GBA4 | GBAFOCUS Friday, September 25, 2020 HONG KONG EDITION | CHINA DAILY

Different materials and sculptural methods used by Shirley Tse are thrown together Art in Playcourt (detail, Diversity matters below left). As a fresh iteration of Shirley Tse’s exhibition in Venice Biennale 2019 reopens in the West Kowloon Cultural District, the artist tells Chitralekha Basu about the core idea informing her practice and what makes it especially relevant at the time of COVID-19.

hirley Tse represented seven openings or more at one end. Hong Kong at the 58th The idea is to present a visual La Biennale di Venezia narrative without a clearly defi ned in 2019. A new iteration beginning or end. At fi rst glance, Sof Tse’s Venice exhibition, curated the installation could look like a by Christina Li, reopened at M+ wanton growth of wooden and Pavilion in the West Kowloon Cul- 3D-printed objects, mimicking Negotiated Differences tural District last week. Suspended wild shrubbery. The handcrafted features 393 almost immediately after its July spindles come in amazingly dispa- wooden spindles, launch in Hong Kong, owing to its rate, and unique, shapes, ranging held together by 479 unfortunate coinciding with the ris- from that of a badminton racket to 3D-printed connectors. ing number of COVID-19 cases in a sound-wave graph. The anthro- back home after a night the city, Stakes and Holders is, once pomorphic figures, entwined out with friends in the 80s again, open to public viewing. around a pillar or appearing to and wondering about the courtship. Her 2003 exhibi- COVID-19 lends context to the have a conference, seem to emerge mountain-loads of packag- tion, titled Does Cinderblock core idea informing the show, from this assortment of wooden ing materials used to wrap Dream of Being Styrofoam, which is about the contingent and bits and bobs only after one is cargo in transit — a curios- invokes a cult sci-fi novel by unpredictable nature of life. With done admiring the incredible ity that would eventually Philip K. Dick. the exception of the two world diversity of the components and lead to her research in plas- She continues to draw inspi- wars, never before was the provi- has stepped back for a panoramic tic and polymers and the ration from her reading of philo- sional and interdependent nature of view of the installation as a whole. extensive use of such materials in her sophical texts, especially those by human existence made so brutally Playing with audience’s expec- works. The somewhat eerie-looking the French philosophers Gilles apparent until a pandemic spread tations is very much the name of shuttlecocks with dark vanilla bean Deleuze and Roland Barthes. And like a multipronged chain reaction, the game. “Change, improvisa- pods for plumes and a red rubber although she stops short of mention- altering the lives of people the world tion and play are the key things in base are a throwback to Tse’s ances- ing Jacques Derrida, I imagine the over, one way or another. both installations,” says Tse, as she tors who worked in rubber planta- man whose concept of differance “After COVID-19, I do not even informs that there never was an tions in British Malaya and vanilla (spelled with an “a”) was about the need to think of a better example to original design for either since the farms in Tahiti, alluding to the nar- distinction, and divergence, between Los Angeles-based artist Shirley Tse owes her interest in packaging illustrate the idea. One infected per- idea was to dismantle and reassem- ratives of exploitation associated words and their intended meanings material to her growing-up years spent in Hong Kong. son can potentially a’ ect everyone ble the pieces in a di’ erent confi gu- with such forms of labor. is on her reading list as well. around them,” says the Hong Kong- ration each time they were installed born artist from her Los Angeles in a new site. “I am interested in the — the second installation of the create the impression of a robotic Philosophy of art To read excerpts from an exclu- home during a Zoom interview. “In idea of di’ erences. The changes (in show. In it are found wooden rack- face. A slab of nephrite — sometimes For an artist and academic who sive interview with Shirley Tse, a world of interdependence, you are each iteration) are meant to show ets with loosened netting, bikers’ called the poor man’s jade — sticks has lived in the United States for go to www.chinadailyhk.com/ counting on others to maintain the these di’ erences,” the artist says. helmets enmeshed in a net of plastic out like a tongue, as if to mock the 30 years, Tse is acutely conscious article/144338#Joining-the-odds equilibrium.” The significance of the term security loops, a lump of jade bal- sculpture’s own enterprise to pass of her working-class ancestry and Stakes and Holders comprises “negotiated” in the title is no less anced on a folded sandbag, among o’ as almost human. migrant status. “Being an immigrant two installations, which, in turn, noteworthy, she adds. For exam- other objects, which are strewn on “This show brings together all in America, I feel I am always in- IF YOU GO are an aggregate of numerous ple, at the time of putting together and around two aluminum bleach- the material I have used and all the between, like a piece of Styrofoam,” smaller sculptures. The installa- Negotiated Di erences in M+ Pavil- ers. The scene suggests a badminton sculptural methods I have explored she says. Shirley Tse: Stakes and Holders Curated by Christina Li with tion titled Negotiated Differences ion, “we negotiated the installation game set-up, but one can’t be too — carving, wood work, mold-mak- Although she opted for studying Doryun Chong. is an assemblage of 393 wooden piece’s movement in relation to the sure if the match is about to begin ing, 3D printing, assemblage — to sculpture over philosophy when Dates: Through Nov 1, 2020 spindles, attached to each other by ceiling and around the air-condition or already over, notes Tse. show that contemporary sculptural she went to graduate school in the Venue: M+ Pavilion, Art Park, 479 3D-printed connectors. Pulling ducts.” Playcourt also includes three practice can be very diverse,” says US because at that point words had West Kowloon Cultural District www.westkowloon.hk/en/stake- out a single unit from this chain of “So in Negotiated Differences, sculptures from Tse’s 2016 show, Tse. seemed like an inadequate medium sandholders/shirley-tse-stakes- wooden sculptures is likely to desta- there are negotiations between peo- Lift Me Up So That I Can See You Indeed, one could of self-expression, her fondness for and-holders bilize the ones around it, if not bring ple and objects, people and objects Better — a homage to Oscar Wil- probably read Play- word play is evident in the way Tse down the whole thing altogether. in relation to a space, between two de’s heart-rending short story, The court as a slice of Tse’s likes to name her works. What was The installation’s form has been spaces (Venice and Hong Kong), Happy Prince, in which trying to autobiography. It refer- Stakeholders in Venice is parsed into compared to a rhizome-like growth. and space and time as well,” Tse redress societal inequities ultimately ences her growing-up years Stakes and Holders in Hong Kong. Handcrafted on a lathe machine, says. destroys the protagonist. In one of — playing badminton on the Playcourt contains connotations the spindles are modeled after an these, called Jade Tongue, two poly- streets of ’70s Hong Kong, of both justice being served and enormous variety of recognizable Play is the thing styrene blocks are mounted watching the automated forms — from soy sauce bottles to The co-existence of heteroge- on a metal stand, to movement of cranes at the a scaled-down replica of Constan- neous elements is even Kwai Chung container tin Brancusi’s Endless Column. The more conspicuous in terminal on her way connectors look like pipe elbows Playcourt gone crazy. Some of these come with

