According to a survey conducted by the Department of Health Bureau of Pharmaceutical Affairs, as of 2009, Taiwan has over 3,000,000 sleeping pill users.
The sleeping pill “Stilnox” incidentally prompted my encounter with a peculiar experience. Due to this experience, I have developed my new work, and titled the exhibition “Stilnox Home Video,” to convey the uniqueness of merging television and pharmaceutical experiences.
It is commonplace today to use sleeping pills. One night after taking Stilnox, I forgot to sleep and unconsciously entered a “world that does not sleep.” As the drug started to take effect, I lighted a cigarette, and while gazing at the smoke and television screen, I found that the living room before me had started to contract, the space embodying a sense of speed. Surrounded by these magnified rings of smoke, all sorts of televisions characters and scenarios started appearing before me, like a psychedelic reality show.
Induced by Stilnox, the images on the television started to exert a new effect. Television and drugs, these two elements of life, reverse themselves unintentionally, producing an intriguing experience out of my daily life.
— Su Hui-Yu 2010.09.25