Hseih Chun-Te: The Other Is Just an Other, Simple as That

Original Text by Monique Sicard

 

When we came from France to shoot the video, Scènes et rêves de Hsieh Chun-Te (Scenes and Dreams of Hsieh Chun-Te), we did not know what we would find.

The video was a further exploration of the series, Raw, which had been shown at a venue next to the beautiful San Stae in the Venice Biennale in 2011. That was two years before we shot the video.

At that time, the critics praised Hsieh as “a great Taiwanese gourmet chef and photographer.” In his photographic works, they saw the appropriation of sadistic fantasies in Japanese eroticism. In their words, these photomontages were “difficult to bear.”

Obviously, the cultural and linguistic barriers had caused the difficulty in understanding the works. What were hidden behind these large, elaborate, black-white-and-gray images with intermittent blurry and clear parts, especially with their titles, such as Danshuei River, Ferry Voyagers at the Guan Yin Shan, Family Portrait, Returning Day, The Fisherman on the Rooftop, Riverbank, Witch, Moonlight, Street Electronical Parade, The Romance on the Stele, Wondering Artist, and The Temple Attendant Who is Longing for the Breeze of Spring? The comprehension of these works was related to the abstraction of the photographic object, which rendered it the medium, the signifier, or, to borrow Roland Barthe’s term, to achieve the photographic image of degree zero.

To have a clear mind, we decided to return to the site where these images were produced. Whether it was in Taichung, Taipei, or Sanchung, we asked the artist the same question: “What was the process? How did you proceed?” He answered our questions patiently. As a result, our action was like the police questioning a suspect, demanding that he returned to the scene of the crime and recounted his past deeds so that we could gain the truth. The demonstration was completed rather quickly: these photographs were not photomontages, but real scenes that were effective and astonishingly complex, coming close to film making rather than photography, which could be perceived as a spontaneous capturing of a decisive moment. If we were able to discover a kind of surprising distance behind the discomfort caused by these scenes, such as the situations that might take place during the video shooting, the ensemble was informed with a profound attention to one another’s suffering.

Our discovery had far exceeded our expectation.

The shooting of certain images required the assistance of several dozens of people, and trucks were needed to transport the sets. Not a single detail was overlooked. The façade of the family mansion was transformed: the windows became photo frames that supported the ancestral portrait. It would take more than twenty years to complete the entire series.

These photos should not be reduced to simple prints. The drawings of the series, Tenky, could prove that: Hsieh’s drawings reflected the imaginary scenes, which served as a starting point when conducting the photo shoot, and were realized to the point of excess. In fact, the making of the photographs depended on the performance. The swimmers jumped off the springboard, following the poses on the storyboard. Here, the reality imitated the drawings. Photography preserved the invaluable memory, which was removed from digital cutting and collaging.

This video did not discuss the scenes that were incomprehensible to Western audience even though Flight in the Night or The Romance on the Stele were so close to L’origine du monde (The Origin of the World) or L’enterrement d’Ornans (A Burial at Ornans), making it quite hard not to associate Hsieh with Gustave Courbet.

What have we discovered? An artist who loves to make jokes, who is provocative and insistent on his belief, and has been unblushingly interrogating today’s world. He is generous, attentive, sensitive to the pain of others, and is extraordinarily persistent. Other than this,
he is simply a person that has grown from his environment, which, in terms of history, politics, society, humanity, and geography, was fascinating for us. This environment was far from what a guide book would say, just like the artist’s photography was far from banal beauty. It was the raining season, which provided a great opportunity to run away from the catastrophic temptation of the landscape.

Hsieh used to have a studio in Sanchong, one of the places where Danshuei River bent. This suburban area near Taipei was easily inundated by floods. He encountered the migrants; they came from the countryside, other islands, or mainland China, looking for jobs here. At the riverbank where he had worked for a long time, and among these people, Hsieh searched for the connections between the geography and history. What this film attempted to discuss was to revisit and recount this history.

In Hsieh’s work, the flowing Danshuei River became a metaphor for the victims of the February 28 Incident in 1947. This family, who were sailing in the muddy river with a dog, geese, and a motorcycle, symbolized the nation itself. This moving group of people had reversed their direction, seeking to leave the satellite city they were once desperate to move in. Hsieh posed his questions to the people at the margin, the exiled, the migrants, and the strangers. Take the couple of people who were fishing in downtown for example. They have become so further away from the river, casting down their fishing rods from a tall but sad building. Displaced people. Another example would be those children who were left for the care of their grandparents in the dilapidated countryside house as their parents had left for the city. Also, those abandoned beliefs and rituals were reinterpreted with a modern taste because of the vibrant social and cultural collision.

This was not a lecture but an observation.

Hsieh has been playing the role of the grand artist; he has taken the risk of speaking up and making people understand, enabling them to perceive and reflect upon themselves in one image or an installation. He invited his visitors to share his geographic and spiritual

landscape. It was never far from the tragedy in 1947; it also included the severity of the martial law, of which the end has allowed the freedom of speech to demonstrate remarkable vitality that has benefited Taiwanese contemporary art and culture.

The Tears of Danshuei River, which was rather moving, addressed the injury that humanity suffered as well as the damage done to the river by the concrete construction on the riverbank. These exiled people only returned to the countryside during improbable vacations. However, when it happened, they brought with them incomprehensible codes of modernity. Among Taiwanese artists, Hsieh would be a rare case because he has never stayed in Europe or America for a long time. He has demonstrated remarkable attention to the internal evolution of Taiwan, especially the connection between “the self” and history. He told us

that the treasure lay under our feet.

Recently, his solo exhibition, Parallel Universe, at the MOCA, Taipei, discussed the Alzheimer disease in the same spirit. Hsieh stated that the hardest thing to bear was not the disease itself but the break it caused between the patient and those who were closest to him or her. He sought out the people who shouldered the responsibility of looking after the patients; one might call them collateral victims. We would not forget the image of Gin Oy, a marathon runner that split the air, who looked afloat when running through a bridge. When Hsieh interviewed Chen Shao-Wei, he admired his determination and his will to emancipate, and invited people to liberate themselves from the constraints that suppressed life. When filming Tan Ai-Chen, he wanted to talk to us about necessary detachment, to maintain a certain distance to reduce hindrance. He said that we had to change our position, letting go the roles of being a son, a daughter, a husband, a wife, and assuming the role of a kind friend. The important thing was to talk, to create dialogues, to express, and of course, to listen. Nonetheless, the body remained as the safeguard of the spirit. The parallel universe was so beautiful, light, and fun; it invited us to face it with ease.

The notables in the city also removed their nice attire and joined the parallel universe, and became more enriched and rejuvenated while forgetting their worries about the future because of the surprising fun. The cascade was not bound by gravity; it drew us without casting us into the depth of the earth but projecting us into the sky and its splashing water. The regular sound of falling water drops did not mark the drama of the passed time but the retrieved joy of lightness.

The other is just an other, simple as that. There is no need to make a drama out of it.