Research
Artist Tsui Kuang-Yu in conversation with Joshua Heilbuth
10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (Apt10)
Queensland Art Gallery / Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane
04 Dec 2021 – 25 Apr 2022
JOSHUA HEILBUTH REPORTING FROM THE 10TH ASIA PACIFIC TRIENNIAL OF CONTEMPORARY ART
Tsui Kuang-Yu, Taiwan b.1974 / The Shortcut to the Systematic Life: I am fine, I don’t get wet (still) 2002 / Digital video transferred to DVD: 4:24 minutes, colour, stereo, single-channel video, 4:3, ed.14/15 / Purchased 2010 with a special allocation from the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Fund / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Tsui Kuang-Yu
Tsui Kuang-Yu is a multi-disciplinary artist currently living in Taiwan. His works focus on the relation between humans and society, portraying this though ‘action videos’. Through his practise, Kuang-Yu accents the absurdity of social values and what we as a society have grown accustom to.
For those that aren’t familiar with your works, could you explain what an action video is?
The reason they are called action videos is that they neither fall under the definition of performances from Western art history, nor are they simply video works, so for me, its purpose is closer to actions that happened during everyday life which sliced into reality. Through this process, I can simultaneously participate in reality while creating another layer of hidden possibility from reality. However, after many years of being questioned by art critics and curators, I am not so insistent on what perspective others should view these documentations because in the end these can only be presented as video recordings. The videos are also edited so I’m more open to it being defined as video art or performance now. Of course, you might ask why not make it into a “live performance”? Well, because for me performance is more about being rehearsed and executed in a controlled environment, but what I want to do is more direct and can happen in a situation that I cannot fully control, even though I risk angering people passing by around me or the authority, and risk being taken by the police.
Through your website, “Spring Action I - 1995” seems to be your earliest work. Was this your first defining moment as an artist?
When I filmed “Spring Action I”, it was only for fun and to confront the school on purpose! Those wooden boards were recycled and reused from another spatial installation, and by flooding the department’s corridor, I wanted to make things difficult for people passing through the corridor. So it started out as an event, and I recorded the results before I removed it. So I didn’t intend for it to be an artwork. I hadn’t really thought about being an artist at that time (because the environment in Taiwan at that time did not accept such things!), but when I think about that record later, I was really going through some kind of rapid transition, a period of jumping from a limiting medium to something more forgiving. Even though I am used to being considered an artist now, but I still feel somewhat unwilling to be one, but there isn’t much I can do, because what I do best is to express my thoughts through what is so-called art”.
During your studies in Taiwan, were you introduced to contemporary Western Art?
Indeed we were, but to be honest, we weren’t paying much attention at that time, (I was a not good student), and I remembered that it was a visiting Professor who gave us something about the relationship between Western science and social art development. This part influenced me more deeply, and it also started my interest in science, such as biology and behavioural evolution. The world today is heavily influenced by the West, especially in postwar Taiwan. Our education, cultural environment, and thoughts are basically a mixture of East and West. Here I have to return to the previous question again, at the beginning when I am explaining the work to Western curators, they can’t really understand, because they are looking at the work from the context of art history, so what I do is “performance”, but what I want to do is a direct response to the authority and society. So I used “myself” to present the possibility of another reality within reality. There are also many metaphors, cynicism, and irony within the works, and sometimes I think it even included the dynamic relation of genes and environment from biology (just my personal view). So no matter what it looks like, these are the categories everyone assigns. It couldn’t be helped, from the psychological point of view, we can always find answers and definitions we are looking for through “classifications”
Your works vary from video, photography and illustration. Have you tried any other art mediums such as painting or ceramics? Or is this too limiting with the message being portrayed?
