susan pui san lok

susan pui san lok's new installation 'Faster, Higher' is a multi-screen exploration of aspiration and endeavour. The herculean effort and commitment of individual athletes training for and competing in a succession of Olympic Games is contrasted with the seamless spectacle of the event itself and its simplified, abstract displays of nations unified in their goals of sporting excellence and world peace. Seen through a montage of archive Olympic material and Chinese documentary news footage, a shared visual and cultural rhetoric begins to emerge, in spite of political differences and the self-exclusion of China from the Games for three decades.

As a precursor to the 2012 Olympics, 'Faster, Higher' highlights the repetitive and mundane exertions of young protagonists and potential future athletes, invoking a complex socio-cultural narrative in which individual dreams and exhortations to exceed and excel run alongside national ambitions and their wider political ramifications. New footage shot at East London¹s Wushu Academy located on the periphery of the Olympic site-in-progress, points to a long-standing Chinese immigrant community once concentrated in Limehouse, and its histories of re-location, identification, and dispersal. Here, aspirations towards the recognition of individual talent are coupled with those for wushu itself, as its campaigners seek for it the status of Olympic as well as national sport. Meanwhile, the future site's interim blue perimeter serves as a literal and metaphorical screen, barrier and defence: against which dreams may be projected, protests erased, and the labour behind the spectacle concealed.

Commissioned by BFI and Film and Video Umbrella. Supported by Arts Council England.

The exhibition was accompanied by the following talks.

Susan Pui San Lok in Conversation with Elisabetta Fabrizi
Tue 24 Jun 18:30 NFT3

Join Elisabetta Fabrizi , BFI Head of Exhibitions, for a guided tour of Faster, Higher.
Sat 12 Jul 16:30 Gallery