17 February 2016

Jen Liu

Value, desire, need could be the base of the impulse to own, to buy, to steal … But why do I need something actually? Why is something of value for me? Why do I desire things? How and where are things coming into being? Where does my desire begin and where ends the idea of the product? Where is my I in this all? Deleuze didn’t really unravel this issue light on this issue when he said that we don’t desire in solitude and just a singular thing; that we desire ensembles and in ensembles. Existing beings are intertwined, they depend on and anticipate each other, and precisely in this interlacing emerges the production, valuation and also desire for and of themselves, their affects and also things. But there is no transparency in this. The films by Jen Liu also don’t really shed light on that issue, too; they don’t really deliver the answers of those questions. Worse! They make the audience ask much more questions and reflect on the place of the gendered self and others in this production system. Liu’s films switch between the immateriality of digital worlds and, the materiality of everyday objects, as well as the phantastic merging of abstract basic geometric shapes in 3D with the human body. They intensify the creation of vital lines.

PROGRAMME:

Safety first (Bad, Don’t Touch, Mercy!)
USA, 2013, 15 mins

Machinist’s Lament
USA, 2014, 18 mins

The Pink Detachment
USA, 2015, 20 mins

The Shape of Things to Come
USA, 2010, 9 mins

Picture credit: Jen Liu