Queer Tetralogy: Desire, Technology, and Rebellion: Inside the Visual World of Shu Lea Cheang｜Lecture Notes
Artist Shu Lea Cheang is known for her films, installations, and Internet art. Her directorial debut, Hagay Dreaming, will be shown at the Taipei Performing Arts Center (TPAC) in May. This month, four of her feature films are being screened as part of the TPAC Select series: Fresh Kill (1994), I.K.U. (2000), UKI (2023) and Fluidø (2017). The moderator of this session, film studies professor Sing Song-Yong, carried out a discussion with Cheang that focused on these films.
In these four films, people living on the margins of society repeatedly appear and gender politics, desire, viruses, and hacking are explored. There is also a recurring theme of resisting authority. As an independent filmmaker, she shared her challenges of fundraising for and producing each film, noting that she also creates installations and Internet art. She smiled as she said, “Which one is my main career, which one is my side career? I don’t know which aspect is lesser in terms of my main career.” When asked why she continues to make films, she answered that each film is a testament to a certain era.
Imagining the Third World: the geographical and political significance of Fresh Kill
Fresh Kill is her summary of New York in the 1990s. It focused on the dumping of waste by First World countries in developing countries, the prevailing street movement, environmental discrimination, and racial discrimination. When asked about her choice of Orchid Island and its irreplaceability, she replied that the inspiration for this film was a news report. A ship carrying industrial waste had sailed to the African continent searching for a place to dump it. Living in New York, she knew that Manhattan’s garbage was transported to Staten Island, where there is a landfill named Fresh Kills. While reflecting on this parallel relationship, she came across information on the establishment of a nuclear waste storage site on Orchid Island by Taiwan in 1982 and connected these unilateral waste dumping incidents.
From queer to sci-fi eroticism: Genre subversion in I.K.U.
"This is sex. This is not love"
Her collaboration with Japanese film producer Takashi Asai followed the release of Fresh Kill. To defy Japan’s censorship rules and the domination of the adult film industry by organized crime groups, Asai invited her to create a pornographic film. She accepted because it seemed like a good challenge. However, the process of recruiting actors was arduous. They had finally found an actress with experience in art films to play the lead. But she disappeared the day before filming was to begin. They knew they had to change their strategy and opted for casting seven different actresses for the seven sex scenes, which also fit the film’s “sci-fi” narrative and logic.
Liberating bodily fluids: Fluidø’s body politics and inclusion in the post porn trend
Aesthetically speaking, Fluidø is the most hardcore and radical of the four films and has been criticized by feminists for its overexposure of genitalia. Cheang does not think of it as a pornographic film. Rather, it is a political work that responds to the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. As HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is transmitted through bodily fluids, this inevitably involves the sex organs. Another political reality is that while treatments for AIDS and HIV are available, government and pharmaceutical company collaborations have led to soaring drug prices, forcing patients in the US to travel to Mexico for needed medicines. This crisis is addressed in the film Dallas Buyers Club.
When Sing asked if she minded the term “post porn” to describe it, Cheang responded that after the year 2000, some ethnic groups and feminists began advocating the return of control of the production of pornography and the post porn trend arose from this. Because it was in line with the times, Fluidø was included.
Body and movement in the viral era: A new direction for UKI
In 2009, Cheang embarked on a new cycle of work: “viral love biohack.” She already had the idea of making a sequel to I.K.U., reversing the order of the letters in the title to become UKI. It just so happened that year she participated in a residency in Barcelona. There, I.K.U. was well received, with a wide circulation of pirated copies. There were also many post porn performers taking part in the same residency. This led to her decision to develop UKI with them. She sought funding and production opportunities. But it wasn’t until 2020 that she received a Guggenheim Fellowship. That was also the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, forcing her to postpone filming and to write the script at home. It can be said that UKI did not come about due to the pandemic. UKI itself was a virus from the start.
Theory and creation: How ideas are incorporated into her films
Some artists worry about being overly influenced by theorists. But Cheang does not shy away from them. Instead, she engages in dialogue with them in her works. Her early readings of the classics included Donna Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto and Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (which influenced her works BRANDON and 3x3x6). More recently, she has read Testo Junkie. In terms of science fiction novelists, Samuel R. Delaney has influenced her the most. She also mentioned that Haraway’s recent shift to advocacy for dialogue with non-humans represents a more transgenic way of thinking for her. She was frank as she pointed out that it is not necessary to struggle with the human-machine boundary. “To fight, you must become a virus.” After bidding farewell to cyborgs, one can become a virus because only viruses can replicate, proliferate, and infiltrate institutions to impact the world.
