Time: 11:30–12:45, House 1

Raqs Media Collective brings two thought-provoking interventions: the lecture performance, Knots, in the morning, and the black-boarding inscription act, We are Knotted, We Come Undone, in the afternoon.

Knots is an invitation to engage with distinct and particular modes of temporal experience that can deflect the unidirectional ‘arrow’ of time. Here, time is knotted, undone, and made manifest as manifold. It enables a timeliness that is playful and embodied.

The performance lecture will be preceded by introductory remarks by Silke Schmickl, CHANEL Lead Curator, Moving Image, in English.

Time: 14:00–15:20, House 1

Unfolding the unknown trace—Analogue filmmakers from Taiwan curated and presented by Tzuan Wu

‘Unfolding the unknown trace’ is a selection of contemporary analogue experimental films from Taiwan. Featuring works by Lichun Tseng, Chun-Tien Chen, Johan Chang, Erica Sheu, Cherlyn Hsing-Hsin Liu, Masa Kudo, and Tzuan Wu, the programme illustrates artists’ skillful experimentations with do-it-yourself techniques, such as multiple exposure, hand processing, found footage, and collage and digital manipulation, to expose a tactile gaze.

As a visual apparatus, film not only preserves memory but decodes and encodes the space and time of the filmmaker who aspires to sculpt an experience, immersing the viewer in a sensation. In the era of accelerated image reproduction, these films impart something otherworldly that only emerges from the sensibility of the medium.

One of the co-founders of the ba̍k-nih-á film festival, artist Tzuan Wu’s selection of works has been inspired by the festival’s most recent edition titled Times Ex-Tense, exploring ideas of immediacy, timeliness, and intermittence.

Screening Credits

初，seed

Lichun Tseng | 2024  | 16 mm transferred to digital | black and white | Sound | 10 min.

The filmmaker captures nature from a microscopic perspective, slowly seizing moments, and connecting all senses with nature.

Ten Thousand Miles Away

Chun-tien Chen | 2021 | 8 mm and 135 film transferred to digital | Sound | 8 min.

A King Boat named ‘pray for the COVID-19’ is sailing. Three reels of 8 mm images and archives from broken 135 film are also on the same journey.

Flight and Frame

Johan Chang | 2022 | Super 8 and 16 mm transferred to digital | Sound | 10 min.

During the pandemic, the filmmaker had cut off each frame of 8 mm diary film and pasted them onto 16 mm film.

It follows It Passes on  

Erica SHEU | 2023 | 16 mm transferred to digital | Sound | 5 min.

A further study on film as a bandage to heal, protect, and conceal a wound. The film has a crack that cannot be seen through.

In Littleness

Cherlyn Hsing-Hsin Liu | 2024 | Double 8 mm and 35 mm transferred to digital | Sound | 8 min.

The waves of oncoming impressions submerge the viewer in an open and chaotic world, in which a noisy childhood experience is faintly drawn.

GARA GARA ガラガラの夢

Masa Kudo & Johan Chang | 2024 | Single 8 mm transferred to digital | Sound | 4 min.

An exchanged diary on one expired Single-8 film by Kudo and Chang in their private rooms in Tokyo and Taipei.

Siren's Lullaby

Tzuan Wu | 2023 | 16 mm with optical sound | 3 min. 3 sec.

The sound of infants, who have not yet learned a language, is like foam that has not yet floated to the surface of sea. 

The Silence of Sirens

Tzuan Wu | 2023 | 16 mm and Super 8 transferred to digital | Sound | 5 min. 55 sec.

Sirens sing behind an obvious screen while the city sinks beneath the sparkling waves and below the obscure light.

Time: 15:30–16:35, House 1

Morgan Wong presents a new rendition of Some Thoughts on Time Dilation, a lecture performance in which he connects scientific analysis of time with personal anecdotes that inspire new ways to think about our relationship towards time and its manifestations. It will be followed by a screening of short videos that document his past performances in which the artist uses his body and repetitive labour to engage with the irrepressible passage of time. The session will conclude with an in-person conversation with Curatorial Assistant, Design and Architecture, M+, Christine Lee.

