Curator for Research-based exhibition series "Cinema Expanding: Visualizing the Unseen"

Description

"Cinema Expanding" is a 3-exhibition series using a grant I received to ask what "expanded cinema" can be in the digital age. The result was three consecutive solo exhibitions, from August through November 2018, interrogation the combined use of software and hardware to open up new species of spatialized cinema. 
My curatorship is based on my research in what is called "Expanded Cinema" in Cinema Studies and Contemporary Art.Cinema has never stopped evolving. Scholars and researchers likewise continue to theorize what it means to keep moving images alive through critical experiments and curious hypothesis of cinema’s possible future. Gene Youngblood, in his book Expanded Cinema (1970), proposed artists should re-activate the audience and revitalize the spectator’s space, a call then echoed by various artists, including Nam June Paik, Stan Vanderbeek, Stephen Beck, Steina & Woody Vasulka and so on. The word “expanded” in “Expanded Cinema” emphasizes extending, especially the definition of moving images, relentless exploration of new territories and endless experimental actions alongside new tools or machines.In our time, images are ubiquitous and imaging tools accessible to everyone. The Writing Machine Collective takes up Expanded Cinema as the 6th edition’s point of departure. Four media artists, Ng Tsz-kwan, Hector Rodriguez, Wong Chun-hoi and Yeung Ming-him (Hugo Yeung), each present their own “expansion” of contemporary digital moving images. The 3-month exhibition series shows not only their moving image works, but also the process of their research, the many questions asked, the technical solutions they tried out, and the conceptual landing they re-discovered. It will be a series of deep experiences.The series also included rigorous docent training, several seminars and art talks, and an on-line web newsletter with 25+entries that the curator Linda Lai wrote and edited: http://www.writingmachine-collective.net/wordpress/wmc_e6/
**This is an element of my action research. My participation was partly supported by CityU SRG 7005025) .

Period	31 Aug 2018 → 18 Nov 2018