I want to know where you got the idea for your work.
This has to do with the work I did previously. I used contagions, cell formations and germs, the circulatory system as the theme in my performance and visual art, also sculptures. What I try to express is the state of these living organisms, which reflect the state of our world or society.
So your idea stemmed from your interested in viruses?
Right. At first, I was instinctively attracted to the form of viruses. There was just a feeling that I wanted to get near them.
Can you please walk us through the process from your idea to making the costumes, why these tentacles, for example?
The protrusions on my costume, well, up until 2004, I felt my work was too calm. That is, it was too quiet. My work was unable to express my feelings and expressing what my feelings is what I wanted to create. So my work went from two-dimensional pieces or sculptures into a costume. The protrusions are meant to help spread, as a disease would, my own feelings and thinking to other people, like a disease, going from one person to the next, multiplying, one viral cell becoming two, two becoming three, like that. So no matter what piece of work I create, I make sure that there are these protrusions enable me to expel from my innards everything from within and in turn allow the protrusions to serve as weapons. So, when I use my protrusions to touch you, I am in fact infecting you. Of course, it’s hard for you to see this based on my costumes, which look rather benign, but in fact what I’m spreading is malignant. It is a strong virus under a cute and harmless disguise. So that this creates trust while I stand in a façade. I am a paradox.
Right. I noticed that your gestures, especially in the beginning as with Kuso Orange Flower 1 (2004) were quite slow moving. By Kuso Orange Flower 3 (2004) you have increased your speed. But it is in Kuso Orange Flower 4 (2004), the one of you performed in Korea, where your gestures had become quite fast-moving, almost hostile with your sudden movements on the train. So, you’re saying that your quick gestures are meant to express your desire to make yourself a contagion in society.
Right. But all this was a result from the initial idea of becoming a contagion. But it slowly evolved into something that looks relaxing, something non-threatening, something funny and matter-of-fact, when in fact I am very serious.
Right. You are not smiling in your videos.
No. I don’t smile at all. To me, what I do on the street is something to be taken seriously. Humans are not used to coming in contact with such situations as myself in public. I appear suddenly before disappearing.
I noticed that some people appeared angry, almost scared. Others were amused, of course. Let’s talk about location. Were all your performances done in Korea?
No. Just the later pieces. Most were performed in Taiwan.
Let’s go in order here. Your first piece was obviously done on the computer. It’s almost all digital, save perhaps some studio work. Then you progressed to nature in Kuso Orange Flower 2 (2004) where you’re in nature, standing on a bamboo raft with not too many people present. Then in Orange Flower 3 (2004) you move to the streets. I see a slow movement towards going public.
That’s about right. This is the situation where I become the anomaly in public. What people do not understand.
I’m curious to know why you chose orange for your costume?
Actually, at first I just wanted to have a sample costume made. So, actually, I did not plan to use this particularly colour or fabric. I had gone to the seamstress and seen the fabric and thought that would be a good fit for the streets.
Right. You are always very serious. So then are you trying to infect people with your seriousness?
This is complicated. I’m not sure if you understand. What I’m trying to infect in people is my current state, my various emotions, my individual state of being. I then use this emotion to spread it, it being something in another language, but to me it is very deliberate I think, for example, when I’m in costume.
I don’t quite understand what you’re trying to say.
Like with Kuso Orange Flower 1, I throw flowers and colours. I am using a common and familiar language. For example, I also use martial arts postures to express myself. I can shoot out flowers and rainbows. These are not things we can do in real life. It’s impossible. It’s just to amuse. It’s just to relax people.
So you are using this introduction to support your non-threatening costume, to lessen the tension people might feel when they see you.
That’s about right.
So, here, I see that the girls in the shop you enter actually do not know you. They actually looked a bit scared. Can you tell me, since you took your performance from Taiwan, to China then to Korea, what you think is the difference between these locations in the way people reacted to you?
The Korean audience were the most passionate. They thought it was fun. They even touched me. The Taiwanese just ignored me. Children might come up to me and pull at my costume. And in China, they were very curious, but they just thought that I was filming an ad.
Interesting. So in China, they think that your performance has got to do with the media, advertising. In Korea they played with you. They are more interactive. And in Taiwan they thought you were perhaps insane. Where did you enjoy performing your piece most?
The Koreans were the most interesting.
So you like that people interact with you then. Do you think that performance art requires audience participation?
I think that people and art are separated by quite a far distance. But when I walk out on the street, I am an artist and I speak an artistic language. This is very different from if they were to watch my video work at a gallery. The feeling would not be the same.
Comments
young money
Hello! Good site!
Thank you!
December 5, 2007 4:13 AM