We Hold Where Study

Wu Tsang

Born in 1982 at Worcester (Massachusetts, USA), lives and works in Zurich (Switzerland).

Date: 2017

Medium: 2-Channel Color HD Video, Stereo Sound, 19min

Dimensions: Dimensions variables

Collection: Fonds de dotation Famille Moulin - Acquisition 2017

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Exhibition

from 11 Oct 2019 to 16 Feb 2020

Wu Tsang, We Hold Where Study, 2017 © Roman Mensing

The Chinese-American artist Wu Tsang has been developing a critical line between individuality and community. She makes an almost ritual examination of the relation between images and the impossibility of representing new ways of collective being. Her films and performances reflect ongoing dialogues and collaborations with artists, people, performers and authors, and present non-verbal forms of communication which pass mainly by way of sound and the body.

It is incidentally hard to translate in French the title of the experimental film, We Hold Where Study (2017), rooted in exchanges with the authors Fred Moten and Stefano Harney. What seems to be an anomaly in the way the English sentence is constructed creates a break in meaning. The film starts with the voice of the poet F. Moten, whose words will set in motion a series of duets choreographed by boychild with Josh Johnson, and by Ligia Lewis with Jonathan Gonzalez. Evolving in distinct spaces, a meadow and a dance studio, the bodies improvise their relation to the other and the environment through rhythmic variations and sounds produced by brass instruments. This film looks for and mourns the spaces of connections and the images of resistance of a poetics of black, queer and trans bodies. The two spaces end up being joined together or rather overlaid on each other, creating an opaque strip in the middle of the screen, a place of “entanglement” of colors and bodies. F. Moten and W. Tsang regard this term as a prism through which to imagine identities. It also makes it possible to think about the violent nature of life and the deterioration required for all regeneration. The film also juggles with contrasts, between the opaqueness and the light released by them, the fluidity of the performers and the black tears streaming from their eyes, the indeterminate places and the oppressive social context described by the succession of the chapters: “algorithm”, “consultant”, “state of war”… Film: Wu Tsangin n collaboration with Fred Moten Choreography: Ligia Lewis with Jonathan Gonzalez, and boychild with Josh Johnson Original Music: Bendik Giske Performers: boychild, Jonathan Gonzalez, Josh Johnson, Ligia Lewis, Julian and Lorenzo Moten Cinematography: Antonio Cisneros Stedicam: Timber Hoy Assistant Camera: Ezra Riley Gaffer: Sean Emer Grip: Jeff Billings Production Coordinator: Dorothy Dubrule Production Assistant: J Makary Voiceover: Fred Moten Editor: Wu Tsang Assistant Editor: Lap-See Lam Commissioned by curator Nadja Argyropoulou for Polyeco Art Initiative Special Thanks: Nadja Argyropoulou, Tosh Basco, Stefano Harney, Laura Harris, Fred Moten, and PSSST Film shown during "A Cris Ouverts" exhibition, Les Ateliers de Rennes 6th edition - Contemporary Art Biennial, 2018