Performing Counter-archives: Another Glitched Ava她r Goes Nuclear

｜Date & Time｜

2024.10.20 Sunday　15:00-17:00

｜Venue｜

TFAM, E Gallery

｜Artitsts and Performers｜

Chen Jhen, Chen Wei-An, Ciwas Tahos, Li Shiou-Fen, Yuki Kobayashi, Sauljaljuy, Sheryl Cheung, Sinkuy Katadrepan, Tseng Chih-Wei,  Yang Tzu-I

｜Curator｜

Emily Hsiang-Yun Huang

｜Performance Description｜

Yuki Kobayashi， I or Another

“I or Another” is the performance work to build a sculptural portrait. It seeks the neutral of gender from the approaches of risking, superiority of majority and social responsibility and vulnerable to have a male body. Kobayashi extracts sperm to show on iPhone through a test kit and also knead them into a white stone powder clay and push out from the meat mincer. It keeps building a sculptural portrait with tracing a move of sperm and the clay that gradually hardens expresses the masculinity left behind modern society. 

Performing online through the screen with invisible audiences reminds of an online live sex in pornography, which includes the risk of showing body unknown and commercialisation of gender. During the pandemic of COVID-19 since in 2020, performance was restricted but also it gave us opportunities to think what is definition of being live in the present era, how the body coexistence in a digital realm between here to there, real and unreal and synchronicity of self and someone who have never met. “I or Another” is questioning the boundaries of nudity, deconstructing the inside and outside of body as materials, who am I performing for, what do I get from barren movement if the screen is extension of the body.

• The first version of Yuki Kobayashi's I or Another (2020) is commissioned by the Embodied Interface, a project co-curated by Hsiang-Yun Huang and Daniela Ruiz Moreno, and sponsored by National Culture and Arts Foundation.

Ciwas Tahos，My Land, Glitched Me（Part of the Project Finding Pathways to Temahahoi）

My Land, Glitched Me is an evolving Net Art project rooted in Ciwas’s desire to connect with her ancestral land in the mountains, aiming to create a queer cultural landscape. Inspired by Net Art, it utilizes cross-software open-source coding to build an online cloud space at https://raxal-mu.glitch.me (raxal mu – “”my land”” in the Atayal plngawan language).

Participants are invited to contribute their audio stories and soundscapes, forming a rich tapestry that informs the Cyber Mountain. This cyber land, unbounded by physical constraints, serves as a base for resisting heteronormativity by archiving diverse stories and soundscapes from various individuals. The project is a continuous journey, expanding its cultural knowledge and queer connections beyond the soil into the cloud. Through this cyber mountain, Ciwas and story contributors create a dynamic and inclusive space fosters a deeper connection to both the ancestral and the Internet realms.

• Performers: Sauljaljuy, Sinkuy Katadrepan
• Sound art: Sheryl Cheung

Li Shiou-Fen，Ava她r
As a heavy gamer, the artist, starting from the "face-pinching" of virtual characters in games and social media, transforms the performance of body image into installation and performance art. The work engages the classical propositions of the sexual gaze and the feminist theories of the dissociation between erotic organs and identity in virtual communities and virtual characters, including: When creating virtual characters as substitutes for the real self, mainly by tweaking and adjusting each organ, how the female body becomes compressed into organs under both external and self-gaze, and how these organs become dissociated from one’s personality; The work also explores how games and social media advertisements emphasize the organs of the feminine body, and how these organs are subjected to the sexual gaze and sexual violence. Finally, it explores the relationship between the ideal image pursued in the creation of virtual characters and the sexual gaze, as well as the state of fragmented but intertwined between the virtual character/character organs/actual self, and responds to the otherness of the "ta / she" in the avatar.

• Technical Operater：Xin Ying You、Shin Ya Yu
• Video Editor：Shiou Fen Li、Pei Yu Li

Chen Jhen, Chen Wei-An, Tseng Chih-Wei,  Yang Tzu-I, Emily Hsiang-Yun Huang　My Favorite News Goes Nuclear

In an era where generative AI fabricates disinformation and misinformation at an unprecedented pace, these falsehoods infiltrate our information streams at lightning speed. We are glued to our screens, compulsively scrolling, as vibrant, attention-grabbing content demands our increasingly fleeting focus. This constant scrolling resembles consuming artificially colored candies—highly addictive and nearly impossible to resist. People trapped in this cycle of digital consumption oscillate between sugar-fueled mental highs and the inevitable crashes of fatigue.

My Favorite News Goes Nuclear explores this phenomenon through two key components: an AI and human-created fake content farm website, and a live "mukbang" performance. The website revolves around themes of "food safety" and "health and wellness," offering a deluge of eye-catching headlines and content designed to captivate and lure viewers into clicking. In the digital realm, news fragments slowly disintegrate with each interaction, while in the physical performance, the performer reports the news while simultaneously consuming the website in a mukbang-style broadcast. By the end of the exhibition, both the website and its content dissolve entirely, leaving behind only the residue of an over-consumed media landscape.

