An amusement park behind a wall of shipping containers is like the beauty of a neon light, a poison and a cure at the same time. Simon Liu looks at fragments of Hong Kong in which the tension between chaos and softness gets created: water dripping from some worn out piping, a welding machine in the middle of the night, a glitch in a street ad. An over-developed, over-polluted, over-populated city on the verge of collapse, and at the same time an infinite collection of wonders. Are the glimmers he finds on the broken and dirty walls just tiny alternatives to the end of the world? (LS)
-New York Film Festival - Projections - 2019
-International Film Festival Rotterdam - 2020
-Cinéma du Réel at the Centre Pompidou - 2020
-Images Festival - 2020
-Portland International Film Festival - 2020
Simon Liu was raised between Hong Kong and Stoke-On-Trent, UK and now lives in Brooklyn, USA. Liu’s films and 16mm multiple projection performances have been presented at film festivals and institutions globally including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, NYFF: Projections, IFFR: Tiger Short Competition, TIFF: Wavelengths, Sundance Film Festival, BFI London Film Festival, Cinéma du Réel at the Centre Pompidou, M+ Museum, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Sheffield Doc/Fest, IMAGES, TIDF, EMAF, EXiS, IMAGE FORUM, and “Dreamlands: Expanded” with the Whitney Museum & Microscope Gallery. Liu is a 2019 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow and a recipient of the NYSCA / Wave Farm Media Arts Assistance Fund in 2018. He is an teacher at the Cooper Union School of Art and a member Negativeland, an artist-run film lab in Brooklyn. Liu is currently in post-production on his first feature film, Staffordshire Hoard.