Yuk-Yiu IP.

Another Day of Depression in Kowloon

Date: 2012
Length: 15:00 min.
Format: 16:9
Specifications: Colour, Sound, Single Channel
Courtesy the artist

In his work “Another Day of Depression in Kowloon”, the artist Ip Yuk Yiu invites the viewer to a virtual trip round Hong Kong. He combines elements of an ethnographic study with the form of a video game. The ambience of the video game “Call of Duty: Black Ops” from 2010 is transformed into a meditative spatial investigation. Unlike the war scenery of a typical ego-shooter,  we see restrained, motionless pictures of abandoned buildings and the empty rain-swept streets of a virtual Kowloon cityscape. Dramatic pictures of streets and building during a thunderstorm and views into variously furnished rooms, where traces of their inhabitants still exist, are presented to the viewer. In part the rooms can be identified as restaurants, with aquariums full of fish, and cages for chickens and monkeys. Cellars with torn-out electric cables, a stairwell with paint daubed on the walls and an abandoned bicycle can also be seen. The monotonous rhythm of the video and the unbroken sound of the rain subvert the concept and logic of the video game “Call of Duty: Black Ops”. The simulated violence and the fight scenes of the ego-shooter have been replaced by a dreary cyber landscape and gives the viewer rather the feel of being abandoned than of inviting them to take part. In its mixture of video game and virtual reality, the work generates an ambivalent mood somewhere between futurism and melancholy.
Elena Titova
 

Interview:

► 1. Your work has been chosen among over 2000 festival entries to participate in VIDEONALE.14.  In which context  do you prefer to present  your work, festival/cinema context or exhibition? And what kind of difference does the respective mode of presentation mean for you / your work?

Preferably I would like to present the work in a cinema context as it takes the audience through a virtual journey that unfolded in a certain temporal order and structural progression.

► 2. Art can be seen as a mirror that registers and reflects life or as a tool that transforms it. Is there a particular theme, concept or problem your art addresses the most?

Two main concepts underlay my works, namely documentation and media appropriation.  These two concerns often seem to suggest divergent approaches in art-making.  However, in ANOTHER DAY OF DEPRESSION IN KOWLOON, these two ideas intersected naturally and formed a conceptual framework that fused the two together as the work deals with the issue of virtual ethnography, i.e. how to document and represent our virtual being in the hybridized media realm.

► 3. In which way is the video medium an excellent possibility to express your intended subjects, especially in contrast to other media you use? Or do you work exclusively with video?

I worked mainly with film, video and digital media.  Video, and by extension video game, thus is a logical media that I derived my inspirations from and devoted my attention to.

► 4. If you have the chance to ask the visitors of the VIDEONALE.14 exhibition questions about your own work, what would be your question?

I have no question.