• Credit

1.Chen Jhen - Website Concept, Visual Designer and Content Farm Writer 

2.Hsiang-Yun Huang - Website and Presentation Concept, Performer, Producer, Content Farm Writer, Filmmaking 

3.Wei-An Chen（@chwan1）- Website Programming and Presentation Concept

4.Tzu-I Yang - AI Consultant  and Presentation Concept

5.Palace_Ting - Content Farm Writer 

6.Julia Huang - Content Farm Writer 

7.Ryan White- Content Farm Writer and AI Consultant

8. Wen-Chun Lo - Content Farm Writer

9. Tseng Chih Wei - Performer (Youtuber)                                       

10. 吃播新聞排版 Evelyn 陳怡諠 

Special Tanks to Irene Huang 

Supported by Stimuleringsfonds 

｜Introduction of artists and performers｜

Chen Jhen

Jhen Chen, graphic designer, co-founder of Limestone Bookstore. Graduated from Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands in 2016. Since 2018, engaged in a one-year residency program at the Jan van Eyck Academie in the Netherlands. Recent works primarily focus on publishing and book experiments, collaborating with various artists through the platform of Limestone Bookstore. Her work "Amsterdam Lunch" in 2020 was selected as one of the "Best Dutch Book Designs" of 2019 and exhibited in multiple cities.

Chen Wei-An

Bachelor of Electrical Engineering and Master of Communication Engineering from National Taiwan University. Specializes in interactive program design, algorithmic art, exhibition system design, and new media production. Formerly the programming lead at Ultra Combos and has participated in numerous technology arts, cross-disciplinary, new media exhibitions. Projects involved include Anarchy Dance Theatre's "Second Body," "The Eternal Straight Line," I-Ily Chang's "Qualia," GuoGuang Opera Company's "PHAEDRA/PHAEDRA," StudioPros "yodex2023" AR webpage, Zenbook Pro: Incredible Comes From Originality’s "21 Days," EVA Air's "2017 In-Flight Safety Demonstration Video," Tanya Chua's "Lemuria" tour, and the National Palace Museum's "QIANLONG C.H.A.O. New Media Art Exhibition.

Ciwas Tahos

Anchi Lin, Atayal name is Ciwas Tahos, based between Taipei Taiwan, and Naarm (Melbourne) Australia, visual artist of Atayal/ Itaṟal descent. Ciwas's body-centered practice weaves the Indigenous Atayal worldview through performance, moving images, cyberspace, ceramics, and kinetic installation to claim a self-determined queer space, their work is an exploration of cultural and gender identity, using her body as a medium to trace linguistic and cultural experiences of displacement to seek out new forms of understanding. 

In 2024, Finding Pathways to Temahahoi was exhibited as part of BLEED at Arts House (Melbourne, Australia), and the new work Sticky Hands, Stiched Mountains collaborated with Japanese dance artist Nanako Matsumoto was premiered in Kyoto Japan. Ciwas was awarded the Biannual Prize of Pulima Art Award and was selected as the inaugural Artist for the 2023 Australia-Taiwan Friendship Year Arts Exchange Partnership. In 2023, their work was exhibited at the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria, the Taiwan Austronesian Art Triennial in Pingtung Taiwan, and Proto-zone13 at Shedhalle in Zürich Switzerland. Ciwas was the guest curator for the 2022 and 2023 ADAM Artist Lab at the Taipei Performing Arts Center. Ciwas completed an MFA in New Media Art at Taipei National University of the Arts (Taiwan) and BFA in Visual Art at Simon Fraser University (Canada).

Li Shiou-Fen

Shiou Fen Li, an independent multi-disciplinary artist from Taiwan, tries to express her views through site-specific choreography, performing arts, video arts, digital arts, and curation.

With her background in political science and sociology, most of her works address social issues such as mental health problems, sexual violence, and political oppression. Particularly, social stigmas related to human bodies are central to her works. Additionally, her pieces often feature symbols of games, death, and pain.

Her representative works include the "Murder For Love" series and "Wasteland." The latter was nominated for the 18th Taishin Arts Award, the most prestigious arts award in Taiwan.

Sauljaljuy

A member of the Paiwan tribe from Taitung, currently studying at the Graduate Institute for Gender Studies at Shih Hsin University.

Sheryl Cheung

Sheryl Cheung experiments with the idea of the body as an instrument that is continually played by effects. Like an open, metabolic body, her sound palette is vulnerable and harsh at the same time. Sheryl works between experimental music, abstract scoring and writing to explore a materialist understanding of power, emotion and moral order. 

Sheryl earned her Master of Arts from University of Manchester (2009) and her Bachelors of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute (2005). She has held supported residencies, workshops and research projects in China, UK, Thailand, Korea and Taiwan. Sheryl is a co-founder of lololol, an art collective that focuses on how emotions and body politics are informed by diverse technology cultures.

Sinkuy Katadrepan

A member of the Puyuma tribe from Taitung, graduated from the Department of Arts and Design at National Dong Hwa University, specializing in photography and graphic design. Identifies as bisexual.

