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Avatar Mythology

Shan Hai Jing
Producer & Media Artist: Zhang Yinan
Media Artist & Director: Jung Hyun Moon
Art Director: Li Yuejuan
Choreographer & Dancer: Chiayi Jess Seetoo, Yu Chien Cheng, Zheng Lingmin
Media Art Support: Zhou Xing, Cao Yanbin, Bin Xue
Music: Jung Min Moon, Paul Yip
Stage Manager December Yang
Costume: Sophia Zhao
Lighting: Li Mingfang
Project Assistant: Liu Zhao

Meiro Koizumi

Prometheus Bound
In Greek Mythology, Prometheus stole fire (technology) from Zeus and gave it to humans, and for this, he got crucified on a mountaintop, and had to endure the eternal pain as a punishment. Since the beginning of our civilization, technology has been the source of prosperity and development. But also it has been the cause of great tragedies such as war sand nuclear accidents. Setting the Aeschylus Greek tragedy “Prometheus Bound” as a starting point, Koizumi created VR (Virtual Reality) theater which deals with this age-old tension between humanity and technology, through collaboration with a person who is desperately longing for the technological advancement – a person who is suffering from ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis- the deadly neurological disease that make a person paralyzed). Through the dialogues with the man about his personal life and his visions of the future, they created a sci-fi vision in which past and future, self and others, humans and machines are all merged into one sequence of abstract VR theatrical experience.

Terrence Zhou

Originally from Wuhan, China, Terrence Zhou is a promising fashion designer based in New York City. Having a background in design and mathematics, Terrence leans on his multifaceted understanding of Chinese tradition, mathematics, Greek mythology and artistry to create collections seemingly out of this world.
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Terrence Zhou 来自中国武汉,是纽约市一位很有前途的时装设计师。拥有设计和数学背景的 Terrence 凭借对中国传统、数学、希腊神话和艺术的多方面理解,创作出看似与世隔绝的系列。

Ayoung Kim

In Search of Petra Genetrix

Petra Genetrix, the protagonist of the series Porosity Valley, is a migrant, mineral, and data cluster. In this lecture performance, the artist traces the origin of Petra Genetrix who constantly crosses borders, gender boundaries, and the concept of existence and nonexistence and creates her own hyperbolic mythology. While utilizing audio and video excerpts from her existing works, Ayoung Kim uses her own voice to create a verbal narrative exploring those agents who cross boundaries. By doing so, she continues to trace multifaceted crystal faces of Petra Genetrix, who is fundamentally porous and ambiguous.

Jonathan Monaghan

Den of Wolves
Den of Wolves is a video installation drawing on a range of references to weave a new multi-layered mythology. The work follows three bizarre wolves through a series of increasingly surreal retail stores as they search for the regalia of a monarch. Composed of one continuous camera shot, the work is an immersive, dreamlike journey drawing connections between popular culture, institutional authority and technological over-dependence.

JIACONG YAN

We only come out at night
FILE FESTIVAL 2007
We Only Come Out at Night is an urban graffiti project involving interactive public projections. A site is selected at dawn and a sticker is stuck or a stencil image is sprayed at the location. When the sun sets, jellies are projected over the heads of pedestrians on the street. As the pedestrian walks underneath the projection, the monsters grab the shadows of the people and eat them. The sticker is then removed and the project visits another place at dawn. A website is created to track the history of the monster appearance in order to promote and create a mythology. There are seven monsters in total, each monster’s design and behavior is unique. Gula, the monster that always eat, Avaritia, the monster that stuffs you into his pants, Invidia, the monster that takes your image and pretends to be you, and so on. Each monster is unique but always sad.

NICOLÁS KISIC AGUIRRE

Sirenas
“Sirenas” in Spanish means both siren and mermaid or siren (mythology). The title of the performance invoked both the sensation of alertness associated to the sound of alarm sirens and the mesmerizing ‘siren call’, the song of dangerous mythological creatures. The ‘siren call’, in Spanish “el canto de sirena” (literally ‘the siren chant’) is popularly referred to as an unavoidable attraction to a seductive, dangerous situation.

