2019 Ching-Hsuan Lin x Shon Kim
Coming to My Place 2019: Ching-Hsuan Lin x Shon Kim
Lin Ching-Hsuan:
I graduated in the Graduate Institute of Animation from Tainan National University of the Arts, and I am now a PhD student. My works mostly belong to “experimental animation.” Actually I did not study animation in university; I did not even major in art-related subjects. Most of my works were graffiti. Later, because I was also into photography and collected many cameras and modified cameras, I started to think if I could transform images into motion graphics. However, I was not so sure which material to use, though. I really got into the field of animation when I started my graduate program. At first, I focused on the experiments on materials. I combined stop-motion animation especially with physics: for example, the process of ice melting. I also used other experimental materials that we are more familiar with in the history of animation, such as oil paint, sand, sketching on the film or object animation.
I made Weekly Diary (2011) in graduate school. I shot a clip for 10 seconds or so each week, and merged them together through deformation. Then I started to think: besides testing the materials or techniques, in what other ways coukd animation experiments be done? Take my later work (The Empty Box, 2011) for example. We might be familiar with the paintings in this work in terms of the content or the visual expression. However, I shot the back of the paper because these bleed-through marks on the backside are something that we were not able to fully control. I think this uncertainty is actually a rather unique quality in animation. The content of the video is more abstract and is about my mental condition along my creative journey.
Then I spent around three to four months shooting in a car for my graduation work (Breathe, 2012). We know that the fog on a car window sometimes vanishes in a glimpse. My creative concept back then was to express what was fleeting, and the quality of fog itself is quite similar to the concept I wanted to express. So I used stop motion, wiping the car window each time I finished drawing. The uncertainty of fog itself is to vanish in a glimpse or to change in shapes, quite close to our breaths or something that is fleeting. You could tell the lines in this work are quite simple. It is actually because the fog vanished very quickly. So I must capture the moment and then wiped it down to draw the next one. As for the content, besides the “fleetingness” as I mentioned, it actually has something to do with life and death as well. At the beginning, I zoomed in from a clearer real scene to the window, meaning the transition from the real scene to animation, which is something we think more imaginative and illusory. And then I zoomed out back to the real scene again. I shot the street scenery from inside the car, and the streets I chose are related to the environment where I grew up and studied. For example, this was taken beside the railway of Shanhua Train Station. It is easier, technically speaking, to shoot this kind of stop-motion animation in a studio. In a car I have to cope with problems concerning the power or the equipment, and to set the camera in a fixed position is quite a task, too. However, these are why making animation is so fun, especially experimental animation. There are a variety of possibilities to try. Those daily things we might not consider to become animation are actually quite suitable to be turned into stop-motion animation.
Then I went to Canada to study another graduate program in Computer Animation before I finished my graduate school in Taiwan. It was more commercial, so I was thinking how to make some experiments out of a quite commercial stuff. So I thought: maybe I could do something with the material to give it a more painting-like texture. After I finished the program, I worked for a local company for a while. I was not so much in love with commercial animation but I thought the director was quite interesting. He wanted to turn the documentary filmed by Betacam into 3D animation. I was making the characters and props then. We know that 3D means three-dimensional, but I could only see the character’s front face from the footage. What did the hair look like in the back, or what did the car look like from behind? I had no idea actually. Besides, he wanted to try some kind of 3D paper puppet experimentally, no longer pursuing the smooth-surface texture in 3D animation. These characters’ faces could only be this blurred, and we didn’t expect to get them more delicate. So even if it is 3D animation, we can still try to figure out if there are other unique expressions.
Most of my works originated from images. I started Unidentidied (2017) from painting several pictures about fluid in a row. The Mandarin pronunciation of “fluid” (“yi”) reminded me of “difference,” so from this concept I started to think about the differences in space or culture. Then I took stereograms as the main visual form of the work. We know about the stereoscope in the 19th century, right? You might have the experiences of reading those kinds of stereogram books, and if you view them with your eyes crossed, the images would become 3D from a certain distance. This stereogram [in my work] looks more like a stereoscope. When we are trying to view it with naked eyes, our eyes would focus on the front or on the back to bring out the depth. Thus there would be a direct tactile effect working on our muscles, which brings a sense of exhaust, because the images would become overlapped or separated intermittently. Part of this work came from the site-specific work I did when I went on exchange in Central Academy of Fine Arts in China. When I arrived there, I started to think about things that belong to Taiwan herself. That’s why I chose to juxtapose the scenes of the Palace Museum in Beijing and those on trains in Tainan.
My creative journey started from the experiments on materials, to the ones about seeing or about the relationship with spaces, including my later work Unidentidied. The narrative structure in it tends to be more nonlinear, since it is mainly composed of images. It is about the person that seems to be the hero in the work, how he gets in touch with the fluid, and what kinds of qualitative changes happen. I used juxtaposition to deal with the background. For example, on this side we see the ancient scroll painting in the Palace Museum, and the image on the right side was taken in Taiwan. By means of the stereogram I just mentioned, it seems to be overlapped yet separated at the same time, responding my reflection on my personal identity.
Shon Kim:
I first studied Fine Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, majoring painting. After that, I moved to Los Angeles to study experimental cinema and majored in Experimental Animation. Recently I have finished the PhD program in Animation but I still have to finish my PhD dissertation. Since I started with paintings in visual arts first and then switched to moving images, especially experimental animation; I’ve always been devoted to integrating still and moving images. For me, there is no separation between still and moving images. My works start from still images, which are in the category of visual arts. When they are made to a certain degree, I would transfuse movement to them with animation, giving them a cinematic life and exploring some unknown points between still and moving images. Each still image in my works becomes a frame – a basic unit of moving images. And every still image itself is a basic unit of visual arts. For such exploration mentioned above, I have learned both still and moving images at the same time, and I have realized that images could be seen as a whole, no matter if they are still or moving. From this starting point, I have named my own aesthetics “Frame Art.” It is based on frame by frame animation and it appreciates every frame. Ultimately, it talks about the organic relationship between still and moving images, and heads for the essence of the existence through movement study.
