CHEN CHIEH-JEN
ABOUT THE FORM OF MY WORKS
1990-1999 - REVOLT IN THE SOUL & BODY 1

TEL : 886-2-3213252 - FAX : 886-2-3927695 - 7335348
1960 - Born in Tao-Yuan County, Taiwan ances'Lral home in Hui-An County, Fukien
1978 - Graduated from Technical School of Design
1980-1982 - Military Service
EXHIBITIONS
1983-1995 - Exhibitions, performance in ruinous houses, basement, street, valleys, sea-sides, glade yard etc., fringe areas and marginal spaces.
Groups
1996 - The Journey Through the Buddha States 1-History of Martyr
performance, The 3 rd NIPAF, Nippon International Performance Art Festival, Tokyo
Taipei Biennial Exhibition, Erotic and Power, Taipei Fine Arts Museum
The Living Clay 4 Exhibition, Lin & Keng Gallery, Taipei
1997 - The Journey Through the Buddha States 2 performance, Asiatic Performance Art 1997, Le Lieu Art Center, Quebec, Canada

CHEN CHIEH-JEN
1990-1999 - REVOLT IN THE SOUL & BODY 1

The Other Space - Taiwan Focus, Hong Kong Art Center, Hong Kong
Revolt in The Soul & Body 1, Lin & Keng Gallery, Taipei
Revolt In The Soul & Body, 1900-1999

The [Revolt in the Soul & Body, 1900-1999] is a project of reveal myself, including a series of works, to rewrite/retell the history of disciplines-punishments piercing through my body, and rename myself in the enduring process of rebirth/creation. By this project 1 attempt to mold the images of penalties out of the memories inscribed in my body and the ecstatic historical photographic images; to dig out, to search for the existential state and the genealogy of the Others who are suppressed, cut off by the multiple, soft structures of the exclusion that collaborate with the new world of the simulacra in contemporary consumer society and lastly to reveal the sophisticated process of internalization and inscription by which the power networks impose on most people.

Three Stages of the Project 1900-1949: The Journey of Patricide and Killing the son

The vestige of the photographic images that display the historical implication of penalty persecuted during 1900-1949 become the site of my work. In the process of gazing, simulating, recomposing the historical photographic images in which the bodies of the Others had been violently executed, disinembered during the ritual of writing, national myth, and fusing my self images into the historical photograph, I attempt to investigate the following problems: 1.How the power seize, appropriate, exclude, and erase the historical images and memories. 2.The complex relationships exist among the executioners, the spectators, the collaborators, the victims and the absent power. 3.How he chains of punishment connecting the executioners and the victims gaze their gaze of each other, and penetrate into the consciousness of most people.

The works of this stage will be accomplished during 1996-1997. In the exhibition these newly created historical images will be displayed with their original photographic images

1950-1987:the state of being collectively possessed under the rule of the Martial Law.

lt is the subject in the second stage and will be accomplished during 1998-1999.

1988-1999: I will explore the situation of alienation, mutation of the bodv, and the state of deprivation, floating of human beings who are collectively possessed by the commodity in the contemporary Labyrinth of consumption. This stage lasts two years, from 1998 to 1999.

The Recalling - Soul Theurgy


CHEN CHIEH-JEN
ABOUT THE FORM OF MY WORKS

PHOTOGRAPHY

For me, photography is rather more like a technological media for the use of capturing souls, a way of subdividing
the flow of time and body into fragments that are instantly frozen over the print, a way of death through light.
Photographs have always been misread as truth and evidence, especially from the angle of power. Between to
photo and be photographed, to see and not be seen; even behind the historical interpretation. Power or power
owner who can employ the photography to be as a kind of magic capturing-soul technique to produce, manipulate
human being's memory.

GAZE

I cannot stop gazing at these photographic images of anonymous people being tortured, executed. It seems that
behind these images you can uncover another layer of image and unspoken hidden words.
It seems that there is another face emerges from the vague, faint face; another shaking, unfixed body emerges
from and overlaps on the fixed body. In the prison of time, images float endlessly sometimes.
In the trance of gazing at photographic images I was often seeing myself to be a victim, or a persecutor, or a
collaborator in the photographs.
As I gaze at these historical photographic images, I find that the past look back on me.
At that moment the past see the present, and look towards the future through my gaze.
As the past look at the lens of camera, the photographer behind the camera, and look to the future, the photographer become the riddle at the intersection of mutual gaze. And doesn't our gaze from viewpoint of spectator get all acts of gazing entangled in the labyrinth of gaze.

LISTEN

As I listen to the silent photographic images, I often hear continuous whispers, or a multiplicity of voices.
Sometimes we caught to read the photographic images by carefully listening. While walking in the labyrinth of
images, we should keep listening.

HISTORIES

The histories I am much concerned about are the histories excluded by the orthodox power, i.e. the histories
outside the history, the histories survived in the realm of ecstasy, the histories that are like the lacunae among the
words, the histories concealed in the mist of aphasia, the histories infiltrated into our language, body, desire, and
taste.
Gazing at the excluded histories has same significance as gazing at the other contemporaries that have been
concealed in contemporary society. Both need to be dug each other deeply.

