Artist Collection #2: Ellen Pau
Artist Collection
Artist Collection #2: Ellen Pau
Ellen Pau (born in Hong Kong in 1961) is one of the earliest pioneering video artists in Hong Kong. Beyond artistic creation, she is known for her influential contributions to the development of video and media arts in the region, through the founding of several important initiatives, including the city’s oldest video artist collective and archive for media art, Videotage, in 1986. Pau also founded Microwave International New Media Arts Festival in 1996. She has collaborated with Zuni Icosahedron since the 80s and began her interest in exploring performative video and choreographic gesture in her video works. Her works have been exhibited locally and worldwide in film festivals and art exhibitions. In 2001, Recycling Cinema, one of her most significant video installations, was presented at the Hong Kong Pavilion in the 49th Venice Biennale.
She Moves
With the movement of water droplets as an expression of emotion, this work examines the rhythmic representation and texture of video as a medium.
Director / Ellen Pau
1988 / 2:40 / Video 8 / Single-channel / Sound / 4:3
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Drained II
The video comments on the materialization of the electronic image. A brief segment of a stage performance is endlessly repeated spatially and temporally.
Director / Ellen Pau
1989 / 5:49 / V8 edited with Betamax / Single-channel / Sound / 4:3
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Diversion
Diversion focuses on the immigration flush of Hong Kong in 1990. By combining footage from various sources – government newsreels of the swimming contests, educational videos on swimming, performance video of the sequence of a burning newspaper goat-head floating down a stairwell- the video is a personal reflection of a collective memory.
Director / Ellen Pau
1990 / 5:40 / VHS / Single-channel / Sound / 4:3
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Song of the Goddess
This work pays tribute to the love story between the two lead female Cantonese Opera performers, Yam Kim-fai and Pak Suet-sin. Their mirrored selves appear as strongly dualistic reflections referencing their love in real life, and also echoing what was acted out on the screen.
Director / Ellen Pau
1992 / 6:39 / Hi-8 / Single-channel / Sound / 4:3
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Movement #1/10
This video is a collaboration between Pau and the choreographer and dancer, Dick Wong. This is the first of a 10-part exploration of movement and space, orientation and disorientation.
Director / Ellen Pau
1995 / 5:25 / Hi-8 edited with SVHS / Single-channel / Sound / 4:3
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Recycling Cinema
A haunting allegory of reality, metaphysics and cinema, the work transcends the sociological, theoretical or formal conventions of cinematic practice with specific challenges to the uni-directional participation of viewing and linearity. The work plays with the constructions of narrative and the act of viewing. An edited version was exhibited in the Hong Kong-China participation in the 49th Venice Biennale.
Director / Ellen Pau
1999 / 11:42 / DV / Single-channel / Sound / 4:3
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For:Give
For:Give celebrates the expressionism of hands. A kaleidoscopic effect is applied to the image so that the hands’ caressing gestures create biomorphic forms, like plants or bodily organs.
Director / Ellen Pau
2003 / 02’36
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52hz
A unique whale named “52Hz” vocalizes at a frequency of 52 hertz, significantly higher than the typical calls of other whale species and it is believed to be unheard of by them, hence, was described as the “world’s loneliest whale”. Pau poetically connects this unique whale to the stories of a sex worker, a YouTuber and school bullying.
Director / Ellen Pau
2023 / 16‘19