Through the Walls

No matter how thoroughly the traveler immerses himself in the local lifestyle, he is powerless in averting the differences from the Other. The discrepancy based on time, class, and geographical distance determines that he is, after all, a passerby. Claude Lévi-Strauss detests traveling, as these predatory experiences are unconsciously capitalized in the social structure as a kind of spectacle. While the process of experiential discovery is called an adventure, this so-called reality is more like a tottering glass sitting on the edge of the coffee table in a bustling cafe. Confined to a (non)moving space, it awaits the moment of a fatal fall or a timely rescue. To understand art is akin to traveling. The perception should not be based upon a faux-discovery categorized through experience. Nor should it be a dead end that is categorized by the medium. The psychological process of categorization generally helps to organize and arrange these cognitive experiences. But it would be a misapplication if applied in unknown territories. The taxidermy approach of cataloguing has circumscribed the possibility of understanding new knowledge. Anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski has provided methodology to confront this predicament. Likewise, Jam Wu has also suggested a similar path in his abiding commitment to integrating imagery with poetry.

In Wu’s latest solo exhibition Through the Walls, he emerges as a set of coordinates to embody the ambiguity in art making, composing poetry with imagery. At the same time, his artistic practice also responds to how Plato compares the four states of soul to the four representations in the classification of knowledge in the Republic. Using the Allegory of the Cave^[1], Plato compares the four states of soul to the condition of the human mind, which also denotes how the individual functions, based on the visible and the intelligible in contemporary life. The four-channel video installation in Through the Walls creates a visual loop by having a man and a woman perform body movements separately. The projection resembles a shadow play in which images in black and white weave across the screen, transformed into film frames, choreographed into a narrative of the body, each frame a segment of the poem, as well as a phantasmagoric fragment of the subconscious. Wu's mastery of text and imagery has been the basis for this form of writing with imagery. In addition to the visual vocabulary created by the rich shapes in the images, his passion for depicting the indescribable and expressing creative attempts that some might consider ineffable is the manifestation of a poet's endeavor, the pursuit of poetry.

In the work Through the Walls, the distinguishable images build a rich visual vocabulary through the interaction between the light and shadow cast on the screen and the performers. It challenges the typical visual experience, creating a sense of alienation and aloofness that permeates its imagery, each frame resembling an allegory. The video seems deeply engaged in the implications and interpretations of nature and primitiveness. Just like animism^[2], it reasserts symbols and meanings to each image. These images are not witchcraft or voodoo. They do not need to prove their worth by appeasing souls. More like magic, they operate in an unique way that is different from our everyday state of mind. Its reality is therefore more arcane and unfathomable. That is because understanding is more about cognition and intellect than about awareness and feeling. In this sense, poetry embodies reality to a larger extent than history, as poetry is the essence of what the poet has experienced and observed. Poetry is, therefore, his life and sentiments distilled, comprising not dry facts, but an experience more real than history.

The exhibition Through the Walls is a collaboration between the imagery of Jam Wu and the music of YuJun Wang. Wu's long-standing practice in theater and art spaces has been a sanctuary that serves as his inspiration and nurtures his visual expression. His exhibition project Papercut Field and its publications Papercut Field and ka ka jip choa have been remarkable achievements thanks to his dedication and involvement in local culture. Wu is not so much a contemporary paper-cutting artist, which, as mentioned earlier, a misuse in categorization, than a practitioner in anthropology in the field of contemporary art. He aspires to authentic and primitive creation while emphasizing the uniqueness of each individual. In Through the Walls, Wu constructs a poetic allegory through imagery. Derived from his personal experience in psychological transformation, his work delineates the state of mind of those that are trapped in the collective subconscious. In the path where individuals pursue in the search of truth and self-knowledge, Wu paves a new way and directs them to a place where one awaits and acquires a new identity steeped in trance and ambiguity. Understanding culture, like the artist's condensation of his emotional experience, is, in this case, both an eruption of unique individuality in art making, and an inevitable encounter with the Other's universal experience.

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