Of the debilitating effects of the pandemic and politics—the spectrum from the Trump presidency to the rise of woke and cancel cultures—Su asks: “How do we survive this when we feel so disempowered and helpless to change anything? I can’t provide a solution but I can come up with an absurd idea, like levitation; maybe that’s the answer. Maybe we need something absurd in order to face absurdity.”

Levitation takes centre stage in her presentation for the biennale. “It’s a metaphor for many things—freedom, spiritual transcendence, rejection of geographical boundaries, human aspiration to reject the physical law of gravity and to take risks to achieve the impossible,” she says. “To levitate means to be in a state of suspension, in between falling and rising. It’s a constant balancing act in between risk and safety. I’m really interested in that given the current state of the world.”

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Su shot The Magnificent Levitation Act of Lauren O at Hong Kong’s Shaw Studios. She came up with the character after she came across American science fiction writer Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, which followed protagonist Lauren Oya Olamina on a quest for freedom. Su’s character belongs to a fictional activist-anarchist group called Laden Raven which was founded in the 1930s. Composed of circus performers—often viewed as social outcasts—and other marginalised members of society, the group attempts to change the world as did the 60s counterculture movement. 

Su was inspired by the anti-war, hippie culture of 1960s and 1970s America, and in particular by the widespread popularity of meditation, transcendentalism and other methods of reaching alternate states of mind. “As a kid, I always wanted to be a teenager in the Sixties and Seventies because of the fashion, the music, The Beatles and flower power. Of course, I was romanticising that era,” she says.

Her art is rooted in a desire to tell stories: all her works are narrative-driven, from earlier creations such as the drawings of mythical beings for Paracelsus’ Garden (2008) shown at Hong Kong’s Grotto Fine Arts gallery to her first film, The Afterlife of Rosy Leavers (2017), for which Su created Rosy Leavers, a bespectacled, redheaded superheroine-esque persona. 

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“Maybe it’s because I was an only child, but I always had an active imagination,” says Su. “I would make up crazy stories all the time. Sometimes I would pretend I was a character in an anime.” A huge fan of Japanese comic books such as Gundam and Fullmetal Alchemist, Su sees a parallel between her practice and the range of references anime draws from: “Eastern and western historical references, Kabbalah, Christianity, alchemy—they mix everything together in a blender and come up with something totally new. In hindsight, this is what I’ve been doing in my work.”

Arise is spread through four rooms and a courtyard, and is intended to be an immersive set for the audience but also for Su’s character, unfolding like a story as you progress through it. “The idea is to create a utopian playscape for Lauren O and the audience. Here, the act of playing is a form of resistance against work and progress, disrupting the monotony of work,” says Su.

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The installation will conjure up a fantastical atmosphere: circus posters will be plastered around the courtyard, and cement-cast triangular pieces similar to the grey acoustic foam, seen in Su’s film, will hover a centimetre or so off the ground. Videos featuring found footage of trapeze artists and tightrope walkers from early circus documentaries will be interspersed with scenes from old, experimental silent films.

Su’s film will be screened in a dark room which functions almost like a sensory deprivation tank, seemingly heightening the dramatic effect of her performance. At the film’s climax, Su’s character is suspended upside down, five metres in the air—essentially levitating—shortly after which she turns into a disco ball; a real disco ball will also hang in the fourth and final room, serving as an important metaphor.

“It’s in the centre of the dance floor; people gravitate and dance towards it,” says Su of the disco ball—a classic entertainment symbol of the 70s. “It’s about collectivity; it’s a platform for people to gather together and amass energy to make something happen.”

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