Cheang Shu Lea, the 64-year-old artist who made the 2001 ‘sci-fi porn’ film I. K. U, will use the world’s biggest art show to revisit themes from her groundbreaking piece ‘Brandon’

South China Morning Post 
Date: 21 July, 2018
By: Enid Tsui

Cheang Shu Lea’s Brandon (1998-99) was a groundbreaking piece of early internet multimedia art that took a maverick approach to exploring the 1993 rape and murder of Brandon Teena, the young American transgender man who was the subject of the 1999 film Boys Don’t Cry.

When the Guggenheim museum restored the work in April last year, it kept all of its period features such as its text-heavy, MS-DOS-style interfaces, visible frames, limited interactivity and first-generation morphing GIFs.

Venice Biennale using fake Chinese curse called ‘schoolyard racism’
The old-school look – an aberration in this age of slick web templates – enhances, not diminishes, the work’s transgressive appeal. Its rabbit hole of chance encounters, Gothic horror, 1990s BDSM imagery and that greatest symbol of personal freedom – the American road trip – is as irresistible now as it was when it was created.

But what would Brandon look like if Cheang had made it today, with issues of sexuality and the public invasion of private space more relevant than ever?
[FULL  STORY]