Genetic Salon – The Remains of Genetic Salon is a multi-channel video installation and total environment that brings together the fragmented elements of the ongoing Genetic Salon project. Presented at Podium Oslo, the installation combines video, text, sculpture, digital prints, sand, 1940s Aftenposten newspapers, LCD screens, a barber chair, and costumes used in the film shoot.

Set within an alternative historical timeline, the work imagines a future in which corporate genetic engineering dominates the human body and radically reshapes how bodies are perceived, valued, and physically designed. Genetic Salon appears as a beauty company, a medical service, a speculative corporation, and a fictional civilisation where bodily optimisation has become a central social logic.

For the exhibition, the scenography of Genetic Salon was physically recreated as it appears in the film: a white, bright beauty salon designed for the act of genetic transformation. After the filming was completed, parts of the scenography and props remained in the space and became part of the installation. What was once a film set becomes an archaeological site; what was once fiction becomes material evidence.

The Remains of Genetic Salon gathers together the residues of a speculative world. The barber chair, newspapers, screens, costumes, sand, and projected images operate as traces of a future that has already happened, collapsed, or been abandoned. The work asks what remains after a promise of bodily perfection has been staged, consumed, and left behind. If Genetic Salon offered the fantasy of redesigning the self, this installation presents its aftermath: the objects, images, and ruins through which that fantasy can still be read.

The project invited three Hong Kong artists Liv Tsim, Mel Chan and Serene Hui Sze Lok who focus their individual practices of an imagination of the human future, to be the cast of the project “The Remains of Genetic Salon”. Monologues for the film are developed by togetherness except Mel Chan’s monologue.

Cast:
Receptionists: Bobby Shuk Pui Yu, Serene Hui Sze Lok, Liv Tsim, Mel Chan
Gambler: Helene Bergsholm
Customers: Jenni Friis Bjørgli, Jinbin Chen TianYi, Florent Chronie-De Maria, Åsmund Skuterud

Producer, Director and Writer: Bobby Shuk Pui Yu
First Assistant of Director: Ka Ki Wong
Director of photography: Rickard Aall
Camera Assistant: Johanna Nystöm
Gaffer: Adrian Maurud
Sounds Recordist: Liew Ceng Teng

Art production: Reem Hassan, Chris Lee, Marion Fransrud
Wardrobe: Avenue, Chris Lee
Stylists: Jenni Friis Bjørgli, Chris Lee
Make-up artist: Gloop/ Elise Ommundsen Granli, Matilde Midttveit
Hair Stylist: Katarina Ljosdal

Production Manager: Magnus Holmen
Production Assistants: Joanna Chia-yu Lin, Fanye Yuan, Leila Marina Centioni
Chef(Catering Service): Yuhe Fang
Drivers: Toma Transport, Rickard Aall
English Subtitle Translator: cy
Norwegian Monologue Translator: Ka Chun Lay
Still Photographer: Dev Dhunsi
Documentation photographer: Jacky Jaan Yuan Kuo
Editing: Bobby Yu Shuk Pui
Colorist: Rickard Aall
Sound designer: Wei Ting Zeng
Location Support: Podium Oslo; Tilt Oslo
Curator: Lesia Vasylchenko

Project support by Billedkunstnernes Vederlagsfond (BKV), Kulturrådet - Norsk Kulturfond, Kulturrådet - Fone for lyd og bilde, Oslo Kommune, Hong Kong Arts Development Council (ADC).

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