The Lighting / 打光

2021
video installation
1920 x 1080, 3 Channels, 5.1 Sound, 21 min on loop
16mm Kodak’s Ektachrome film transfer to 2K video
work commissioned by Han Nefkens Foundation
video trailer ︎

Light is the spectre that hovers around photographic technologies. From analog to digital and from light-sensitive coating to computer algorithms, light always occupies an irreplaceable place in competing image-making technologies. Throughout the process of negotiating with light, however, it cannot be disputed that white supremacy in this competition has “unconsciously” and “imperceptibly” shaped human prejudices. Jean-Luc Godard was one of the first white persons to (self-)reflect this crisis in the discourses of the former West: when he was invited to Mozambique assisting the country’s development of image in 1977-78, he realised that Kodak films that were mainstream of the time could not be accurately exposed for portraits featuring subjects of dark skin tones. We cannot simply attribute this technical failure to inadequate equipment for the reason that even the most advanced algorithms used today still show a rather high error rate when determining certain group of people and their skin tones.

The Lighting aims to revisit and clarify the issue of discrimination rooted in technological development and image production through an interdisciplinary exploration. The work comprises three narratives—three professional Togolese photographers explore how to use instruments to compensate for insufficient exposure for dark skin tones; a leading software engineer developing facial recognition algorithms at Taiwan’s MediaTek talks about how they have created a camera algorithm that is highly popular on the African continent; moreover, the artist uses Kodak’s Ektachrome, a popular film in the 70s, to produce a kung fu film in the style of exploitation film, using images of the famous Black martial art film star, Jim Kelly, in Bruce Lee’s movies in the 70s. The work is also interlaced with an animated Bruce Lee as the narrator trained by facial motion capture and a speech recognition algorithm.

Installation view at Art Sonje Center in Seoul, South Korea, 2021. Photograph by Yang Ian

Installation view at 72nd Berlinale Forum Expanded, Germany, 2022. Photograph by Leonie Hugendubel

Producer | Gregor Kasper
Executive Director | Patrice Ayele-Yawou
Director Assistant | Clémentine Kilikiba, Smith Kalao
Director of Photography | Lucas Bueno Maia, Olivier Yamajago
Camera Assistant | Andres Villarreal
Gaffer | Rodrigo Levy Piza Fontes
Production Manager | Freedo Apedjago
Recording | Ixmucané Aguilar
Director of Sound | Sum Sum Shen
Mixing Engineer | Ilya Selikhov
3D Animator | Mooni Perry
Art Director | Ling Yu He
Technical Support | Guan Da Photoelectron Technology Co.
Programmer | Hong Bin Liang
Interviewee | Felix Agboka, Laïson Hilda Akoko, Apélété Kuami, Cédric Newland, Florence Umamariya, Shu Fan Wang
Translation | Rosanna Lovell, I Hsin Cheng
Performer | Kin Man Cheong, Chih Hao Chou, Ho Hsuan Feng, Shinyi Lin, Han Tang, Yugen Yah, Hanwen Zhang, Xiaopeng Zhou
Research | RLIS Research Lab of Image and Sound, Heichi magazine,
Digiarts (National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts), neo-Portal (Media Lab of Times Museum)
Presented by xīzhuāng culture & media

Special thanks for the support from
Zian Chen, Yixin Deng, Shih Yu Hsu, Chien Hung Huang, Hsiang Ning Huang,
Haeju Kim, Mohamed Kotb, Yen Yi Lee, Yu Chieh Li, Mo Lou, Dominik Lübben,
Po Wei Wang, Chi Yu Wu, Chia Hsuan Wu, Jian Ru Wu
Han Nefkens Foundation
LOOP Barcelona
Fundació Joan Miró
MOCA Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei
Art Sonje Center
WIELS Contemporary Arts Centre
Inside Out Art Museum
Ilham Gallery
ZK/U Center for Art and Urbanistics

72nd Berlinale Forum Expanded (Berlin, Germany)
38th Shortfilm Festival Hamburg (Hamburg, Germany)
28th Encounters Film Festival (Bristol, UK)
36th Image Forum Festival (Tokyo, Japan)
59th Golden Horse Film Festival (Taipei, Taiwan)
28th ifva Awards (Hong Kong, China)
22nd Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival (Lausanne, Switzerland)
2023 Athens Short Film Festival (Athen, Greece)
2023 INTERFILM Festival (Berlin, Germany)

Related Information ︎
︎︎︎ Berlinale
︎︎︎ Han Nefkens Foundation
︎︎︎ Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst
︎︎︎ Kulturaustausch
︎︎︎ Monopol

© 2024 Musquiqui Lab

The Lighting / 打 光

© 2024
Musquiqui Lab

The Lighting / 打光