The Story Changing /
Matrix 284 Gallery, Berkeley Art Museum /
Berkeley, California /
Dec 13, 2023 – Mar 10, 2024 /
DeWitt Cheng /
The Story Changing, the first US museum show by Sin Wai Kin, the Canadian-born, London-based performance artist turned filmmaker, consists of two videos in a small exhibit in the Matrix 284 Gallery and the adjoining hallway at California’s Berkeley Art Museum. The title evokes the postmodernist artist’s concerns with narrative and language in the formation of identity, which they consider to be fluid and culturally determined rather than innate; it is also self-determined and performative, in line with the queer-scene drag shows that fascinated Sin—a recent nominee for the Turner Prize—as a young art student in London in 2009. “I think drag is like a magnifying glass,” they say. “To make something more extreme is to look at it more closely.”
The curator, Victoria Sung, interviewing Sin, adds, “Language is such a powerful tool in terms of how it constructs our worlds, but also how it can constrict our worlds.” Sin’s multichannel, video-loop narratives, without beginning or end, marry extravagantly costumed performers, all avatars of the artist, both male and female; philosophically oriented dialogues, full of contradictions and paradoxes, which circle back to existential questions of names and identity, suggesting a script jointly penned by Gertrude Stein, Eugène Ionesco and Lewis Carroll; and visual fantasy with old-school practical effects. Looking back to the surrealist films of the 1930s and, perhaps—in the use of Baroque interiors and statuary paired with meditative voiceovers—to Alain Resnais’ famous 1961 dream-puzzle film Last Year at Marienbad, Sin’s The Breaking Story (2022) and Dreaming the End (2023) are enigmatic, intriguing deconstructions of gender and race essentialism. “I think we live in a constructed reality, so by constructing a fantasy world, I’m trying to also lay bare how constructed our world is and how much choice we have in places we didn’t realise before,” they say.
The Breaking Story is a six-minute, six-channel video that presents six talking-head newsreaders from parallel universes or alternate realities—the artist, again, lightly disguised in various wigs and costumes, face painted as in Chinese opera, and filmed sitting at different studio desks. Each of them begins his/her news update with “Today’s top story” or “This just in.” These narrators are unaware of each other, the artist declares, but they speak in turn, without overlapping or interrupting, sometimes directly contradicting each other (“You are not what you think you are,” “You are what you think you are.” “A hero turned out to be a villain,” “A villain turned out to be a hero.”), sometimes finishing another’s thoughts; occasionally all six characters even break out into group sighs or laughs. Sin violates the dramatic unities of time and space and normal notions of selfhood by “undoing binaries” while playing with true and false dichotomies. Two of the six characters are named opposites: the red-headed ‘male’ Storyteller spells tales, authoritatively creating and controlling reality; the silver-haired ‘female’ Change, a kind of weather forecaster, challenges “the hegemonic narratives that we exist in”, as the artist puts it in the show catalogue, since nature usually supersedes culture.
Dreaming the End is a 22-minute single-channel video that follows, or seems to follow, a narrative thread. It begins with a shot of Change’s hands cradling a book in which the opening words “Once upon a time” are followed by a repetition (or epizeuxis) of the word ‘name’, so that it loses meaning and becomes ridiculous. The glamour of a dinner scene in sumptuous, gilded surroundings is subverted by the male and female diners—Sin, again, in cosplay regalia—talking past each other: “I’m telling a story,” “I’m not telling a story.” The woman leaves and is replaced in the next scene by the Storyteller, who explores Rome’s 1940 neoclassicist/fascist Square Colosseum, with its De Chirico ground-floor arcades populated by statues, and a hedge labyrinth filled with talking statues reminiscent of Jean Cocteau’s in Beauty and the Beast, who engage this new Alice Liddell in aphoristic duets.
“You emerge from a clearing from which you can see things for the first time.”
“Every time the story becomes embodied, it changes a little.”
“I am also aware of the words shaping me as I speak them.”
“I am pulling meaning out of vibrations in the air.”
The Storyteller returns to the ornate dining room at the end of the film, promising to tell us a story. The story begins all over again, like a repeating dream, perhaps: one that slightly changes reality, as concepts of western femininity have changed, embodied differently in the brave new non-binary gender-identity universe.
