For the final instalment of Surface Tensions Part 1: ‘Alt Truths, More than Fiction’, HOP are pleased to present two moving-image installations by emerging artists. The Colour That Is Lost With Death (2019) is a three screening video installation by artist Jing Xie, and Sacred Disease (2019) is a two colour animation with voice-over essay by artist Renèe Helèna Browne.
For ‘The Colour That Is Lost With Death’, Jing says: ‘the use of urine collection in modern medicine makes urine an agent of our bodies. Functioning as a speculum, it reveals hidden information by embodying the state of the internal body, making the invisible visible. As a result, it often becomes a source of fear or shame about our bodies. Diseases or sudden changes occur in our bodies which compel us to re-recognise ourselves. Perhaps it is not necessarily a fear of death, but of pain and suffering. In other words, if death is simply flesh disappearing without pain, the fear of disease or death will basically disappear as well.’
Sacred Disease (2019) is a two colour animation with voice-over essay by artist Renèe Helèna Browne. This voiceover, written and performed by Browne, is an exploration of language and its power when consumed by the performance of romantic partnership. Through a feminist epistemological lens, an episode of TV series Sex and the City is examined next to the mythological love story of Acontius and Cydippe from the Roman poet Ovid’s book ‘The Heroides/Letters of Heroines’ (5CE). Browne’s own personal testimony weaves through the storytelling, which positions the digestive system, one of inputs, processes, and outputs as a symbol for the effects of romantic fantasy.
ST20 Part I: ‘Alt-Truths, More than Fiction’ - Expanded Cinema as a site for Experimentation & Activism (April – June 2020) brings together 5 artists working in the expanded field of moving image: Hio Lam Lei, Sharon Daniel, Hijack, Jing Xie and Renèe Helèna Brown.
Through a feminist epistemological lens, they freely and playfully juxtapose narratives, myths, archival materials and personal testimonies, using devices such as satire & fictive constructions to explore the unstable nature of perceived realities, cultural identities, structural racism, consumption, romance, and our relationships to Western nationalism
