[documentation 01-main screen, 02-conversation]
James Coupe’s site-specific jalousie room, which he created in Hong Kong for the WMC_e5 (2014), is a world premiere.
At 5:00pm today (11 Oct), at WMC_e5’s Opening Forum, he will walk us through the conception and creation of this work. Please join us at Connecting Space-HK (18-20 Fort Strees, North Point)
jalousie (法)/1.嫉妒 / 2. 百葉窗簾
法國「新小說」大師亞蘭.霍格里耶1957年撰寫的小說《嫉妒》裡,女子與一位鄰居的交接一直被觀察著。觀察者是她的丈夫,或一個攝影機而已?不得而知。無論如何,觀眾都成了同謀,一直位處外面望進去。觀眾知道的亦僅止於此,全憑攝影機的描述 — 即使所描述的是甚麽無法確定、非線性,甚至是充滿矛盾的。
裝置是一個包含三個部分的觀察室:一個攝影機巨細無遺的拍攝及分析著展場外的街道及樓宇;另一個攝影機則拍攝一位在展場內的女士;還有一段三人的對話,當中的一個卻長久緘默。卻由一段旁述申聯一起。
作品探討觀眾作為偷窺者的角色,與及他們所佔據的碎裂、猶豫的敘事的視點。作品配合展場內的橫條狀窗戶,令觀眾永遠無法得知全貌。
jalousie / ʒaluzi / nf [1] jealousy; [2] venetian blind
In Alain Robbe-Grillet’s 1957 novel, Jealousy, a woman is observed in her interactions with a neighbor. It is unclear if the observer is her husband or simply a camera, but regardless, the reader is complicit, always on the outside looking in, all we can know is what we are told and even that is uncertain, non-linear and contradictory.
This installation is an observation room with three parts: a camera that meticulously and obsessively analyses the street and buildings outside the gallery; a camera that is looking for a specific woman inside the main gallery; and a conversation between three people, one of whom never speaks. Binding it together is a disembodied mechanical voiceover.
The work is concerned with the role of the viewer as voyeur, and the fractured, confused narrative that such a position provides. It uses the slatted windows of the gallery to ensure that what we see is always the part, and never the whole
About James Coupe
James Coupe 藝術家,英國出生,現以西雅圖為創作基地。近期的作品經常探討日常生活中「監視」引出的權力和意義,尤其現今高科技監控技術的應用,包括高清攝錄機、面孔識別軟件、電腦網絡搜尋器及社交網站內的計算程式等。Coupe專注新媒體創作,卻往往充滿著對「舊」媒體的思考,例如電影、文學,以及近期的「全景觀」。他的作品介乎虛擬、虛構、與真實之間,探討現今以監控主導的社會突顯人們對自身和彼此相互監視的形形式式,以至把討論引到「窺視癖」對「偷窺狂」的經典辯證論述。這次作品的重點,與其說是又一次對監控作出系統性的意識形態評判,不如說是Coupe對後現代人類的吊詭狀態的關注,試圖以監控作為核心,在題旨上以及作為隱喻的開發潛力上打開更多參照的可能。
James Coupe – “In his recent work, British-born, Seattle-based artist James Coupe examines the power and meaning of surveillance in our everyday life by working with advanced surveillance technologies, including high definition video cameras, facial recognition software, and computer algorithms derived from popular search engines and social media sites. Coupe works in new media but his artistic practice is anchored in an engagement with older media – namely, cinema, literature, and, most recently, the panorama. Situated at the intersection of the virtual, the fictional, and the real, Coupe’s work examines the ways that contemporary surveillance society simultaneously foregrounds self-observation and mutual observation, and thus mobilizes the classic scopophilic dialectic of voyeurism and exhibitionism. But, rather than subjecting surveillance to a systematic ideological critique, Coupe’s interests lie in the way surveillance provides a theme and metaphor for exploring the paradoxes of the postmodern human condition.”