10 Questions with Yu Chin Tseng

Tseng Yu Chin, currently based between Berlin, Amsterdam, and Paris, began his career as an experimental filmmaker, and at the age of 27, he was selected as a finalist in the Experimental Short Film Program of the Taiwan International Golden Horse Film Festival. Afterward, he concentrated on the artistic expression of video as a medium during his graduate studies and officially entered the field of video art-making (or extended cinema).

At the age of 29, he was selected as one of the youngest artists at the 12th Kassel Documenta in Germany for his work "Who is listening?" and the following year, he received the China Contemporary Art Award. The following year, he was awarded the China Contemporary Art Award and became one of the most representative video artists in the world at that time. His work is based on the human body and the subjective mind, using the body to discuss self-existence, identity, politics, society, and contemporary values, and the distorted and out-of-control state of the subjective consciousness of society, which is coldly and violently inflicted on the individual's body. The use of video as the main subject expresses the political embarrassment of the body being present but the spirit being absent. The most iconic series are the Child Body series and the Teen Body series, which use the body as an indictment of society as a whole and the constant feedback of the self.

He is a video art-based artist; all his artworks, from the use of media to the form of presentation, are based around the thinking of video art, all of which can be discussed in relation to the proposition of moving images itself. Express the political embarrassment of the body's presence but the absence of the spirit. This is what often fascinates him, and he keeps searching for it, a photograph, a text, an image, a sound, an illustration, an installation, all of which he can't stop gazing at and making. The most representative series are the children's body series and the teenage body series. The teenage body series is currently in progress.

Now he is trying to escape from his own country, from a country that is considered by the world to be democratic, Taiwan, a country that is eager to deal with authority and is gradually turning itself into another totalitarian consciousness. During his early years of international visibility, the Taiwanese government used a flexible but strong request to abandon his own creative concept and instead produce works that promoted a positive image of the government and showed its allegiance to it. But he decided to refuse this request, and as a result, he was silenced in Taiwan for almost fifteen years. He felt deeply the disguised dictatorship of the democratic world, or the backroom political manipulation of Taiwan, and the embarrassment and disappearance of the presence and existence of the people he had long discussed in his work in each moment.

For him, this is already a very abrupt state of affairs, and he just wants to find the dignity of his own creative freedom after being banned by the government for a long time.

He has long been concerned about the disorder of self-consciousness in any one moment, the sudden conflict between physical presence and consciousness, and believes that all of them are not just single-minded individuals at all times but are in urgent need of constant control of the body in each moment. This complex thought-consciousness, yet constantly anxious in the active or passive control of the physical body, allows for a sudden disorientation and drowning of one's being, a moment that he finds very beautiful and a reality that cannot be ignored.

And in every disorderly state of human self-consciousness, He believes it is possible to look closer at one's own existence in the present moment and to point to three questions about oneself in the present.

+Why am I here?
+What am I doing?
+How did I get to this state?

These three issues are so strongly highlighted in the disordered moment that you cannot ignore them, can see beyond the axis of time, can see both the past present and the imminent present existing simultaneously in the state of staring at the disordered moment, any but also brings out the sadness of human existence; you become part of the whole, you can only see yourself living in it, trapped in the darkness of this human quagmire. You become part of the entire thing; you can't get out of it; you can only see yourself surviving in it, trapped in the darkness of this human morass, and because we will eventually die, we continue to live under this eternal nonsense, but the constant disorder of self-consciousness becomes a possibility to stare at the whole of life.

tsengyuchin.com | @howl_howl_howl

Ok, you are gone. Oct 05 2022, video, 2022 © Yu Chin Tseng

INTERVIEW

Please, introduce yourself to our public. Who are you, and how would you describe yourself as a person and an artist?

