A film poster can arouse great imagination and desire to see the movie. By associating the poster’s text and drawn images, the audience imagines their own story and version of the movie’s plot. Horror has always been a genre about the unknown; classic horror films always end at the point when the unknown reveals itself, when the unknown become the known. A film poster holds an unfulfilled desire, just as the unknown remains hidden in the dark.
Thin Veiled World is a set of seven film posters dealing with aspects of the classic horror genre; zombie police eating only homeless people: a woman transfiguring her body to become a modern-day Frankenstein: a politician-turned-property-developer who, after destroying farmland, is the victim of a vegetable monster and so on. While researching classic horror films, I found that a majority have their origins in the political and social situations of the time. These films are all inevitably “political”—as a ghost is always a history denied, a prayer unanswered and justice unfulfilled.
A Closed Circle of Unknowns is a circle formed by seven old cinema chairs, similar in arrangement as during a séance. The chairs give a hint of the presence of the unknown by folding and unfolding in slow motion. In a traditional séance, something “alive” is placed in the middle of the circle in order to summon the spirits. Here, a recording by NASA of the sound of planets in the solar system will be played as “bait” in my own ritual. [Ho Sin Tung]
A Closed Circle of Unknown, 2014. mixed media. dimensions variable
