End Transmission, 2010

Hong Kong 2016
End Transmission

Chi-Wen Gallery

Video/Film
Single-channel Video, DVCPRO HD, Black and White, Stereo Sound, 15min 40sec
0
Selected for Film Sector

A decoded, alien environmental message, structured as a hypnotic experimental film, forcefully and poetically warns us of their return and the planet’s re-colonization.

Strange messages are sent to humanity. They are frightening and poetical at the same time; they report of a takeover and the end of it all. The messages alternate with ominous black-and-white images of lifeless cities under control, frozen industrial landscapes, sterile laboratory machinery and nature in an abandoned state. "We were here before you". "Fear is natural". A final warning: the planet is re-colonized, and human life only seems possible in the protected, artificial and enclosed environment of a large-scale indoor resort.

Stephen Hawking once wrote, "If aliens ever visit us, the outcome will be much as when Christopher Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans". In this case, who are the colonizers and who are the natives? (Texts from Netherlands Media Art Institute)

End Transmission (2010) was shown at 40th International Film Festival Rotterdam, Tiger Award nominee for short film

Yin-Ju Chen (b.1977) studied video and performance art at the San Francisco Art Institute in the New Genres Department, currently lives and works in Taipei. She was a resident artist at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She has participated in many important international exhibitions and film festivals, such as “Traversing the Phantasm”, Forum Expanded at 66th Berlin Film Festival (Germany, 2016), "Social Factory”, Shanghai Biennial (2014), “A Journal of the Plague Year”, (Para/Site, HK, 2013), "Modern Monsters Death and Life of Fiction”, Taipei Biennial(2012), International Film Festival Rotterdam (2011), EMAF - European Media Art Festival (2011), “Multitud Singular”, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (Spain, 2009), International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (NL, 2008), and San Francisco International Film Festival (USA, 2006).

Yin-Ju Chen has invited to participate “The future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed”, 20th Biennial of Sydney (AU, 2016) and Liverpool Biennial (UK, 2016).

James T. Hong(b.1970) discontinued his Ph.D. program in philosophy at the University of Illinois and studied filmmaking at the University of Southern California. He has recently participated in many important international exhibitions and film festivals, such as “Traversing the Phantasm”, Forum Expanded at 66th Berlin Film Festival (Germany, 2016), “A Journal of the Plague Year”, (Para/Site, HK, 2013), The Berlin International Film Festival (Germany, 2013), "Connecting the Dots: The Evolution Will Be Social", The Online Biennial (2013), "Modern Monsters Death and Life of Fiction”, Taipei Biennial (2012), International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (NL, 2008, 2012), and the International Film Festival Rotterdam (NL, 2001, 2007, 2008, and 2011), Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival (2005), Taiwan International Documentary Festival (2004). Several of his films have received awards and grants, including Behold the Asia: How One Becomes What One Is (2000), Die Entnazifizierung des MH (2006), and Lessons of the Blood (2010). In 2008, Hong was a guest of the Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD. His recent articles are published in e- flux Journal and the Taipei Times. Hong currently lives and works in the USA and Taiwan.