My name is Tseng Yu Chin, a video artist, a radical thinker but a moderate behavioral person. Born in an Asian country, my mother tongue is Mandarin, and I am currently living in Rotterdam, Netherlands, with my partner.
All along my artistic journey, I have often recalled an incident from my early childhood. My parents were very strict and conservative, even too strict. I always remember a dinner party where my parents met their good friends and their children, i.e., the two families, to have dinner together at a Japanese restaurant. As a child, I felt a sense of extreme impatience as I watched my serious parents and their friends having a serious conversation; as I watched my parents smile politely and speak in a serious, stilted voice, I suddenly imagined a scene in which my parents and their friends started bumping their heads against each other's, like two balloons bumping into each other, they kept bumping their heads against each other, but still keeping the conversation in a serious manner. I started to imagine this unexplained behavior, like watching a cartoon in my head, I started laughing, and I couldn't stop laughing at the sound; at that moment, my mother tried to stop me from laughing out loud, and it all stopped when my mother slapped me until my mouth bled, and all I could see was my mother's maddened angry face.
Wow, so the imagination can hurt or be capable of damaging, passively or actively, I thought at the moment.
That's when it started; I have been fascinated by the sudden moments of disorder or disorientation that occur in everyday life, whether in a group or in solitude. Is it a loss of normalcy? But no, and very briefly, although I do like to see people in a state of mental breakdown. These sudden occurrences, whether in my mind's image or in real life, see a very subtle look on the person's face, a blank but misty look in their eyes. Is the person present in that state, or is it a fading or reinforcing one? All of these things make me think and imagine what kind of story could be happening, and it's a scene that actually occurs in our lives almost every day. It's like a fragment of everyday life suddenly appears, and I like to watch it happen in silence.
I am very used to capturing these fleeting and sudden everyday events with my camera, video recorder, audio recorder, or just my eyes. They become elements and nutrients for my artistic creation. And then, I present these captures in films, photographs, illustrations, and installations as a kind of record, evidence, and specimen. After a period of life observation and artistic creation, I turn my attention to the quieter or solitary condition of human collapse and the physical and mental state of a person before or after an episode of grief or anger, which is a quiet and forceful response to the world, an atmosphere that is about to happen, or the aftermath of what has happened, which fascinates me even more, a deeper and more extreme aesthetic and philosophical aspect.

How did we get to this place, Installation, 2022 © Yu Chin Tseng

When did you first realize you wanted to be an artist?

I don't know when I first learned the phrase "artist," perhaps when I was a child, someone, I've forgotten who, suddenly whispered in my ear: "You should be an artist." That's how I remember the sound of a voice in my ears, and I always felt that I should be an artist from a very young age, even though I had no idea what an artist was. But in the country where I grew up, the profession of the artist was not recognized; it was like being a vagrant or being treated as a lowlife. My mother felt the same way, and she constantly suppressed and even scolded me for being ungrateful to my mother if I wanted to be an artist.
However, in my early childhood, my habitual imagining was to resist the reality of discontent and doubt that made me feel safe in my head. I imagined many incidents; I observed small events in my life, and I imagined them and extended them. In my mind, these are all kinds of fragmented and chaotic images and sounds, and settings.
After graduating from high school, I was severely sexually assaulted by strangers, but no one knew about it. By the time I got to university, I was being bullied by my college classmates and teachers because I was gay, and I was even verbally abused and told I should kill myself. My mother had a hunch that I might be gay, so she said personally that she would commit suicide if I was gay. And I have tried to talk to people about these things, but no one takes what I say seriously, thinks I'm just making it up, or thinks it's my fault that I'm the one who caused it.
I was driven to a point where I had nowhere else to go when my self-consciousness resisted even more. I had to save myself, and I had to start looking for ways to save myself with only myself. As a teenager, I learned in a very rudimentary way that art could heal my mental state and express the events that had happened through art, so I returned to the area where I was blurred between imagination and reality. I began to make images or photographs or drawings. I started to produce a lot of different kinds of work; it was then that I began to think that I could use art to resist the outside world. Creating art was something I could do to protect myself or to swear at society with ferocity, and it became clear to me that I wanted to be an artist to defend myself against the world.

