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金剛經 (Diamond Sutra)

Shot concurrently with Sleepwalk 2012 in Liao Wei-li and Michael Lin’s corrugated cardboard installation for the Venice Architectural Biennale, this is the third film in Tsai Ming-liang’s ‘Walker’ series.

Considering questions of time and duration, life and death, Tsai began filming Lee Kang-sheng’s slow walk just as a rice cooker was turned on, the steam from which reminded Tsai of the face of his mother on her deathbed. In this film, Tsai’s usually static camera pans alongside the monk, capturing every facet of his movement as the rice begins to boil rhythmically. Titled after a Buddhist Sutra brought back to China by Xuanzang, the Tang dynasty Buddhist monk who inspired the series, the film’s focus on a mundane domestic implement in an artificial environment raises questions about the possibility of experiencing reality as it is. Diamond Sutra was selected as the opening short film for the 2012 Venice Film Festival.

夢遊 (Sleepwalk)

The ‘Walker’ series follows Tsai Ming-liang’s long term muse and collaborator Lee Kang-sheng, dressed in the robes of a Buddhist monk, walking at a profoundly slow pace through different environments.

In 2012, the Taiwanese architects Michael Lin and Liao Wei-li developed an installation for the Venice Architectural Biennale and invited Tsai Ming-liang to create a video work for the exhibition space. Shot in a prototype of the design, which was developed to reflect the impact of Taiwan’s geological conditions on the island’s living spaces, the third instalment of the Walker series sees Lee Kang-sheng’s slow-walking monk inhabiting an uncanny landscape constructed from corrugated cardboard. Sleepwalk takes the monk out of contemporary urban streetscapes and into an imaginary environment. Two versions of Lee inhabit this space: the first lies sleeping, whilst the second paces the installation with almost imperceptible movement, as if moving through his own dream.