Video Art|A collaborative showcase of the Videoart at Midnight Edition (Berlin) and the Videotage Media Art Collection (Hong Kong) video art collections
Goethe-Gallery, Goethe-Institut Hongkong, Wan Chai
The second edition of Connective Video will present a selection of works by Enoch Cheng (Hong Kong) and Lynne Marsh (Canada/Berlin). Cheng’s work is inspired by his grandfather, who immigrated to South Africa in the 1970s. Its mythological narrative explores an intertwined relationship between history, anecdote, and fiction. Marsh’s work situates in a former Soviet airbase about two hours outside Berlin. By using scripts and performance, the work brings about a hallucinatory narrative with a choreography of flights.
Works selected in this program are characterized by unconventional narrative structures that aim to explore the ways audiences relate to time and space. Through the performative use of camera and fragmentary play of composition, both artists explore larger questions about the politics of modern social life.
Anna and the Tower stages an encounter with Anna, newly trained as an air traffic controller, while on duty at Magdeburg-Cochstedt International, a former soviet airbase about two hours outside Berlin. Although fully updated in 2010 and ready for traffic, by winter 2013 it rarely had any commercial flights. The airport and tower lie quiet awaiting economic prosperity to come. Filmed on location with the control tower as stage, Anna rehearses the tasks of her job almost as rituals to pass the time. She repeats air-to-ground commands in a scripted performance of readiness, conjuring a hallucinatory narrative choreography of flights.
About Lynne Marsh
Lynne Marsh is a Canadian artist, currently living and working in Los Angeles. She received her BFA at Concordia University in Montreal and her MA at Goldsmiths, University of London. From 2001-2016 she lived and worked in London.
Her practice is concerned with questioning the status of the image through mediation, technology and production. Ideas central to Lynne Marsh’s research include offstage space; production-in-production; affective and cultural labour; music as a framing device; and the Brechtian revealing of the mechanics of cultural and theatrical production.
Working with moving image, performance and installation, Lynne Marsh’s works develop out of an ongoing inquiry into specific sites of human spectacle. Her works capture the behind-the-scenes workings and turn the camera onto those subjects whose labour and gestures support and mediate events in these locations. In doing so, her works address the political dimension of its scenography. Marsh’s formal and conceptual strategies emphasize the camera’s performance as a means to reconfigure social space, presenting the mechanics that create an experience as a type of theatre or performance in its own right.
Hong Kong: Two works by Enoch Cheng
Cortazar Aquarium (12'51")
Same Boat (19'31")
Cortazar Aquarium and Same Boat are part of a series that addresses the construction of one’s identity through non-linear narratives. Inspired by Julio Cortazar’s short story about exile, Hong Kong and Western mythologies and Hong Kong cinema, Cortazar Aquarium starts from the loss of baggage at an airport. The story’s location then evolves into an aquarium which leads all the way back to the hero’s origin. The ambiguous condition of miscommunication or the impossibility of proper communication in modern society has shaped the (lack of) choice for one to narrate where one belongs. Same Boat is a journey in a sea without borders and time zones. A story about the hallucination of a voice that could be that of an illegal Hong Kong migrant, or of an extinct zebra from South Africa. This film inspired by the artist’s grandfather who immigrated to South Africa in 70s, rides on the waves of history, anecdote, fiction, mythology, and the music of different cultures, presenting the state of mind as constantly drifting in order to explore the now that cannot be easily registered, or the past that cannot be fully imagined, or the future that cannot be conveniently remembered.
About Enoch Cheng
Enoch Cheng is an artist, independent curator, director, performer, writer, and founder of art collective Interlocutor. His practice spans moving image, installation, curating, dance, events, theatre, and performance. Concerned with the everyday subtleties in contemporary urban lives, his works explore recurrent themes of place, travel, fiction, memory, time, and destination.
He received his MA in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, London, and BA in English Literature and Art History at the University of Hong Kong; he has also lectured at Hong Kong Art School. He is the recipient of Award for Young Artist at Hong Kong Arts Development Awards. He is currently an artist fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany.
Connective Videos
Connective Videos: Berlin – Hong Kong is a new collaborative platform between Germany and Hong Kong, curated by Olaf Stüber (Videoart at Midnight, Berlin) and Isaac Leung (Videotage, Hong Kong), presented by Goethe-Institut Hongkong. The project encompasses the video art collections of the Videoart at Midnight Edition and the Videotage Media Art Collection. In multiple screenings throughout 2018, Connective Videos aims to learn, compare, and reimagine compelling stories told by various German and Hong Kong artists. It will consider histories across various geographical spaces and offer insights into our existing knowledge of video art production and archival practices.
The screening and the post-screening discussion will be moderated by Isaac Leung.
