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Ventriloquists: Liang Mei-Lan and Emily Su

double channel video installation

09'11 & 09'13''

2009

Ventriloquists: Liang Mei-Lan and Emily Su is a recording of a conversation between me and two women from the Philippines who got married to Taiwanese citizens. Over the past decade, living in a foreign land has made them learn the local languages in order to make things easier in daily life. However, due to different family backgrounds, their linguistic habits are not similar. The dialogue between Liang Mei-Lan and me was based on three languages (Chinese, Hokkien and English), and with Emily, it was based on English and Chinese only. Throughout the conversation, incorrect use of words, mispronunciation and strange accents were clearly present. At the end of the conversation, I invited them to sing a Chinese song, trying to free them from the invisible language barriers and cultural differences and enabling them to savor the cultural differences reflected in the song.

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Commissioned by the 53rd Venice Biennale Taiwan Pavilion in 2009

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