Hsu Che-yu

City Strays

We encountered the dogs on the forays through Pristina’s streets. At night, we melded into the canine throngs, shadowing their movements until they dispersed and vanished. The residents imparted a saga of these dogs: in the late 1990s, as Serbian troops and Albanian insurgents clashed, domestic dogs were cast adrift on the battleground streets. Ever since, Pristina has been a tableau of roaming dog packs, with sporadic human-dog confrontations.

Demarcation

We captured images along a boundary within Mongolia, chronicling the contrasting landscapes on each side. This boundary delineates the realms of the Przewalski's horse and the domestic horse: on one side, a 506 square-kilometer sanctuary safeguards wild horses, free from human intervention – untouched and unaided; on the opposite side, horses lead entirely different lives under human care, serving as children's companions, workers, modes of transport, sustenance, and sources of amusement.

Rabbit 314

With a rabbit's dead body in hand, a glove puppetry performer reenacts the movements of rabbits as imagined by humans. The project was initiated by the death of a laboratory rabbit, and was inspired by the artist's family memories. The artist's grandma served in an animal laboratory for thirty years, during which, due to the particularity of her job, she had to dissect living animals for observation and experiments.

The Zoo Hypothesis

Referring to two historical events during World War II in Taiwan under Japanese colonial rule, they explore the performative relationship between ‘gestures’ and ‘horror’: For the memorial ceremonies at the zoo to commemorate animals that died during military operations, animals such as elephants and orangutans were trained to kneel down as a gesture of mourning. The other reference in their conversation is the execution of dozens of animals at the Yuanshan Zoo in Taiwan in 1944, intended to prevent civilian casualties caused by animals after the US military had bombed the cities. These unfortunate animals were later turned into taxidermy. Drawing on these historical observations, ‘The Zoo Hypothesis’ explores the role of technology in archiving the world and constructing human memory. At its center lie the tense relationships between animals and humans, and between matter and memory.

Blank Photograph

Artist Hsu Che-yu blends his digitally animated exploration of the relation between media and memory with an account of Taiwanese terrorist Yung Ru-Men, a bomb maker who idolised Japan’s suicidally-inclined United Red Army.

The Making of Crime Scenes

A film producer, an assassin, and a patriot. These aren’t three characters in this film but three ways of describing Wu Dun, a member of the United Bamboo Gang who murdered the Taiwanese-American writer Henry Liu and became a producer of wuxia films. Hsu Che-yu, who previously brought Single Copy (IFFR 2020) and Re-rupture (IFFR 2018) to Rotterdam, visits Wu’s abandoned studio to restage the events with forensic scanning techniques.

Re-rupture

While suspended from a crane eight storeys up in the air, a man performs a guitar solo. The act staged in homage to a failed art project from 20 years ago is one of several moments in Taiwanese history that artist Hsu Che-yu unearths and reanimates.

Re-rupture

While suspended from a crane eight storeys up in the air, a man performs a guitar solo. The act staged in homage to a failed art project from 20 years ago is one of several moments in Taiwanese history that artist Hsu Che-yu unearths and reanimates.

Re-rupture

While suspended from a crane eight storeys up in the air, a man performs a guitar solo. The act staged in homage to a failed art project from 20 years ago is one of several moments in Taiwanese history that artist Hsu Che-yu unearths and reanimates.

Microphone Test: A Letter to Huang Guo-Jun

The Microphone Test series is named after writer Huang Guo-Jun’s work Microphone Test. Two months before Huang committed suicide, he wrote an essay in epistolary style titled“To Mother,” in which he expressed his intention to kill himself to his mother. The writing style is filled with black humor and expressive quality, but he killed himself two months after he wrote this letter, and he did not leave any suicide note. Microphone Test: A Letter to Huang Guo-Jun is a video letter to Huang Guo-Jun. Through conversations with Huang’s works created before he died, the letter depicts private family memories of three good friends, and attempts to portray what in fact belongs to the artist, or perhaps everyone’s memories through the memories of these others. Or perhaps, what is important is not whose memory it is, but the process that memory is constructed and viewed.

Single Copy

An experimental biography of Chung-I, one half of a once-conjoined twin whose separation surgery at age 3 was broadcast live on Taiwanese television. Forty years later, artist Hsu Che-yu produces a digital scan and ceramic cast of the man's body in a playfully analytical take on doubling and copies.