Tao Hui Being Wild, 2021
Single channel video (color, sound)
Duration: 12:03 min
A young woman skates through a college town, an old paper factory, an urban movie set, and a city center, singing lyrics by 1980s Taiwanese folk singers Tai Chao-mei and Helen Wang. These lyrics are interspersed with lines that the artist wrote, creating a dialogue between the two. Roller skating came to China in the 1980s, and it gained popularity after the 1989 Asian Roller Skating Championship, which embedded it in the collective memory of a generation. The video draws on settings that frequently appear in film and television. Here, the everyday act of skating becomes a metaphor for the rapid passage of time. In this motion, individuals can use their bodies as a measure of the city and of the pace of the economy, exploring how to break free from those restrictions.
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