The Beheaded Stream is a video installation that consists of the following three videos: the Cartography of Land God , the Chorography of Mountain God, and Water Without a Source, with conflicting indigenous and Hakka tribal cultures and collective memories narrated in the videos. Topographical remnants of “beheaded stream” are located in the mountains near Taoyuan, close to Guanxi Township in Hsinchu and in the southeast region of Longtan District. In the early Qing dynasty, it was an area where indigenous Atayal people hunted and lived in, and the area is now mostly inhabited by people of Hakka descent. Starting with an intertribal conflict between the indigenous and the Hakka communities and along with myths and legends about the God of Soil and other mountain deities, the artist referenced temple chronicles and visited Hakka elders, where he inquired and communicated with the God of Soil, mountain deities, and beheaded spirits through means that included the crows of rooster, mediums, and divination blocks, with responses received that continue to echo and linger.
Liang Ting Yu conducts field studies that extend into geology, topography, landscape, regionalism, and chorography, with focus placed on death, killing (the head-hunting tradition and cannibalism (eating the flesh of the indigenous people)), ghosts of ethnic conflicts, as the artist also conducts a practice of geographical production that negotiates with death.