Persevering with his investigations into the affective qualities inside histories, our bodies, and language, the exhibition unfolds round two newly produced video installations. Whereas analog movie typically lays the groundwork for his observe, on this exhibition, the artist for the primary time works and experiments instantly on the movie as materials, reflecting upon his camera-led mode of transferring picture making. The artist’s experiments on the celluloid materials turn into evident in his most up-to-date set up Déjà vu (2023). Utilizing the cameraless strategy of photogram ¹ because the image-making methodology, a 16mm movie projection onto the large-scale window of the exhibition area unveils an summary, flickering black and white picture of a vertical line in fixed motion. For this work, the artist uncovered 30 meters of metallic wire instantly onto 30 meters of movie unfavourable. The metallic wire, right here, could also be learn in all its ambivalence, as a tool for entrapment, as a software of escape from excessive rise constructing, or of erotic pleasure even. Alongside these strains, the query whether or not and the way have an effect on travels and the way one’s personal bodily expertise, disadvantaged of its visible illustration, may be associated to the accidents of others additionally turn into the driving questions of the sound piece of the set up. Underlaid with the booming bass rhythm derived from protest chanting, the narrator’s voice interweaves private reminiscences of bodily damage with others’, whether or not from accident, hate crimes, or police brutality. If a déjà vu “is only a bodily sensation, not an actual reminiscence,” ² is it doable to make use of one’s personal bodily reminiscence to grasp or relate to another person’s expertise? The road in Déjà vu turns into an ontology for the skinny membrane, characterised by afflictive transfers and the perpetual inscribing and publicity of reminiscences, feelings, and sensations—analogous to the presence of the movie itself and the pervasive sonic and mechanical clatter of the 16mm movie projector.

Like a déjà vu of kinds, this query additionally resurfaces in a 3D-printed clay reproduction of a valuable Qing dynasty calligraphy brush relaxation on the window seat within the exhibition area. Initially fabricated from jade-like opaque glass and to be discovered within the households of royals, artists, or poets (normally males), the comb relaxation is molded within the form of a kneeling bare boy leaning ahead on the ground and interprets into an object of standing (and maybe homoerotic want). Identical to the imprint of a wire left on the celluloid of the movie, the visceral cracks and wounds on the artist’s copy’s head and physique testify to a longstanding historical past of violence and objectification of weak topics.

The borders between topic and object, shopper and consumed, stimulator and the affected, are additional distorted within the three channel video set up Autocorrects (2023). Constructing upon the artist’s earlier curiosity in music and sentimentality, the musical composition is paying homage to downtempo beat music within the Chinese language talking music business from the early 90s; a style closely influenced by earlier actions from the US and Europe, additionally by means of Japan. Charged with emotions, and amplified by rhythmic narration, this regionally tailored style typically makes use of particular synths and devices to assemble a sure sense of city sentiment, a mirrored image of the booming of city growth and its ambiance at the moment.

Working with the style’s tropes, the tune begins with a thunderstorm and a phone ring, and instantly cuts to a different pattern: a discovered interview with a Western music producer writing for the Korean pop music business casually feedback on the completely different relations to feeling in music manufacturing between “us” and “them.” Who writes from feeling, and who’s extra structured?

Because the lyrics slip in between reminiscences, app chats, description of violent instruments and protest slogans. the “I” and “U” are by no means mounted, they traverse via offenses, sensations, and scenes of intrusion, captures and accidents. What does one lose when one sends a palm pic to somebody for a studying? How is one’s personal forgetfulness on names, associated to the state choreographed amnesia? Identical to the autocorrects perform on the telephone, the “I” slips to “U” and again. The infliction of reciprocity and interconnectedness of impacts is additional epitomized within the lyrics, constantly rendering the intimacy and transitional modes of affecting or being affected.

Whereas the video channels show fleeting photos recorded in transitional areas comparable to airports and hallways, as phrases are laser-engraved into the celluloid of the movie—questioning additional the peripheries and membranes and vulnerability of our materialized skins/surfaces, ideas, and emotional worlds. Likewise paying homage to a setting of a karaoke bars or an isolation unit, the curtains itself act as a membrane and are employed as each boundary-objects and as a web site of connectedness between the 2 works, creating an expanded subject of relations and actions oscillating between them.

at Kevin House, Vienna
till October 21, 2023