Shu Lea Cheang
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Shu Lea Cheang () (born April 13, 1954) is a
Taiwanese-American Taiwanese Americans () are Americans who carry full or partial ancestry from Taiwan. This includes American-born citizens who descend from migrants from Taiwan. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, 49% of Taiwanese Americans lived in the state of Califo ...
artist and
filmmaker Filmmaking (film production) is the process by which a motion picture is produced. Filmmaking involves a number of complex and discrete stages, starting with an initial story, idea, or commission. It then continues through screenwriting, castin ...
who lived and worked in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
in the 1980s and 90s, until relocating to the
EuroZone The euro area, commonly called eurozone (EZ), is a currency union of 19 member states of the European Union (EU) that have adopted the euro ( €) as their primary currency and sole legal tender, and have thus fully implemented EMU polici ...
in 2000. Cheang received a BA in history from the
National Taiwan University National Taiwan University (NTU; ) is a public research university in Taipei, Taiwan. The university was founded in 1928 during Japanese rule as the seventh of the Imperial Universities. It was named Taihoku Imperial University and served d ...
in 1976 and an MA in
Cinema Studies Film theory is a set of scholarly approaches within the academic discipline of film or cinema studies that began in the 1920s by questioning the formal essential attributes of motion pictures; and that now provides conceptual frameworks for und ...
from
New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...
in 1979. Since the 1980s, as a
multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradition ...
and new-media artist, she has navigated topics of
ethnic stereotyping An ethnic stereotype, racial stereotype or cultural stereotype involves part of a system of beliefs about typical characteristics of members of a given ethnic group, their status, societal and cultural norms. A national stereotype, or nation ...
, sexual politics, and institutional oppression with her radical experimentations in digital realms. She drafts
sci-fi Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel universe ...
narratives in her film scenario and artwork imagination, crafting her own “science” fiction genre of
new queer cinema "New Queer Cinema" is a term first coined by the academic B. Ruby Rich in ''Sight & Sound'' magazine in 1992 to define and describe a movement in queer-themed independent filmmaking in the early 1990s. It is also referred to as the "Queer New W ...
. From homesteading cyberspace in the 1990s to her current retreat to post net-crash BioNet zone, Cheang takes on viral love, bio hack in her current cycle of works. Over the past decade, she has emerged as a prominent figure in
new media art New media art includes artworks designed and produced by means of electronic media technologies, comprising virtual art, computer graphics, computer animation, digital art, interactive art, sound art, Internet art, video games, robotics, 3D pri ...
. Cheang is one of the leading multimedia artists dealing with multidisciplinary topics. She is regarded as a pioneering figure in internet-based art, with her multimedia approach at the interface between film, video, internet-based installation, software interaction and durational performance. Her work is often interactive. She is most noted for her individual approach in the realm of art and technology, creatively intermingling social issues with artistic methods. Cheang's work employs film, video, net-based installation, and interface to explore "...ethnic stereotyping, the nature and excesses of popular media, institutional – and especially governmental – power, race relations, and sexual politics." Cheang has also written and directed the feature films '' I.K.U.'' and '' Fluidø'', and directed ''
Fresh Kill ''Fresh Kill'' is a 1994 British-American experimental film directed by Shu Lea Cheang and written by Jessica Hagedorn. It stars Sarita Choudhury and Erin McMurtry as Shareen Lightfoot and Claire Mayakovsky, two lesbian parents who are drawn int ...
''.


Life events

Cheang was born during a time when the island of Taiwan was under martial law in 1954. From Taiwan, Cheang moved to New York in the 1980s. She admitted to feeling liberated after moving, calling it a process of “self-acknowledgment and affirmation.” Her art career seeded and bloomed in New York. Shortly after she moved to New York, she joined the collective
Paper Tiger Television Paper Tiger Television (PTTV) is a non-profit, low-budget public access television program and open media collective based in New York City. Currently operating from Brooklyn, PPTV was co-founded by media activist and Academy Award nominated doc ...
and started producing live weekly programs that used public-access channels to reach cable subscribers. After 20 years in New York, she went on a decade of a self-imposed lifestyle as a digital nomad which she says “liberated me from monthly fixed payments of rent, electricity and phone bills.” She lived in Japan, Holland, the United Kingdom, and finally relocated to Paris in 2007, where she currently works and resides. Cheang concluded her 20 years spent in New York with
Brandon
' (1998–1999), the first
Guggenheim Museum The Guggenheim Museums are a group of museums in different parts of the world established (or proposed to be established) by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Museums in this group include: Locations Americas * The Solomon R. Guggenhei ...
web art commission/collection. Tough social themes such as racial politics help progress her work. She recalls, “When I first got to New York, I was more concerned about certain kinds of racial discrimination or stereotypes of being an Asian woman — there were many different kinds of fantasies about Asian women.”


