Niki Siu's week-long POP-UP "Laugh At Last: Gingerbread Man's Destiny"《最後一笑：薑餅人的宿命》蕭麗琦突圍展覽
updated 2022.05.07
Pop-up exhibition: Niki Siu: Laugh At Last: Gingerbread Man’s Destiny 蕭麗琦《最後一笑：薑餅人的宿命》 video + installation + blueprint for a game 錄像 + 雕塑裝置 + 平面圖像 + 有待製作的遊戲的藍本 2022.05.08-14 ONE WEEK ONLY | 2-8pm daily at Floating Projects, L3-06D, JCCAC Artist's narrative at Art Notes [read]
Recent news and past cases about animal experiments inspired Niki Siu to do this multiple-component work, now installed at the Floating Projects. It features the controversy between animal rights and human progress.
Siu aims at raising awareness of animals’ value in society and hopes visitors will share her concern for greater animal respect. The work draws from critical theories, materials art, and contemporary art.
Whereas the sculptural element shows the artist's critical view of how humans and animals co-exist, the video component, Laugh At Last, lends a voice to the animals, as Siu imagines it.
The wall components are at once process-sketches (i.e. backstory for the sculptural and video components) and themselves independent visual portraits for contemplation.
Added to this multi-component work is a world-building plan for a game environment Niki Siu wrote in April 2021 before the making of this work. Consistent with her concern for animal rights, this game plan contemplates environmental issues, also from a more-than-human perspective.
近年的報章報導和過去的事件啟發蕭麗琦製作與動物實驗相關的作品。該作品探討了動物權益與社會進步的潛在矛盾。她的作品目的在於提高人對動物尊重的意識，探究如何重新理解動物在人類社會中的位置。作品涉及批判理論、造型藝術和當代藝術。雕塑作品展示了創作人對人類和動物如何共存所提出的問題，而視頻《最後一笑》則如她想像的那樣為動物發出不滿的聲音。牆壁掛畫既是過程草圖（即雕塑和視頻的背後故事），亦是作為沉思的獨立視覺肖像。除了這個作品外，還有蕭麗琦於 2021 年 4 月編寫的遊戲世界觀的建構概念。與她對動物權益的關注一致，這個遊戲計劃涉及了環境與人性問題，也是從超越人類的角度來設計的。
/ Curated by Linda Lai 黎肖嫻策劃
From the artist Niki Siu 創作人蕭麗琦自述
薑餅人？Why Gingerbread man? The name's origin is the gingerbread man's story. To avoid being eaten by humans, it escapes. It overcomes different challenges, though eventually consumed by the cunning fox. In my work, the experimental subjects, unfortunately, cannot even escape from the laboratory. 作品標題源自薑餅人的故事。為了不被人類吃掉，它逃跑了。雖然它克服了各種的挑戰。但最後，它被狡猾的狐狸吃掉了。相對而言，在我的作品裡，實驗對象永遠無法離開實驗室。這就是牠們的命運。
《最後一笑》The Last Laugh, video component... The Last Laugh is a work of montage-collage, a method I picked up in the last few years. In a two-minute video, I explore animal right from the animals' viewpoint. Humans are caught by a mysterious man and finally not a single human manages to escape… 《最後一笑》是兩分鐘的視頻，以動物角度去探索動物權益：人類被神秘人抓獲，嘗試逃跑，但最終失敗了... 過去幾年，我學習了蒙太奇拼貼藝術。我嘗試把它套用在這個作品中。
《失落的荒島：禁區》Lost Island: Dark Side, world-building plan & gameplay... ...
Lost Island: Dark Side is a proposal for world-building for a game environment. It is a 2D sci-fi horror video game, built around a mysterious adventure in escaping the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The lost island is Chernobyl, which was closed by the Soviet government after the disaster, and finally turned into a ruin, isolated from the world.
Each player acts as a Soviet Union chemist, who needs to find time-machine elements around the nuclear plant. The ultimate goal is to for the chemist to return to 1990 from 1986. The progression of storylines is affected by the player’s choice, leading to different endings.
《失落的荒島：禁區》是為遊戲環境構建世界的概念。它講述了逃離切爾諾貝爾核電廠的，這是一款科幻驚悚的 2D 視頻遊戲。名字的由來是因切爾諾貝爾核事故發生後被蘇聯政府關閉，變成了與世隔絕的永久廢墟。 ... 玩家為一名蘇聯化學家，在核電廠附近進行探索。在任務中，他們需要收集時光機的零件，協助化學家從1986年返回1990年。同時，玩家的抉擇會影響故事線的發展，從而產生不同的結局。
=== Niki Siu 蕭麗琦 is a fresh graduate from the School of Creative Media's Bachelor of Arts program. More about Niki Siu [... ...].
More on the project: https://nikis-gtblog.webnode.tw/ ART NOTES 藝文暢談 [Niki Siu / Why and how I made Gingerbread Man’s Destiny, notes to a pop-up show 薑餅人命運的聯想：動物平權創作手記]
