Victoria Gong
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Victoria Gong is a London-based experimental moving-image artist / director who has been published by KALBLUT Magazine and NOWNESS ASIA as well as won awards with the Athens Fashion Film Festival and ASVOFF (A Shaded View of Fashion Film by Diane Pernet) in Paris. Victoria has screened her video productions at the Venice Biennale, Labelhood & Youtopia in Shanghai, and UBU Art Collective in Seoul.
Incorporating contemporary dance, fashion, experimental music, and dream-like sequences, the moving-image works of Victoria Gong are based on narrative shorts, fashion films, and music videos. Some of Victoria’s most notable moving-images includes experimental fashion film AMBERSTICHE and music video UNCANNY VALLEY - featuring music artist I’MMORTAL. In both of these works, there is a consistent theme of characters rising and engaging with the darkness. With high contrast and theatrical, focused lighting, Victoria Gong’s actors dance within the void of her expansive, dark compositions. The costumes in the videos are either dance-based, fantastical, revealing, primal, or sleek, depending on the character and contexts of the sequence. For example. in UNCANNY VALLEY, the character of I’MMORTAL is dressed in a plain white outfit (along with her clone) throughout most of the video except for when she enters the confines of a psychiatric hospital room, for which she wears a tight tan outfit and faux fur overcoat on her shoulders, perhaps indicating a sense of rockstar status.
In AMBERSTICHE, we are engaged in a lucid experience. Exotic dancers with tribalistic markings on their face and bodies dance upon poles or the cold floor seemingly prowling the area of the frame. Their dances are primal in nature, swallowed by the encompassing darkness and leading towards a prismatic character who ‘shines’ and ‘explodes’ into sparkled abstract constructs, which are analogue animated by three VFX animators working for Victoria. The light-based configurations flow with aquatic vigor followed by a luminous shine reminiscent of precious stones and fine jewelry. UNCANNY VALLEY has a more clear narrative base as I’MMORTAL seems to be struggling not only with herself (via a psychiatric hospital), but also with an intrusive android clone, which eventually breaks out into all out war between the two. In the final sequence, one of the two instances of I’MMORTAL shoots lasers from her hands finishing off the other. Is the deceased instance of I’MMORTAL or the clone? We will never know. The mysterious, indirect narratives in the experimental moving-image works of Victoria Gong compliment her rich visuals which are almost monochromatic in cool and neutral colors, followed by enchanted dance, engaging costumes, and performances which contain evocative motions which both haunt and challenge us to engage and question the sequences.
AMBERSTICHE V. 1 (pictured above) depicts a video-still from the experimental fashion film. As we can see, the dancer uses the composition of her upper-body and face to compliment and contort to the dancing pole and her dark environment. Upon her face, we will find primal tribalistic markings, sleek, slicked-back hair, and an ominous stare off into the distance which seems melancholy. This frozen frame appears like a staged conceptual photograph, yet only a single instance within the carefully choreographed sequences of Victoria Gong’s complex work.
Victoria Gong represents some of the very finest the experimental moving-image arts has to offer. Her combinative techniques of engulfing and integrating her actors and dancers within the confines of her dark compositions to the backdrops of experimental audio, unfamiliar and narrative-based fashion / costume design, and evocative contemporary dance are in contemplative analysis. These works are best savored in the moment and with repeated watchings to unlock the mystery of her narratives based in the fawn-like movements and engagements of her actors. Victoria Gong consistently offers lucid experiences based in horror, confinement, mystery, and technological aesthetics which challenge the viewer to appreciate the unlimited potential of moving-image as well as her ability to orchestrate fine, hallucinogenic engaging sequences of infinite depth.
Written by Michael Hanna, Editor of Point Pleasant Publishing.
