Celluloid was a material used in the production of early cinema films, and camphor from which it was made was an important resource in Taiwan under Japanese rule. While tracing the history of camphor, which supported film-making, the “Stories of Celluloid” reveals the underlying structure of colonialism and resource development, and illustrates how such structure is also connected to current AI-based image generation.

With the video footage of a camphor distillation shed exhibited at the Taiwan Exposition in 1935 as a starting point, “The Exhibited Factory of Cinema” overlays the narrative about the ointment made from camphor on the film footage capturing the production process of camphor, which was also a raw material for cinema films. The “Phantom Gaze” questions the way we look at colonies by tracing the path heading to the camphor production center, using the unreleased footage of Taiwan's camphor industry shot by an American film company. In the “Terra Nullius Data,” a video of a shed imitating a camphor distillation shed, the process of creating new images by reusing footage and documents of the resource extraction and laborers is demonstrated. The term “Terra nullius” in the title means nobody's land or unclaimed land, suggesting the current situation surrounding the ownership and use of data.

“The Way (After Chen Huo-chuan)” is a work inspired by the novel of the same name written by a Taiwanese writer CHEN Huo-chuan published in 1943 during the Japanese colonial rule. It reconstructs the memories and stories surrounding camphor by combining books, ointment made from camphor, and AI-generated images.