Hi Hi

Bassam here, and welcome to this space where ill be posting some WIP images of a project I’m developing with˚ʚJennifer Mehiganɞ˚ .me and Jennifer have made a lot of work in the past, some short film works and light^TM Collaborations but this will be the most ambitious of our collaborative works.

we generally use the picture below as our portrait, Jen being the horse and me being the armored figure _{(time for an update as i think we are now maybe both horses ???)}

We made this short film/video a while ago, and its functioned as a precursor to the work we are making together now. The work explored themes of divine retribution, queendom, and climate change through the lens of Catholic iconography, constellations, and Fallopia Japonica (Japanese knotweed). Through out the work you encounter images of embracing horses, highly stylized diagrams, floating eyeballs, a dead horse, a hand growing flowers out of its palm and other convulsing plant life.

I will be using this residency to build the world of the film we are making together, so ill be posting some images of character design, landscape layouts, portraits of computer generated flowers, CG outfits among other things. ❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀

There is a trinity of subjects I’m currently obsessed with: toilets, boglands, and crossroads. I’m fascinated by toilets and sewers and boglands and crossroads as gateways of egress and ingress to Underworlds where The Outcast Dead may dwell. Historically, those deemed criminals were often buried at crossroads and bogs for the same reason; that their souls may forever be lost and not find their way to salvation. As a trans girl and a witch, I’m in love with the phrase ‘The Outcast Dead’ (as used by Crossbones Graveyard near London Bridge, an unconsecrated Victorian burial site now dedicated to The Outcast Dead). 

My work is driven by the politics of the eulogy: who gets to be grieved, how that grieving is allowed to happen, and what kinds of stories are remembered of the dead. 

For this residency I’m going to begin developing a project mapping these gateways to the lands of the Outcast Dead, which I’m collecting under the title, ‘Sewer Sonnets’. I’m interested in sonnets as writing born of love and devotion, and I see devotion as being my main research methodology in this project. 

I always try to approach the subjects of grief and the dead with a balance of levity and care, because I truly believe grief to be both a transformative, inherently playful/magickal force and utterly world-destroying at the very same time. That being said, grief can be an intense and raw subject, particularly for those of us who have lost someone close to us, so please take care here. I’m always up for talking about this stuff though, so feel free to comment here.

Hi,

We are a cyber art collective, “Su and XTRUX”. We are Su, the individual artist, and XTRUX, which is a 5-member group. We’re preparing a few exciting projects this year. One of the plans is called The Space Warriors and the Digigrave, an extension of this project is what we plan exploring for the residency. It will be an adaptable “grave”, we called it Digigrave, which is sort of an artist’s last will exhibition. We will use some interesting addons to build it in the world of Minecraft.

The Digigrave is also a  “spaceship” . A spaceship which offers a different perspective of reviewing ourselves, to escape from those who are addicted to grand narratives of groups, categories, ethics, or families. It looks like a Taiwanese traditional tomb, and also recalls the memory of Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall built during the 1980s. It’s part of Su’s sci-fi story Space Warriors.

According to the story setting, Digigrave carries alien species to come and save the earth – or the island of Taiwan under martial law. In East Asia, during the last decade of the Cold War from 1984 to 1987, CTS, one of Taiwan’s only three official TV stations at that time, produced and broadcasted a very rare and weird sci-fi series, Space Warriors. It was basically copied from the Japanese series Super Sentai in late 1970s with modifications. At the same time, it also referenced the Gavan, the follow-up series of Super Sentai, and was mixed with some local elements. CTS eventually discontinued the series due to low ratings, inconsistent production quality, overt criticism from parents, and the import of the Japanese original on VHS and satellite television.

Unfortunately, the sci-fi did not open the people’s imaginative thoughts about the universe and the world, but rather, the series, combined with illogical fantasy and Chinese Folktales and even martial arts elements, subtly implied nationalism, Confucianism, patriarchy, and other values, which was a very strange and unique experience during the martial law period in Taiwan.