ELIŠKA SKY

Kingdom of Sport
Series Kingdom of Sport connects the reference to the traditional renaissance portraits and modern sport culture. It was inspired by the classic portrait painting and the greek mythology, especially visible in the short film. Each model demonstrates their constructed ‘royal’ character with one type of sport specialisation. Sport equipment is cleverly integrated into the styling, fashion accessories and set design.

alex da corte

Bad Cat

“A giant cat made of foam and tangerine velvet with a wide, cartoonish, sharp-toothed grimace, almost fifteen feet high, is flipped on its back at the center of the gallery. It’s vulnerable—it looks like it’s yowling—and its shadow is a cut-out wraith of blue carpet.” Erin Schwartz.

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Da Corte often uses surreal imagery and everyday objects in his practice and explores ideas of consumerism, pop culture, mythology, and literature.

John Russell and Joey Holder

TETRAGRAMMATON
A dialogue between these two artists on themes of myth, ritual and meaning, as much about their exhaustion and propensity to bewilderment as any potential they may inhere, for recuperation for and by language, culture and society.Joey’s work, ‘Religiously observant’, is inspired by alchemical and occult ideas, the world of spirits and hallucinations. The wall print features a gold CGI blazon of the Tetragrammaton It references the Sumerian mythology of the Annunaki a race of ancient chthonic fertility Gods, subsequently inscribed in a series of publications by Zecharia Sitchin (a kind of elder statesman of conspiracy theorists worldwide) as descendants of aliens, who enslaved the human race to extract gold from the earth.John’s work similarly ranges over territories of opposition: between ancient and contemporary; mythic and kitsch; between the viscid and primordial. It takes as its subject the vector of congealment, in the Marxist sense of the way labour power is congealed in commodities and so forth, extending this metaphor into an aesthetics of myth and ritual, emptied out, flattened, compacted like a sedimentary layer of anthropocene garbage, for the post-historical epoch.The sound component provides an aural complement to this structure of refuse, exhaustion and abjection. Mixing pre- or -post-linguistic utterances, grunts, groans, screaming: a kind of secular glossolalia chaotically interwoven with whalesong, deep techno and political oratory.

Lech Majewski

the Valley of the Gods
Valley of the Gods weaves together three narrative threads, mixing with the world of myths inspired by the Indian tribe legends about the ancient hero Ullikummin. “I am fascinated by the beauty and poetry of this mythology. It illustrates the contrast of primitive America with the current, equally surreal culture of America’s myth. With the culture of mass media and dreamed-up film illusions. It is summarised, among others, by the phrase ’sky is the limit’, demonstrating that everyone can become enormously rich”, director Lech Majewski said in a statement.

Peeping Tom

Vader
Peeping Tom’s dance shoves certain motifs towards the very limits of acrobatics. Yet between bruised, nostalgic people, or people in love, the situations are deeply dramatic and expressed with feeling. This new piece develops the generic persona of the old father, his mythology, his prestige and his ridicule, his pitiable power deleted by gradual disintegration. It is an intensely human portrayal.

ALEXANDRU NIMURAD

The birth of the night
Heavily influenced by mythology, biology and astronomy he creates characters which tell stories about life. All of his projects have the same simple core that is something, a small part, of the daily routine, of the emotion. And when emotion is created they, the characters, have the opportunity to venture inside themselves and to feel‚ without anything stopping them, led only by the simplicity and purity of the dream, of the new story.

Ed Young

My Gallerist Made Me Do It
Ed Young is the bad boy of SA art, the agent provocateur, the iconoclast, the master of subversion. His instincts are to epater la bourgeoisie, defy political correctness and flout cant, shibboleths and taboos, thus exposing the conservatism of art lovers of every age and generation. The cult of his own personality and fabrication of a personal mythology involves lengthy bouts of narcissistic exhibitionism and self-exposure.

Mandy Greer

Мэнди Грир
曼迪·格里尔
Dare alla Luce

“The immensity of the installations push my own body’s endurance, as I grind up piles upon piles of thriftstore flotsam and jetsam, a remaking into the image of revamped mythological story, amped up on glitter and beads. I wade through fairy tales, archetypes, mythology, allegory and folk tales looking for moments that coincide with my own experience of everyday life, where animals perform us. These narratives are, after all, the ordinary human dramas that perpetually reoccur, until they become mythos.”