When it comes to Wu’s works after the year 2000, for example the Former and Current Life series51 (《前世今生》系列), the grotesque images penetrate the civil world in his pictures.
The main theme in this series is “technical revivalism” (Pan 138), which means to use the latest technologies from the West on one hand but to think in a Chinese way on the other52. In Work Together toward Same Goal (2002), United in Our Effect (2002) and Dreaming of Golden Millet (2002), the visual images co-exist with poems and mottos from the Gods to explain something bewildering. Wu fabricates the names, the address and the personal
background of the figures in this series. The fabrication serves two purposes. On the one hand, the pseudo-professional judgments53 try to convince the viewers to believe his stories. On the other hand, it responds to the previous idea of fake aesthetics claimed by Wu as the
characteristic of Taiwanese culture. What he is confronting is the advanced technology. He expresses his anxiety about the functions of “format” and “undo” in the world of digital technology54. His anxiety becomes the inspiration for him in creating the eerie pictures of this series.
In the Former and Current Life series, he performs the grotesque narratives to tell the stories of his works and makes his figures extremely grotesque in order to face the inevitable power. Wu now becomes the God, or a chi-tung55 (shaman)to claim his professionalism and practice his power to control his figures’ fate. Also, his pseudo-oracles point out the keynote of the audiences’ “infantile beliefs […,] such as the belief in the ability of the dead to return life” (Schneider 169). The monstrous people Wu creates remind the audience that there is a
51 This series includes United in Our Effect (《永協同心》) (2002; fig. 22), Work Together toward Same Goal (《同舟共濟》) (2002; fig. 23) and Dreaming of Golden Millet (《黃粱夢》) (2003; fig. 24).
52 See footnote 3 of Chapter One.
53 In Chinese folk culture, people believe that each person will be judged by the King of Hell. All the crimes and the punishments will be descried in the judgments to warm the living people.
54 See 1.2 of Chapter One.
55 Chi-tung, a “human spirit medium” (Pan 139).
certain power controlling us imperceptibly but inexorably. It can not be named for sure. Thus, he regards the religious language as a metaphor to tell the audience the dreadful stories which the audience may have heard of in their childhood. The original idea can be traced back to the concept of uncanny derived from the infantile psychology. In Freud’s Uncanny, there are some ideas that can be used to analyze Wu’s works in the third period. Adopting the terms such as “mirror-images” and “the repetition,” there are symmetrical arrangements in Wu’s works, such as the androgynous twins in Spirit Dreaming Conjuration (《夢魂術》) (2004), and the anonymous bodies in Spell to Shift Mountains and Overturn Seas (《排山倒海術》) (2005). Unlike his previous style, Wu uses computers to create many clones which are
evolved from the process of repetition. These pictures contain not only the scenes of carnivals, but also the uncanny figures which are always the trademark of Wu’s works.
Wu makes many clone-like figures in his pictures, and they look more like freaks than just abnormal people in both Spirit Dreaming Conjuration and Spell to Shift Mountains and Overturn Seas. They are naked and hairless; some of them are even just heads without bodies or bodies without heads. The figure in the backdrop (Fig.27) catches my attention. It reminds the audience of the image of the pregnant hags56 in Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World. This time, it is more ambivalent than the hags Bakhtin talks about. When looking at it closely, viewers can tell that it is not a real female body, but a body (without gender specification) with fake breasts. The expression on its face is covered, and it reappears on the main figure in the center of the picture (Fig. 28). Additionally, the main figure in the center of Spirit
Dreaming Conjuration is also a spectacle of freaks. The appearance is like Siamese twins (1837; fig.29) which were treated like freaks in the literatures in the 19th century57. Russo suggests that “the freak and the grotesque overlap as bodily categories” (79) in her research.
56 See 4.2.
57 Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, “Monstrosités” Histoire Générale et Particuliere des Anomalies de l’Organisatoin Chez l’Homme, et les Animaux. Paris: J.B. Baillière, 1837, Plate 15.
According to the definition, the freaks, “as a cultural representation in the late nineteenth century, [it] belongs to the increasingly codified world of spectacle […and] as beings to be viewed” (79). However, Russo does not mean “freaks are born to freaks” (80). The freaks are
“made to seem like ‘real, living breathing monsters’ in the intersection between their presentation in freak shows, photography, cinema, the discourses of biology, and […] all of which supported this illusionism” (80). Therefore, the spectacle is what people impose on the freaks, but not something inherent in the freaks.
Wu links the spectacle of freaks to the folk humor58, and the combination produces the carnival atmosphere as in Bakhtin’s carnivalesque. The oaths and Taoist talisman (Fig. 30) can be found in his fake oracular judgments on the sides of the pictures. These are, however, not made arbitrarily. Wu actually refers to the real religious rituals to make the arrangements in the pictures. Although Wu borrows the real rituals and religious narratives, the contents of his fake judgments are ridiculous, and the talismans are mixed with graffiti (Fig. 30).
According to my interview, Wu thinks that there always seem to have some secrets among the staff and the magicians in circuses which make them so enchanting59. Circuses travel and show in local festivals and state fairs. During performances, people can have a chance to simply relax and have fun; it is just like spending time in a carnival. Wu thinks it is the time for all kinds of desires to emerge. Also, in circuses, people pay for the spectacles they cannot see outside the circus tents.The Siamese twins are grotesque spectacles60 to fulfill the audience’s desire of watching and consuming the spectacles. After Wu’s extra work on the picture, the figures are endowed with multiple meanings. They are not just bodies to attract or disgust people, but with a mission to present the desire and the inner fear of people.
58 See 4.3.
59 Shih-hang Chou, personal interview, 1 Nov. 2006.
60 In The Female Grotesque, Russo has cited some pictures of Siamese twins which were taken in the displays or circus’ museums (81-82).