I May Doze
for Millions
of Years
July 8 - Aug 21, 2021
Opening on July 8 at 7pm
EN|ES
I May Doze
for Millions
of Years
July 8 - Aug 21, 2021
Opening on July 8 at 7pm
I May Doze for Millions of Years
4K, 13'54", Mexico, 2021
Director & Script Val Lee
Producer Jo Ying Peng
Cinematographer Yollotl Alvarado
Line Producer Elizabeth Calzado
Editor Yollotl Alvarado, Val Lee
Sound Designer Hao Luo
Sound Recording Erick Ruíz Arellano
Costume Designer Alberto Perera
Production Designer Mía Ourgant
Cast Mónica Nepote, Chantal Garduño, Cristián Mandujano, Damián Mandujano, Mauricio Carranza, Alberto Perera, Juan Manuel de la Trinidad, José Luis Mellado
Special Thanks Tang Fu Kuen, Chang Jui-tzu, Victor Costales, Eric Namour, Dario and Nicolas Namour Lira
Buenos días mujeres
4K, 8'40", Mexico, 2019
Director Val Lee
Producer Jo Ying Peng
Photography Yollotl Alvarado
Project Manager Elizabeth Calzado
Sound Erick Ruíz
Camera Assistant Hugo Sandoval
Characters Mónica Nepote, Alberto Perera
Performers Mauricio Carranza, Víctor Hugo García Camacho, Israel González Arreola, Marco Antonio González Nava, Carlos Eduardo Hernández Cedano, Abraham Hurtado Hernández, Uriel López Romero, José Gerardo López Sánchez, Juan José Luna Alvarado, Iván Martínez Montes de Oca, Francisco Martínez Uribe, José Luis Mellado Zamarripa, Adrián Robert Gutiérrez, Moisés Segura Ramírez, Manuel Rogelio Soriano García, Gregorio Vara Hernández, Saúl Mandujano Jurado
Special Thanks Mauro Giaconi, Saúl Mandujano Jurado & Family, Vera Ramírez, Noé Adolfo Riande Juárez & Hush, Germán Rosales, Jesús Quijada, Estudio Tacubaya
N
HD, 23’59", USA, 2019
Director Val Lee
Photography Paul Shih
Performers Vinson Fraley, Tajee Harrison
Vernacular is pleased to present the exhibition I May Doze for Millions of Years by Taiwanese artist Val Lee. The title is taken from her latest film which will be premiered alongside Buenos días mujeres and N. Three works comprise the trilogy to outline Lee’s research on contemporary violence in society, following her interest in experimental documentary.
The history of violence culminates in this merging of victim and perpetrator, of master and slave, of freedom and violence. (Topology of Violence, Byung-Chul Han)
Focusing on the sociological investigation of violence and complex political situations, Val Lee explores the psychological state of perpetrators and the theoretical context on the spatial and psychological characteristics of the total institution. The concept is associated with the thesis of the sociologist Erving Goffman, where a great number of individuals are isolated from the wider community for a considerable time, together with leading an enclosed, formally administered life.
In the film N, the characters V and T met in a hotel room in Manhattan and performed 'action scripts' for an appointed duration. As the first work in the trilogy, it elaborates a social relation experiment based on Lee’s field research of the young prisoner in New York.
Buenos días mujeres depicts two others, M and A, who encounter in different sites around Escandón following action scripts that designate their journey. Confronted with several scenarios, the main characters dwell in the narrative as if on auto-pilot. Devising a wholly cinematic language between auto-cinema and auto-documentary, Lee’s ‘action script’ is designed beforehand but played out in the absence of the director. Buenos días mujeres deals with the theme of gender crime, also referred to as femicide. With a rare poetic take on the subject, the work provides insight into the inner system governed by a pulsating toxic masculine behavior.
In the new work, I May Doze for Millions of Years, M comes across C and other characters who perform in various fable-like sets that lead their journey to an unknown destination. Staged in the surreal cantina La Faena, the scenes are forged with ‘trance’ and ‘hypnosis’ which serve as metaphors to interpret the unstable collective consciousness while confronting politics with diversified ideologies.
The exhibition I May Doze for Millions of Years encompasses film, installation, a sound piece made by Marcos Lutyens in collaboration with Val Lee, fragmental writings that sketch the scenes behind the screen, and a reading corner with a selection of books that draws the artist’s research path.
Val Lee is a director and co-founding artist of Ghost Mountain Ghost Shovel, an art collective employing constructed, ephemeral situations as a form of live art where the audience enters a poetic constellation of action script, installation, sound, hypnotic rhetoric, composite structure, and mise-en-scène. GMGS is drawn to urban violence, criminal act, political riot, abrupt historical reenactment, and the diversified modes of psychological absorption and participation.
The exhibition I May Doze for Millions of Years is supported by the Ministry of Culture, Taiwan. The film I May Doze for Millions of Years is supported by the The National Culture and Arts Foundation (NCAF), Taiwan. The film Buenos días mujeres is supported by the Ministry of Culture, Taiwan. The film N is supported by the Asian Cultural Council (ACC).
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