Event
Megan Watson, The Air in Cyberspace, 2022

Both Sides Now 8: Queer Realities/Virtualities

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When
from
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21
June
2023
18:30 - 20:00
Book Tickets

Both Sides Now 8: Queer Realities/Virtualities | Subtitled | 65mins | Rated 15

esea contemporary is pleased to host the screening programme 'Both Sides Now 8'. Curated by videoclub and Videotage, the programme explores both real and virtual Queer spaces, with moving image works by international artists and filmmakers, including Kit Griffiths, Bassam Issa, Liao Jiaming, P1nk Poodle, Su Hui Yu, Wang Jun-Jieh, Megan Watson, Robert Yang.

'Both Sides Now 8' brings together a collection of films that explore queerness from international perspectives, which resonate between the fantastical, material, theoretical and playful. Where artists are exploring real and virtual spaces, creating and queering reality and virtuality. Using videogames, CGI, post-digital performance, and film, artists have made work exploring desire, death, cyberspace, passion and exorcism.

Su Hui-yu, The Glamorous Boys of Tang, 2018
Bassam Issa, A Paradise Out of a Common Field, 2020
P1nk Poodle, Queer Theory Saved My Life, 2023
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PROGRAMME

  • Megan Watson, The Air in Cyberspace, 2022, 3:20 mins
  • Bassam Issa, A Paradise Out of a Common Field, 2020, 5:32 mins
  • Robert Yang, Zugzwang, 2022, 3 mins
  • P1nk Poodle, Queer Theory Saved My Life, 2023, 4:20 mins
  • Su Hui Yu 蘇匯宇, The Glamorous Boys of Tang (1985, Chui Kang-Chien) 唐朝綺麗男(邱剛健,1985), 2018, 17 mins
  • Wang Jun-Jieh 王俊傑, Passion 激情, 2017, 13:10 mins
  • Kit Griffiths, Dic Pic, 2019, 11:43 mins
  • Liao Jiaming 廖家明, Repetition Maximum 最大重複次數, 2021, 5 mins

Film Synopsis

Megan Watson, The Air in Cyberspace, 2022, 3:20 mins

The Air in Cyberspace is a Sci-Fi animation depicting cyberspace as a parallel universe. A datascape of information seeping from the real and physical world to a geographical, abstract ocean of electric bioluminescence. Inspired by cyberculture theories, The Air in Cyberspace depicts the start of self-organising cyborg existence.

Bassam Issa, A Paradise Out of a Common Field, 2020, 5:32 mins

A Paradise Out Of A Common Field is a short animated film by Jennifer Mehigan and Bassam Issa that explores the iconography of the zombie. The origin of the zombie in general cultural history is relatively unknown, but within the confines of this film, she emerges from a lush garden and is submerged into the ocean. Playing with dream worlds that consist of feral horses and writhing flowers, horizons and image planes unfold to disorient viewers, while the audio transports you through an interpretation of the history of the Irish graveyard and its relationship to trauma.

Robert Yang, Zugzwang, 2022, 3 mins

Zugzwang is a tactical chess-like gay sex dungeon video game inspired by the history of sex magic, censorship in the US, cruising architecture, and the poetry of Emily Dickinson. As a sex angel, you must help mankind meet each other in the neon darkness. Drink deep their juices, distill their pleasure into divinity. Desire is a labyrinth. The absence of the witch does not invalidate the spell.

P1nk Poodle, Queer Theory Saved My Life, 2023, 4:20 mins

Queer Theory Saved My Life explores queerness in AI image models alongside NASA public domain footage. Typically, text-to-image AI image generation is done with visually descriptive keywords, but by inputting excerpts from queer theorists unexpected representations are created. Various cycles of feedback into the image generators, alongside other processing is used in a science fiction narrative of escape to Mars.

Su Hui Yu 蘇匯宇, The Glamorous Boys of Tang (1985, Chui Kang-Chien) 唐朝綺麗男(邱剛健, 1985), 2018, 17 mins

In 1985, two years before the end of Taiwan's martial law period, the renowned poet and screenwriter Chui Kang-Chien's film The Glamorous Boys of Tang was first screened in Taiwan. The film is a homoerotic fantasy, and was therefore not well received due to the conservative atmosphere at the time. More than thirty years later, with new funding and film technology, Su Huiyu has re-created The Glamorous Boys of Tang to call together the differently gendered bodies and subcultures of Taiwan's diverse society. The four channel piece can be seen as re-narration of the original 1985 version, or the next leg of its journey.

Wang Jun-Jieh 王俊傑, Passion 激情, 2017, 13:10 mins

Passion is a tale of a dreamer's passionate downfall in everyday life. It starts with the sudden arrival of spaceman Hal at a deserted harbor dock. Three idle sailors join, fueling the lonely pier with desires. The film draws inspiration from Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Querelle, incorporating imagery from Fassbinder, Jean-Luc Godard, and Alexander McQueen. It explores the passions of physical desire and artistic creation. When passion fades, all momentum dissipates, akin to death, leaving emptiness and decayed imagination.

Kit Griffiths, Dic Pic, 2019, 11:43 mins

Dic Pic is a vigorous, humourous and tender self-portrait exploring gender/transnarrative, the daily work of an artist, and the radical act of liking yourself.

Liao Jiaming 廖家明, Repetition Maximum 最大重複次數, 2021, 5 mins

'Repetition maximum' (RM) is a concept in weight training, referring to the most weight you can lift for a defined number of exercise movements. The artist turned his artificial body and the metropolitan surroundings into a big canvas, as in such way he expresses as well as confronts the power hidden beneath the action of image manipulation.

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Biographies
Both Sides Now
Bassam Issa
Megan Eekie Watson
Robert Yang
P1nk Poodle
Su Hui Yu
Jun-Jieh Wang
Kit Griffiths
Liao Jiaming
About this series
Communities in the Making
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