Queensland Art Gallery - Queensland Government

Chen Chieh-jen
On going
Chen Chieh-jen’s guerilla-style performance art in 1980s Taipei
demonstrated early the artist’s sense of urgency to highlight subjects
often hidden or off-limits in Taiwan’s mainstream culture — from
the inequity of power to its history of colonisation. Chen’s acts of
resistance during Taiwan’s martial law period, which had been in place
since 1949, conflated his role as artist, culture jammer and activist.
By taking performance art into the streets, Chen critiqued social
and political abuses, but also served to openly testify to the belief in
personal and artistic freedom of expression. He enacted this through
the body, facing a serious risk of personal danger in doing so. When
martial law was finally overturned in 1987, however, Chen retreated
from making art. It was not until 1996 that he resumed work, this
time on a project that stridently questioned the nature of selfhood in
contemporary Taiwan, an inquiry inextricably linked to its colonial past.
In the digitally manipulated photographs Chen produced from the late
1990s, his body takes the place of Taiwan, becoming a site of depravity
and the grotesque within scenes of horror — simultaneously victim,
perpetrator and historical accomplice.
On Going 2006 can be seen as the culmination of several films by Chen
which reveal Taiwan’s once-thriving structures of industry as ruins. In
the works Factory 2003 and Bade Area 2005, he reveals the complex
implications this has had for people left unemployed and displaced by
the loss of industries, which have moved out of the country in search of
higher profits. 1 Chen recognises the indifference of mainstream media in
respect to these issues; these people have no voice, and Chen describes
their situation, like others in Taiwan, as ‘being shrouded’. 2 The coping
mechanism of the amnesiac, which compartmentalises the past, becomes
a feature of On Going, where silence heightens the presence of a cloaked
consciousness, in insistent, surfacing images that refuse the shroud.
A black car emerges from an invisible entrance. It is adorned with
stickers calling for Taiwan to become the 51st state of the United
States. No contact is made between the anti-imperialist and the
driver of the car, both of whom seem distanced from reality as if
their coexistence in this stage is a coincidental crossing of parallel
dimensions. The driver makes no attempt to get out, and in a moment
we see that the interior has filled with smoke, and he can no longer
be seen sitting upright in the driver’s seat.
Excerpts from a black-and-white documentary about the US military
stationed in Taiwan during the Cold War take over the screen. In
government parlour rooms, deals are toasted, while bombs detonate
and machine guns strafe the night. Returning to Chen’s film, large
pieces of ash float in from the dark. The location in the factory has
changed to a similar grey room now populated by defunct machines.
The back of the truck has been burnt, but from behind a red curtain the
man produces a suitcase housing a small screenprinting set, and begins
printing manifestos on unused dot-matrix printer paper left under the
factory’s machines. Televised media returns to screen in which news
clips talk about arms procurement in Taiwan. The man gets into the
driver’s seat, and backs the truck out of the factory room, leaving it lit
but deserted, stage open, and in a state of suspension.
About On Going, Chen writes:
I understand that the abstractive expressing form and the political
problems in interior Taiwan are not easily understood . . . If we leave
aside the political situation in Taiwan, I do hope the viewers just see
the film as ‘image poetry’ and experience the state in the film. 4
The new edit of On Going, shown for the first time in APT6, considers
the role of political ideologies in Taiwan, hinging past and present.
On Going opens with a slow gliding camera shot, circling the interior
windows of a high-rise office block; the central atrium and its vacant
floors establish a palpable sense of void which permeates the film.
Next, an abandoned factory becomes a dark theatre which shelters
a solitary anti-imperialist and his beaten-up truck. 3 Fluorescent
lighting describes the edge of this stage, over which numerous fire
extinguishers and bundles of flyers are littered. The man slowly shifts
some fire extinguishers onto a pile and loads bundles of papers into
the back of the truck. Chen’s 35mm film absorbs the nuanced gloom of
the factory, suffused with detail and deep colours — red, blue, greenish
grey — as it tracks through the scene, graceful and seemingly luxurious
in contrast to the content on stage.
In the rear of the truck the man is surrounded by framed portraits
of leftists who have been executed in Taiwan. Ageing pamphlets lie
strewn on the floor, along with a copy of The Communist Manifesto.
Naomi Evans
Endnotes
1 Chen Chieh-jen describes his work ‘as an act of connection, linking together the
history of people who have been excluded from the dominant discourse, the reallife
situations of areas that are being ignored, and “others” who are being isolated.
In this way, I resist the state of amnesia in consumer society’. ‘Chen Chieh-jen’, Artes
Mundi 4, ,
viewed 29 October 2009.
2 Chen Chieh-jen, email to the author, 21 October 2009.
3 Chen, email to the author. Chen describes the actor in this film as a member of an
anti-imperialism group: ‘The group only has two or three members and their claims
have never been followed with interest’.
4 Chen, email to the author
Chen Chieh-jen
Taiwan b.1960
On Going (stills) 2006
35mm film transferred to DVD, single channel,
continuous loop, colour, silent, 20:22 minutes,
ed. 4/5 / Images courtesy: The artist
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