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Tiffany Sia: Overt Listening
Tiffany Sia's first Austrian solo show: a new film on the Cold War legacy of Taiwan's Kinmen Islands, bunkers, beaches and radio. At MuseumsQuartier.
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Preview: written before the show opened
Kinmen is a cluster of Taiwanese islands about 1,800 metres off the coast of China, left by the 1949 Battle of Guningtou at one end of the Chinese Civil War's frozen front line. Tiffany Sia's new film goes there: abandoned bunkers, museum displays and empty beaches, under radio propaganda, imported pop and military exercises.
The film anchors her first institutional solo show in Austria, laid out in chapters across the Museumsquartier's ground floor. Around it, new works include one on the Flak towers and Austrian neutrality, and another on interrupted television broadcasts.
At its New York Film Festival premiere the film ran 85 minutes, mostly wordless, with onscreen text and no subtitles for its English, Mandarin and Taiwanese Hokkien. You can see it in a cinema first: the Austrian Film Museum gives it its European premiere on 14 November at 18:00, with a Q&A. Tickets are €14, free under 19, pay what you can on Thursdays 17:00 to 20:00, and free on 29 November and 27 December.
Editor's pick
Kinmen sits about 1,800 metres off China's coast, and loudspeaker stacks there once blared Teresa Teng songs across the water. Sia's mostly wordless film moves through its bunkers and empty beaches, with new work on Vienna's Flak towers.
Look for
The Kinmen film
The centrepiece cuts between military bunkers, museum displays and deserted coastlines, with radio broadcasts and the sound of military exercises laid over the landscape.
Teresa Teng over the loudspeakers
The film shows the speaker stacks that blared songs by Teresa Teng, banned on the mainland, across the water toward China.
Dash cam drives
Long stretches of dash cam footage play against intercepted radio from both sides, a collage of Chinese chamber music and Eastern and Western pop.
The Flak tower work
A separate installation turns to the Second World War's reinforced-concrete anti-aircraft towers and civilian shelters to reflect on Austrian neutrality.
Good for
- Evening Visits
- Going Solo
- Nerding Out
With kids
Under-19s go free.
Also at Kunsthalle Wien
On now nearby
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Image credits
9
- Tiffany Sia: Overt ListeningCourtesy the artist and Maxwell Graham, New York
- Herbert Boeckl – Hans Josephsohn: Figural ArchetypesHerbert Boeckl Nachlass, Vienna; Josephsohn Estate / Kesselhaus Josephsohn, St. Gallen
- Tolia Astakhishvili: Figure of the Childmumok – Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien
- Terminal Piecemumok – Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien
- Kunsthalle WienStephan Wyckoff / PresseKunsthalleWien, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Leopold MuseumPeter Gugerell / Wikimedia Commons, CC0
- mumok – Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig WienAndrzej Otrębski / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Architekturzentrum Wien (Az W)Spock1801 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Kunsthistorisches Museum WienManfred Werner (Tsui), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0