Is It a Dream?

This installation was first presented during the Venice Biennial in 2007 where it formed part of the national presentation by Taiwan in the Palazzo delle Prigioni. In that same period, Tsai also presented a major installation in the Palace Museum in Taipei as part of an international film-installation exhibition entitled Discovering the Other.
The two installations are a striking step in the career of Tsai, who is undoubtedly one of the most important contemporary cinematographers; With this step, Tsai is in fact taking cinema into the exhibition space. The installation closely resembles a small intimate cinema. A cinema the way they no longer exist or may never have existed at all, but that doesn’t stop you remembering them like that.
In an old unused cinema in Malaysia, the film maker saw the theatre of his memories and decided to shoot a film there. The seats from the same cinema are now in Rotterdam to help us experience the dream of the film maker.
In the installation cinema, a film is screened in which the film maker’s parents appear. The cinema as a family environment in which dreams and memories are made. The work is both a nostalgic look at the cinema of childhood as a contemporary spatial performance that continues the discourse of cinema. (GjZ)

With grateful thanks to the Taipei Fine Arts Museum.