To tie over the cold days, we are starting the year with a screening series of artist films selected by our Fellows and Scholars, with additions from a screening and artist conversation in Beijing during our Curatorial Trip last year with visiting institutional directors. Occurring weekly in four iterations, this constellation of moving images orbits around ideas of homely feelings, being itinerant, time travelling, and hearing more-than-human voices. Wading through waves, defying winds, crossing borders, and stretching time, this screening series may offer anchor points and flowing tangents in a shifting roadmap for times unfolding in front of us.

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SCREENING I: HOMELY FEELINGS
Wednesday, 31 January, 6-8pm

Home represents more than a place; it embodies a sanctuary of security, a haven that shields against life's uncertainties. In this film selection, artists and collaborators exchange soliloquies, stories, and musings on the feelings of insecurities and displacement caused by personal circumstances or external forces. From the quotidian comfort of cooking at home (Xiē) to the anxious bracing for an incoming typhoon (Zhu), from the barrenness of a wartime underground fortress (Lee) to the maximalist decor of a pair of elderly lovebirds (Yang), we find contrasting perspectives on the physical reality of sovereignty, the unhomely feeling of being, and the ethics of homemaking as archiving.

Xiē 楔, What Makes a Home?, (2022, 36'00'') (Weitian Liu’s pick)
Jianlin Zhu, Like the Wind, (2019, 29’20”) (Yuhang Zhang’s pick)
Lee Kai Chung, As Below, So Above (2023, 32’27”) (Yuhang Zhang’s pick)
Luka Yuanyuan Yang, Coby & Stephen Are in Love (2019, 30')

SCREENING II: ON THE GO
Wednesday, 7 February, 6-8pm

Being on the go encapsulates the fascination of video montages and road movies, as the journey itself becomes the protagonist. In the shifting weave and knots of landscapes, scenes, and encounters, the sense of self becomes subsumed in images and their making. Travelling together, then, not only creates its own visual language and modes of sharing (Xiē), it documents the bond of friendship, civic responsibility, and political agency (Tan) that ultimately challenge the construct of social and historical reality we take for granted (Nguyen).

Xiē 楔, X learns to talk to the land on a frozen river; Y’s thoughts are interrupted by exercising jets overhead; Chang finds webs woven with branches in the mountains; Ban says some are confined, and some knocked down the barriers, (2022, 22'02'') (Weitian Liu’s pick)
Tan Pin Pin, Walk Walk (2023, 27’) (Jason Wee’s pick)
A recent film by Alison Nguyen (2023, 29'51") (Rachel Wang's pick)

SCREENING III: TIME TRAVELLING
Thursday, 15 February, 6-8pm

In this realm of temporal fluxes, artists wield the device of time-travelling narrative as a powerful metaphor to delve into contemporary issues like censorship, risk capitalism, and mass political movement. Through this fictional lens, artists reappropriate historical events and create alternate realities to serve viewers with cautionary tales, speculative intervention, or even possibilities for change in the present. The delirious and phantasmagorical destination of time-travel ranges from taking part in a monumental moment in recent art history (Wang) to borrowing from a future self to repay one’s unpayable debt (Noorizadeh).

Wang Tuo, The Second Interrogation (2022, 55’00”)
Bahar Noorizadeh, Free to Choose (2023, 36’00”) (Rachel Wang’s pick)

SCREENING IV: MORE-THAN-HUMAN VOICES
Wednesday, 21 February, 6-8pm

Voices of nature speak in human frequencies, where blooming orchids and ocean waves become subjectivities, storytellers, and witnesses to the folly and tragedies of the Anthropocene. They reveal an irrevocable entanglement with human society and history, geography and seismic movements, migration and displacement. We might be surprised by what these stories ask of us – would we be delighted by its whimsical humour, controlled silence, and ethereal indifference (Park), or horrified by statelessness, irrevocable banishment, and the cruelty of bare life (Hu)?

Jade Park Ji Yun, (Welcome to)The Planet of Orchids (2023, 62’00”) (Feixuan Xu’s pick)
Hu Wei, Long Time Between Sunsets and Underground Waves (2020, 53’16”)

*Please be reminded that the film will start at the scheduled time. Latecomers may not be admitted.