The nonlinear narrative structure of The Unusual Death of a Mallard is anchored in the artist’s familial memories. Presented as a large-scale projection, the work opens with the 3D scanning of a mallard, and proceeds to splice together elements from both the real and virtual worlds. A recurring thread throughout is Hsu’s grandmother, who spent three decades working in an animal laboratory in Taiwan and used to bring lab animals home for Hsu’s father to play with. Images of the now elderly grandmother are juxtaposed with Hsu’s daily activities and digital recreations of animals, including scenes in which Hsu’s nephew interacts with the animals in and out of the field of augmented reality. In the monitor-based Rabbit 314, a Taiwanese puppeteer performs a wordless routine on a rabbit, as if trying to reanimate the animal with a series of engineered movements. Shown together as a visual and conceptual dialogue, the two video works question and complicate the relations between the living, the dying, and the dead through image construction, ritual, advanced technology, and, most importantly, memory.
Rabbit 314, 2020. single-channel video (HD, color, silent). 7 min 16 sec
