2010 Feb- Disappearing Scenes

Disappearing Scenes- Images as the establishment of environment and emotion.

Disappearing Scenes Edited Video

Video Designer& Live Performer: Hsuan Ku


Set& Lighting Designer: Petya Manahilova

Place: White Space, CSM Backhill stie

Premiered on 16th February 2010
 
 
Initially, this work comes from a concept: when we sit in a car, there are numerous pictures drifting away out of the frame of a window. We tend to focus on the upcoming destination, but ignored the roads and landscape around us. So what do we get and what have we lost?

This beginning of work comes from those ideas, not from any text. With these ideas I want to explore to combine the use of a dual projection: a bigger projection and a TV set. With using such double projections, the main visual notion is that use the two images to assist each other and to complete the whole composition.

Therefore, the starting point of the video design is not based on the use of telling a story, in contrast, the images tend to build up the environment and support the expression of emotions. Because there are different subjects in this story, such as the memory of being lost, the end of a relationship and the repetition of the movement of death, etc. Therefore images, they should have a corresponding relationship with these subjects to create several emotional changes. For me, this is the most interesting point of the video design: not only to help the narrative, but also to create external imaginations.

As for the acting skills, because the concept of the stage design is quite minimal and utilising an empty stage to assist the establishment of the two projections, thus the performer in the space must have the ability to establish the real situation from the empty and minimal settings. Thus the meaning of movement must be very precise and its direction must be very clear. Otherwise it will create an inevitable confusion and misunderstanding for the audience in the process of receiving messages from the performance.

To me, this acting technique goes back to the training that I have received from the traditional Chinese theatre. In traditional Chinese theatre, the stage is often set up by one table and two chairs. With these objects, the actors have to rely on the directions of their eyes and body movements to convey a variety of situations. This is also a very important feature of the Eastern acting skills. Interestingly, it unexpectedly becomes an essential model reference for acting techniques for a show of such nature.