Emerging filmmaker, artist and performer Wu Tsang’s new solo show Under Cinema at FACT will investigate how artistic practice and its products are positioned to challenge dominant non-mainstream narratives.
The world premiere of a new commission film, Under Cinema, features the acclaimed American singer-songwriter Kelela, and was conceived as a site-specific installation for FACT’s Gallery 2, which is located under a cinema venue. The exhibition investigates issues of voice and representation through innovative filmmaking methodologies, questioning the reliability of the fixed image, as well as the viewer’s gaze. Under Cinema will be showcased at FACT from 26 October 2017 until 18 February 2018.
Alongside the new commission will be the UK premiere of We hold where study (2017), a two- channel projected film which takes a choreographic approach to image-making and mourning. The film features duets of performers moving through different landscapes as seen from a disconcerting and subjective viewpoint.
Moving fluidly between documentary, activism, and fiction, Tsang’s intimate approach and continuous re-interpretation of the roles of history, language, music, and performance creates an immersive other-worldly context for her characters. Her filmmaking style tends towards the magical realist, and focuses on the increasing importance of imagination in both storytelling and the day-to-day. For Tsang, the relationship between the cinematic and the social is inherently problematic, and her filmmaking becomes a testing ground for collaboration and repeated, perhaps ritualistic, refusals of representation.
Tsang’s new commission is a co-production between FACT and Warp Records, and is developed with the support of the Goethe-Institut, London.
We hold where study was commissioned by curator Nadja Argyropoulou for Polyeco Art Initiative.
This exhibition is a collaboration with Nottingham Contemporary, where Devotional Document (Part 1) took place earlier this year.
Wu Tsang: Under Cinema Exhibition at FACT, Liverpool 26 October 2017 – 18 February 2018
www.fact.co.uk
RELATED EVENTS
The Related Events accompanying the exhibition will foreground experimental forms of filmmaking (particularly considering the role of activism and engagement within the practice) and will showcase artist-made film through a series of screenings, workshops and discursive events. FACT will present a wide-ranging programme, Refuge, which will investigate the notion of “refuge” or “safe-space”, in relation to art (and by extension to cultural institutions). These events will consider how art and artistic approaches can represent, or begin to give a platform to, a diversity of narratives usually underrepresented in mainstream media and discourse. The series, developed in collaboration with a variety of local partners, explores the positive effect of these possibilities but also their limitations and failures.
Alongside the exhibition, FACT’s Learning team will produce a variety of resources for Young People, families, and schools to better understand the themes covered in Tsang’s work, as well as her unique approach to documentary.
About the Artist
Wu Tsang’s films, installations, performances, and sculptures move fluidly between documentary, activism, and fiction. Her projects have been presented at museums and film festivals internationally, including MoMA (New York), Tate Modern (London), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), MCA (Chicago), MOCA (Los Angeles), Berlinale Film Festival (Berlin), SANFIC (Santiago), Hot Docs Festival (Toronto), and South by Southwest Film Festival (Austin). Her first feature film WILDNESS (2012) premiered at MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight, and her work was also featured in the 2012 Whitney Biennial and in “The Ungovernables” New Museum Triennial in New York. She has received grants from Creative Capital, the Warhol Foundation, and the Rockefeller and Guggenheim Foundations. Wu Tsang is based between Berlin, Athens and Los Angeles, and is represented by Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin. wutsang.com
