Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries
01 Jan - 25 Feb 2007
Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries
1 January – 25 February 2007
Curator: Fredrik Liew
I am almost hypnotised by the flashing images and the mesmerising soundtrack. It reminds me of the special state of mind one can enter while watching a film at the cinema. Or the feeling of sitting by oneself, deep in thought, at a bus stop in a city, in a flow of impalpable impressions. I’m not quite sure which. Perhaps a bit of both. The works are very filmic, hovering somewhere in the borderland of animation, silent movies, poetry and rap. In their films, events and non-events, important and unimportant things flash by at a frantic speed, not unlike the pace of life in the big city.
Using a simple technique, they create films for the Internet which they publish on their webpage (www.yhchang.com) as well as exhibit in actual gallery spaces. They often refer to the relationship of their work to the medium of the Internet. “We try to break as many rules as possible. We try to express the essence of the Internet: information. Strip away the interactivity, the graphics, the design, the photos, the illustrations, the banners, the colours, the fonts and the rest, and what’s left? The text.”
Without contradicting their ideas (I think), I’d like to claim that we are left with much more than text and that interactivity is a key feature of their art. An interesting aspect of their work is how they manage to critique their chosen medium from a conceptual standpoint while using the very same medium for creating powerful, engaging work that is not dependent on it. Their pieces are perhaps not interactive in the strictest sense of the word, but nevertheless, that’s what they become. The flashing images in combination with the rousing soundtracks captivate us and create alternating sensations of presence and distance (or boredom). As they say in one of their pieces, “Boredom and indifference are also essential to what we do! To what every serious artist does! And we’re serious! Deadly serious! We’re serious about boredom! Boredom is serious, damn it! Without boredom there is no art! Boredom is the stuff of dreams!”
As you see (or will see), their work is imbued with a fair amount of humour and self-confidence.
Y0UNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES are not unknown to the Swedish art-going public. In 2004, they participated in a workshop, exhibition and catalogue at Färgfabriken, Stockholm, with, among others, Ola Pehrson, with whom they became good friends. At the end of 2005, both they and Ola were invited to participate in the São Paulo Biennial, which closed recently, and were looking forward to exhibiting together again. When Ola and most of his family were killed in a car crash on Good Friday 2006, Young-hae and Marc rejected the piece they had been working on for the Biennial and made END CREDITS, which is their homage to Ola.
Like many of their other works, END CREDITS deals with the everyday, with life and the seemingly quotidian – events to which we attach little importance. The first half of the film is basically an account of such events: telephone calls, a barking dog, a brief moment of attention to the dog. Boring and monotonous.
Sometimes, however, the insignificant can be everything. The second half of END CREDITS relates to the first and makes me think of that which we may call the causality of coincidence. If you imagine life as an endless line of seconds and minutes, then a cough, a movement, a telephone call (or the absence of that call) will displace the entire chain of events. If you hadn’t done exactly what you did on a particular day, you would never have bumped into your old friend in the street. Then, that would never have happened. Of course, something else would have happened. If we follow this thought through, life evolves into millions of tiny, parallel realities. If we follow this thought through, we realise that we influence people’s lives all the time, even though it is impossible to predict it or to do anything about it. That’s life.
END CREDITS is about life. It is about how the most insignificant of events can mean the difference between life and death.
Fredrik Liew
1 January – 25 February 2007
Curator: Fredrik Liew
I am almost hypnotised by the flashing images and the mesmerising soundtrack. It reminds me of the special state of mind one can enter while watching a film at the cinema. Or the feeling of sitting by oneself, deep in thought, at a bus stop in a city, in a flow of impalpable impressions. I’m not quite sure which. Perhaps a bit of both. The works are very filmic, hovering somewhere in the borderland of animation, silent movies, poetry and rap. In their films, events and non-events, important and unimportant things flash by at a frantic speed, not unlike the pace of life in the big city.
Using a simple technique, they create films for the Internet which they publish on their webpage (www.yhchang.com) as well as exhibit in actual gallery spaces. They often refer to the relationship of their work to the medium of the Internet. “We try to break as many rules as possible. We try to express the essence of the Internet: information. Strip away the interactivity, the graphics, the design, the photos, the illustrations, the banners, the colours, the fonts and the rest, and what’s left? The text.”
Without contradicting their ideas (I think), I’d like to claim that we are left with much more than text and that interactivity is a key feature of their art. An interesting aspect of their work is how they manage to critique their chosen medium from a conceptual standpoint while using the very same medium for creating powerful, engaging work that is not dependent on it. Their pieces are perhaps not interactive in the strictest sense of the word, but nevertheless, that’s what they become. The flashing images in combination with the rousing soundtracks captivate us and create alternating sensations of presence and distance (or boredom). As they say in one of their pieces, “Boredom and indifference are also essential to what we do! To what every serious artist does! And we’re serious! Deadly serious! We’re serious about boredom! Boredom is serious, damn it! Without boredom there is no art! Boredom is the stuff of dreams!”
As you see (or will see), their work is imbued with a fair amount of humour and self-confidence.
Y0UNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES are not unknown to the Swedish art-going public. In 2004, they participated in a workshop, exhibition and catalogue at Färgfabriken, Stockholm, with, among others, Ola Pehrson, with whom they became good friends. At the end of 2005, both they and Ola were invited to participate in the São Paulo Biennial, which closed recently, and were looking forward to exhibiting together again. When Ola and most of his family were killed in a car crash on Good Friday 2006, Young-hae and Marc rejected the piece they had been working on for the Biennial and made END CREDITS, which is their homage to Ola.
Like many of their other works, END CREDITS deals with the everyday, with life and the seemingly quotidian – events to which we attach little importance. The first half of the film is basically an account of such events: telephone calls, a barking dog, a brief moment of attention to the dog. Boring and monotonous.
Sometimes, however, the insignificant can be everything. The second half of END CREDITS relates to the first and makes me think of that which we may call the causality of coincidence. If you imagine life as an endless line of seconds and minutes, then a cough, a movement, a telephone call (or the absence of that call) will displace the entire chain of events. If you hadn’t done exactly what you did on a particular day, you would never have bumped into your old friend in the street. Then, that would never have happened. Of course, something else would have happened. If we follow this thought through, life evolves into millions of tiny, parallel realities. If we follow this thought through, we realise that we influence people’s lives all the time, even though it is impossible to predict it or to do anything about it. That’s life.
END CREDITS is about life. It is about how the most insignificant of events can mean the difference between life and death.
Fredrik Liew