The care for opacity: On Tsai Ming-Liang’s conservative filmic gesture

Abstract

A thin veneer of immediate reality is spread over natural and artificial matter, and whoever wishes to remain in the now, with the now, on the now, should please not break its tension film.-Vladimir Nabokov, Transparent Things Transparent thingsThe opening generic of Tsai Ming-Liang's Face (2009) has just ended. In the background, we hear the hum of a café. On a white screen, calligraphy of the Chinese character for face, 脸 (lian), fades-in. It is full and well-proportioned, yet it seems to irresistibly flee toward the right, as if drawn in a fury -or better, furiously drawn forth. This transient and animated calligraphic gesture already prefigures the general movement of the movie to come: faces moving through and passing away; faces in time, trans-appearing faces.Simultaneously, we hear a short dialogue between the café waiter and some visitors. 'Bonjour. We're looking for Antoine. -You just missed him.' Through the café's window, we see a flock of pigeons rapidly vanishing. We are left with an empty cup of coffee on a table, a view on the café's descending street, and some pale, shadow-like reflections on the window of the movement of the people inside the café. Antoine was here. His cup is still there. The film production crew had an appointment with him at 10h. Too late -he is at the dentist now. Xiao Kang's reflection appears where Antoine

Soulful sedentarity: Tsai Ming-Liang at home at the museum

“…So now that invitation was for me inexorably linked with Truffaut's films. (Vijn 2010) I have described elsewhere the ethical and cinematographic importance of the Truffaut-Léaud privileged relationship for Tsai and how it has deeply influenced the way he envisages his long-lasting commitment with his fetish actor, Lee Kang-Sheng (Bordeleau 2011). Prolonging an ongoing meditation on art practices as power of exposure and concealment, vital play and artistic display, this article focuses on a lesser-known side of Tsai's work through an analysis of his video installation at the Xue Xue Institute in Taipei.…”

“…Tsai's quasi-apocalyptic idea of interruption is an essential component of what I have elsewhere called his conservative filmic gesture (Bordeleau 2012). He doesn't simply wish to stop the destructive processes related to global mobilization; in a way, he effectively manages to do so.…”