MEMORY

Memory, like the proliferation of living beings, proliferates itself in the moment of forgetting, gleams in the darkness of our silence, and emerges instantly while we are much more concerned with our present situation of life.

Memory has no relation to the nostalgia for the past. It is rather through the non-linear time and the ecstatic state of consciousness to explore any potentiality that lies deeply inside our body. Under this state to gaze out some kinds possibility and by it to dialogue with the reality. For me, memory likes a being state of the Now and Here.

PENALTY

Penalty is, a ritual of embodiment, provided with the structure of exclusion. In the entanglement of to maltreat and be maltreated, the spectators' gaze intervene, and the penalty thereby infiltrates into the gaze. The gaze brings the ritual of penalty to a real climax that make the subsequent extension of emotional effect possible.

During the ritual of penalty, what do the victims think about at the agonizing moment of suffering and death? What kind of transmutations happen in the spectator's thinking and emotion while he gazes at the execution of penalty?

How serious the executioner is possessed by the technique of execution during the process of execution?

Is it possible to find the map of their thinking and emotions from their faces or bodies? And, will this map be inscribed once again on the bodies of the spectators?

How they develop this highly delicate techniques of manipulation and execution that extend the duration of
the victim's agony and the spectator's gaze, at the same time indifferently conceal the victim's agony in the
enduring ritual of penalty? And how we be bewitched by the techniques of these management ?
I wonder whether the victims painstakingly expose thier intention of committing the patricide by means of
demonstration of punishment for for the transgression against the law. And I also wonder why the invisible,
but ubiquitous father can't still escape his tragic destiny to kill his sons in the atmosphere of fury, suspicion, and
phobia. Is the ritual of penalty a microcosm of everlasting entangling fate of patricide (matricide) and killing the
children?
Is the moment of suffering the only moment of sobriety during the ritual of penalty?
Our desire to possess more commodity is incessantly induced by the mechanism of capitalist management. Lack becomes one of the most deep anxiety in the mind of most people. Under the delicate, soft way of management, I wonder which one of commodity fetishism or death will be closer to self-abandonment of human beings.

REDEMPTION

The reason why I takc the imagcs of penalty as the sitc of my work has no connection with the intention of redemption. For me, to create the works of art is a kind of voyage between turbidity" and a sudden realization", a state of journey. In this state, I strive to know the ecstasy that has been imposed on my face and seems to come from the entanglement of the maltreat and the masochist. This face is so difficult to remove.

FEAR
In the history of Chinese Zen Buddhism Ch'anmaster Fei-Ker's cutting his arm by himself for gaining the
teachings of Bodhidharma, and finally achieving the enlightenment is a famous Kung-an. Fei-Ker´s frightening
act of cutting arm by himself initiated the transmission of Zen Buddhism tradition in a characteristic way-beyond
the language, books, and fixed, right pattern. The extremity of cutting arm becomes the invisible bridge between
the turbidity" and a sudden realization" rupture and rebirth by which we pass through the fear in the mind.
Cruelty always obstruct the spectators from looking into the photographic images. Nevertheless, are the dark
abyss of wounds not the very crack that we can pass through the self-abandonment?

DISTANCE

We always seek to find the proper distance to deal with something. But, what is the proper distance ? Do we not always stand either inside or outside the state of things? What we can choose is to keep on moving, i.e. stepping into, then passing through the state of things.

COMPUTER

When I hold the pen to paint my computer painting on the digital touchpad, I always feel a sense of untouchable,
unmeasurable void between me and the paintings. The sense of void is the reason why I choose the virtual space
of computer painting as the place for rewriting the histories which hidden into my body, the religious place for
dialogue with historical photographic images. In other words, the virtual space of computer painting is a field of
floating for rewriting histories, memories in the void.
I put these vague historical photographic images into computer, and enlarge them on a very large scale. On the
screen these enlarged images seem like the historical vestige scattered in the mist. A uncertain number of indistinct images, some vague faces, some pieces of dismembered body, and some broken images only with floating scents drift in the mist.
And who are they?
When I intrude myself into the boundless space of image specters, and try to paint their possible faces by
imagination, every stoke of my pen seems to betray their original faces. These faces I have painted seems more
like the masks, the brand of my own face that I impose on these historical images, the faces of the Other.
But, who is the real Other?
As I painted the historical images, I also fuse my body image which comes from my body memory into the mist
of images together. For me, this imagery of synchronization of images seems in a state of trance is a kind of
Jing Xiang

JING XIANG

The term of Jing Xiang comes from the Tibet Book of the Dead. It means the gaze of consciousness, during the process of transmutation between die-live (the state of the Bardo), the flashback of the imagery of the Karma-what the man/women had done in their life time. For me, in other words, it is the re-emergence of the suppressed, repressed, and concealed memories.

I call the process of writing Jing Xiang, the process of writing the genealogy inside my body, the action of re-naming myself as Recalling-Soul Theurgy.

FERRYBOAT

The process of production from one Jing Xiang to the other Jing Xiang is at the same time the process of production of a series of ferryboats. It also means crossing over one situation of life to the other situation of life, and sailing in the river of the excluded, the concealed genealogy.

My works are the overlapping journey of Jing Xiang about Re-calling Soul and production of Production of Ferryboats.


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