You Can't Talk with Other People
Kuo Chia-Ling
郭嘉羚
Production date
2014
Object Detail
Media
single channel video (colour, silent)
Measurements
8 sec
Notes
The red lips move, speaking fast in Chinese; the same sentence is repeated over and over again as the 8 sec video loops: ‘Ni bu neng he bieren shuohua’. The literal translation is ‘You cannot talk to other people’ or, perhaps more stridently, the implication is ‘Don’t speak to anyone’. Part of the artist’s ‘Red Lip’ series, begun in 2006, this video was inspired by a telephone scammer who attempted to extort the artist’s mother, threatening harm to her family if she told anyone. Kuo says: ‘The sentence was particularly crucial and decisive in the scam phone call to people who were involved.’ Her mother, in fact, communicated with a taxi driver, bank teller and the police with facial expressions, body language and written notes.
Accession number
2015.330