Sudden Rise
Wu Tsang
Born in 1982 at Worcester (Massachusetts, USA), lives and works in Zurich (Switzerland).
Sudden Rise is a ‘performance film’ extracted from the eponymous performance by Moved by the Motion.
The film was originally projected onto the proscenium (front) curtain of a theatre at the beginning of each performance, building anticipation of the theatrical space about to be revealed by the show. Here positioned at the end of the exhibition, Sudden Rise acts recursively to reflect on forms of beginnings and endings (as with The show is over, ‘the end won’t come’) as it plays with the blurry line between performance and real life. The fast-paced visuals reference the origins of pictorial single-point perspective as its development coalesced with scientific enlightenment, nautical imperialism and the slave trade, as well as eighteenth-century phantasmagoria theatre forms, with images used to echo stories of trauma and resistance across, through and out of time. In a brief 3:32 minutes, the video advances dizzyingly into a dystopian future and ends abruptly with a metaphorical curtain opening.