Tseng Chih-Wei

Tseng Chih-Wei is a performing artist in theatre, dance and immersive works. His practice raises public awareness on HIV/AIDS and explores queer culture. Through the performativity of body and the poetic imagination of language, he invites audience-members to create intimate experiences in unorthodox spaces with him, and to open up possibilities of conversations among people with a variety of beliefs and ideologies. In 2024, he toured Europe with his HIV/AIDS lecture performance Black Plum Blossom, and performed in Paris, Berlin, Munich, Zurich, and Maastricht. His previous HIV/AIDS works are immersive work POZbath (2023), participatory art project Wild Plum Blossom Close Up (2022-2023), and autobiographical solo show Paris Wild Plum Blossom (2020). And his queer immersive work Mommy Drag(2020) was collaborated with drag queen Nymphia Wind.

Yang Tzu-I

Master of Graduate Institute of Communication Engineering at National Taiwan University, Master Candidate of New Media Art at National Taipei University of the Arts. Formerly the machine learning engineer at AILabs.tw. Specializes in research planning, programming, and inter-departmental communication. Previous main product, "Yating Verbatim" and published papers related to speech recognition technology. Dancer at the opening ceremony of the 2017 National Intercollegiate Athletic Games,  Producer, scripter, and actor of Who Kidnapped the Drumsticks? at the 2019 Taipei Fringe Festival.

Past Projects have predominantly involved collaborations with artists and groups, transforming artistic concepts and abstract theories into programmable presentations across various exhibition formats. Projects include digital collaborative productions such as Shiou Fen Li Unfinished, Still Alive, and Life Holds No More’s physical theater productions Error After Life and Me/Us II, as well as Xin-Yi Song's exhibition Model One.

Yuki Kobayashi

Yuki Kobayashi (b. 1990, Tokyo, Japan) is a Visual / Performance Artist. Kobayashi received his BA from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, Fine Art in 2014 and MA from Royal College of Art, Performance and Painting in 2016. He uses his own body as a neutral object to question gender, disability and racial stereotypes, looking into human relations. Questioning both power and restrictive social codes towards a more uncertain world of freedom and equality. Mainly with action-based performance, he has participated in a number of stage, festival and video works as well as contemporary art exhibitions. In one of his major projects “New Gender Bending Strawberry” (2012 – ongoing), Kobayashi characterises himself to make performance and multimedia pieces. His work “Life of Athletics”  (2014 – ongoing) explores the concept of sexism and racism of sports society and athletics movement. In 2019, Kobayashi founded the performance platform “Stilllive” to communicate with artists of different physical backgrounds. He has invited with Artist in Residence by CHAT (Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile) (Hong Kong, 2023). Kobayashi received Asian Cultural Council (ACC) Individual Fellowship Visual Arts Grant Award in 2023.

｜Introduction of Curator｜

Emily Hsiang-Yun Huang

黃祥昀 Emily Hsiang-Yun Huang is a researcher and visual artist from Taiwan. She holds a BA in Philosophy from National Taiwan University (TW) and an MA in Media Studies from Leiden University (NL). Her research interests focus on the relationship between body and technology from the perspective of postcolonialism, cyberfeminism and digital materialism. Projects she has curated include IMPAKT Festival-Our Terms, Our Conditions, Taipei Digital Art Festival-Fake It Real (2022), Embodied Interface (2020) and Uchronia (2020). 

As an artist, she often makes performance films derived from her poetry on the vulnerability of human and non-human existence, with a focus on the female body, in-between identity and the circularity of time. Her works have been exhibited at the Taipei Museum of Contemporary Art and the Cinedance Festival at the Eye Museum in Amsterdam, Roll Out Dance Film Festival in Macao, Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade and Venice International Performance Art Week curated by the artistic duo VestAndPage as part of the Performance Art Program conceived by Marta Jovanović, among others. In 2022-2023, she received the Mondrian Artist Start Grant and exhibited her works at Rotterdam Art Week and Ars Electronica in 2024.

Commoning 4 : www.counterarchive.commons
 

www.counterarchive.commons is a project whose name refers to a non-existent URL that transforms .com, which represents commercial companies, into .commons. Positioned at the intersections between open source culture, live/performance art, and internet/net art, the project explores how the concept of archive in the digital age can develop a methodology of commoning when it comes to the negotiation of the powers of "remembering" and "forgetting". Under the themes of fragile archive, corporeal archive, and AI archive respectively, we will discuss postcolonial sound art and internet archives in Latin America, non-western and open archives of cyberfeminism, and, finally, an expanded definition of archive as dataset, dealing with AI-generated misinformation, disinformation and data poisoning, where we will reflect on and imagine the future of machine unlearning and open-source art practices.

Curator：Emily Hsiang-Yun Huang 

Artists：Chen Wei-An, Chen Jhen, Lee Tzu-Tung, Li Shiou-Fen, Lin An-Chi, Yuki Kobayashi, Julia Rossetti aka Látigx, Daniela Ruiz Moreno, Tseng Chih-Wei, Yang Tzu-I

Find more information about this exhibition: https://hackmd.io/@counter-archive/entry