Ms Ellen Pau is a self-taught video artist. Her early works first appeared in local screening clubs and then resurfaced on the international arena starting in 1987. From there, Ms Pau dedicated her life in video art to the development of media art in Hong Kong.
In 1986, Ms Pau co-founded Videotage, a media art collective in Hong Kong aiming at creating an umbrella organization for media artists, facilitating artistic and cultural exchange and promoting video and media art in Hong Kong. She is also the founding director cum curator of the Microwave International New Media Arts Festival.
Ms Pau works as an independent cinematographer, curator, art critic and researcher focusing on Asian new media arts. She also works as an art consultant for her newly founded company Inter-Act Arts. Her single channel videos and video installation works have been extensively exhibited worldwide in film festivals and art biennials. In 2001, ‘Recycling Cinema’ was selected and exhibited at the Hong Kong Pavilion in the 49th Venice Biennial.
Diversion (1990, 5m39s, DVC)
Produced one year after the June 4, 1989 incident, Diversion focuses on the immigration flush in Hong Kong. The Victoria Harbour swimming contest scenes of the 1960s by the Hong Kong Government are returned as absurd metaphors and black humor. No special editing equipment is used. The overlaying of images is not done electronically, but produced by recapturing the reflected image from the television screen. By combining footage from various sources- government newsreels of the swimming contests, educational videos on swimming performance video of the sequence of a burning newspaper goat-head floating down a stairwell- the video is a personal reflection of a collective memory.