- DATE : 02/10/2019 02/10/2019
- TIME : 15:00–17:00
- VENUE : West Court Lecture Theatre, Main Building, ECA, 74 Lauriston Place
Taiwan Academy Lecture
The Algorithm of Gender & Sexuality in the Digital Age
Lecture by Shu Lea Cheang
Cheang constructs networked installation and multi-player performance in participatory impromptu mode. She draft sci-fi narratives in film scenario and artwork imagination. She also builds the social interface with transgressive plots and open network that permits public participation. Engaged in media activism for two decades (the 80s and 90s) in New York City, Cheang concluded her NYC period with a cybernoia film FRESH KILL (1994) and the first Guggenheim museum web art commission/collection BRANDON (1998-1999). After I.K.U. (2000)’s release at Sundance Film Festival, she set out to create large scale installations and networked performance internationally. From homesteading cyberspace in the 90s to current retreat to post-crash BioNet, her current cycle of works take on viral love and bio-hack. In 2017, FLUIDØ, a cyphepunk scifi movie premiered at Berlinale; Wonders Wander, a mobi-web-serial was commissioned by Madrid Pride. In 2018, she joined Gwangju Biennale with UKI, virus rising, a 3 channel immersive installation; participated at Taipei Biennale Post Nature exhibition with collective Mycelium Network Society. Currently She is developing Unborn0x9, an open hardware hack project with ultrasound echo- stethoscopes and UKI, a cinema interrupted by a mobile app. game and working on a solo exhibition for Taiwan Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2019.
About the Artist
Shu Lea Cheang is an artist and filmmaker working with various art mediums and film formats, including installation, performance, net art, public art, video installation, feature length film and mobile web serial. Her artistic pursuits demonstrates an imagination and desire to cross the boundaries of society, geography, politics, and economic structure, thus redefining genders, roles, mechanisms, etc. As a net art pioneer, her BRANDON (1998-1999) was the first web art commissioned and collected by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. From homesteading cyberspace in the 90s to her current retreat to post-netcrash BioNet zone, Cheang takes on viral love, bio hack in her current cycle of works, including projects in development UKI cinema interrupted (2009 – ), UNBORN0x9 (2017- ). Her work 3x3x6, a mixed media installation representing Taiwan in Venice is currently on view at Venice Biennale 2019.
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Abstract
Artist Shu Lea Cheang discusses her work 3x3x6 as Taiwan’s entry at Venice Biennale 2019. Presented at the Palazzo delle Prigioni, which first served as a prison in the sixteenth century, 3x3x6, an immersive, multidimensional mixed media installation investigates ten cases of imprisonment due to gender, sexual, and racial nonconformity while transforming the Prigioni into a high-tech surveillance system. The work in its employment of the contemporary technologies of communication and surveillance constructs a multi-thread trans-punk-fiction scenario that reconfigures the algorithm of gender & sexuality in the digital age.
