The inside of the protecting greenhouse is warm, welcoming, a necessary condition for some of its living beings. However, the creatures living under its shelter may unknowingly start to deform. Protection turns into corrosion. They go from resisting to losing their self-care ability, eventually leading to a sense of hopelessness. This decaying metamorphosis could be considered a conspiracy theory. But how would we be able to truly know? 

Installation with video-montage, 2023

Ho Ho Man, HU GUAN-YING and Senri Suzui

The artists created an installative, multisensory landscape, dealing with the interconnectedness and unpredictability of socio-political landscapes. Landscapes transforming, eroding and mutating. The visitors were invited to enter through a greenhouse-like construction into a dystopian realm where the notion of time and space were questionned.  

The members of the group, coming from different Asian countries (Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan)  discussed the multifaceted conflicts faced by each nation. Based on this exchange they created a video montage featuring news from each country about Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022. The news stories were then meticulously edited and reconstructed by members from each country. Ultimately challenging how the media forms our knowledge and our perception of what we believe to be true. 

Process

The group was very eager to work on a project that would allow them to learn more about their lived realities and the political landscapes in their different home countries. They started researching political identities and pop cultural phenomena in Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan and looking for similarities and differences. In a second step they looked for a spatial translation that could convey the feeling of protection and enclosure. During their discussions the symbolism of the greenhouse and Gullivers tunnel came up and from there they decided to build a narrative that addressed fragmented political landscapes and set it into a spatial installation that resembled the former. The process involved countless tryouts and discussions and the work with different tools and methods.