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In Spear, Che-Wei Chen collaborates with a friend who was diagnosed with dissociative disorder. The film starts with the individual experience. It attempts to transform the fragment of traumatic memory into an artistic way. During the shooting, it includes the scene of hypnosis that the subject suddenly switches between personality states. The film blurs the lines between documentary and fiction; likewise, it unfolds a compound experience intertwined with reality and fantasy. The film examines the human being under the state of discipline and the mute condition of language. We also gain an insight into the archetypes of trauma: violence, power, oppression and control technologies, etc.

Che-Wei Chen is a visual artist and filmmaker based in Taipei. His recent practice has focused on the subjectivity of people with mental disorders and reflected upon the complexity of contemporary conditions. He explores the boundaries between reality and fiction through multiple perspectives within complex structures and narratives. His work not only reveals the repressed collective unconscious but also re-examines the power and political structures underlying the social system. Besides, he also addresses issues such as postcolonialism, modernity, classification, biopolitics, etc.

The conception of the work is based largely on prehistoric cave paintings on Sulawesi Island, as well as fossils and remains undiscovered or still undergoing excavation in East Asia, Southeast Asia and other regions. The creation of cave paintings marks the dawn of the intelligent creature discovering images for immersive experience. Species of different lineages can develop similar functions because of being in similar environments— what we call convergent evolution; different ethnicity groups, too, are able to develop consistent cognitive ability in similar spaces. As one of the oldest cave paintings, the painting at Leang-Leang cave had witnessed the beginning of consciousness, which happened across different locations in human history. It illustrates the common ground of humans and how they gradually evolve to share more similarities.

Wu Chi-Yu born in 1986, is an artist based in Taipei, Taiwan. Chi-Yu’s work has long been focusing on re-establishing the connections among humans, things, animals, and the ruined world left by technic capitalism. His practice revolves around the moving image, looking for contemporary narratives in lost memory through the reproducing of oral history and myths. He is also involved in different collaboration projects of installation, video installation, and performance.   The exhibitions he once participated include: The Ouroboros (TheCube Project Space, Taipei/ Casino Luxembourg, 2019); Serious Games (HOW Art Museum, Shanghai, 2019); 12th Shanghai Biennale: Proregress (Power Station of Art, Shanghai, 2018); Trans-Justice (MOCA, Taipei, 2018); Crush (Para Site, Hong Kong, 2018); Taipei Biennial (Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, 2016); The 2nd CAFAM Future Exhibition (CAFA Art Museum, Beijing 2015). His films have been screened at Short Film Program-Art Basel Hong Kong (2019); Beijing International Short Film Festival (2017); EXiS Festival (Seoul, 2017); Arkipel Festival (Jakarta, 2016). He had a solo show: 91 Square Meters of Time (TKG+ Project, Taipei, 2017) and was a resident artist at Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten (2014-2015).

The work is a paper made video composed of digital image and physical material that delves into the essence of moving image. I divided the digital video into the film ratio of 24-frame-per-second. Through the process of digital transforming in printing and scanning, the re-composed video is in between movement and stillness, virtual and concrete, digital and material. The contrasts have thus been thus related to the Oriental philosophy of Taoism, "one body with two sides". With the video, I was trying to visualize the abstract natural law which denies description. Tao is empty yet inexhaustible, hidden but always present, a way of life yet not a locatable truth. darkness within darkness seeks, in the same way, to be comprises of the very contrast between the established (material) and the abstract (digital) through revealing the invisible time in image.

Wu Chia-Yun (b.1988, Taiwan) received an MA degree in Visual Communication from the Royal College of Art (London) and an MFA degree in Motion Picture from the National Taiwan University of Arts (Taipei). She is an artist and filmmaker based in Taipei, her work is a mixture of image, video, mixed media and installation, focusing on the topics of “human condition” and “the time of image”. Wu has been awarded as Emerging Artist Made in Taiwan by the Ministry of Culture (2017), First Prize of Kaohsiung Awards by the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts (2019), and has had a solo exhibition at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (2019). Her works have also been internationally selected to the European Media Art Festival (2020), The European Independent Film Channel (2015), Shanghai international Film Festival (2014).