A Brief Study & Contemporary Practices of Found

This workshop/lecture is not a show and tell of strategies for contemporary practices of moving images. It will begin with a history of moving images, integrating history, theories, thinking and practice, exploring the reconstruction of invisible images, its politics and possible mobility.

Furthermore, the workshop/lecture also reflects on contemporary practices of found footages. How can we position the found footage in the history of experimental film? And how can the found footage be retrieved from the context of the “experimental” and be deployed in the realm of contemporary art practice? What does the word “contemporary” mean in this context? Experimental filmic procedures as well as history will be questioned and overturned gradually during the process, through the method of “indexing”.

The lecture/workshop will be indexing and exploring the following keyword:
History of Moving Images (or Pre-history of Film)
The anxieties, politics, mobility (of moving images)
Paul Virilio
Hito Steyerl
Chen Chuan-Xing
Found Footages

Workshop Content
  1. History of the Moving Images / Pre-history of “Cinema” 1
  2. History of the Moving Images / Pre-history of “Cinema” 2 and its’ relations with the contemporaries + rethinking
  3. Found footage in the Context of Experimental Film and its history . Re-question and re-examine “experimental” . Paul Virilio “Public Image”、”Less Than an Image”
  4. Contemporary Practices in Found Footage 1. Politics of Archive: Translation in Film (Hito Steyerl) . In Defense of Poor Image (Hito Steyerl)
  5. Contemporary Practices in Found Footage 2 . “Anxieties of the Silver (image)” ( Chen Chuan-Xing「銀鹽的焦慮」). “Screen” (Chen Chuan-Xing「螢幕」)
  6. Reconstructing Image – Some possible methods and thinking on found footages in contemporary practices, how could them relate to our culture context or politics. Paul Virilio “The Vision Machine”
About the Instructor

Au Sow Yee was born and grew up in Malaysia. She now lives and works in Taipei, while regularly traveling back and forth between Malaysia and Taiwan. Graduated from Chinese Culture University (Taiwan) majored in theatre arts and attained her M.F.A degree from San Francisco Art Institute (U.S.A) in experimental filmmaking. Her works concentrated images, image making, history, politics and power, through video installation and other mediums. Sow Yee’s recent works focuses on re-imagine history of Malaysia, South-east Asia and its related region from perceptions and ideologies bounded by the Cold War. Meanwhile, she also continues her interest in image making mechanism, creating live cinema performance using self-made mechanism and mechanical film projectors. Sow Yee’s works were exhibited in Singapore Film Festival, official selection of Experimental Film and Video Festival in Seoul (ExiS), Bangkok Experimental Film and Video Festival, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Centre (U.S.A), New York Squeeky Wheels Video Festival and various other exhibitions and screenings.

Her solo exhibition in 2015 Habitation and Elsewhere: Image as Instrument was held in Taipei and Kuala Lumpur, curated by independent curator Guo Jau-Lan. Sow Yee was the co-founder and co-curator for KLEX (Kuala Lumpur Experimental Film and Video Festival) in 2010 and 2011. In 2015, Sow Yee was invited for a 2015-2016 collaboration project by Taipei Contemporary Art Center (Taiwan). Sow Yee is also one of the resident writer for online magazine Promethean Fire Review (Malaysia) and No Man’s Land (Taiwan). mainly in questioning, exploring as well as expanding the relation between

Date
20 – 27 Jan 2016

Time
8.00pm-10:00pm

Venue
Lostgens’ Contemporary Art Space