Vídeo Àsia.
10 videos to rethink a decade of moving images

In the last decade, audiovisual creation in Asia has led a brilliant development. A period that, not in vain, coincides with the economic strength of China and South Korea. As well as with an apparent global hegemonic turn that is reflected in an increasingly evident Asian presence in our daily life. Through this careful selection of the work of the most recognized artists and filmmakers in Asia, this exhibition proposes a review of the state of the audiovisual issue and the future challenges faced by its creators.

Despite the most vindictive videos of already established artists such as Chen Chieh-jen; The works Long life of Yao Jui-chung and Big words by Ju Anqi show an acid reflection on the great socio-political narratives of the 20th century, on both sides of the Straits of Taiwan. A look inherited by the emerging generation of artists from Asia, as shown by the bitter farewell to the idealism of Ding Shiwei in Goodbye Utopia. The creators we present here have grown up with greater access to information and contemporary art from abroad than their predecessors. However, in their works there is an intentional return to the traditional art such as Chinese ink painting or calligraphy; a return to the handmade art as we appreciate in Untitled by Guoxi. This search is nothing more than a repeated attempt to weave a personal history of its own. This individuality claim will lead Hsu Che-yu and Cheng Ran to create their videos as a diary

Precisely, Cheng Ran's Diary of a Madman allows us to introduce another key element in the evolution of Asian audiovisual creation: hybridization. His experimental works denotes the increasingly blurred border that exists between the author's cinema, the video creation, the video clip and the documentary. Thus, L'Être et le Néant by Su Hui-yu brings to mind the new wave of Taiwanese film, the distanced shots and the slowness of Hou Hsiao-hsien's eye. In the haze of Message to the Future by Ma Haijiao we recognize Tarkovsky's Nostalgia as a documentary about the situation of Syrian refugees in Europe. This audiovisual border trip is also made by numerous filmmakers such as Yu Depeng, to whom the video is an instrument for investigating the grammar of the image and to subvert the corseted structures of the film industry. As Tsai Ming Liang or Apichatpong Weerasethakul did, after triumphing at the most recognized film festivals in the world they have found an escape valve in the video creation. Filmmakers who throw themselves into video art, artists who want to make cinema. This complicated cartography of the image in our days opens the door to a new future, that of the "moving images".

ACTIVITY: "Action: Encuentros con el videoarte asiático".