canceled | FLUIDØ (2017, 80:00) in conversation with Shu Lea Cheang

Part of Winter 2020

March 12, 2020
CANCELED || Given yesterday’s announcement that COVID-19 is a pandemic, and following the subsequent travel bans and advisory to #staythefuckhome, our international guest artist Shu Lea Cheange has canceled their travel plans. In support of mitigating the imminent impact of COVID-19 in our Toronto community, we are canceling this March 26 event. It is not lost on us how Fluidø addresses the urgency and tension of this moment about contagion and virus – and we will postpone this timely conversation to discuss it’s aftermath in October.

FLUIDØ is VIRUS, SEX, HACK, DRUG & CONSPIRACY.

Set in the post-AIDS future of 2060, where the Government is the first to declare the era AIDS FREE, mutated AIDS viruses give birth to ZERO GEN – humans that have genetically evolved in a very unique way. These gender fluid ZERO GENs are the bio-drug carriers whose white fluid is the hypernarcotic for the 21st century, taking over the markets of the 20th century white powder high. The ejaculate of these beings is intoxicating and the new form of sexual commodity in the future. The new drug, code named DELTA, diffuses through skin contact and creates an addictive high. A new war on drugs begins and the ZERO GEN are declared illegal. The Government dispatches drug-resistant replicants for round-up arrest missions. When one of these government android’s immunity breaks down and its pleasure centers are activated, the story becomes a tangled multi-thread plot and the ZERO GENs are caught among underground drug lords, glitched super agents, a scheming corporation and a corrupt government. Check yourself in as a fluid junkie for a super hyper viral ride

Script/direction: Shu Lea Cheang
Produced by Shu Lea Cheang, Jürgen Brüning Filmproduktion and AMARD BIRD Films.

Cypher punk code hacking data hunting – human body the final frontier.

In partnership with the Department of Cinema & Media Arts, School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design,York Centre for Asian Research, Taipei Economic & Cultural Office, and York Centre for Feminist Research.

GET YOUR TICKETS HERE YORKU Faculty and Students get in FREE!

Director Statement: I was living in New York City throughout the 80’s and 90s, being part of the downtown performance and independent filmmaking community. They were times of protest and street actions, of clubbing, sex, drugs and the AIDS epidemic. We lost many friends. ACT UP was leading direct action and civil disobedience to demand the release of curing drugs. FLUIDØ ultimately claims the virus as my own salvation. My attempt at reconciliation with the pain of lost intimacy. Projecting to a future, our bodies are colonialized, engineered, reconstituted. We own an empty shell of a body whose data we no longer have access to. FLUIDø’s excessive ejaculation celebrates the free flow of body fluid. I want the movie to be watched in the cinema where audience can experience collectively the raw, uncensored body power.

Biography: Shu Lea Cheang is an artist, filmmaker, networker working with various art mediums and film formats, including installation, performance, net art, public art, video installation, feature-length film and mobile web serial. As a net art pioneer, her project BRANDON (1998-1999) was the first web art commissioned and collected by the Guggenheim Museum in New York. She drafts sci-fi narratives in her film scenario and artwork imagination, crafting her own “science” fiction genre of new queer cinema, terming them eco-cybernoia (FRESH KILL, 1994), sci-fi cyberpunk (I.K.U., 2000), sci-fi cypherpunk (Fluidø, 2017). From homesteading cyberspace in the 90s to her present retreat to post net-crash BioNet zone, Cheang takes on viral love, bio hack in her current cycle of works. In 2019, she presented 3x3x6 at Venice Biennale 2019. Currently she is developing two projects: UNBORN0x9 (a hacking performance) and UKI (an interruptive cinema).
http://mauvaiscontact.info

Shu Lea Cheang is best known for her 2000 cult smash I.K.U. in which sensual cyborgs fuck for information and pleasure. The film, heavily influenced by Blade Runner, is perhaps the first cyperpunk movie to radically explore the possibilities of cybernetic sexualities. The pioneer in the field of media art embraced internet and hacking culture early on, recognizing both its capacity to enslave as well as liberate, mixing that with queer and sexually explicit imagery bringing something new to the cultural landscape. Cheang describes herself as both a “cyberhomesteader” and a “high-tech aborigine” hinting at meta-levels of not only her own life, but the worlds of her films.

OTHER SHU LEA CHEANGE ENGAGEMENTS IN TORONTO:

Tue., March 24th, 12:45 at Nat Taylor Cinema, York University. There will be a screening of Shu Lea Cheang’s Wonders Wander followed by a question and answer. Wonders Wander’s fantasia filmic episodes recount tales of present-day people’s resistance with relentless defiance, seductive sensuality and vigorous passion.

GET YOUR TICKETS FOR WONDER WANDER HERE

Wed., March 25th, 1:00 at 280A YL, York University. This will be an artist talk by Shu Lea Cheang focused on her netart practice and, in particular, her recent piece “3x3x6,” shown at the 2019 Venice Biennale. As the Taipei Fine Arts Museum writes “Internationally recognized as an Internet art pioneer, Cheang explores the changing relationships between technology and body politics in the age of late capitalism and globalization.”

GET TICKETS FOR ARTIST TALK HERE