Screening Credits

I Got Time
2013 | Digital | Colour | Sound | 5 min. 14 sec.

This documentation of Morgan Wong's durational performance sees him holding a cup of concrete for 24 hours. While going about his daily activities, his cup of concrete gradually solidifies, literally materialising time as it passes by.

Plus-Minus-Zero
2010 | Digital | Colour | Sound | 3 min.

While in Sapporo, the artist walks backwards in a counterclockwise manner, as a futile attempt to turn the ‘clock‘ back 56 minutes and 6 seconds, which is the time difference between Hong Kong and Japan.

Filing Down a Steel Bar Until a Needle is Made
2015 | Digital | Colour | Sound | 6 min. 11 sec.
This video documents Wong’s filing down a steel bar the same height and weight as his own body into the size of a needle. This is an ongoing durational performance reflecting on time, endurance, and transformation.

Frustration of Having More Than Two Choices to Make in Life
2013 | Digital | Colour | Sound | 9 min. 36 sec.

This video captures Wong’s intensive meditative days of isolation from the world, with nothing but a steel bar and a hand file. The artist seems to be paralysed by the burden of a choice, and frozen in time.

Demolishing Rumour
2010 | Digital | Colour | Sound | 5 min. 9 sec.

In Beijing since 2009, a rumor spread about the demolition of Caochangdi Art District in Beijing. In response, Morgan Wong stages a performance symbolically demolishing a gallery building model in Caochangdi.

Time: 16:40–17:40 Moving Image Centre

Building on the morning session’s deliberation on the notion of time, Raqs Media Collective will expand the dialogue in the afternoon through a performative act of blackboard inscription. Using images and texts, they will question the metrics of measuring time while inviting other acts of marking and writing. Moreover, this session invites participation from artists, interlocutors, and members of the public to annotate, dispute, complete and extend the ideas about inhabiting time.

Time: 17:45–19:00, House 1

For over two decades, artist Takashi Makino conjured moving image works and performances which deal with the treatment of time, perception, phenomena, and existence itself. His mastery of analogue and digital film formats, alongside his careful consideration of sound and music and a meticulous approach to editing, produces works which foreground superimposition, layering, and multiple exposure—elements which invite audiences to imagine, interpret, and dwell within their own sensorial and emotional landscapes. This selection of his latest films, paired with a live performance by the artist, is a powerful reconsideration of the idea of collage within a durational experience, where multiple times, spaces, and meanings converge and collide into an unstable yet exquisite whole.

Screening Credits

100 Years

2025 | Digital | Colour | Sound | 30 min.

Takashi Makino’s first experimental documentary is an embodied portrait of and tribute to Japan’s oldest motion picture film processing plant, founded in 1923 and originally named Yokohama Cinema Shokai. Alongside a soundtrack by composer Takuma Watanabe, the artist weaves his documentation of the historic buildings—now demolished—with film footage which were excavated from the abandoned site and which recorded scenes of Yokohama before the Great Kanto Earthquake.

Anti-Cosmos

2022 | Digital | Colour | Sound | 16 min.

Inspired by mystical philosopher and scholar Toshihiko Izutsu’s treatise on cosmic order and chaos, Anti-Cosmos addresses the artist’s interest in relating his abstract image-making with amplifying the viewer’s powers of imagination. Intended as a work to be experienced physically, the film’s soundtrack was mostly produced in the range of frequencies below 1000 Hz to generate visceral vibrations during the viewing experience.

Constellation

2025 | Digital | Colour | Sound | 21 min.

Accompanied by a live performance by the artist

This brand-new work, described by the artist as ‘like finding a star chart among stardust’, is a politically minded meditation on a series of paper collages the artist created in 2024, reimagined with 8K scanned film noise. The artist’s live performance will create a sound collage with a piano soundtrack by artist-musician Liz Harris (a.k.a. Grouper / Nivhek).