The exhibition Chaos and Memories, which the Phi Center is running until June 11, consists of FRAMERATE, an immersive British installation about the strained relationship between the human species and the earth, and four Taiwanese virtual reality works. A rich program and as challenging as international news!
Posted at 7:00 am
FRAMERATE: Pulse of the Earth [le pouls de la Terre] is a creation of the British studio ScanLAB Projects, specialized in 3D digitizing the reality of the world to project us into the future. Suffice it to say that the shifting landscapes that this installation accelerates into are not really images that we analyze with the joy of our hearts.
The work reviews some human activities that contribute to killing, eradicating, inhabiting, exploiting, or reshaping spaces on the planet. But it also addresses plant growth, which is a real balm, even if it’s only temporary during the roughly 25-minute experience.
The viewing of the film takes place in a dark room, seated or standing, which helps to fully immerse us in the subject. A sense of embarrassment washes over us as we watch all these cattle glued together on a cattle ranch, the speed of the film giving the impression that the animals have no heads, only bodies. The accelerated images of a London intersection send us back to a human state adapting to the fate of ants. And those caught in a quarry mistakenly make the machines for cave worms…
Both the film and the installation are aesthetically surprising. The projection screens on the walls, ceiling and floor make you dizzy if you don’t want to miss anything and increase the uneasiness that confronting the themes treated helps to evoke. These images, recorded continuously over very long periods of time and then accelerated at high speed, confront us with our destiny and our responsibilities. It’s hard not to come out a little smudged… from this other critique of our suicidal species.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY PHI
Still from the movie FRAMERATE. Customers of a restaurant appear in time lapse.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY PHI
Plant growth is shown to us through thousands of 3D images scanned every day for months.
1/2
Virtual reality
All That Remains (2022), by Craig Quintero, Taiwan, 12 min, in English
Here is a theatrical camera-like narrative filmed in virtual reality by Craig Quintero, with a poetic approach and very beautiful and sensitive acting from actress Yu-Hsin Yu and her partner Ollie Huang. A film about encounter, intimacy, our fears, our needs, our dreams, our loneliness and our community. The film was shown at the Venice Biennale last year.
Red Tail (2022), by Fish Wang, Taiwan, 20 min, in English and Mandarin
Fantastic 3D animated film about a little boy who escapes during a nap started on the bench of a beautiful train station floating in the sky! He starts following a fish’s red tail, finds himself in a cable car full of strange creatures. Man seems no more than a species like any other on an earth that has become desolate and ugly. The sequel is magical, the drawing is attractive and the theme is an invitation to learn from our mistakes, to endure our little tragedies and not to lose our courage!
The Man Who Couldn’t Leave (2022), by Chen Singing, Taiwan, 35 min, in English, Mandarin and Taiwanese
Certainly the most eye-catching film of the four. A dark page in Taiwan’s history is the “White Terror,” that 38-year period (between 1949 and 1987) during which thousands of Taiwanese intellectuals suspected of sympathizing with the Chinese Communist Party were imprisoned or even executed. Chen Singing’s film tells the story of some of them. Very well done and quite creepy.
Missing Pictures Episode 2 (2022), by Clément Deneux, France, UK, Taiwan, Luxembourg, South Korea, 11 min, in French, English, German, Korean and Mandarin
PHOTO SUPPLIED BY PHI CENTER
Still from Missing Pictures Episode 2
One piece of advice, end your visit with Missing Pictures! Clément Deneux’s film about Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-Liang puts you in a good mood! The pictures of this little boy (he!) who is fascinated by his grandfather are touching. Their intimate relationship will shape the fate of the future director, who was born in Malaysia and whose film Stray Dogs won the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 2013.
Chaos and Memories, at the Phi Center, 315 Saint-Paul Street West, Montreal