Invade

INVADING THE FISSURE BETWEEN REALITY AND ILLUSION

I-chen KUO

In the region in which reality and illusion blur, exist the contradiction of mutual opposition and the conflict of mutual resistance. Reality is not necessarily non-illusory, and illusion is not necessarily unreal. My images are an attempt to invade the inner realms of both, to create a suture joining reality and illusion, and manifest the dissonance between presence and absence, thus engaging in a visual narrative of the conflict and contradiction between reality and illusion.

I have adopted the city as the text, and the politics, culture, economics, etc. of a physical location as the genes that form the image. I have employed a symbolic technique, shrinking my vantage point down to a simple, single-channel image that serves to awaken consciousness, and have used "invasive flight" as a constant suturing of potential points of connection within the process of interjection, distancing and transformation. This in turn signifies an autonomous existence as subject. Through the manifestation of the real, reality and illusion form a relationship of mutual intertextualization and subsummation. Governed by the logic of globalization within the context of advanced-stage capitalism, the artificial environment formed by hyperreal media and images has produced a counterfeit of reality and illusion, falsely constructing a projected position from which the summoning of the subject is manipulated, and altering the emotive and cognitive framework regarding the environment that humanity inhabits, causing the formation of a false subjective world.

Reality is rife with the counterfeit reality of hyperreality. I have attempted an act of anti-manipulation, in which the counterfeit reality of the image has been eliminated, and transformed into the invasive flight of illusion. Here, the image of an airplane shorn of its substance has become an empty form that only exists as a shadow. Even though it is manifested as mere emptiness, the viewer's cognitive awareness of the airplane creates a natural mnemonic reflection through the schemata of image recognition. Thus, the empty form of a shadow takes the place of substance. Within this contradiction of mutual opposition, the projection of the image of an aircraft has become a rational, visual form of acceptance.

In this way, the constantly repeating presentation of the image installation performs an uninterrupted suturing of reality and illusion, producing continuous contradictions of mutual opposition and conflicts of mutual resistance, further opening up a judgmental distance engendering a spectrum of different meanings. This judgmental distance is the very fissure I have attempted to open, through which we may invade the region that contains reality and illusion.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• KUO
• I-Chen