The calm wind shapes the boat is an online project from Susu which will be live on the Blue Oyster website from Friday, October 25 to Sunday, November 24.
Past Event
Research image courtesy of the artist
Please join us at Samoa House Library in Tāmaki Makaurau on Friday, October 25 from 5pm for a one night only collective viewing of the artwork, and an artist talk between Susu and Joanna Cho with Blue Oyster director Simon Palenski from 6pm. Refreshments provided by the Lebanese Grocer.
The calm wind shapes the boat is a digital artwork informed by Susu’s recent experiences of taking multiple trips between Aotearoa and Taiwan. For Susu, these recurring arrivals and departures, undertaken in order to obtain exemption from compulsory military service, hold passages between legal, cultural and personal constructs of gender, and sensations of homesickness, belonging and familial memories. Composed of materials collected on each trip, such as video, notes, text and animation, The calm wind shapes the boat also features a written response between Susu and poet Joanna Cho formed around an ongoing correspondence.
Susu
Susu is a Taiwanese artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau, working in digital fabrication, casting, moving image and installation. Their work examines the mutability of memory and language, and the perpetual process of becoming, through acts of movement across the transitional spaces of national boundaries, terrestrial bodies, the virtual and the physical.
Joanna Cho
Joanna Cho is the author of People Person (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2022), which was shortlisted for the 2023 Ockham NZ Book Awards. She lives in Ōtaki and works as an adult literacy tutor and at a bookshop. She is working on a book of short stories.