Taiwan has form in staging depressing video installations next door to the Doge’s palace. This year’s contribution is an orgy of flesh, both on screen and at hand. Li’s animations follow a tribe of sketchily rendered humanoids as they engage in an operatic orgy of misery. The drama unfolds as the characters lose themselves in screens-within-screens, their masturbatory narrations performed from a cyclical script.
That’s the catch, though: Li’s characters are puppets, and their unfreedom his choice. The loop they are stuck in might be pure sarcasm. More likely that it’s Taiwanese melancholia.