2019 Venice Biennale

Shu Lea Cheang represented Taiwan at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019. She is the first woman to represent Taiwan with a solo-exhibition. Her site-specific work was installed at the Palazzo delle Prigioni, a former prison across from the
Palazzo Ducale Several palaces are named Ducal Palace (Italian: ''Palazzo Ducale'' ) because it was the seat or residence of a duke. Notable palaces with the name include: France * Palace of the Dukes of Burgundy, Dijon * Palace of the Dukes of Lorraine, Nancy * ...
in
Piazza San Marco Piazza San Marco (; vec, Piasa San Marco), often known in English as St Mark's Square, is the principal public square of Venice, Italy, where it is generally known just as ''la Piazza'' ("the Square"). All other urban spaces in the city (exc ...
. Curated by philosopher Paul B. Preciado, the immersive installation explored pervasive technologies of control, from surveillance to incarceration, drawing from historical and contemporary cases in which people have been imprisoned due to their gender, sexual orientation, or race.


The Influencers 2019

In he
talk for The Influencers 2019
"Genre Bending Gender Fxxxking", Cheang reflects on her eventful trajectory mixing, messing genres and genders in her multi-disciplinary art practices, from ''BRANDON'' (1998-1999, Guggenheim Museum), ''3x3x6'' (2019, Venice Biennale) to her current projects in process, ''UNBORN0x9'' and ''UKI'', an interruptive cinema.


Notable works

''Color Schemes'', is an interactive three-channel video installation exhibited at the
Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–194 ...
in 1990. The video features people of different ethnicities and reveals the complex attitudes surrounding ethnic stereotyping embedded in American Culture. In 1994, Cheang directed the film ''
Fresh Kill ''Fresh Kill'' is a 1994 British-American experimental film directed by Shu Lea Cheang and written by Jessica Hagedorn. It stars Sarita Choudhury and Erin McMurtry as Shareen Lightfoot and Claire Mayakovsky, two lesbian parents who are drawn int ...
''. The title refers to a garbage dump in Staten Island. The film "envisions a post-apocalyptic landscape strewn with electronic detritus and suffering the toxic repercussions of mass marketing in a high-tech commodity culture." ''Bowling Alley'', commissioned by the
Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, to ...
and funded by
AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile te ...
New Art/New Visions, was exhibited in 1995. The installation linked the Walker's Gallery 7, the city's community bowling alley (Bryant-Lake Bowl), and the
World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...
. ''Bowling Alley'' mixed real-life with cyberspace to illustrate the similarities and differences of how people communicate with one another face-to-face and through the Internet. ''Bowling Alley'' was Cheang's first cybernetic installation. Cheang collaborated with other Minneapolis artists to present a work which set to challenge the idea of what is personal and public, popular art and fine art by intertwining these oppositions. Another major Web-based project Cheang created was ''Brandon'' (1998–1999). The one-year narrative project explored the issues of gender fusion and techno-body in both public space and cyberspace. The site got its name from
Brandon Teena Brandon Teena (December 12, 1972 – December 31, 1993) was an American trans man who was raped and later, along with Phillip DeVine and Lisa Lambert, murdered in Humboldt, Nebraska by John Lotter and Tom Nissen.Note: – as Brandon Teena was ...
, a trans man who was raped and murdered in 1993 after his biological sex was revealed. ''Brandon'' was the first Web-based artwork commissioned by
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously exp ...
. It explores Brandon Teena's story in an experimental way that conveys the "fluidity and ambiguity of gender and identity in contemporary societies." In addition to the website, ''Brandon'' included live public events at the Guggenheim Museum, th
De Waag Society for Old and New Media
in Amsterdam, and Harvard University. Over time, as web browsers evolved, ''Brandon'' stopped displaying correctly. In 2017, the artwork was digitally restored and made publicly viewable again in a joint initiative by the Guggenheim's conservation department and New York University's department of computer science. ''Brandon'' was also featured in Rhizome's Net Art Anthology, an online exhibition of one hundred important net artworks. ''Brandon'' is currently accessible at http://brandon.guggenheim.org. The project was a major achievement in the conservation of net.born art. Contemporary web browsers could no longer recognize much of the early HTML code used on the site, or support the unique Java applets used to animate its text and images. In December 2016, Conserving Computer-Based Art (CCBA), a joint initiative of the Guggenheim and NYU, obtained approval from Cheang to restore the work. In 2000, Cheang directed the feature film '' I.K.U.'', a pornographic film which she claimed was inspired by ''
Blade Runner ''Blade Runner'' is a 1982 science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott, and written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples. Starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos, it is an adaptation of Philip K. Dick' ...
.'' ''I.K.U.'' was nominated for an International Fantasy Film Award.


