Sunday December 16, 7:30pm
YES: Morrison Gong / Erica Sheu
Artists in person

Still from “Banquet” (2017) by Morrison Gong – Image courtesy of the artist

Microscope is very pleased to present a screening of works in film, video, and performance by Queens-based artists Morrison Gong and Erica Sheu, as part of our emerging artist series YES. Although informed by different life experiences, both Gong and Sheu tackle themes of national identity, cultural backgrounds, gender, eroticism and intimacy — often through very personal and poetic perspectives — in their individual as well as in their collaborative work.

In the four 16mm and Super 8mm films by Sheu in the program, the artist starts with events of everyday life to consider her origins and the concept of home in a foreign country, often drawing by hand on the filmstrip or featuring text from books, as well as setting the images in dialogue with each other through double-channel or split-screen.

Gong’s work centers around ritual, sexuality, and the transgression of cultural traditions, frequently treating body, food, animal bones, butterfly wings, etc. as material. Most of the artist’s moving image works consist of collages or slideshows of still photography, digital scans, and fixed-camera shots, often with references to or featuring the work of Nan Goldin, Nobuyoshi Araki, and Carolee Schneemann, among others.

Closing the night is a new collaborative, multiple projector performance “Immoral Tales” by the two artists — featuring Super 8mm and 16mm film, 35mm slides and digital video — accompanied by a live score by Yifan Guo. Among the projections are excerpts from “Ne Zha Nao Hai”, a 1979 Chinese animated film about the myth of Prince Nezha and his triumph against the Dragon King; virtual porn games; 70s Taiwanese propaganda; excerpts from “Twenty-Two” a documentary about Korean and Chinese “comfort women” during WWII; scratch film loops; handmade 35mm slides; and original video shot by the two artists.

Gong and Sheu will be in attendance and available for a Q&A following the screening and performance.

General admission $8
Members & Students $6

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Morrison Gong is an artist pursuing a BFA in Fine Arts at Parsons School of Design with a minor in Moving Image Arts. Their work investigates how corporeal traumas and sensations reinforce the definition of female gaze. Gong has showed their work nationally and internationally, at Vox Populi Gallery, Manhattan Independent Film Festival, and Hong Kong Arthouse Film Festival. Gong currently lives and works in Queens, NY.

Erica Sheu is an experimental filmmaker who works with celluloid film. Her work often reflects on the diasporic identities and the mechanisms of filmmaking. She holds a BA in English from National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan. Her work has shown at The Film-Makers’ Cooperative in New York, Detour Gallery (ISFF) in New Jersey, Tai Kwun Contemporary in Hong Kong, and 2018 Taiwan Biennial in Taiwan. She is currently based in Queens, New York.

Still from “A Short History” (2017) by Erica Sheu – Image courtesy of the artist


Program:

A Short History
by Erica Sheu, 16mm dual projection, b&w and color, silent, 2017, 3 minutes 25 seconds
A personal history. An anonymous narrator recalls their life experience as it forms and collapses their identity.

the way home
by Erica Sheu, Super 8mm to digital, b&w, sound, 2018, 1 minute 45 seconds
A lady asked me how to go home. Distantly, we talked about our home on our way home.

first draft
by Erica Sheu, 16mm to digital, b&w, sound, 2017, 3 minutes
A note on recent readings as a self-realization. A split-screen film.

rainy dog
by Erica Sheu, 16mm to digital, b&w, silent, 2017, 3 minutes
Everything was not planned. We started the day, in a basement in Queens, New York, watching a Japanese cult film, Rainy Dog, which was shot in my hometown Taipei, Taiwan. Hand-processed and solarized the film as an attempt to bring out the layers through light.

Banquet
by Morrison Gong, HD video, color, sound, 2017, 4 minutes 25 seconds
Banquet is an erotic ritual: extravagant, indulgent, a celebration of food, flesh and bone as material. Its driving forces are the ecstasy of being alive, and the eternal fear of the unknown beyond death.

What Great Grief Has Made the Empress Mute
by Morrison Gong, HD video, B&W, sound, 2016, 1 minutes 20 seconds
A video comprised of 25 scans of photographic prints by Araki, Goldin, and myself juxtaposed with June Jordan’s reading of What Great Grief Has Made the Empress Mute. In a way similar to how the extravagance of the empress’ life disguises her pain, the eroticism and glamour of the photos disguise their melancholy.

Festal Flutter
by Morrison Gong, 16mm to digital, color, sound, 2018, 3 minutes 20 seconds
A contemplation on the similarities between insects’ life cycles and human’s celebration, festivities, consumption and death.

Eros Diary
by Morrison Gong, HD video, color, sound, 2016, 4 minutes 34 seconds
This frankly explicit film investigates the ecstasy, intimacy, and ambivalent emotions of sex and how it both does and doesn’t connect two people from different ethnic backgrounds.

Immoral Tales / 哪吒闹海
by Morrison Gong & Erica Sheu
Music by Yifan Guo
16mm film, Super 8mm film, 35mm slides, digital video, 2018, approx. 17 minutes
A multi-projection expanded cinema performance that investigates the parallel between an ancient Chinese mythology and East Asian women’s traumatic sexual experiences.

From “Immoral Tales / 哪吒闹海” (2018) by Morrison Gong and Erica Sheu – Image courtesy of the artists


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Microscope Gallery Event Series 2018 is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC).