Qingdao Lotus Pond 青島蓮花池, 2018
Single-channel video 5’03 單頻錄像 5’03
Single-channel video 5’03 單頻錄像 5’03
“In a performance conducted during his residency at Sa Sa Art Projects, Phnom Penh, the artist dresses himself in a golden spandex suit, as an androgynous non-human fairy spirit, and wades into a lotus pond. Carrying a utility belt of canned Qingdao beer, he opens each of them and douses the lotus flowers and leaves, the pond and himself in it. His intention is to fertilize the vegetation with this beer, but the lotus leaves’ ultra-hydrophobic surface refuses the nutritious offering and duly repels the bad booze from China.
The trans-human entity the artist assumes is not ahistorical. An animist spirit in gold, the colour often found in regional shrines and temples, the artist alludes to the Maoist khmer rouge regime that outlawed religion and traditional systems of knowledge. As citizens were rounded up and disappeared into killing fields, the only way to survive is to escape into the forest, to subsist on nothing, to make no sound, and to become “nonhuman”. Autogenocide is to be avoided by devolution into a low-tech DIY cyborg, to commit auto-castration, to transition into a post-gender, post-Marxist, post-colonial, post-death, trans-genocidal and trans-species non-identity.”
Written by Nick Yu on “ Bad Bodies” show in Tomorrow Maybe Gallery (HK)
"藝術家在金邊Sa Sa Art Projects 駐留期間的一場演出中, 穿上金色緊身衣, 扮成中性的非人類精靈, 步進蓮花池。他戴著裝滿青島啤酒的腰帶，打開每一個罐，澆向蓮花、蓮葉、池塘和自己。他的目的是用啤酒來為植物施肥，但荷葉的超疏水表面拒絕了這種營養物質, 並適時地抗衡來自中國的壞酒。
大在藝術家眼中，這個跨人類實體帶它自身的歷史。它是 一個相信萬物有靈論的精靈，身上的金色是一種經常出現在當地神殿和寺廟的顏色。藝術家以此影射赤柬政權奉行毛澤東思想，取締宗教和傳統知識體系。當人民於田野被圍捕、殺戮，唯一的生存方法就是逃到森林裡，滴水不沾、粒飯不進、一言不發，變成「非人類」。要避免被國家滅絕，就要將自己變成一個低技術DIY生化人，自我閹割，過渡到後性別、後馬克思主義、後殖民、後戀母情結、後死亡、跨物種的非個體。"
俞迪祈寫於「壞軀體」展覽在Tomorrow Maybe Gallery (HK)
on view of “Bad Bodies” show (2019) in Tomorrow Maybe Gallery (HK)
on view of “BE THERE design festival” (2019) (HK)
on view of “Qingdao Lotus Pond” (2018) in Sa Sa Art Projects (CM)