What is your artistic background? And how did you develop into the artist you are today?

I studied Multimedia Design for Advertising at college, specializing in multimedia video and animation, but I have always done my own work and have not let the constraints of the college stop me from creating. Later on, I studied Technology Arts and met some professors who could understand my work, but at that time, they let me develop on my own. My academic education did not help me much. I am not a creator who cares much about technique, nor do I trust art theory or philosophical theory. I don't think it's necessary to show technique or theory in order to create art, it's more about what medium the art itself needs to speak, and that's more my concern.
I believe in my own creative instincts because of my past experience, combined with reading and watching a lot of films. I've trained myself to bring together the states of life and observation and the fantasies in my head, which I like to describe as a kind of orgy, very direct and relevant, a very intimate process of closeness and penetration, and to let it all happen in my head, to produce images and sounds in my head intuitively. It's like I'm being told passively that I need to make these images and sounds, letting this happen.
But having lived in a repressive Asian society for so long, we learn to express things in a roundabout way almost from a very young age, and I no longer try to express what really happened, which is unnecessary; I have a warning for myself: No one will understand you even if you are talking in tears, or if you are talking with a laugh.
That's why I like to alternate between silence and howling in my work. I like to translate what I want to say into codes or hide it in my work, which becomes my intuitive judgment in creating art. I also enjoy the moment when the viewer can only feel the fragments and subtleties of my work. Even when the viewer is looking at a silent work, the work is full of cursing and shouting, whereas an extremely agitated work is, in fact, an expression of the deepest silence. Overlaying layers of emotion and visual technique, this is my favorite expression of conflict and confrontation.

You already have a long and successful career with significant international experience. What is one lesson you learned over the years from your artistic career?

What I learned was honesty, that an artist should be honest, that an artist should respond directly to each of their works, that the artist's presence can be found in their work, that there should be no excessive technique, no excessive strategy, no excessive theory, that these constantly take everything away from the artist, that the artist becomes an unwanted presence and loses his responsibility as an artist.
Although it is very cliché, I believe that in the current artistic environment, the best way to express oneself is, to be honest with the artistic works.

Pollution Witness 2019, Dirty Finger, mixed media, 2019 © Yu Chin Tseng

You also participated in Documenta in Kassel, one of the most important international art events. What was your experience like there?

I was the youngest artist at Documenta in Kassel at the moment, and everything was still crazy and naive, and I was always excited to say: this is all so rock and roll!
The most profound feeling I had at that time was the relationship between each artist and their own work. I could clearly see that the temperament of different works was linked to the artist. The relationship between the artist and his work was obvious to me, and the relationship between the artist and his work should be interactive. The artwork is a direct and honest representation of the artist's thinking in each moment, and the artist needs to be fully immersed in their own artistic creation process.
But it was also a time when I was thinking deeply about the relationship between my national society and myself. In the course of the exhibition, you are constantly asked about your perspective on your own country and society. When an artist is placed in a highly significant art exhibition, it is not only an expression of your own personal state but also a reflection of the cultural state of your own country.
How do you get your artwork and ideas from the country you grew up in, and I begin to think about how I see my relationship with my own country.
It's like being asked a question directly and explicitly to answer how you perceive the society in which you are living.

Your work with video art is politically and culturally charged. So much, that you also had some disputes with the Taiwanese government. What can you tell us about this issue? And how did you overcome this situation?

