Lin Shih-Chieh
Lin Shih-Chieh, who is based in Taipei, earned his MFA in Film and Video from the California Institute of the Arts. His works include experimental movies, documentary, and sound. His works focus on the theme of the interrelationship among personal memories, dreams, landscapes, and histories. In 2017, he stayed in the Cité Internationale des Arts and created artworks. His works turned to explore the myth and analyzed the origin of the narrative. ‘A Short History of Decay’ has won the best experimental film and the best music design in Golden Harvest Awards, Taiwan, 2015. It has been selected as the opening film of the 36th Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg.
- Location France / Paris
- Year of the Grant 2017
- Residency Cité Internationale des Arts
- Work Dreamland
My creation in this residency was ‘Dreamland.’ The idea was based on the story in 18 century. A Frenchman, George Psalmanazar, who claimed he was a native of Formosa (today Taiwan), and wrote a book of Formosa Ethnography even though he had never been to Asia. Under his pen, Formosa was an island with magnificent beauty and a fantastic scene. Reimagining reality with fiction and recreating another reality with reality have always been the subjects of my interest.
While visiting numerous exhibitions in Paris, I obtained various inspirations for creating artworks. I saw how international artists used a whole new language and a unique view to express prevailing global issues as well as political aesthetics. Therefore, I reflected that if I wanted to examine national identity in my work, I should present it from a broader perspective.
Artwork presentation：
‘Dreamland’ was an artwork with multi-channel video installations. One of them was exhibited during the residency. The video combined Asian anthropological photos were taken by European photographers in the early twentieth century, the ‘exotic’ street scenes of modern Paris, and the dynamic landscape images I took in Taiwan. I collaged all these materials to become the scene in Psalmanazar's dream. It was played on an old TV as if a man continuously switches the channels during late night when having insomnia.
As a movie fan or a creator, I always fantasize about Paris to be my Godness of Muse. I had finally made my dream come true by living and creating artwork in Paris. I have finally made my dream come true by living and creating artwork in Paris.