Still Walking
Tsai Ming-liang’s divisive Walker series keeps Moseying, this time in an equally divisive location: Washington DC.
Tsai Ming-liang
Love them or loathe them, Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang’s ongoing – and expanding – so-called Walker Series has consistently done what any good film should: get you talking. Admittedly Tsai has always been a bit of a provocateur. Not in the inflammatory, shit-disturbing sense of the word, à la Tom Six or Lars von Trier, but his films do inspire robust post-screening chatter. Few, if any, of us left The Wayward Cloud with nothing to say about a guy having sex with a watermelon.
For the uninitiated, since 2012 Tsai has dropped his alter ego and muse Lee Kang-sheng into the middle of a crowded, boisterous urban space in full, bright red monk regalia, and filmed him walking… very… very… very… slowly through that urban space. Lee’s Buddhist monk, Xuanzang (a Journey to the West reference), made his first appearance in No Form, an offshoot of the theatrical Only You, for Taiwan’s National Theater and Concert Hall. Since then, there’s been Walker, the first of two commissioned by HKIFF for Beautiful 2012 (No No Sleep was the second) and a half-dozen others, and the locations Tsai’s sent Lee to have spanned the globe: Taiwan’s Yilan coast, Kuching, Tokyo Marseille and Paris. The films are curious examinations of time and space, that force us to consider truly looking at where we are. As Tsai puts it, “I want the audience to interpret the movies for themselves and think about themselves when they watch, and really see the space.”
“Really seeing the space” has different meanings in different locations – Tsai calls the Paris of Where “noisy… it’s too much,” – so it’s curious to find our monk on the streets of Washington DC in the latest entry, Abiding Nowhere. That same DC that was the centre of an attempted insurrection just three short years ago.
Tom Vick, film curator at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Asian Art and executive producer of Abiding Nowhere, commissioned the film as a way to recognise the Museum’s 100th year. The meditative way we watch the Walker films piqued Vick’s interest years ago, and with Tsai increasingly turning his attention to museums and installation work the stars finally aligned. “I was interested in how Tsai, as a contemporary artist working in a Buddhist context, would interact with and be inspired by the ancient Buddhist works in our collection,” says Vick. “I also thought that commissioning a new work by a major Asian filmmaker – one who I’ve been a fan of for 30 years – would be a great way to commemorate our centennial year.” There was no brief beyond incorporating the NMAA in some way. Tsai reeled in Days co-star Anong Houngheuangsy for his second Walker appearance and off they went.
So far so Walker. The first time we see Lee’s monk he’s on the Washington Mall, creeping past the Washington Monument. The obelisk sits there, perfectly framed for ages, and in meditating on this particular space, it’s hard to filter the images of January 6 out, even though they clash with other landmark moments that happened in the space: MLK’s civil rights march in 1963 and the women’s march in 2017 as just two. No one was actively making a statement, but it’s a curious side effect of the film’s raison dêtre.
“That is a very interesting perspective. I have to say January 6 didn’t come to mind as I watched it. I think that’s because – with the exception of the Washington Monument – [Tsai] chose to avoid iconic, recognisable locations like the Capitol Building or the White House,” Vick theorises. “Instead, he emphasised nature and neighbourhoods removed from the downtown area, which is clogged with stands selling American flags and other politically-tinged souvenirs that serve as constant reminders of that we’re in the country’s political centre here. If anything, it felt like a brief vacation from all of that.” DC’s main train station makes an appearance (and offers some levity – even if it was by accident), as well as a city street corner that distills it: a Black man busking in front of a giant version of Old Glory, none of which anyone pays any attention to. The rest of the monk’s walks are through serene green spaces and soothing galleries, with Anong shadowing him but never crossing paths.
Tsai is a bit more conflicted over inferred meanings. “The slow pacing is in contrast to modern society, which is very fast. It’s very obviously calm, and so it’s a type of rebellion. I’d never been to DC before this project, but I know its signatures because of movies – the symbols of DC like the Lincoln Memorial or the Washington Monument. I didn’t want to shoot just these kinds of symbols; I wanted the rest of it. And I didn’t think of what those places might mean now.” Despite the lingering turmoil-adjacent images that may flash before some of our eyes, Abiding Nowhere, like the other Walker films, are about rediscovery. “When I first saw the final cut … it was like seeing the DC area through a new set of eyes. I was struck by the details [Tsai] chose to emphasise, such as the sky, and his sensitivity to the natural light,” Vick adds.
As if the spectre of January 6 weren’t enough, the NMAA, like many museums these days, is facing a reckoning of sorts. Every day reports trickle through the media about major institutions – the MoMA, the Louvre – being dragged for dodgy provenance on their collections’ contents, with pieces often repatriated; Mati Diop’s Dahomey won a Golden Bear for wrestling with the issue. Is Vick preparing the NMAA for its next 100 years and a life with fewer artefacts and non-traditional methods for showing off what they do have?
“[That’s] a good point. Presenting our collection in new ways is just one way we are responding to the need for museums to be more ethical and inclusive places than they have been in the past,” he says. At the other end of the spectrum, Tsai’s recent pivot to museums as an outlet for filmmaking dovetails with institutions’ needs to stoke a new generation of museum-goers – and the content to engage them.
“Museums actually have more freedom for movies, which are being overwhelmed by the concept of industry. They need to consider markets and box office returns – and using only cinemas to show movies will limit the development of cinema in the future,” argues Tsai. Films like the Walker series, “Need more audiences to advocate for the arts – all arts – and if they only have mainstream cinema to go to that’s not enough. Museums can cultivate that sense of art. They all have cinemas in them now, or near them, and it creates a culture by symbiosis – like at the MoMA, or the Pompidou or M+ here. They need each other. One needs more audience and one needs more content.”
To that end Tsai is currently negotiating with Amsterdam’s Eye Filmmuseum (duh) on some kind of collaboration, though at this point he’s unsure if it will be a Walker film. One thing is certain: he’s got at least one more in him. “If I could pick one [museum] to ask for a Walker it would be one in China,” he finishes. “I’d really like to shoot in Xi’an (Chang’an), because it’s the birthplace of Xuanzang. Though I don’t know how they’d take to the monk’s red robes.” — DEK
Where we were
The Mira Hong Kong, TST • Hong Kong International Film Festival
Hong Kong • April 2, 2024