This four-minute clip basically introduces most of my works. As you can see, still and moving images are highly integrated in the works. I also make commercial animation. I just showed you some very different works because I really enjoy trying different extremes and going between commercial and experimental. Switching to another field, I do performing arts as well. I have always been interested in them because animation, moving images and performing arts are all about movements. So I have often cooperated with performers.
I have been working on a project called “BOOKANIMA”, which is a compound word of “book” and “anima”. The project is meant to give a cinematic life to books. The reference books I used normally contain a lot of series pictures. I have started from these to create movements and have brought them to life, just as what the word “animation” means. This is a site-specific project. I have moved to different places and have collected local materials such as reference books and sounds. I would do researches, recordings and held local exhibitions. By making videos about local materials, I would like to discuss about the relationship between a certain topic, the culture and the place. One of the series is Martial Arts. It was inspired from my childhood memories of reading related books. One of the works (BookAnima: Girl Action, 2019) is full of gender images, inspired from a certain Japanese culture. There is also another one about Anderson Silva, champion of mixed martial arts. Right now I am working on the project in Kaohsiung. During the residency in Pier-2, I have focused on Tai Chi and have bought more than fifty books about it in Kaohsiung, a lot of which are from second-hand bookstores. Besides, I have recorded the sound of the garbage truck and the “ding-ding” sound when Kaouhsiung Light Rail Transit is arriving and leaving the platform, in order to put them in the video.
Shon Kim:
Since my earlier works, I have decided to not just stay in one particular area and repeat myself. I became aware that I had to make some changes, in terms of both materials and concepts. I have also decided to focus on the uniqueness of each project instead of just on a single video, because it is a bigger scale for me to get deeper into different concepts. Every time I finished a project, I would renew myself and move on to the next one. This is my principle and point of view as an artist. I just found out it is dual-channel when I saw Lin’s Unidentidied today. I would like to ask further about how the audience are supposed to view the so-called stereogram. Do they need to wear special glasses?
Lin Ching-Hsuan:
Actually I left out the glasses on purpose, because when the audience are viewing it with naked eyes, it is more difficult for them to take control of the “uncertainty.” Some may not be able to see it, or some may lose their focus while trying to focus on it. However, this physical perception happens to respond to the state of being overlapped and separated intermittently, which is what I am intended to convey. If the audience wear the glasses, their state of viewing the work would be constant, because it is already perfectly set up technically. The juxtaposition I did is to generate, through the form, the consequent or contrastive effect about the relationships between different countries, cities or locations, or about the narrative.
Cheng Sheng-Hua:
Continuing your discussions, you both place quite an emphasis on a certain “ambiguity” in your works. The ambiguity lies not only in the images themselves, but also in what the works try to convey, which is quite different from the “certainty” in commercial animation. There is this ambiguity either in images or the topic and content. I’m wondering how you two consider and deal with it in your works.
Lin Ching-Hsuan:
I think Professor Cheng clearly saw what our works have in common. I think the ambiguity might have something to do with my personal situation right now. In a digital era, animation has become interdisciplinary and the definition of it has become a bit vague, especially for experimental animation. The ambiguity might have something to do with “fluid” as well. My works have been dealing with water. I think water is ambiguous and floating; its shape may change constantly. It can also refer to the question whether the fluidity might get a bit ambiguous when we’re thinking about our national or personal identities,.
Shon Kim:
I do not think about the uncertainty through the topics or the narratives, but rather from the historical position of art or the artists themselves. Art and artists have always been interdisciplinary and they point out the ambiguity and uncertainty. People always resist new things conservatively, yet good artists introduce the unknown, the ambiguous, the unidentified, the strange, the mysterious, the radical, and so on; so as to make the viewer react, ponder and have doubts in the daily life that they are already familiar with. Artists themselves might not know for sure where they are or what they are actually introducing.
Lin Ching-Hsuan:
Shon was graduated from the CalArts, which was the first school in the world to have a department of experimental animation. I am wondering when he finished the graduate school there and got back to Korea, which development phase was the Korean experimental animation in then? Take Taiwan for example, the development of experimental animation became more stable in the 1980s, after the Golden Harvest Awards was launched.
Shon Kim:
In Korea, animation is developed as an industry. On the other hand, however, many independent animation artists have started to rise since the 80s to the 90s. Frankly speaking, I might not be able to call their works experimental animation. Their works are more of independent, personal creations different from the commercial animation. But to be more precise, experimental animation is avant-garde. I could not say that there is experimental animation in Korea. Neither am I sure about Taiwan or Asia, because Asia has just started to take in and discover this area.
Cheng Sheng-Hua:
Lastly, I would like to invite the two artists to conclude what animation is to you.
Shon Kim:
Animation to me is about our existence. Moving images are like our lives and our existence. We go through everyday lives and time just goes by like this, and moving images are also an art based on time. These two match each other a lot. Animation is about me, about us, about our birth and about our death.
Lin Ching-Hsuan:
From the earlier definition to the digital era, with the boundaries getting more and more blurred, animation scholars have been talking about what animation is, and what extended animation could be. Let’s get back to the easiest way, to its Latin word root “anima.” It means to bring life to something, which is one of its essences. We could extend through other ways in terms of the materials or the technics, but essentially we could still think from this point.
Cheng Sheng-Hua:
The intersection of their definitions of animation could be a very good ending for today. Animation is real. It brings, out of something that does not have life, a new life in front of the viewers.