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. |