CHEN CHIEH-JEN
From the 1980s to the early 1990s, the era just before and after the lifting of martial law in Taiwan in 1987 - Chen Chieh-jen was actively involved in performance art. He then turned to working with historic photographs of criminal punishment, which he altered using computer technology to create the photographic series, Revolt in the Soul and Body (1996). In 2000, he began using straight photography to treat his preoccupation with "artificial futures'' in the series, The Twelve Karmas Under the City (2000). His long interest in creating (or reworking) shocking images to comment on history, power, and the power of the image resonates in his turn towards film installation with works such as Lingchi: Echos of a Historic Photograph (2002).
Another simultaneous project explored similar concerns in very different ways. The Factory (2002) is a 30-minute long film as a contemporary still life. Somewhere between a frozen photographic image and modern documentary reconstruction, The Factory shows a clothing factory that went out of business and had been deserted for eight years. Chen invited the female workers who had once labored at that factory and had since lost their jobs to return there and perform as they had years earlier. Their old and weathered faces are seen in the context of dilapidated buildings and a clothing industry that symbolizes a lost era of Taiwanese history. Black and white documentary images come together with more recent ones, juxtaposing two different temporalities so that the soundless and slow-moving images establish a new way of looking at history. As in Linchi - Echoes of a Historical Photograph, the reconstruction and examination of recent and historical images underscores the relationship between the past, present and future of people living in traditional Societies that are being radically transformed today. Thus the import of a work like The Factory is not merely in its depiction of Taiwan's manufacturing history or a specific past struggle lost to Capitalist delocalization. More importantly, it reflects on deserted places and people and their forgotten histories in a way that comments more widely on time and the experience and process of history. -A.C.
http://www.ubicarte.com/_ubicarte/site/articles-detail.php/id/895
http://n.s.art.free.fr/artist/chen.htm
http://www.asa.de/magazine/iss2/3chen.htm
http://www.srcs.nctu.edu.tw/joyceliu/mworks/mw-interart/GazeOfRevolt/GazeOfRevolt.htm
http://blog.twblog.net/goya/archives/002126.html
http://blog.twblog.net/goya/archives/001438.html
http://news.etat.com/etatnews/text/981204-1.htm
http://publish.pots.com.tw/Chinese/CoverStory/2004/03/09/299_6cover/index.html
Born 1960 in Taoyuan, Taiwan
Lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan
The Factory, 2003 16 mm, color, sound, 30'
Courtesy the Artist
Courtesy the Artist
From the 1980s to the early 1990s, the era just before and after the lifting of martial law in Taiwan in 1987 - Chen Chieh-jen was actively involved in performance art. He then turned to working with historic photographs of criminal punishment, which he altered using computer technology to create the photographic series, Revolt in the Soul and Body (1996). In 2000, he began using straight photography to treat his preoccupation with "artificial futures'' in the series, The Twelve Karmas Under the City (2000). His long interest in creating (or reworking) shocking images to comment on history, power, and the power of the image resonates in his turn towards film installation with works such as Lingchi: Echos of a Historic Photograph (2002).
Another simultaneous project explored similar concerns in very different ways. The Factory (2002) is a 30-minute long film as a contemporary still life. Somewhere between a frozen photographic image and modern documentary reconstruction, The Factory shows a clothing factory that went out of business and had been deserted for eight years. Chen invited the female workers who had once labored at that factory and had since lost their jobs to return there and perform as they had years earlier. Their old and weathered faces are seen in the context of dilapidated buildings and a clothing industry that symbolizes a lost era of Taiwanese history. Black and white documentary images come together with more recent ones, juxtaposing two different temporalities so that the soundless and slow-moving images establish a new way of looking at history. As in Linchi - Echoes of a Historical Photograph, the reconstruction and examination of recent and historical images underscores the relationship between the past, present and future of people living in traditional Societies that are being radically transformed today. Thus the import of a work like The Factory is not merely in its depiction of Taiwan's manufacturing history or a specific past struggle lost to Capitalist delocalization. More importantly, it reflects on deserted places and people and their forgotten histories in a way that comments more widely on time and the experience and process of history. -A.C.
http://www.ubicarte.com/_ubicarte/site/articles-detail.php/id/895
http://n.s.art.free.fr/artist/chen.htm
http://www.asa.de/magazine/iss2/3chen.htm
http://www.srcs.nctu.edu.tw/joyceliu/mworks/mw-interart/GazeOfRevolt/GazeOfRevolt.htm
http://blog.twblog.net/goya/archives/002126.html
http://blog.twblog.net/goya/archives/001438.html
http://news.etat.com/etatnews/text/981204-1.htm
http://publish.pots.com.tw/Chinese/CoverStory/2004/03/09/299_6cover/index.html