Windows On The World (Part 1)
Islands Off the Shores of Asia, Spring Workshop/Para Site, Hong Kong, 2014
Tag: WOTW1_Sections
Windows On The World (Part 1) / 世界上的窗户（第一部份）
Windows On The World (Part 1) ／ 世界上的窗户（第一部份）
in collaboration with Thomas Tsang / DeHow Projects
commissioned by ParaSite Art Space / Spring Workshop for the group exhibition Islands Off the Shores of Asia
mixed media installation featuring a single channel video
2014
As part of the Wong’s long-term endeavor on the unconscious relationships between sci-fi and Cantonese opera, the structure built in the exhibition departs from the oceanic landscape appearing in Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972) and its infinite horizon of islets. In this work the vortex of space conquest collides with the vortex of antiquity, becoming a site where a Chinese sci-fi plot is imagined.
(from exhibition text)
Singaporean artist Ming Wong’s incredible tunnel installation Windows on the World (2014). As you walk into the Kubrick-esque ‘tunnel’ (fashioned out of wood and fabric), dotted with translucent portholes, the soft strains of Cantonese opera grow louder. At the end of the tunnel, the vanishing point, a looped video is screened of Wong in spacesuit gear, tumbling and arcing through the air to the opera aria Princess ZhaoJun Crosses the Border.
“Science fiction is a space where one can reimagine societies and identities, and extend an idea or the repercussions of that idea, on a society,” says Wong of his creative response to the show title, Islands Off the Shores of Asia. “And the events of [Occupy Central] have called up so many ideas and questions. What is the future of Hong Kong? Utopian or dystopian? Who belongs to Hong Kong? Who does Hong Kong belong to?”
(from TimeOut review by Ysabelle Cheung)