My work has long focused on the human being in every moment of loss of control, concentration, and silence. It is not only an exploration of personal consciousness but also goes back to the traditional proposition of the meaning of existence, but it also touches on every aspect of people's current society, culture, and life, reflecting through their experiences of the collapse or fragmentation of the whole environment and social structure.
It is important to understand that Taiwan is a very small island, surrounded by sea and very closed, and the international community does not yet fully recognize it as a country. Very few people in the world know Taiwan on many levels, and it is very easy for the Taiwanese government to control the whole island. Everything is politicized, including the state of the arts, which follows the government's policies.
The international community is completely unaware of how the government on this island actually controls the people of Taiwan, and Taiwan has developed its own political and artistic environment that is completely parallel to the international one.
At the time, I was the only artist from Taiwan to enter the Documenta in Kassel in 50 years, and Taiwan had not been on the Documenta watch list. When I returned to my country from Documenta, many paradoxical situations occurred, which can be discussed at the level of the Taiwanese government and the artistic environment in Taiwan, as well as the reaction from China.

Politically, Taiwan was internationally regarded as democratic and free and maintained a long-standing international image of confronting Chinese power. However, Taiwan embraced many Chinese artists at the time, including Ai Weiwei. Taiwan's largest official art museum never helped Taiwan's own artists to hold solo exhibitions in its largest exhibition space, and Taiwanese artists could only exhibit in the basement of the museum but helped Chinese artists Ai Weiwei and Xu Bing to hold solo exhibitions in their largest exhibition space. Even all the art magazines in Taiwan have given full coverage to every Chinese artist at Documenta in Kassel, while my presence was never mentioned in Taiwan at the time.
On the Chinese government side, as I was about to go to Documenta, I received a phone call from a completely anonymous person asking me directly if I was going to attend Documenta. When I found out that I was definitely going to attend, the caller said: "How can that be? Taiwan is not on the list! After that, he hung up. And after the Documenta, China took it upon itself to award me the Ai Weiwei Prize for China Contemporary Arts Award; Taiwan was outraged and found a powerful force to call me a traitor, a traitor to my own country!
Absurdly, Taiwan sent the government's biggest co-curator to meet with me privately and in a moderate but forceful manner, hoping that I would stop doing work that questioned the state of Taiwan society as a whole, but of course, I didn't believe they could understand my work. They wanted me to start promoting the good side of the government, such as the government's tolerance of foreign workers or the government's focus on the well-being of low-income people, and they wanted me to shoot foreign workers in my work. They wanted me to do this kind of work to promote the international image of Taiwan, but I refused on the spot.
Of course, the image of Taiwan is still liberal and democratic, so the government has used the most tactful and subtle methods to slowly make me lose my international visibility. And this brings us to the art environment in Taiwan, which is controlled by the government. The government is not only the main financier of most art activities in Taiwan but also controls the quality of the content of each work.
The entire art environment is designed to please the government for the sake of funding and position, and even the entire jury system is designed to assist government censorship. Sadly, all art exhibitions and competitions in Taiwan have been judged by the same group of judges for a long time. In the year I entered Documenta, many important exhibitions and competitions in Taiwan were openly disqualified on the grounds that I was not a professional artist. The fact that I got into Documenta is a complete disruption of the political and artistic balance in Taiwan.
So, while the government was trying to keep me out of the international spotlight, the art environment in Taiwan was actively cooperating. I later learned that after Documenta, I was approached by many international institutions and curators, and at a time when Facebook was not even very well developed, they could only find me through government agencies and art institutions. But all the institutions in Taiwan were unanimous in saying that they did not know me as an artist, and then they took it upon themselves to recommend artists that fit the government's profile, and some even declared me dead, which gave me shivers.
So for the next fifteen years, I almost disappeared from the international art scene, and Taiwan tried to disappear my voice in Taiwan. I tried to do a few exhibitions in Taiwan but was met with strongly negative criticism, and no one would believe my experiences in my home country, where you are not considered an artist in your own country, simply because Taiwan is internationally regarded as a free and democratic government, and I could no longer defend myself with my artistic work. I also tried to run a non-profit art space to help young artists but was suppressed by the government. During the years of silence, I began to suffer from mental illness a long time when I met my partner, but of course, I continued to make art and did not stop creating. At that time, I decided to disappear from Taiwan on my own, and my partner, seeing my suffering, the anger, and the sadness I was suffering alone, asked me if I wanted to leave Taiwan to start a new life, so I decided to leave Taiwan.
But have I overcome all this? In the years before I left Taiwan, I slowly regained my quiet life, continued to make art, and continued to do physical exercise, but mentally I wasn't able to get out of these oppressions completely, but I am now trying to get back to a quiet state of creativity, and I need to slowly settle down these almost 17 years of experience, but these experiences have given me a more abundant desire to create and a deeper reflection on life.
As the artist Not Vital said: out of sympathy, that it's never happening. I don't need to be sympathized with, but to discuss my work with me, to see my work.

