Artist Statement: Hua-Hiu The journey forever marches on. We are just following Following a moment of Hua’s absent-minded gaze… The emotions of the mortal Has always remained in a flickering state. It cannot keep sober all the time. A sound of Hua-Hiu is needed To wake up the inner self. But only for a moment Till we return to the mortal world.

by Huang Wen-Hao

An emotionless naked man is walking around downtown Taipei. From a single complete figure, the man gradually becomes two translucent images, orange and green, as if his soul were leaving from his body. There is no heavy traffic as we usually see on this main road of Taipei, but only the unusual thrilling chilly loneliness. To look at it more carefully, now we see some people and cars moving very slowly. Since it is way slower than the speed we are familiar with, the sense of speed here almost vanishes. At this moment, viewer shouts out as an intrusion to the dream-like space, as the man’s soul returns to his body. It comes back to the single complete figure, walking forward, until the soul leaves again…

It is a classic scene in the genius director Danny Boyle’s movie 28 Days Later (2003). The main character Cillian Murphy walks out the hospital after he has remained in a coma for about a month. The streets in London seem deserted that there is no one around. He whispers, feels panicked, and wishes that it were just a dream. In the real world, once some element is removed from the scene we are familiar with, it creates bizarre insecurity which gets on our nerves. We start trying to search for any familiar item to fill the blank. However, the blank is the endless fear and strangeness. Unlike28 Days Later, the elements being removed in Huang Wen-Hao’s Hau-Hui is not people or life but time. He slows down the speed of downtown Taipei and puts in a naked sleepwalking man to create a conflict which viewers experience both visually and psychologically.

The creation of Hau-Hui is to juxtapose two different videos. First, Huang Wen-Hao filmed the street scene of the main street in downtown Taipei at 4 o’clock in the morning in summer. After it was done, he removed the background of the naked man walking in the film studio and made a composite image. He later time-stretched the video of the street scene and juxtaposed the other scene where the man was walking at a normal speed in the foreground. The different sense of time in the two videos made the man’s walking like sliding, while the street scene slowly and yet submissively glided away under the man’s steps.

The actor in the work was still a college student at that time. When we told him the concept of the work, he not only agreed without hesitation but also brought out a more astonishing idea – walking naked around the campus of Fu Jen Catholic University. For him, it seemed to offer him a right reason walking naked in public. Although eventually we still filmed this video in the film studio, it was apparent to me that prosperity and self-liberation had already become the aggravating inner struggle of modern people. Shouting thus became the liminal essence to briefly return to the consciousness.