Infected dreams 被感染的夢 VHS tape, Scaffolding, Speaker, Stage lighting, Digital Print, Solar panel, Full range speaker, Sandbag, Cement, Toner, Single channel video( 17'58" ) VHS 磁帶、金屬鷹架、喇叭、舞台燈、數位輸出、太陽能板、全音域喇叭、矽沙、混凝土、單頻道錄像 ( 17分58秒 ) Size Variable / 視場地尺寸而定 2023 ( Installation view of bear hole, Taipei, 2023 ) “Infected Dreams” is a road trip of magical realism, of a fascination with the representations of wilderness, of the sadness evoked by a changed landscape, and also, the self-explorations of the "recently traumatized”.
Expanding upon TING Chaong-Wen’s past works Akno Island and Darkness Equation of the Mount Mihara Monogatari series from 2017, which focused on the contexts of the Mihara volcano on Ōshima Island in Tokyo, Japan, and its unique volcanic formation which had become a symbol of post-war pop culture, these past works embody the social anxiety and expectations of alternate outcomes towards disaster. The black desert provides hallucinations and experiences of alienation for the creative imagination of subsequent creators, producing the fictional monsters and horror films that shape our perceptions and misconceptions towards the land.
Infected Dreams incorporates these past projects into the past and present of one of Taiwan’s most magically realistic roads, Provincial Highway No. 61 (West Coast Expressway). TING revisits elements of the original works—installations, objects, and videos—taking them outdoors to the endpoint of the expressway in Qigu District, a barren former industrial landscape undergoing drastic changes in renewable energy construction projects, which experience irreversible ecological changes beyond the resilience of natural environments. By unmasking the transformations occurring at the fringe, hazards of photovoltaic power plants, desertification along the shore, and loss of post-industrial heritage sites, the work shows how human beings vie with nature and try to impose changes in vain, as in the concept of "plasticité destructrice" proposed by Catherine Malabou. The subject suffers from various natural or political disasters and unexpectedly gains the ability to decompose and reshape itself, in an ironic but proactive way. Meanwhile, the "transformation" coincidentally follows the situation of one's personal state—as a "recently traumatized” person (a new person created as a result of the trauma) prone to the lasting effects of long COVID.
“Intervening” in the site, gazing, observing, recording, surveying, discovering “nonfictional” experiences, and placing the work among “alternative landscapes” to create a chain reaction, TING Chaong-Wen further explores and extends the processes of visualization and iconography in the cultural production system, exploring how through the material transformation of prejudices, metaphors, and embedded histories, the contradictions and fallacies in the pursuit of civilization have been adapted and become rooted in the physical world we live in. 作品《被感染的夢》是藝術家丁昶文關於魔幻寫實的公路之旅,展示了對荒野再現的迷戀、對地景形塑後的睹景傷情,也是其作為「新傷者」的自我探索。