Understudy
2025
Single-channel video, color, sound, performance
40:00
The performance begins with piles of wood hanging on the walls, appearing to slice the space in half. The performer then removes pieces of wood and assembles them with their body, becoming a chair, a tool, an object, or an apparatus. The chair’s design is based on those commonly used in schools in Taiwan. The performance aims to expose the power dynamics embedded within the educational system, specifically the relationship between the school chair, the human body, and architectural space. By disrupting habitual forms and functions, these unstable assemblages reveal how systemic structures quietly shape bodies and behavior. In the end, the performer returns all the wood to the wall; no chairs, no bodies, and no visible traces remain.
School chair in Taiwan.
Photo from the Department of Education, Taoyuan, Taiwan.
As the performance continues, the video Understudy Simulacra plays on a continuous loop on the wall, accompanied by a distorted radar sound. The video incorporates the same space in which the performance Understudy took place. It suspends established power relations among school chairs, the human body, and architectural space. The work examines chairs, bodies, forms, tools, objects, and apparatuses as modular units that alternately occupy, reorganize, or erase space, thereby exposing the concealed mechanisms of discipline embedded within the education system.
Understudy Simulacra
2025
Single-channel video, color, sound
0:44