top of page
2020
QUESTION PROJECT
TRUTH or MYTH?
IF NARRATIVES BECOME THE GREAT FLOOD
LIU YU
2020/11/27 - 2021/01/30
TRUTH or MYTH?
Myths hover between fiction and reality, mirroring humanity’s search for origins and reflecting cultural understandings of the world—could this open up another way for us to rethink contemporary worldviews?
If Narratives Become the Great Flood
The multi-channel, three-dimensional projection installation, If Narratives Become the Great Flood, comprises a set of back projections, a set of front projection onto clay figures, and a two-channel stereo. The entire installation resembles a theater without performers, and utilizes video images, writings, and clay figures from three different stages to engage the audience, and convey the artist’s observation of “mythology,” how myths are circulated and passed down, as well as how they mutate and produce unique narratives. Liu Yu chooses “the great flood” as the theme – a myth shared by 254 races spreading across 84 linguistic zones, using the world-ending flood and the origin of human beings as a common mythological narrative. She collaborates with Taroko-Hakka percussionist Sayun Chang, and indigenous students from Taishin Elementary School in Miaoli’s Taian Township to record the sound used in the installation. By doing so, the mythic legend is removed from specific space-time in history, and is represented through a contemporary script, narration, and video installation to capture the common, fluid quality of consciousness in dissimilar forms and media, while offering an alternative narrative clue departing from contemporary linear narrative and informed by the ancient mythic structure.
Sponsors l National Culture and Arts Foundation, Taipei City Goverment Department of Cultural Affairs
Supporting Partner l Panasonic Taiwan
ARTIST
LIU YU
Liu Yu was born in 1985 and is currently engaged in artistic creation. Beginning in 2014, she began to gradually develop a creation method in the vein of field-work documentation. Liu produced a series of works focusing on marginalized communities within the social structure, setting the existence of these groups against the current social or historical situation. Her works involve a variety of raw images and the reorganization of a large number of field surveys and reference material into her own unique creations. Solo exhibitions include ‘The history of the concave and the convex’ (Hong-gah Musuem, Taipei, 2018); ‘Several Ways to Believe’ (Taiwan Academy, Los Angeles, 2017); and ‘The ship of fools mooring’ at the train station (Kuandu Museum of Fine Art, Taipei, 2016).
EVENT
Myth: A Creative Performance Workshop
2021.01.09 l Phone Lin X Liu Yu l The myth might be an unverifiable narration technique for us in contemporary life, but it is a reality inseparable from the existence and daily lives of the indigenous peoples, as oral tradition is intertwined with their culture. Recalling how we, as children, believed that all stories to be true, we tried to reenact the story of a great flood in this performance workshop. Children played the role of the creatures and were asked to reinterpret how these ancient tribes assigned the various organisms to certain positions in order to maintain balance and order during the Genesis flood. We also tried to reproduce the process in which an unverifiable but actual occurrence could be shaped into a myth. Beginning with “The Great Flood is coming…”, pre-established character settings reinterpret how ancient tribes assigned these creatures to certain positions in order to maintain the balance and order of the land, while also recreating the process in which an unverifiable but actual occurrence could be shaped into a myth.
bottom of page