S/Z Rye Green Berry
2022 / 19:42 / Color / Sound / 1.85:1 / USA / Original format: mixed media -> 4K digital
This project takes its cue from Roland Barthes’ S/Z. The film overcodes historical (found) materials. It liberates characters from their original stories and builds an operatic fable from their signifiers (voice, face, costume, and gesture). Rye Green Berry is a code for RGB. The film draws on our color memory by working with historical screen patterns used in film processing. The vanishing color worlds of historical painting, vintage film, and videotape are then intentionally converted into an unfamiliar palette within the digital RGB space.
創作靈感來自 Roland Barthes 的著作《S/Z》。《S/Z Rye Green Berry》將歷史材料（拾得錄像）進行解碼與重編碼，其人物事件地點語言被一一解放出來，然後從大量散落的文化符號（聲音、面孔、服裝和手勢）中重新搭建出一部歌劇寓言。Rye Green Berry 是 RGB 的暗碼。這部電影通過電影膠片的篩板召喚我們的光色記憶，再有意識地將那些慢慢消失的色彩世界——歷史繪畫、復古電影、錄像帶——重置於數位 RGB 空間中，轉調成一塊新色畫板。
Artist statement:
Thinking about cross-dressing and gender interpretation was what initially led me to create S/Z Rye Green Berry. In traditional Asian opera, women were restricted from performing on stage by the political oppression of the times, thus producing the art of drag performance. I started collecting historical materials, including Peking Opera in China, Kabuki in Japan, and Pansori in Korea.
From the original drawing paper of scroll painting, to 35mm, to VHS, to the generations of digitization (including the 4K rendering of this video), this process has resulted in the alteration of many details and color changes. I started to think that the circulation of media, occurring over many generations, restructures memory. In migrating from platform to platform, many additional distortions and digital artifacts not found in the original materials creep in. Through the compression and reconstruction necessitated by file transfer, the materials have a simulated historical appearance that makes them seem genuine. They reappear before our eyes on new devices, and are then washed back into the digital torrent. The RGB templates are brought into the flux of color representation, to suggest both the current status of color in contemporary media and to anticipate future changes.
These technical, media-derived fluxes parallel the way, in the older performance styles, the authenticity of gender is not allowed to manifest. Women were restricted from taking the stage and did not appear with their true faces. Their appearance was further modified through cross-gender mimicry, voice manipulation, musical style, disguised skin tone and so on. Furthermore, the distortions caused by the transfer and dissemination of the media obscure them even more.
However, these characters, in their spiritual alternation of reality and closer-to-reality, cleverly invoke the mystery of identity’s changeable borders.
創作動機：
思考變裝性別與性別詮釋是最初引導我創作 S/Z Rye Green Berry 的動機。在傳統的亞洲戲曲中，由於時代的政治壓迫，女性被限制在舞台上表演，從而產生了變裝表演藝術。我開始收集歷史資料，包括中國的京劇、日本的歌舞伎和韓國的板索里。
從捲軸畫的原畫紙，到35mm，到VHS，再到一代又一代的數字化（包括此影片的4K導出），這個過程產生了很多細節的變異和色彩的變化。我開始想像，媒體的串流和循環，在幾代人之間重構了記憶。從一個平台遷移到另一個平台的過程中，有些在原始材料中所不存在的額外失真和數字偽影逐漸出現。通過文件傳輸所需的壓縮和重建，這些材料具有模擬歷史的外觀，使它們看起來近乎真實。它們在新設備上被重新展演在我們眼前，然後又被沖回數字洪流中。 RGB 模板被帶入色彩表現的潮流中，以暗示當代媒體中色彩的當前狀態，同時預備了未來的變化。
這些技術性的、媒體衍生的流動，與歷史性的演繹藝術有著平行之處，即性別其本真性不被允許表現。女性被限制登台，不能以真實面目出現。他們的外表通過反串操演、語音操縱、音樂風格、偽裝膚色等進行了進一步的修改。加上，媒體的轉移和傳播所造成的變形更加掩蓋了它們。
然而，這些變裝人物，在現實與接近現實的精神交替中，巧妙地喚起了身份多變邊界的神秘性。
