom? And who might be affected in what way at the encounter of this work?
I am part of the other in this foreign land, carrying an image minimized to my physiological traits–and the fantasies attached to this image. Through the work, it is intended to bring forward such encounters, the intertwined thoughts and complexity of me in images, as the other person (my own), who tries to regain the agency of my own images, rework them and project them in the outer world.
With the adoption of multiple languages in the work with limited translation, the telling of our-stories about our cokplexities as the other become multi-layered: on one hand an incomplete, unwilled storytelling in Mandarin, on the other an attempt to look into the complex of identification in our-storical trajectory via a touch upon my families‘ lives as “Taiwanese,“ who, throughout the recent generations, lived through regimes with tremendous differences.
multi channel moving imager, sound tracks work
Date: 2024
„bist du japaner“ is an attempt to reflect and resist the simplifications enacted upon the encounters of the others as a plural and non-fixed others. What to be told about you when the interest of knowing you is close to none? What language should be used to tell whom? And who might be affected in what way at the encounter of this work?
I am part of the other in this foreign land, carrying an image minimized to my physiological traits–and the fantasies attached to this image. Through the work, it is intended to bring forward such encounters, the intertwined thoughts and complexity of me in images, as the other person (my own), who tries to regain the agency of my own images, rework them and project them in the outer world.
With the adoption of multiple languages in the work with limited translation, the telling of our-stories about our cokplexities as the other become multi-layered: on one hand an incomplete, unwilled storytelling in Mandarin, on the other an attempt to look into the complex of identification in our-storical trajectory via a touch upon my families‘ lives as “Taiwanese,“ who, throughout the recent generations, lived through regimes with tremendous differences.
Thanks to：
Partial family photo: Chen Jessica
Partial voice over: Lin Chih-Yu、Lin Meng-Shuan
Guitar: Liu Yun-Chung
Life stories of my grandparents: Wen Shu-Tzu (my mother)
Dramaturgy consultation: Miki Feller
Still image shooting assistance: Pavel Polenz
Work Consultation: Adam Broomberg, Filipa Cesar, Paolo Caffoni, Marine Hugonnier, Diana McCarty, Lorenz Schwarz
To grandma (1936-2020) and grandpa (1933-2023).
Partial family photo: Chen Jessica
Partial voice over: Lin Chih-Yu、Lin Meng-Shuan
Guitar: Liu Yun-Chung
Life stories of my grandparents: Wen Shu-Tzu (my mother)
Dramaturgy consultation: Miki Feller
Still image shooting assistance: Pavel Polenz
Work Consultation: Adam Broomberg, Filipa Cesar, Paolo Caffoni, Marine Hugonnier, Diana McCarty, Lorenz Schwarz
To grandma (1936-2020) and grandpa (1933-2023).
bist du japaner (Mandarin/English)
