Proxy of Heaven

Tzu-An Wu makes experimental films. Most of his works are collages with heterogeneous images, audio, and texts in an attempt to inquire about the constructs of narratives and self. In recent years, Wu produced pieces of handcrafted techniques and experimentations with super 8mm and 16mm films, in which the artist explores the junctions and new possibilities of the production technologies for analog and digital images.

After WU’s arrival in New Zealand, WU has been trying to take a photo of the starry night sky every day with his phone, whether or not it was clear. The star photos can be interpreted as diaries. Using a 16mm Bolex camera to film the stars frame by frame with long exposure. Exposure time was determined by the mind. These uneven pulsations of lights correspond to the starlight changing along with the thoughts that were at mind. This film documents WU’s everyday ritual of star-gazing with the related associations and inspirations and forms a meditative process.

Born into a stretch of furry yellow, then hand-picked by the man he adores, a young rooster, COCKEREL, begins his caged yet sensual life as a native chicken farm's breeder without even knowing.

The cat I don't own runs through windows between different spaces and times, and it disappears before finishing a sentence. Using outtakes and rushes (what "fur film" means in Mandarin) to redeem the affects in these images we produced for. The film is the first volume of an ongoing exchange diary project between Erica SHEU and Tzuan WU. From the filming exercises and hand processing from the very beginning, we collaborate and experiment with different workflows of audio and visual between Taiwan and USA.

1st sound / image jamming between Amund Ulvestad and Tzuan Wu.

Many years after graduation. Some one left earlier while the party goes on. We made a day to visit the green lake together. In that burning afternoon. These fragments of over-exposed, out of focus film were produced without a purpose. Then seamed together by chance. All of these probably are merely a reminder of our rights of indulgence; These are things you should commemorate, these are your memento mori. Thousand layers of Absolute Terror Field. In the center the princess is still praying for maintaining the world. Covered by magic circles, under the urban plan construct with an inverted pyramid shape. She prays in a basement that no one could reach.

An experimental documentary which opens with a story of my family: my American aunt found a painting of my grandmother by chance, in a random Chinese restaurant in the middle of nowhere - she said she cried. By tracing this story and reproducing its meaning, the film wonders through different topics: the construction of the Cold War, USA and Taiwan relations, different generations of Chinese diaspora since the 1950s, contemporary immigration and cross-nation fluidity, family romances, religion, and ancestors...

The things we had lost in time differ, it is the reason why we can’t grow up together. Some events seem to be not important at the moment might became a crucial milestone in a personal sense. Through retelling and rewriting the memory, the pointless emotions turns to the flowing memory, and being able to preserved. The film was shot in 16mm, based on a childhood (false) memory, transformed with fantasies and symbolic objects, and performed in a public environment. The elements in the film are both the markers of emotion and time, with montage, the outside world and inner scenery came across to each other.

This work is an argument initiated with Wendy Brown’s article Resisting Left Melancholy. She applied Walter Benjamin’s notion of “Left Melancholia” to see the political thoughts and the norms in the left-wing movement/ theory traditions as the notion of melancholia. There is the thingness of the thoughts that can see as the lost object. Extends this idea, the thingness of thoughts, come from one’s personal or collective memories could become the pathological fixation.

Faires decay with self-irrrtation. Sweltering heat, sweats pour from their armpits.

A love letter in collage style, consisting of found footage and a strange reading of Kang-Chien Chui’s work, karaoke and diary videos.

A study of the plants, ducks and waterfalls in Oakley creek. The film is hand dyed with ferns I gathered in the creek walkway.

A documentation of the solar eclipses in an afternoon. I use different filters and multiple exposure, with both negative and reversal film stocks, compose this sketch of the sheltering black sun.

Shot / Edited on 16mm film stock, Cross-Processed by MONO NO AWARE, Transferred by DiJiFi.com.

Filmed in Auckland, New Zealand.