You're Not Really Here, Are You?
Sometimes Monastery, Skene Milne (feat ASJ), Sing Jantzen Tse - , Kong Yiu Wing
8/4/21
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1/5/21
As infinite new realities are continually being created through CGI, <em>You’re not really here, are you?</em> explores the fluidity of artificial landscapes in which artists create and re-interpret their identities through myth-making. The invention of myths involves a duality of time, simultaneously (mis)remembering a past, while inventing a future that is assembled from the present -- an unstable, swaying moment, neither here nor there.
The artists in this show create versions of alternative realities through different means, but always intimate, sensorial, and with a touch of humour -- Sometimes Monastery presents The Forgetter, an arthouse video game that invites the player to violently destroy unwanted memories to construct a more desirable brain which can be sold as a commodity.
Skene Milne’s dreamscapes imagine translucent bodies forming out of water, rejecting narratives of fixity, emphasizing instead the regenerative fluidity of identity-making.
Kong Yiu Wing’s eerie 3D rendition of Lo Ting, a mythological half man half fish creature (which half is what is yet to be determined), presents a commentary on the shifting grounds that many are experiencing, a puzzle rooted in the socio-political and art history of Hong Kong that is both alien and ancestral.
Dabinlo Lab presents two very different works that probe into the in-between state of reality and virtuality. An experimental animation series follows a cubical character called Bino, as he attempts to traverse from his CGI world into the physical world. A passageway in the art space is transformed into an MTR coach, traversing between unknown destinations, as TV adverts, news reports, memories amalgamate into blurriness. Two openings present a choice in entering or exiting, reflecting on the conundrum that many are facing now.
8/4/21
-
1/5/21
當CGI不斷創造出無限的新現實，You’re not really here, are you? 透過此科技現象，探索人造觀景的流動性。在這些虛擬世界內，藝術家通過神話創造重新詮釋自己的身份。由於塑造神話涉及時間的二元性，所以當記住（錯）往事時，亦能同時衍生出一個由搖擺不定、閾限的現實而組裝的未來。
這展覽中的藝術家雖然採用多種方式創造不同的虛擬現實，但每個版本都含有一種親密、具觸感、和幽默的特性 -- Sometimes Monastery 呈送帶有藝術影院風格的電子遊戲【遺忘者】，邀請玩家猛烈破壞不良的記憶來構建更理想的腦袋，以作為商品出售；Skene Milne 的夢境構思出在水中形成的半透明物體，從而拒絕固定性的敘述，強調循環流動性的身份構造；江耀榮以3D技術構造的傳奇半人半魚（其哪半屬意何哪尚待確定）怪物盧亭，替大家正經歷的不穩之路作個短評 — 是一個根植於香港社會政治和藝術的難題，既陌生、又有祖傳的親切感[a]；Dabinlo Lab 展示兩個截然不同的作品，探索現實與虛擬之間的邊緣空間。其一是實驗式的動畫系列，讓觀眾跟隨一個叫Bino的立方體角色，試圖從他的CGI世界穿越到物質世界中。另外的作品將一個藝術空間裡的通道改變成地鐵列車，在未知的目的地之間盤迴，周圍的電視廣告、新聞報道、回憶等慢慢變得模糊。兩個開口呈現「進、出」的兩個選擇，反映許多人進退兩難的困境。