2020 Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition: ANIMA

Launched by Hong-gah Museum in 2008, Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition (TIVA) has been witnessing ceaseless breakthroughs and innovations over a decade through inquiring into possibilities of moving-images in variety. This year marks the very first time for inter-institutional collaboration of TIVA, organized by Hong-gah Museum and Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab (C-LAB). The exhibition ANIMA is curated by Eva LIN and YU Wei, endeavoring to expand the visual viewing experience into image experience for other senses on top of the exhibition theme while activating both the museum and the properties of an abandoned building, the former Air Force Command Headquarter, to showcase the fluidity of interaction between images and diverse spaces.

“Anima” is “life” as well as “soul” in Latin. As such, the exhibition aims to delve into the subtle imageries beyond description behind moving images. It is often through a ritual that we summon the unknown. A ritual draws a line between the spiritual realm and the physical reality temporarily, so that we as participants are separated from our everyday lives for a brief moment. A ritual grants us the portal to trance, be that a parallel universe, alternative reality, or displaced space-time on the other side.

It is like hypnosis. Through a certain form of guidance, we see – or least we are convinced to see. In hypnosis, we do not fall asleep. Instead, we stay in a certain lucidity while everything becomes extraordinary meaningful. ANIMA attempts to conceive hypnosis as a ritual of image viewing, where the image itself serves as the medium to hypnosis. Just as the “extraordinary sleep” induced by a hypnotic ritual, the works are portals that lead us to a mediated conscious state betwixt chaos and clarity. The works in front of your eyes are either inducers that lead us to trance, or the flows that demonstrate how we approach it.

Rather than a themed exhibition, however, ANIMA is more of means to viewing, the imageries haunted in mind, and the trance in image viewing as if induced by hypnosis. ANIMA emphasizes not the reading of but the experience of images—the focus lies not in the digestion of information exhibited in images, but in the insight into the true words beneath. How can an image be perceived when we “unread” it? Or to the extreme, can an image still be established when we “unsee” it? With hypnotic images as portals, we are granted with access into those alternative realities betwixt actuality and fantasy that seem out of place—the subconscious reality, the mise-en-scène reality, the media- mediated reality, and the reality awkwardly edited by fragments of memory.

ANIMA gathers a total of 26 contemporary video installation works with a screening program to present a sensational experience novel to visitors. The exhibition spaces encompass the venue of Hong-gah Museum and that of C-LAB. A series events of public program named ANIMA Sessions, the online screening project ANIMA x Giloo, and the off-site events at Yuhsiu Museum of Art are launched throughout the project.

Curators: Eva Lin, Yu Wei

Artists:
Chen Singing (Taiwan) / Alexei Dmitriev (Russia) / Stan Douglas (Canada) Ceal Floyer (UK) / Albert García-Alzôrriz (Spain) / Mihai Grecu (Romania) / Hui Gi-Wai (Hong Kong) / Meiro Koizumi (Japan) / Katarzyna Kozyra (Poland) / Lee Ji-Hong (Taiwan) / Lin Guan-Ming (Taiwan) / Lin Yen-Chao (Taiwan) / Liu Yu (Taiwan) / Stefano Miraglia (Italy) / María Molina Peiró (Spain) / Niu Jun-Qiang (Taiwan) / Rossella Nisio (Italy) / Nicolas Provost (Belgium) / Ben Rivers (UK) / Hiraki Sawa (Japan) / Chulayarnnon Siriphol (Thailand) / Tao Hui (China) / Ruth Waters (UK) / Gernot Wieland (Austria) / Wu Tzu-An (Taiwan) / Yan Wai-Yin (Hong Kong)

Venues: Hong-gah Museum, Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab (C-LAB)

Presenters: Chew’s Culture Foundation, Hong-gah Museum, Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab (C-LAB)