A General Art Review of It’s a Dream, a Video Installation by Tsai Ming-Liang
By Jeremy Tew
Shanghai upon the Sea
November 7, 2010
For years, I have been a great fan of the film director Tsai Ming-Liang. I have always looked out for his film works after all these years living in USA, Singapore, Malaysia, and currently in China. Walking up to the fourth floor and having to cut through another installation work and beyond, I was completely unaware of Tsai’s video installation upcoming. Although the video installation was exclusively relegated to a very site specific space, perhaps in exalting the work, this was really a pleasant chance encounter.
This was not any more surprising after knowing Tsai’s exceptional subjects of making movies and approach in the film industry. Malaysia born and Taiwan based, Tsai’s movie has always been lack of commercial screening just about anywhere but never short of media attention and critical reviews. To briefly overview his lengthy years of establishing his film making career, and crossing national and international boundaries, he has gradually gained admiration and respect by many within the film making circle and from his die hard fans alike. Many of his works have garnered international big prizes. He has made a niche for himself. His stature in the film making world is ascertained.
Tsai has chosen his media forte the short film as his video installation, entitled It’s a Dream and dated year 2007. To speculate from the title, the video could have been shot or the installation idea could have been conceived in year 2007. Now being displayed again, it is appropriate to the thematic Rehearsal. It is presented together with many other contemporary art forms currently shown in the 8th Shanghai Art Biennale at the Shanghai Art Museum from October 24th, 2010 until February 28th, 2011.
Although Tsai’s installation statement tells about his desirable dream, the short film was sequentially about eating durians in an old cinema. He had enacted his childhood moments within a theatrical setting. With recurring screening or re-playing, his childhood is therefore repetitively rehearsed as in the video being played throughout the installation and to different visiting audience. In turn, in this case of installation, a desirable dream can therefore be played again and again by means of motion pictures.
Along the way, Tsai has chosen to sensitively edge into his very personal past by resurrecting his childhood memories of eating durians, videotaped to be re-played as the all too familiar experience from the past. This could be his wishful attempt to weave together his childhood memories that had over the years been fragmented, tarnished, or vanished, and torn down like the old cinema. In other words, memories can be recounted and, therefore, memories can be re-enacted and might as well be some incidental and pleasant occasion. For Tsai, film making is his life and life connotes the metaphor played out in the movie. These could be some coagulating moments for Tsai living in his make believe world, metaphysically speaking, to meaningfully transcend these moments of life realistic or unrealistic state.
More than that, eating durians usually requires rendezvous; few eat durians alone. To gather around eating durians, to judiciously savor the varying flavor of durians, and to talk about the exhilarating sense of eating durians at the same time, is as normal or believable as dreaming. For Tsai, the childhood memories of eating durians were some joyous sensory experiences. Gathering eventually turned out to be some childhood memories while dreaming about the memorable past continues to later haunt the dreamer; time has somehow gone by sooner. Sweet, pleasant, memorable or not, both dreaming and eating durians can be some transformed experiences to savor together, in this case, all but in a theatre setting, via video installation and in motion pictures.
At different occasion when open or closed for viewing, embroiled with enthusiastic crowd or void with eerie emptiness, the cinema is periodically occupied or emptied out. The inherent cyclical process of screening a film profoundly recognized by Tsai enable him to play up or down his ideas about filming, another fundamental of rehearsing a movie scene. Watching movie in a theatre has always been or seemed to be a form of somewhat voyeuristic and silent act. The audience watches the motional images and listens to the dialogues. The communal act staged out in an exclusive and relegated space, i.e. inside a theatre, and very much fitting the audience in his or her desired corner or seating. Together sharing some pre-recorded moments, it is public screening in the dark and sitting neighbor to another person known or anonymous. Watching a movie can be likened to be setting oneself into the silver dreamscape, some emotionally fascinating and thrilling experience. Its captivating motional images, real or not, some dream like conditions, often creep into one’s sensory nerves.
For Tsai Ming-Liang, however, watching a movie is a joyous sensory experience. Implying a movie poster, his movie world is distinctively imprinted in the exhibition statement casually hung outside the theatrical installation. The reddish ambience within sets the moody tone upon entering into some dreamscape, believable or not. The statement previews Tsai’s childhood memories and they are all now but a dreamscape. Everyday life in real cannot be repeated but it surely can be artistically rehearsed.
By delving deep into his past and probing fathomlessly, if possible, it can be said that Tsai is paying tribute to the strange familiar past that everyone once had. This video installation can also be interpreted as a choreographed memorial to commemorate the long entombed past that all cannot return to. Like a swinging pendulum, his make believe world from time to time congeal the dreamy state into the believable memories.
To round up by taking the cue of The End credit of a movie, below is the part replicated installation statement but edited to embellish. It is to further savor into Tsai’s invitation to his repetitively rehearsed dreamscape, his world of movie:
It’s a dream
And so you’ve decided to see my movie
You enter and sit on a red chair in the dimly lit room
The seats are old, deteriorated, full of stains and dusty
They were dismantled out of an old cinema that had ceased operation and shipped here from faraway
That old cinema is now rotting away in a small town
Of course, movie is no longer screened in that cinema
What you are watching now was filmed in that cinema
It is actually my dream
However, the old cinema in my dream has been torn down long ago
I saw another cinema at another place
It seemed to be appealing at me
“Come to film me. Come to film me quickly.”
