Exhibitions
Mirror Worlds
Zoe Butt and Bec Dean
In 2003 cyberpunk author William Gibson caught the sci-fi world off guard by setting his new novel Pattern Recognition in the present day. While Gibson's pop-cultural terrain—of iMacs, weblogs, Starbucks and Pilates — is familiar, his evocative prose begs us to consider this particular moment with urgency, as his plot hurtles towards any number of possible futures.
In mythology, literature, art and film, the mirror has long been used as a metaphor for alternative realities. Consider the fate of poor Narcissus, the adventures of Alice in Through the Looking Glass or the trials of Jean Cocteau's Orphee. Gibson coined the term 'mirror world' to describe man-made things — such as electrical plugs, dial tones and airline sleeping socks—that exist all over the world, but in slightly different forms. In science, Mirror Matter Theory proposes that all particles have a counterpart—invisible save for their gravitational effect—with whole planets, solar systems and galaxies of 'dark matter'.
Today urban life is veined with visual noise. Branding, advertising and infotainment and marketing gurus stop at nothing to predict the tipping point of the next big thing. But this is not science-fiction, it is the time in which we live, when our dreams and anxieties are constantly reflected back to us by a stream of media. Mirrors are everywhere we look. Mirror Worlds features work by Asian artists who use video to address and challenge our image-saturated contemporary condition.
For an increasing number of Asian artists, video is now affordable, immediate and accessible – using a visual language familiar to all who watch TV. While Korean artist Nam June Paik is credited alongside Andy Warhol with originating the artistic use of video, the broad emergence of video art in many parts of Asia is a relatively recent phenomenon. And though rigorous debate about contemporary approaches to the medium in this region is only beginning, the work itself is currently enjoying international exposure and success.
One of Asian contemporary art's most striking characteristics is its interest in reconciling the traditional values of the past with the shifting values of the present. Video technology is used intuitively to engage with the accelerated pace of an increasingly globalised world. While skyscrapers and complexes rise up across the region, many artists question rapid transformation. The video works in Mirror Worlds tackle such pressing issues as the blending of cultural practices, consumerism, the speed of urban change, and modern warfare and terrorism. Inventive and often subversive, the artists reflect on the present using techniques ranging from simple visual ploys and deliberately contrived situations to complicated computer animation to play havoc with reality.
Chen Shaoxiong, Junebum Park and Wit Pimkanchanapong each create movement and action while using footage shot from a static perspective. In Chen Shaoxiong's Anti Terrorism Variety (2002–3), skyscrapers behave as if they can miraculously detect terrorist activity, responding by bending or splitting to evade oncoming planes. In this fiction the glittering high-rises of Shanghai and Guangzhou also magnetically attract and repel incoming attacks – planes momentarily stick to their targets only to be powerfully flicked off. This caricature of global terrorism appears to take place in real time, while the city's inhabitants walk by, oblivious.
In 1 Parking (2001–2), 15 Excavator (2003) and The Advertisement (2004), Junebum Park's hands loom larger than life over aerial views of the city as he appears to manoeuvre pedestrians, vehicles and billboards. Influenced by mime performance and traditional Japanese Bunraku puppet theatre, Park begs the viewer to reconsider the relationship between his performing hands and the miniature objects he appears to be moving.
In Wit Pimkanchanapong's series Still Animations (2003–4), urban moments are presented in suspended animation, like complicated lenticular photographs. The scenes appear static, but then tiny almost imperceptible movements are detected, as if Bangkok were built on an undulating mass of water. The series draws on the visual language of tourism, with panoramas that resemble travel snapshots. Pimkanchanapong's work subtly suspends and critically appraises visual stereotypes concerning Thailand's family traditions, tourist culture and urban landscapes.
Rashid Rana, Kiran Subbaiah, Sharmila Samant, and Heman Chong and Corinna Kniffki all place human protagonists in staged environments or situations. Perplexed by how meaning is misconstrued in our media-oriented society, Rashid Rana's videos and photographs force us to acknowledge multiple viewpoints rather than a single world view. In Ten Differences (2004), Rana aims a gun at his reflection. The bloody consequence of this mirrored encounter poses questions about the relationship between victim and assassin, viewer and participant.
In Flight Rehearsals (2003), Kiran Subbaiah provides a philosophical account of his desire to fly. Subbaiah's introspective voiceover combines historical fact with superfluous anecdotes, highlighting our need to dream. Cunning in the use of visual deceit, Subbaiah questions the origin of desire, suggesting our own intellects are disturbed and disjointed by lofty ambitions which disrupt our relationship with the physical world.
Heman Chong and Corinna Kniffki's Divided Tonight (2003) begins with a young woman standing in a white room, behind a dividing table stacked high with neatly arranged consumer items, including boxes of cigarettes. A single defiant gesture turns this ordered scene to chaos. Divided Tonight presents our addictions and consumer choices as a containing and supportive wall to hide behind—a wall the woman repeatedly destroys as the video loops.
In Sharmila Samant's Dissonant Consumption (2003), four women are given the challenge of eating traditional meals using the wrong implements. Chopsticks struggle with a chapatti, a spoon is wielded against meat-and-three-veg, a fork is uselessly dipped into soup, while a knife contends with spaghetti. These amusing vignettes, while absurd and improbable, gently question the assimilation of other cultural traditions. If we co-opt a people's cuisine, can we also lay claim to their culture?
The eight artists in Mirror Worlds use the immediacy of video to examine their surrounding environments and social practices through digital and performative interventions. They explore and playfully subvert the quotidian, the commercial and the culturally specific.
[image: Chen Shaoxiong]