Stakes and Holders, now showing at M+ Pavilion, is sculptor Shirley Tse’s visual commentary on the theme of heterogeneity and connectedness of things.

Film Review If only summits were such fun! By ELIZABETH KERR side-eye Donald Trump gets from in Wonsan, South Korean Presi- and Jo — and full credit to Jung Steel Rain 2: Summit has abso- nearly every corner of the globe. dent Han Kyeong-jae (Jung), North and Yoo for pitch-perfect straight- lutely nothing to do with 2017’s The tonally disjointed Summit Korean Chairman Jo Seon-sa (Yoo man reactions — at Smoot’s utter Steel Rain. It’s a sequel in creative starts its cleanly cleaved three acts Yeon-seok, Hospital Playlist) and ignorance of the world beyond his spirit only, reuniting writer-director hopscotching around East Asia US President Willis Smoot (Angus doughnuts and cheeseburgers is Yang Woo-suk and his leading men, as the North again plots a coup, a Macfadyen, still best known for worth the price of admission. Their Korean-wave star Jung Woo-sung shadowy right-wing Japanese fac- Braveheart) are kidnapped by sequences turn into a pseudo-three- and perpetual scene-stealer Kwak tion plots re-invasion of the Kore- Supreme Guard Commander hander that could easily have been Do-won, who also co-starred in an peninsula, China bristles at the (Kwak) and taken aboard a North its own fi lm. Yang’s breakout feature The Attor- South participating in a military Korean nuclear sub, to be held The last act revolves around the ney. In the fi rst fi lm, Jung played exercise, and the US threatens can- hostage until the coup is carried inevitable conscience-based, bloody a North Korean special-forces type cellation of peace talks between out. They’re locked in a stateroom mutiny, led by former submarine and Kwak a high-ranking South North and South. The fi lm uses very together. commander Jang Ki-sok (Shin Korean bureaucrat who got mixed sensitive, and very real, global rela- The comic back-and-forth Jung-geun), who was disgraced and up in a (ridiculously complex) coup tions as a framework for a standard among the three leaders forms the demoted for refusing to carry out attempt in Pyongyang. action fi lm. That’s about as analyti- basis of the second act, with Mac- what he considered illegal orders. A healthy dose of the regional cal as expected, but Yang isn’t really fadyen absolutely thieving the fi lm Summit fi nishes o’ as a standard geopolitical dynamics that laced interested in the real world — evi- with his gloriously outsized, blus- submarine thriller — bursting pipes, Steel Rain 2: Summit the earlier fi lm is here again. Jung dent as soon as act two starts. tery performance as an outsized, tense pings, drastic diving/surfac- Written and directed by and Kwak swap border sides, and Things settle down after a lita- blustery president. There are no ing — and though it has its share Yang Woo-suk. Starring Jung Yang throws a new character into ny of job titles crowd the screen attempts to hide the Trump impres- of exciting seabed chases nothing Woo-sung and Kwak Do-won. the mix in the form of the US presi- for 20 minutes and thoroughly sion, and the fi lm is funnier for it. matches the gonzo middle section South Korea, 132 minutes, and Macfadyen’s unhinged, gleeful dent, a less than subtle comic ri’ on confuse viewers with a string of The shared eye rolls, ego stroking IIB. Opens Sept 24. the current POTUS, confi rming the names. While attending a summit and ba¨ ed expressions from Han performance. A rare 2020 delight.