This was not any more surprising after knowing Tsai’s exceptional subjects of making movies and approach in the film industry. Malaysia born and Taiwan based, Tsai’s movie has always been lack of commercial screening just about anywhere but never short of media attention and critical reviews. To briefly overview his lengthy years of establishing his film making career, and crossing national and international boundaries, he has gradually gained admiration and respect by many within the film making circle and from his die hard fans alike. Many of his works have garnered international big prizes. He has made a niche for himself. His stature in the film making world is ascertained.
Tsai has chosen his media forte the short film as his video installation, entitled It’s a Dream and dated year 2007. To speculate from the title, the video could have been shot or the installation idea could have been conceived in year 2007. Now being displayed again, it is appropriate to the thematic Rehearsal. It is presented together with many other contemporary art forms currently shown in the 8th Shanghai Art Biennale at the Shanghai Art Museum from October 24th, 2010 until February 28th, 2011.
Although Tsai’s installation statement tells about his desirable dream, the short film was sequentially about eating durians in an old cinema. He had enacted his childhood moments within a theatrical setting. With recurring screening or re-playing, his childhood is therefore repetitively rehearsed as in the video being played throughout the installation and to different visiting audience. In turn, in this case of installation, a desirable dream can therefore be played again and again by means of motion pictures.
Along the way, Tsai has chosen to sensitively edge into his very personal past by resurrecting his childhood memories of eating durians, videotaped to be re-played as the all too familiar experience from the past. This could be his wishful attempt to weave together his childhood memories that had over the years been fragmented, tarnished, or vanished, and torn down like the old cinema. In other words, memories can be recounted and, therefore, memories can be re-enacted and might as well be some incidental and pleasant occasion. For Tsai, film making is his life and life connotes the metaphor played out in the movie. These could be some coagulating moments for Tsai living in his make believe world, metaphysically speaking, to meaningfully transcend these moments of life realistic or unrealistic state.
More than that, eating durians usually requires rendezvous; few eat durians alone. To gather around eating durians, to judiciously savor the varying flavor of durians, and to talk about the exhilarating sense of eating durians at the same time, is as normal or believable as dreaming. For Tsai, the childhood memories of eating durians were some joyous sensory experiences. Gathering eventually turned out to be some childhood memories while dreaming about the memorable past continues to later haunt the dreamer; time has somehow gone by sooner. Sweet, pleasant, memorable or not, both dreaming and eating durians can be some transformed experiences to savor together, in this case, all but in a theatre setting, via video installation and in motion pictures.
At different occasion when open or closed for viewing, embroiled with enthusiastic crowd or void with eerie emptiness, the cinema is periodically occupied or emptied out. The inherent cyclical process of screening a film profoundly recognized by Tsai enable him to play up or down his ideas about filming, another fundamental of rehearsing a movie scene. Watching movie in a theatre has always been or seemed to be a form of somewhat voyeuristic and silent act. The audience watches the motional images and listens to the dialogues. The communal act staged out in an exclusive and relegated space, i.e. inside a theatre, and very much fitting the audience in his or her desired corner or seating. Together sharing some pre-recorded moments, it is public screening in the dark and sitting neighbor to another person known or anonymous. Watching a movie can be likened to be setting oneself into the silver dreamscape, some emotionally fascinating and thrilling experience. Its captivating motional images, real or not, some dream like conditions, often creep into one’s sensory nerves.
For Tsai Ming-Liang, however, watching a movie is a joyous sensory experience. Implying a movie poster, his movie world is distinctively imprinted in the exhibition statement casually hung outside the theatrical installation. The reddish ambience within sets the moody tone upon entering into some dreamscape, believable or not. The statement previews Tsai’s childhood memories and they are all now but a dreamscape. Everyday life in real cannot be repeated but it surely can be artistically rehearsed.
By delving deep into his past and probing fathomlessly, if possible, it can be said that Tsai is paying tribute to the strange familiar past that everyone once had. This video installation can also be interpreted as a choreographed memorial to commemorate the long entombed past that all cannot return to. Like a swinging pendulum, his make believe world from time to time congeal the dreamy state into the believable memories.
To round up by taking the cue of The End credit of a movie, below is the part replicated installation statement but edited to embellish. It is to further savor into Tsai’s invitation to his repetitively rehearsed dreamscape, his world of movie:
It’s a dream
And so you’ve decided to see my movie
You enter and sit on a red chair in the dimly lit room
The seats are old, deteriorated, full of stains and dusty
They were dismantled out of an old cinema that had ceased operation and shipped here from faraway
That old cinema is now rotting away in a small town
Of course, movie is no longer screened in that cinema
What you are watching now was filmed in that cinema
It is actually my dream
However, the old cinema in my dream has been torn down long ago
I saw another cinema at another place
It seemed to be appealing at me
“Come to film me. Come to film me quickly.”
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