I studied in the “art class” path since middle school. I was required to be proficient in watercolour, calligraphy, ink painting, sketching, and other mediums. I really enjoyed drawing and painting back then. Later, when I entered university, I was shocked both in terms of ideology and the environment. I still painted in the beginning, but I found the canvas to be too small for me, on the other hand, I am also wondering why do I limit myself to painting? Why not spatial installation? Anyway, neither of the two mediums could satisfy what was brewing in my mind, even though what I have in mind was still an immature concept, I explored other mediums and disciplines, these are the things mentioned previously, the things that have nothing to do with art but instead have the largest impact in the world, and most relevant to us. A few years later, I figured it out and understood what I wanted. Although I don’t have the professional skills or tools, but from the limited tools and way of thinking that I have learned, I thought I may still be able to do it. So at that time, I was thinking about how to express and be critical at any time, anywhere, and not be limited by the “medium”, and that medium became myself, and all the people, the things, relationships, authorities, these can all be my material. However, later I also understood that what I had learned was artistic expressions, and art was my tool for presenting ideas and concepts on the social level, but these actually still have their limitations, and I am still trying to learn and experiment with other expressing methods.
During my visit to the Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art, I was introduced to your series, “The Shortcut to the Systematic Life” which was showing as part of the 2018 exhibition "The Long Story". What was the inspiration for these works?
“The Shortcut to the Systematic Life" series was developed over a long period. I personally think that it is still developing under the same background and concept. It’s very hard to say exactly what made me want to start this series in the first place, but I think two keywords are “shortcut” and “misunderstanding”. I have always been interested in the conflicts and adapting relationships between man and the urban environment, perhaps also a reflection of my interest in biology. At the time, I was looking for ways to quickly complete my tasks in the urban environment, whether it was in life or adapting to the social system, especially because I have always been very frustrated by reality. I use these actions to demonstrate how I can change my appearance to blend into the background. I also try to temporarily change the environment through deliberate misunderstanding and imagination to see if I can achieve my goal. It is like the development of a city, it never completely follows the original plans, even though the roads are already thoroughly designed, taxi drivers will always manage to find shortcuts, these shortcuts are also adjusted in real-time according to the conditions. I think everyone is living like this, but our imaginations are often limited by the constraints of reality. When you are walking on the road that you take every day, and suddenly, for some reason, you see a scene that feels like it is from a hallucination, perhaps the lights, sounds, colours, but people mostly ignore it, and feel they are overthinking. But if you can continue this “hallucination” and further imagine more about life and the environment, will you have the opportunity to explore more possibilities in your life, or even change it? Or are we actually living in hallucinations that we believe are real all this time? You don’t need to spend too much effort and money, you only have to change the logic behind the way you think, but the most important part is personally experimenting and verifying.
How did the public react to your works ? Have you ever been in trouble with the authorities?
I think most people don’t have the time to react. For the more harmless actions people just laughed, but for other situations, it may be different. For me this is a good thing, I will try to keep a low profile and blend into the surroundings as much as possible before I start an action. Perhaps that is the only way to demonstrate the contrast between “reality” and “what happened after my intervention”, and it is the only way for me to get my verification. However there are exceptions, I was caught by plainclothes police officers in London, the reason they said was because I was not allowed to film with a tripod on the side of the road without a permit, (but I believe the real reason is they don’t like me waving racing flags on the side of the road), my assistant Mia Jancowicz spend a long time and finally managed to persuade them to let us keep the camera and tapes. A few days later, we met another female police officer with her police baton, (she must be thinking this guy hasn’t learned anything), She said that CCTV has been following us, please leave quickly or the armed police will come over soon. I always tell the people who help me film, just see how things go, and prepare to run if anything goes out of control.
Within your “The Shortcut to the Systematic Life” action video, you are seen hitting golf balls into the public and on-coming traffic. I have to ask, were the golf balls real?
Those are not real, they are ping pong balls. I originally thought it shouldn’t matter if it was real golf balls, (I was still young at that time, and feels if I want to do it, it should be for real), I was doing my residency at the Gasworks Studio in London at the time, and everyone thought it was a bad idea, my filming assistant Mia warned me that if I used real golf balls, she’s not going to help me, so I had to compromise, but thinking back now she was right.
