Presented by Chi-Wen

A, the last human on the planet. X, the god, demon, or the future in A’s nightmares. In 1972, a futurologist book which precisely predicted the human’s destiny manifested in East Asia. In an unknown era, the last human found the mysterious message from an electronic device, so he decides to look for it. The film looks like a TV variety show; in ten chapters, the audiences will travel in this dream-like prophecy of “the future from the past”.

In recent years, artist Su Hui-Yu has employed the approach of “re-shooting” as his method to create new works, which revisit past, unfinished, tabooed, and misunderstood figures, events, and things. Through his work, he is able to achieve new revelations or unveil active historical viewpoints. Sing Song-Yong, the Taiwanese researcher of the feature, thus comments on Suʼs work in his essay written for the work: “The key to the uniqueness of Su Hui-Yuʼs work, in my opinion, lies undoubtedly in the fact that he acutely captures potential meanings of past cultural events in relation to his own generation, through which his works become bold statements about what has not been expressed in the past.” After being re-interpreted by Su and through his lens, a new life of controversial or seldom discussed works from past eras emerge. The title of the film is inspired by American futurologist Alvin Tofflerʼs book, Future Shock (1970), which was translated into Mandarin and published in 1972 during the Cold War era. In Suʼs homonymous work, Future Shock of 2019, he utilizes the approach of re-shooting to re-interpret Tofflerʼs masterpiece, from which he applies keywords from new terms and notions proposed by Toffler to the narrative. Four years later, Su presents his latest work, the same name feature, which continues the creative concept of re-shooting -in contemporary Taiwanese ruins. However, different from the previous video piece that has a narrative based on chapters, the feature version shows an endless road trip of a last survivor on Earth, accompanied by Oliver, a smart computer from the original book, invented as an aid to humanity. The labyrinthian style of visual expression prompts the audience to piece together the otherwise fragmented images by themselves, allowing them to choose their own viewing angle to approach and understand the work. Combining the old school folk tales and supernatural mysteries, the story sails through modern cityscapes, religious fields, scenic spots and ruins around Taiwan to create psychedelic and glamorous scenes for the viewers.