I remember visiting with my parents Hong Kong’s laser disc film rental shops in the 1980s. While they browsed in the comedy section, I always buried myself amongst the horror films- the quietest and coldest section in the whole store, where all the disc covers were black-coloured. I avidly read the film titles, the taglines and each sypnosis on the cover one-by-one. I never gathered the courage to take one out and watch any of these movies. My horror film experience comes from reading, rather than watching.
A film poster can arouse desire to see the movies and great imagination. By associating the poster’s text and drawn images, the audience imagines their own story and plot version of the movie. Horror has always been a genre about the unknown; classic horror films always end at the point when the unknown reveals itself; when the unknown become the known. A film poster holds an unfulfilled desire - just as the unknown remains hidden in the dark.
Thin Veiled World is a set of seven film posters dealing with aspects of the classic horror genre: zombie police eating only homeless people; a woman transfiguring her body to become a modern-day Frankenstain; a politician-turned-property-developer who, after destroying farmland. is the victim of a vegetable monster etc. While researching classic horror films, I found a majority have their origins in the political and social situations of the time. These films are all inevitably “political” - as a ghost is always a history denied, a prayer unanswered, and a justice unfulfilled.
A Closed Circle of Unknowns is a circle formed by seven old cinema chairs, similar in formation during a séance. The chairs give a hint of the presence of the unknown by folding and unfolding in slow movement. In a traditional séance, something “alive” is placed in the middle of the circle in order to summon the spirits. Here, a recording by NASA of the sound of planets in the solar system will be played as ‘bait’ in my own ritual.
A film poster can arouse desire to see the movies and great imagination. By associating the poster’s text and drawn images, the audience imagines their own story and plot version of the movie. Horror has always been a genre about the unknown; classic horror films always end at the point when the unknown reveals itself; when the unknown become the known. A film poster holds an unfulfilled desire - just as the unknown remains hidden in the dark.
Thin Veiled World is a set of seven film posters dealing with aspects of the classic horror genre: zombie police eating only homeless people; a woman transfiguring her body to become a modern-day Frankenstain; a politician-turned-property-developer who, after destroying farmland. is the victim of a vegetable monster etc. While researching classic horror films, I found a majority have their origins in the political and social situations of the time. These films are all inevitably “political” - as a ghost is always a history denied, a prayer unanswered, and a justice unfulfilled.
A Closed Circle of Unknowns is a circle formed by seven old cinema chairs, similar in formation during a séance. The chairs give a hint of the presence of the unknown by folding and unfolding in slow movement. In a traditional séance, something “alive” is placed in the middle of the circle in order to summon the spirits. Here, a recording by NASA of the sound of planets in the solar system will be played as ‘bait’ in my own ritual.
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紗薄世界
Thin Veiled World
(a set of 6)
Color Pencil on paper
68 x 102 cm each
2014
Commissioned by the SeMA Biennale Mediacity Seoul 2014
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A Closed Circle of Unknowns
Mixed Media
Dimension Variable
2014
Commissioned by the SeMA Biennale Mediacity Seoul 2014
p.s. The Alphabet behind each chair is different, there were K, Q, C, L, J, T and H.
p.p.s. The chairs could move. But I brought the wrong camera to Korea which doesn't have the video function.
So I don't have a decent video showing its movement. I blame myself everytime I look at these photos.
