O critiqued on Expanded Space: (Re)play 【一人一點藝評社 One Point Critique Society】

Replay as Resurrection

A man told me the art space was temporarily closed for video repair while I was tiptoeing through the hallway, peeking inside the round window like a sneaking mouse.

I got inside eventually. There, two silent televisions, blank screens in darkness. This incident came to me like an omen, echoing the theme of the performance archival exhibition ‘Expanded Space: (Re)play’: What do we mean by replaying something that has already passed in a virtual world, a digital storage?

A stack of documents piled on the corner table of the room denotes that the discussion has long been fermenting for years. As seen in the room, Melati Suryodarmo has left behind performing objects accompanied by documentaries, Xavier Le Roy has aligned screenshots from video records of three re-performances—undoubtedly, camera footage plays a major role in recreating and reimagining live art. Dying as a metaphor: if transforming a real body into digital dots signifies a performance dying for the first time, do broken/corrupted/disappeared video records mark the second time? ( Someone once told me they envisioned the experience of death as 「熄電視」.）

I stared at the two shut-off display machines as if some sort of ghost was screaming and lingering around. I couldn’t witness the artist’s performance in person, and its copy was lost before my eyes. Yet, I knew it would be replayed at another time, in another space. This unfolding layer of ‘resurrection’ fascinates me. Unlike other types of art, performing art employs the ‘body’ as its material, etching the essence of life and death within itself, and the act of archive makes it more pronounced.

What is a being with a mechanical reproduced ‘body’ ? ‘My knee is not the way it was.’ said dancer Yvonne Rainer at the age of 81. The quote comes from one of the papers resting on the table. Human flesh inherently undergo a period of decay, while numeric counterpart possesses a completely different lifespan. Not perpetually preserved as it appears, perhaps each digital replaying is just a step towards the loop of dying and coming back to life.

Images were taken by the writer. - Jumping Frames- Expanded Space: (Re)play 展覽日期：13/9 - 6/10 展覽地點：Tomorrow Maybe, 4/F, Eaton HK Instagram專頁：jumpingframes.hk Facebook專頁：Jumping Frames 跳格香港國際舞蹈影像節