text by Chang Ching-Wen
● Digital Emotion
“The idea that television is everywhere completely fascinates me,” says Su Hui-yu, who grew up watching TV. Even now, the first thing he does when he gets up in the morning is turn on the TV—not the computer. Invented in the 1920s, television became a relic long since it could not compete with the speed and excitement of the Internet age. Still, it has an indomitable power to survive, and under these conditions television's tension and absurdity crop up time and again. In the eyes of Su Hui-yu, television programming in Taiwan is extremely interesting; the way it operates, the logic that drives it, its various types and the world it creates, all present an endless stream of surprises. Moreover, this is the phenomenon Su is most familiar with and loves to observe, and therefore the foundation upon which his artwork rests.
At the time of his 2002 solo exhibition Happy Space, Su Hui-yu still had not completely committed himself to using his own body as the subject of his artwork. Su invited a dancer to perform as the centerpiece of this exhibition, and accompanied the live performance with two video works Volume and Area which feature the artist himself. Seeing how easily professional performers become overly staged and unnatural, Su Hui-yu began to consider connections between his finished videos and performance. This, along with his experience with the theater world, convinced him to do his own acting. From that time forward, with the exception of his 2004-5 series Endless Recalling, which was performed by professional television and stage actors, Su Huiyu has performed in his own work.
At the exhibition Happy Space, a dancer measured the venue with her body, moving step by step before a continually shifting horizon line and floor plan projected onto the floor, while a naked Su Hui-yu shifted restlessly, coiled in a bathtub or around a toilet in the videos Volume and Area. Explaining his decision to mask parts of his body with blocks of vivid color in later versions of these works, Su says, “At that time I had two thoughts: the first was to extend the effects I created with areas of color in my paintings; the second was to avoid losing visual focus due to the nudity.” Su used another post-production technique in Volume to alter his body movements, creating a unique quality in the work. Regarding this, Su explains, “Computers make these things really convenient today. You can adjust the colors of a photograph or edit a video. Real-time performances can be changed with editing software to create an entirely different mood.” He hastened his breathing in Volume, making his chest convulse like a frog's throat. “It's already not real,” Su says, “the video of something real is a modification. The feeling is altered once it is digitized.”
● So Euphoric, Yet So Banal
Television broadcasts both information and entertainment. While Su Hui-yu loves watching TV, he is not merely a passive viewer, but rather one who knowingly appreciates the medium's absurdity.
Su invited soap opera actors to perform in his series Endless Recalling, choosing the phrase often heard in movies and television “No way!” to be the series theme. The actors would time and again say the phrase under different circumstances, made up as different characters, and always divorced from a narrative. In three works of the series, “no way” takes on a formulaic triteness when uttered in the context of Su's cheap sets, makeup and props, furthermore returning these words usually spoken at climatic moments to the status of a hollow device. Analyzing how television operates, Su extracts and purifies these kinds of devices and also presents them in Dance, Everything and other works.
“Dance,” Su Hui-yu says, “expresses my love for MTV—I guess I really like to spend my time on banal things. I made the music for the video myself; it's entirely a 'boom-chick-boom' electronic sound track, because that's mostly what I hear on MTV—they just have a few variations. What we see on MTV everyday is so banal. I also used black and white for the video to make it more monotonous. What you see in Dance is not only my state of mind, but also what has appeared on MTV.”
Steps are continually repeated in Dance, while the image of the dancer is duplicated and shrunken. Su both performs this as himself, and epitomizes television variety show hosts. The video Everything is based on a poem that Su wrote, which appears one sentence at a time in black Chinese characters on a white background like subtitles. Reading the poem carefully reveals that it actually means nothing. Every word of Su's “everything” seems to send out a message, but actually isn’t. In this way, Everything makes us anticipate something that never really happens.
● Matinee Idol
Other works by Su Hui-yu related to MTV include Stars & Stripes (2004) and Bad (2005). Bad is a video work Su made with fellow artists Huang Yi Ru and Wang Jia-Ming which recreates Michael Jackson's 1987 music video of the same name. The dance steps, story line, costumes and camera work are all the same as Jackson's (Su and others even wear blackface), just the location was changed to the parking garage below Taipei's National Theater. Regarding this work, Su explains, “The point wasn't about replicating Jackson's video scene by scene; it just had to be done that way. I did everything for the performance art aspect: struggling to imitate the video, and personally imitating Jackson. The significance of three Taiwanese guys paying homage to an 80s American icon lay in the time and cultural context of Taiwan. Actually, Jackson's video Bad has been parodied many times by many people, but we weren't making a joke—we were extremely earnest. If it appeared funny, it was only because we didn't dance well enough. We practiced for several months just for that performance, and all the dancers volunteered just for a chance to dance like Michael Jackson.” According to Su, the only reason for making this video was “liking Michael Jackson.”
