Year: 2010
Venue: Taipei Artist Village, Underground Museum of Fine Arts at Taipei National University of the Arts / Kuandu Arts Festival

”Hold Down Interactive Multidisciplinary Performing” was performed at Taipei International Artist Village and Kuandu Art Festival.

My artistic practice often involves associativity and spirituality of an era as well as how to offer a more integrated experience to viewers/spectators through the presence of body, challenging a stable subject-object dichotomy as proposed by René Descartes. Modern art adopts a hostile attitude toward social tools, and the result is that artists have become alienated individuals while artworks have become pure objects being removed from life reality. In a world of diversity, art should be diverse too. We cannot hold on to a narrative with only one possibility, but should integrate various aspects to simulate the denotation and connotation of motions. Without a more profound interpersonal connection as we try to find a direction, we should not expect a different future. In Hold Down, I create an integrated space of fluidity through interrelated motions to demonstrate a relationship where everyone is its own subject in the communication process.

Hold Down features elements I have been worked on in the past ten years, including video, space installation, performance art, interactive technology, etc. The materials are to provide “body” with an immersive space to perceive and to experience. “Body,” including the bodies of spectators, actors, and I (creator and one of the four actors), is the most important medium in the work, for that it brings up the cultural and spiritual perception and feedback as well as the extension and expansion in action. The intention is to allow spectators to feel the main idea of “Hold-Down” – the spiritual state of being as one is in control or even out of control.

I believe art should explore humans’ instant spirituality in a deeper level as it reflects social and religious values. In a world filled with flowing possibilities but also with its own limit, how humans adapt themselves to fit in the “constantly changing environment” and “the spirit caught-in-between” are the main artistic concepts of Hold Down. Hold down, be quiet – it is an era of patience – the patience to wait for economic recovery, environmental cleaning, the arriving hero, the savior, or even a new force to lead the world… Meanwhile, we need patience to look for the new energy as well as worldview to restart the world we are living in. The English word “Hold-down” has two meanings – “to restrain” and “to manage to retain or keep possession of.” The two “forces” force us to “suppress the excessive desire” and to “remain tranquil.” I use this word as my work’s title because I want it to be closer to the life reality in the real world” and the universal spirituality of art in contemporary world.”