「The Story Changing」是單慧乾首個在美國舉行的博物館展覽。單慧乾是一位生於加拿大的香港行為藝術家，後來更成為電影製作人。是次展覽會於加州的柏克萊大學藝術博物館的Matrix 284 Gallery和旁邊的走廊展出單慧乾的兩件錄像作品。這個展覽名稱喚起了這位後現代主義藝術家對身份認同的形成的想法和表達。單氏認為身份認同是流動和受文化影響的，而不是先天決定。身份認同亦應該是自主定義和以行為表達的，就如深深吸引單慧乾的酷兒變裝表演一樣。單慧乾這位於2009年在倫敦修讀藝術的學生最近曾入圍透納獎。單氏說：「我認為變裝是一面放大鏡，放大事物讓人可以更仔細觀察。」
在訪問單慧乾的策展人Victoria Sun補充：「語言是建築我們的世界很有效的道具，但同時亦限制了我們的世界。」單慧乾的多屏重複播放影像旁白沒有開始與結束，單氏把自己的的頭像與服飾誇張的男或女表演者結合；進行充滿矛盾和悖論的哲學對話，把主題帶回到關於姓名和身份的存在主義問題，像是一篇由Gertrude Stein、Eugène Ionesco和路易斯‧卡羅爾共同撰寫的文章，以及運用傳統實際特效的奇幻影像故事。回顧1930年代的超現實主義電影，或許還有Alain Resnais 1961 年著名的夢境解謎電影《Last Year at Marienbad》中所使用的巴洛克風格裝飾和雕像及平穩的旁白，單慧乾的《The Breaking Story》（2022年） 和《Dreaming the End》（2023年）都對性別和種族本質主義作出神秘而有趣的解構。單氏說： 「我認為我們生活在一個被建造出來的現實中，所以透過建構一個幻想世界，我試圖揭示我們的世界是被建造出來，以及展示出我們無意識中所作出的選擇。」
《The Breaking Story》是一段六分鐘的六屏錄像。每個屏幕都有一位主播在報導平行宇宙或另一個現實世界的新聞事件。單慧乾一如以往用各種假髮和服飾輕作打扮並畫上中國戲曲的臉譜，然後坐在不同的工作桌前錄影。每一個他／她都以「今天的頭條新聞」或「最新消息」開始報導新聞。單慧乾表示主播之間互相不知道其他人的存在，但他們輪流說話，不會疊聲或打斷其他人。他們有時會作出相互矛盾的發言（例如「你不是自己想像中的那樣」和「你就是你想像中的那樣」、「英雄原來是壞人」和「壞人原來是英雄」），有時又會幫對方作補充，有時甚至會幾個人一起嘆氣或大笑。單慧乾的作品違反時間空間和普遍的自我觀念，「取消二元」的同時又玩味著真與假的對立。六個角色中的其中兩個的名字意思相反：紅頭髮的「男性」名叫「講故人」，他靠著「講古」製造和操控事實；銀頭髮的「女性」名叫「變」，仿照天氣報告員，挑戰著「現存的主導文化」，如單慧乾在展覽目錄中所撰，因為本能常常會取代文化。
《Dreaming the End》是一段22分鐘的單屏錄像，內容跟隨著──至少看似跟隨著敘事線。影片的開頭是「變」的手拿著一本書，書的開首寫著「很久以前」，後面重複寫著「名字」一詞，令文字失去意思、讓人摸不著頭腦。晚餐一幕周圍金光閃閃的奢華氛圍被男男女女的食客破壞，單慧乾仍是穿著誇張的服飾，食客們說著：「我在說故事」、「我不是在說故事」。一位女士離開了然後下一幕被「講故人」取代。「講故人」探討羅馬1940年代的新古典／法西斯主義方形鬥獸場，其De Chirico風格的地面拱廊擺滿雕像，還有一個充斥著會說話的雕像的樹籬迷宮，讓人想起Jean Cocteau在《美女與野獸》中參考Alice Liddell故事的雕像。
「你從一片空無中誕生，在那裡你第一次看到了事物。」
「每當故事具體化時，它都會有一些改變。」
「我也意識到當我說話時，我的話會塑造我。」
「我從空氣的波蕩中感受到意義。」
在影片的結尾「講故人」回到華麗的飯廳，承諾告訴我們一個故事。故事再次從頭開始，也許就像一個重複的夢：一個稍微改變現實的夢，因為西方女性氣質的概念已經改變，在大膽創新的非二元性別認同宇宙中以不同的方式呈現。