Kris Project II: If the Party Goes On (2016)



The “out-of-body aesthetics” developed in Au Sow-Yee’s works relate to a process of dissolution from a long history of community construction. In Kris Project II: If the Party Goes On, she assumes the CT106 plane crash to envisage an out-of body moment for Loke Wan Tho – and also artist Au Sow-Yee herself. More than assimilating the incident as a possibility to rewrite Taiwanese movie history, Loke Wan Tho gets into a overlapping, simultaneous time-space by the name photographer Loke. He is embodied in the rainforests where the Communist Party of Malaya hid, by a mine lake which has been squeezed of all natural resources from colonial times. He possesses the characters in the Cathay-Keris’s movies from behind the Chroma-key effect. Manipulating movie sequences from Air Hostess and Mambo Girl as Wayang Kulit (Malaysian shadow puppet play), frequently drawing from Ramayana which was banned in Malaysia, Loke shuttles between different transfigured party and the gods of different cultures. As in the fictional utopia “Mengkerang”, does the indefinite, ambiguous trans-subjectivity presented in Loke’s “party” really exist? Or it is only the ghost of globalization era? (written by Esther Lu, Director, Taipei Contemporary Art Center)

Video . 4’41”, 13’52” . Dimensions Variable (collaboration with Taipei Contemporary Art Centre)




Reviews:

http://www.heath.tw/nml-article/for-che-ali-the-rhyme-retrograde/

https://www.sohu.com/a/156306055_181497