Information

Date: 2018.5.12 (Sat) 15:00 – 16:30
Location: KWM artcenter
Free Admission.
Notice: A kind reminder that there’s no entry 15 minutes after the beginning of the event. Please keep your phone mute during the screening and talk.

Screening Information

“SIGhostNAL” is a short film directed by Chinese artist Chen Zhou starring Argentinian artist Amalia Ulman. The work concerns a fish born in a fish tank in a high – level conference room of a law firm. It is trying to escape its trapped situation. After making a jump for it, its soul is released from its body swimming into the video camera of a conference room. At that moment, the soul of a lady drags her luggage into the same conference room. She stays, sleeps and meets the fish in a dream. They don’t know where they are. The film is based around their encounter.

”SIGhostNAL” is an invented word created by Chen Zhou, to describe human bodies as though they were ghosts, wandering in every part of a virtual world, experiencing the chaos in a state of limbo between life and death.

Amalia Ulman plays both the roles of a beautiful lady and her own soul in the film. In her practice, she is known for creating a series of fictional roles on social media platforms tempting an audience to believe in them. The tension between the objectivity of the photographic image and subjectivity of the emotions in her project aid the public to fall for her fantasies. Creating real life scenarios for an audience, she invites them to spy on her life, involve themselves into her identities, and engage with the emotional aspects of her fictions. This is her first collaboration with an artist in China.

On the one hand ‘Work’ can liberate women, but it can also transform the persona into a role that is then hard to break free from. As the awareness of urban professional life and female identity have become unavoidable in the Chinese work place, Ulman’s art, directly and uniquely, provides a fantasy out of real elements, stimulating each viewer to reflect upon and feel the dramatic dilemmas of everyday life.

This film event is a collaboration between KWM artcenter and NOWNESS who are both honoured to invite Director Chen Zhou to screen his new short film. After the film screening, Chen Zhou will have a conversation with Zhang Yuling, Art Director of KWM artcenter discussing the making of the film and current themes reflected in the production.

Guest Speakers Information

Chen Zhou (b. 1987, China) works on Contemporary Art and Film. His first feature, Life Imitation(2017), received the New: Vision Award at the CPH:DOX Film Festival,
Asian Perspective Award at DMZ film festival, and has been included in the Official Selection of 61st BFI London Film Festival. Recently the exhibitions he participated include: “Cold Nights”(Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, 2017), “2nd Asian Film and Video Art Forum (AFVAF)” (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea, 2017), “After Us” (chi K11 Art Museum, Shanghai, 2017).

Yuling Zhang is a graduate of Pekin University and Sorbonne Paris 1, and recieve a doctor degree of European medieval art history. She is presently based in Beijing, as the artistic director of the KWM artcenter. She is also an art documentary producer and script writer and visiting professor of the China Academy of Fine Arts, Hangzhou.

Partner Information

NOWNESS
Culture in Motion.
A leading global creative life video platform
presenting the best new wave short films
in design, fashion, music, food, architecture, travel, etc.
A go-to source of inspiration and influence,
and a movement for creative excellence in storytelling,
we celebrate the extraordinary of every day.