ANIMA – 2020 Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition

“Anima” is “life” as well as “soul” in Latin. As such, the exhibition aims to delve into the subtle imageries beyond description behind moving images.

It is often through a ritual that we summon the unknown. A ritual draws a line between the spiritual realm and the physical reality temporarily, so that we as participants are separated from our everyday lives for a brief moment. A ritual grants us the portal to trance, be that a parallel universe, alternative reality, or displaced space-time on the other side.

It is like hypnosis. Through a certain form of guidance, we see – or least we are convinced to see. In hypnosis, we do not fall asleep.

Instead, we stay in a certain extraordinary lucidity. Hence, we are more focused than usual, while everything becomes extraordinarily meaningful.

This exhibition attempts to conceive hypnosis as a ritual of image viewing, where the image itself serves as the medium to hypnosis. Just as the “extraordinary sleep” induced by a hypnotic ritual, the works are portals that lead us to a mediated conscious state betwixt chaos and clarity. The works in front of your eyes are either inducers that lead us to trance, or the flows that demonstrate how we approach it.

There are more than a few works involving dreams, fantasies, illusions, or subconsciousness. Rather than a themed exhibition, however, “ANIMA” is more of means to viewing, the imageries haunted in mind, and the trance in image viewing as if induced by hypnosis. Some works have very limited playing time, or even are completely still images. Yet, it hinders not our gaze and contemplation that consumes us into a suspended instant to re-experience a never-ending duration. For those with a longer length, you are welcome to capture them with a loose attention or through a sensation beyond vision.

“ANIMA” emphasizes not the reading of but the experience of images – the focus lies not in the digestion of information exhibited in images, but in the insight into the true words beneath. How can an image be perceived when we “unread” it? Or to the extreme, can an image still be established when we “unsee” it? With hypnotic images as portals, we are granted with access into those alternative realities betwixt actuality and fantasy that seem out of place – the subconscious reality, the mise-en-scène reality, the media-mediated reality, and the reality awkwardly edited by fragments of memory.