Consumers really cannot decide which idols television chooses to create; they can only select from the list of given options. Regarding television or TV stars, Su states outright, “It seems I am completely absorbed, yet equally repelled,” and this also goes for the famous model Lin Chi-ling. “You think she is really pretty, but she is everywhere, which gets annoying,” explains Su. For his work The Super Model Love, Su and friend Cheng Shih-chun donned bathing caps and bathrobes, applied facial masks and strode onto the runway at Taipei National University of the Arts where Lin Chi-ling was modeling. Before being escorted from the stage by event staff, they moved fairly close to Lin. A television news program interpreted their actions as “facial guys try to approach supermodel,” which Su mixed into his final video along with his own recording of the performance. Su Hui-yu later elaborated on his love/hate feelings for the product of television media called “Lin Chi-ling” with his exhibition Chi-Lin. Impersonations are always more vivid than the public personae from which they are derived, just like those on the Taiwanese television program Everybody Speaks Nonsense II – Hot Pot, which Su loves to watch. Television personalities maintain a distant yet close relationship with their fans.
● Re-presenting Action Art as Television Programming
Su Huiyu creates his representations by filming actions and then editing them. “I add a little story to my videos,” says Su, “They have dramatic overtones, or even elements of advertising.” Su's method of rearranging the images in his videos comes from the effects he sees in television programs or the movies, and this gives his work a twofold quality—the action itself and then its representation. Discussing his works Happy Space, Bad, Dance and more recent The Fabled Shoots, Su states, “I think the important parts are doing the performances myself and then the post production. I edited the videos so they have a quality similar to MTV music videos or the look and feel of the movies. I played that precarious looking role for The Fabled Shoots, but the performance was just one process in creating the work. By performing myself and then re-presenting the result as video art, it became about something other than that danger. I think using certain visual effects can let it be known that something is just a performance. For these kinds of works, it is also possible to add bonus tracks giving behind the scenes views of the production process.
Su's technique of reproducing or re-editing is an extension and reflection of techniques seen in a variety everyday media, and he uses media's inherent rules or logic to make his statement. His latest work The Fabled Shoots—A Warning blends the look of advertising with terrorist threats to create theatrical tension. While this visually and aurally arresting video is spattered with red liquid and filled with gunfire, it also has a feeling of emptiness.
Perhaps the wrath and turmoil of terrorist videos are at most just entertainment when they aren't happening to you. Entertainment requirements for twenty-first century people who have lived in a TV environment already surpass what is generally assumed. For this reason, a deeper understanding of how contemporary entertainment operates can raise enjoyment levels and also trains us how to avoid getting completely drawn into its traps.
● Fantasy and The TV Kid
Su Huiyu's work revolves around television. Su's concepts, performances, impersonations and simulations of the look and feel of popular media are the most amusing parts of his work. But expending so much effort to simulate the banal look of television also creates a feeling of futility. This futility, a central theme of Su’s work, is decked out by the artist in a seductive euphoria.
According to Su, The Fabled Shoots reminds us that the characters who repeatedly fall over in movie gun battles never really get hurt, and are, in a philosophical sense, symbols of immortality. This series also partially reflects the contradiction between the hyper-real fear created by terrorist threats in the media, and our human craving for gunfire and hitting a target. No television viewer is unfamiliar with the events behind The Fabled Shoots, which include the September 11 attacks and the April 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech.
Discussing 9/11, Slavoj Zizek relates his astonishment at what he sees as the fulfillment of an American fantasy as visualized in so many Hollywood blockbusters. Perhaps the spectacle of terrorism does not cause real suffering, since news programs that report on wars disperse the pain among many delightful details so it can be consumed in palatable bites. Su Hui-yu has a deep understanding of how television and the media manipulate viewers. For every finished work, he both analyzes and appreciates how they operate, simultaneously revealing their emptiness and their charms. Furthermore, Su Hui-yu's work begs the question: which is more real, the world of television, or the world we experience directly through our unmediated senses? Don't go away; we'll be right back after a short message from our sponsor!
(First printed in Artist Magazine, Issue 389, October, 2007.)
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