Pounding of gaze, video installation, 2021 © Yu Chin Tseng

Your work has much to unpack, but we can say all your pieces deal primarily with the "conflict between physical presence and consciousness," as you mention in your statement. What messages do you ultimately want to convey with your work? What would you like the viewers to learn from it?

I'm glad you mentioned this part. I've always believed that artworks should exist in a very mysterious way, that you can't read everything at once, and that the viewer should be able to be silent in front of the work and then start reading the work itself.
When I was in Taiwan, there was a playwright who said that extreme optimism comes from extreme pessimism. At the time, this statement made me think about it for a long time. Although I don't believe that optimism exists, I do believe that sadness and anger are the driving force of being human. We should face the power of grief and anger, the deeper philosophies that are transformed when we read all the anger and grief in detail.
But for the audience, I always see it as a mutual learning process. I am offering my perceptions and observations of life. I hope that the audience will reflect on the meaning of their own lives, and the impact and importance of their own perceptions of life. As human beings, we often deliberately ignore our own perceptions of life; each of us has our own profound and serious views. The viewer becomes an element in the moment of watching the work, a kind of projection that feeds back into each viewer and brings away a richer experience of life.

Is there anything else you would like to experiment with?

There are two things that I have always wanted to experience in my life. Firstly, to work with an experimental band to make a concept video for an entire album, from concept to idea to production, is an experiment and a challenge I've always wanted to experience, to execute a concept in a completely different form to my own work.
Secondly, I have always held small solo exhibitions in the past, but in the future, I would like to hold my solo exhibition in a large art museum or gallery, where I can spread out my works in a complete art space and think about how to display and exhibit all my works over the past 20 years. The point is that I hope I can see each piece of artwork being treated well, even just once.

You are currently based in Rotterdam. What is the art community like there? Do you find it an excellent place to create?
I have just moved to the Netherlands for a year, and I love the energy of the country. The art scene in Rotterdam is relatively active and relaxed, with many small art festivals and events to attend.
I really like an art institution called BRUTUS, which uses a huge abandoned factory as an exhibition space and is the most contemporary art venue in Rotterdam. I would love to work with them sometime.

And lastly, what are you working on now? Do you have any new series or exhibitions coming up?

I am actively applying for art residencies in European countries to meet more artists and to make the European art scene aware of me as an artist. I am not a political artist, but because my experience is political, it is best to talk about it in person, and interviews such as yours are also very helpful.
After decades of experience, I have a deeper sense of human existence. It is inevitable that we will die, but before we die physically, we should face our spiritual state. But before the death of the body, we should face our spiritual state and have a deeper understanding of human nature, a deeper and more intense feeling of anger and sadness. Therefore, I continue to make artworks and continue to discuss the present moment in which we live. I also began to discuss the state of the artist's existence in this contemporary situation. I am looking forward to what I can do next. I have been preparing drafts of my work for almost five years, and I will be making them slowly.
And because I've left the place where I felt sorrowful, I'm free from all the artistic situations that made me feel exhausted, and now I'm completely free and unrestricted. I don't have any restrictions on collaborations or contacts, so I leave it up to chance and coincidence, and I think that apart from working hard to produce honest artwork, the rest is destiny.

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