You have created works across the globe in countries such as New York, London and Taipei. How have these cities influenced your practice? Is there a particular city you are yet to visit and would like to have a residency?
Over these past periods, traveling and living in different cities and regions, I can indeed experience and compare the difference in culture and values. It also allowed me to experiment with the tolerance of different cities in a vague and incorrect way, this had a certain impact on expanding my horizons and world views. But I’m not the kind of person who can go to every city and do the same thing in the same method, for example, I didn’t produce any work at my later residencies in Linz and Dublin. This was not because of their urban environment, but because I don’t want to keep using the same methods, and when I want to dive deeper into the social structures what should I do? Do I have enough tools available on hand? Can I still use the same logic and reasoning? So later I paid more attention to media and data, and how they interact and evolved in everyday life, (in fact I only started using Instagram in 2018 and Facebook in 2019). It took me several years of research because the technical threshold is relatively high and the process is full of setbacks, but I have not given up. So it’s not so much which city I want to go to next, but rather I want to study the interaction between the data world and social behavior. And further verifying and creating the possibility of social adaptation in real life, maybe the next time you will see an AI avatar claiming to be Tsui Kuang-Yu deceiving people around the world.
Has your work been affected by the COVID pandemic?
Maybe it has, maybe it hasn’t, because in recent years many of my research direction for my creative works has changed its direction. The creative duration of each work has been extended and required more resources, so it’s becoming difficult to carry out the project if the resources weren’t in place. It’s best to stay at home and continue to think and develop the concept. During this process, it is very likely an idea has been delayed for so long it has become unable to be realised. Isn’t this very similar to the pandemic situation where many people in the world are forced to stay at home? Everyone in the whole world is connected to each other, the economic recession has caused the art market to decline, and the art-related industries and the resources I need may also disappear in this broken cycle. The exhibitions and residencies abroad that I was originally invited to were either canceled or postponed indefinitely, so opportunities could not be created from them. But having said that, during the pandemic, because Taiwan was so well-protected that there was no urgent sense of it being a crisis like the rest of the world, the reaction of the Taiwanese art scene was relatively weak.
How much preplanning goes into one of your action videos?
It depends, some pieces require me to do a lot of location research, some require me to make props, and some require a lot of communication and coordination. For example, “The Shortcut to the Systematic Life: Superficial Life” took several months of location research and prop production. At the same time, because these took so many months the information gathered from my research at the start was outdated by the end (I was wearing a blue uniform in the Tai Chi part, but the group uniform in the background has already changed). I was doing my residency in Rijksakademie for the execution of the “Invisible City: Sea Level Leaker”, but the prop was constructed in Taiwan. The filming was originally intended to take place during the Summer, but I spent half a year communicating and testing with Taiwan, so it was already Autumn by the time the equipment arrived in the Netherlands. Although this does not affect the execution much, but it’s not a pleasant experience to have the leaking water pipes against the body while walking through open windy grassland. Among all the projects “Rubbing the City: The Beautiful Dirty Bubble” is the second most frustrating project for me. It took me three years, but it was finally stopped at the experimental model stage because we could not overcome the technical difficulties. During this period, I used a lot of “communication” methods and letters to let the transport company cooperate for free and let me experiment with their cars, learn about the routes, safety, and different type of buses. I risk being reported to the police, and when people ask what I was doing, I said this is an “enclosed carbon reduction testing”, this is not about how much effort it takes to prepare, but more about how to “make up stories” and adapting to situations. In the end, I don’t even know who I am... However, what is certain is that the closer my actions intervene to everyday life and social systems, the more preparation is required. As mentioned earlier, five years ago, I spent a few years and my budget researching privacy technology and social behavior, and the process encountered an accident that led to the entire project being shutdown, which was the most frustrating project for me.
When are you having your next exhibition?
There are no clear plans yet. As mentioned earlier, I must first accumulate resources and find opportunities to execute simple projects. Currently, I am working on a project related to AI and human social behaviour and hope to have results before 2024.
- Interviewed by Joshua Heilbuth 2022
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