Recent works

Cheang's ''Locker Baby Project'' (2001-2012) is a playfield of sonic imagery triggered only by human interaction. Her baby series project proposes a fictional scenario set in year 2030. The transnational DPT (DollyPolly Transgency) advances clone babies as an intelligent industry. The Clone Generation holds the key to unlock the networked inter-sphere of ME-motion (Memory+Emotion). * ''Baby Play'' (2001), the first installment employs a large scale table football field. Opposing rows of 22 ball players are replaced by human sized cloned locker babies. The tracking of ball movement retrieves ME-data (texts and sound) deposited in respective lockers. * ''Baby Love'' (2005), the second installment consists of 6 large size teacups and 6 clone babies. Each teacup is an auto-driving mobile unit with spinning wheels allowing direction maneuver and speed variation. Each baby is a situated mac-mini engine with wifi linked to the net depository of shuffles and remixes of popular love songs. * ''Baby Work'' (2012), the third installment designates the public visiting the gallery to collect and rearrange scattered keys and compose words into collective sonic expression. Active participants are the clone babies who are entrusted to store and retrieve ME-data. Cheang wrote and directed the 2017 science fiction film '' Fluidø''. In 2021, she was one of the participants in
John Greyson John Greyson (born March 13, 1960) is a Canadian director, writer, video artist, producer, and political activist, whose work frequently deals with queer characters and themes. He was part of a loosely-affiliated group of filmmakers to emerge in ...
's experimental short documentary film ''
International Dawn Chorus Day The dawn chorus occurs when birds sing at the start of a new day. In temperate countries this is most noticeable in spring when the birds are either defending a breeding territory, trying to attract a mate or calling in the flock. In a given loc ...
''.Sarah Jae Leiber
"International Dawn Chorus Day Premieres April 29"
''
Broadway World BroadwayWorld is a theatre news website based in New York City covering Broadway Broadway may refer to: Theatre * Broadway Theatre (disambiguation) * Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, N ...
'', March 29, 2021.


Filmography


Films

* 1990 – ''How History Was Wounded: An Exclusive Report on Taiwanese Media'' (Short film; director) * 1994 – ''
Fresh Kill ''Fresh Kill'' is a 1994 British-American experimental film directed by Shu Lea Cheang and written by Jessica Hagedorn. It stars Sarita Choudhury and Erin McMurtry as Shareen Lightfoot and Claire Mayakovsky, two lesbian parents who are drawn int ...
'' (director) * 2000 – '' I.K.U.'' (director, screenwriter) * 2000 – ''Love Me 2030'' (Short video; director) * 2017 – '' Fluidø'' (director, producer, screenwriter) * 2017 – ''Wonders Wander'' (director, producer, screenwriter)


See also

*
List of female film and television directors This is a list of female film and television directors. Their works may include live action and/or animated features, shorts, documentaries, telemovies, TV programs, or videos. A * Jennifer Abbott (Canada) * Sarah Abbott (Canada * Jenn ...
*
List of LGBT-related films directed by women This is a list of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender-related films that were directed by women. LGBT-themed films directed by women – especially, but not exclusively, lesbian-themed movies – are an important and distinct subset of the gen ...
*
Taiwanese art The artistic heritage of Taiwan is extremely diverse with multiple major influences and periods. History Stonecutters of the Changbin culture began to make art on Taiwan at least 30,000 years ago. Around 5,000 years ago jade and earthenware w ...


References


External links


Bowling Alley

Brandon

Baby Love

Shu Lea Cheang
in the
Video Data Bank Video Data Bank (VDB) is an international video art distribution organization and resource in the United States for videos by and about contemporary artists. Located in Chicago, Illinois, VDB was founded at the School of the Art Institute of Chic ...
* * Shu Lea Cheang's artworks an
biographical information
can be found in Experimental Television Center an
its Repository
in the
Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art The Cornell University Library is the library system of Cornell University. As of 2014, it holds over 8 million printed volumes and over a million ebooks. More than 90 percent of its current 120,000 periodical titles are available online. It ...
, , Cornell University Library.
Shu Lea Cheang
on
Vimeo Vimeo, Inc. () is an American video hosting, sharing, and services platform provider headquartered in New York City. Vimeo focuses on the delivery of high-definition video across a range of devices. Vimeo's business model is through software as ...
* https://web.archive.org/web/20080203204921/http://tiger.towson.edu/~kbinya1/shu_lea_cheang.html * https://web.archive.org/web/20081118051407/http://www.walkerart.org/archive/1/B7737137B85D01716161.htm * http://the-artists.org/artist/Shu-Lea-Cheang * Tribe, Mark and Reena Jana. New Media Art


Shu Lea Cheang Papers
Fales Library and Special Collections at New York University Special Collections *http://www.babywork.biz/proposal/lockerbaby-3parts.pdf {{DEFAULTSORT:Cheang, Shu Lea 1954 births Living people Feminist artists Installation artists New media artists Women pornographic film directors Taiwanese women artists Artists from New York City Artists from Paris Taiwanese emigrants to the United States