Sci-Fi New Queer Cinema
films by Shu Lea Cheang
1994 - 2023
Shu Lea Cheang is an artist and filmmaker. Her genre bending gender hacking
practices challenge the existing operating mechanisms and the society’s structural
boundaries. Her work builds social interface with transgressive plots and open
network that permits public participation; constructs networked installation andmulti-player performance in participatory impromptu mode; drafts sci-fi narratives infilm scenario and artwork imagination.
She made four feature-length films - FRESH KILL (1994), I.K.U. (2000) andFLUIDø (2017) and UKI (2023), respectively termed Eco-Cybernoia, Scifi
Cyberpunk, Scifi Cypherpunk and Scifi Viral Alt-Reality Cinema. In retrospect,these three decades of films seek to define a genre of Sci-Fi New QueerCinema.
Celebrated as a net art pioneer with BRANDON (1998 - 99), the first web art
commissioned and collected by Guggenheim Museum, New York, Cheang
represented Taiwan with mixed media installation, 3x3x6, at Venice Biennale
2019. She is currently showing two art works - RED PILL (2023) at Hope, TechnoHumanities (Museion, Italy) and UTTER (2023) at Attention After Technology(Kunsthall Trondheim, Norway).
http://mauvaiscontact.info

FRESH KILL (1994, 80:00, color, 35mm)
2024 release - restored 35mm film print and 4K DCP
Initiated by the Fales Library & Special Collections of New
York University with a grant from National Film Preservation
Foundation.
Selected showings:
Berlinale, Berlin Film Festival, Berlin, 1994.
Whitney Biennale, New York, 1995.
International Film Festival Rotterdam, Rotterdam, 2024.
Synopsis:
Coined as an eco cybernoia film, an avant-anarcho ecosatire,
FRESH KILL envisions a post-apocalyptic landscape strewn
with electronic detritus and suffering the toxic repercussionsof mass marketing in a high-tech commodity culture. “Kill” isDutch for stream, Fresh Kill tells the story of two young
lesbian parents caught up in a global exchange of industrial
waste via contaminated sushi. The place is New York and thetime is now. Raw fish lips are the rage on trendy menus
across Manhattan. A ghost barge, bearing nuclear refuse,circles the planet in search of a willing port. Household pets
start to glow ominously and then disappear altogether. Thesky opens up and snows soap flakes. People start speaking
in dangerous tongues. A riveting and densely packed film,
Fresh Kill evokes the furious rhythms of channel surfing with
its rapid-fire editing style.

I.K.U. (2000, 90:00, color, HD)
Selected showings:
Sundance Film Festival, Utah, 2000.
Theatrical release at MK2 Beaubourg, Paris, 2001-2002.
Synopsis:
Envisioned as a sequel to Blade Runner, I.K.U. tells the story of
an internet porn enterprise that dispatches IKU (orgasm inJapanese) coders to collect orgasm data for producing massively
profitable I.K.U. chips for mobile phone plug in and introduces
orgasm on-the-go. “I.K.U. is a phenomenon…. it crosses all
categories -- geographic, physical, conceptual - with a dementedflourish. As much trans-genre as it is trans-gender, I.K.U. also
wants to merge video and film into a fresh digital universe largescale enough to overwhelm the viewer.” - writes B.Ruby Rich inher article “ The I.K.U. Experience, The Shu Lea Cheang
Phenomenon”, collected in her “ New Queer Cinema: The
Director’s Cut” Duke press, 2013.

FLUIDø (2017, 80:00, color, HD)
http://fluidthemovie.com
Selected showings:
Berlinale, Berlin Film Festival, Berlin, 2017.
Documenta 14, Kassel, 2017.
Synopsis:
Set in 2060, after the Government declares the eradication ofAIDS, mutated AIDS viruses result in the ZERO GEN genetically evolved gender fluid humans whose ejaculate is
an intoxicating hyper-narcotic for the 21st century. A new war
on drugs begins, the ZERO GEN are declared illegal. The
bio-drug carriers are caught between underground drug lords,
glitched super agents, a scheming corporation, and a corrupt
government in this conspiracy-filled hyper viral film plot.
“When Shu Lea Cheang’s Fluidø first came out in 2017 it wasmeant to be a queer cypherpunk science-fiction film. Now, inthe era of global confinement, digital sexuality, and sanitary
surveillance, it has become the archeology of our present,"
writes Paul B. Preciado for Billy Wilder Cinema (LA)screening in 2021.

UKI (2023, 80:00, color, 4K)
http://u-k-i.co
Selected showings:
FILMFEST MÜNCHEN, Munich, 2023.
LAS ART FOUNDATION, Berlin, 2023.
Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2023.
Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2023.
ICA, London, 2023.
Coined as a Scifi Viral Alt-Reality Cinema, UKI’s storyline unfolds
as we follow a defunct replicant REIKO dumped on Etrashville - avast dump for electronic trash - who tries to revive themselves withthe help of Etrashville's transgenic inhabitants. Parallel toREIKO’s trajectory is that of an infected city and a conspiring
biotech corporation GENOM Co. As the plot thickens, REIKO’s
body is coded and decoded to re-emerge as UKI the Virus. Settingback GENOM's bio-engineering scheme, UKI the Virus swarm
through the infected city to liberate the occupied bodies. Throughvirus becoming, viral love, we claim our viral bodies. ““Thisextraordinarily visually intense film moves from 3D graphics togame engine generated cinematic mise en scène to visual effects
enhanced live action scenes in an extraordinary tour de force ofcontemporary digital collage.” – Matthew Fuller, Cultural Studies,
Goldsmiths, University of London.