Fatal & Fallen unearths the trope of the deadly, deranged and delinquent woman pictured in East Asian exploitation, xianxia , sci-fi and arthouse films. In the 1st and 2nd Editions, the program delved into the underworlds such as prisons, brothels, and homes as sites of crime, sexual desire and revenge across Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Indexing on the region's socio-political context when years of post-war depression, authoritarian regimes, foreign military rule, Cold War and rapid industrialization found an outlet in extreme and misogynistic cinematic imagery. Against this backdrop, Fatal & Fallen uncovers the dynamics of power and desire through the bleak yet charged territories of exploitation films. While the preceding Editions explored the entangled genres of Japan's pinku eiga, Taiwan's Black Movies, Hong Kong's Girls with Guns and South-Korea's thriller and Hostess films, this 3rd Edition opens the program up the technomystical paradigm of cinema.

Dominant images of technology in cinema have historically been casted through an industrial and sterile lens, from the sprawling early sci-fi opera Metropolis (1927) to the cyberpunk title Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989), charting the descent of a metal fetishist transforming into pure iron. As visions of machines in sci-fi films further entrenched binaries such as emotion//logic, sentience//incognisance or flesh//mechanical, the mystification of technology has become an utmost heresy in mass culture. This neo-natal neutering of a machine eros at the onset has been further cemented by the othering, alienation and material sterility in the sci-fi canon. Meanwhile, the myth of the machine continues to create techno-solutionist visions of a starry-eyed future of futile automation. Silicon Valley's innovators are stuck in a navel-gazing bind of lore-crafting, where specters of western enlightenment continue to propel projections of the savior in the machine. On the polarizing end, cataclysmic clouds pregnant with fear mongering surrounding emerging technologies such as generative AI, blockchain and the Internet of Things continue to fuel techno-anxieties. Paralyzed by paranoia and dripping with a rhetoric of annihilation, the doomerist worldview isn't a productive alternative either.

In an acutely frenetic present, Fatal & Fallen: The Ultra Bad Woman as Techno-Mystic Weapon is a conjuring act to unravel from the technological double bind to revel in a latent space ― amidst magic and machine, arcana and effability. As cultural critic Erik Davis invoked at the dawn of the new millennium, "magic is technology's unconscious, its own arational spell. Our modern technological world is not nature, but augmented nature, super-nature." As such, the rift between magick and technik orbits are not polarizing ends, but rather two interchangeable and symbiotic vectors of the same axis. Moreover, the concept of a "super-nature" ― or excess of the divine ― can be seen through the ever evolving legacy of technologies. Ricocheting betwixt ancient to alien, devices morph from sigil to code; oracle bone to predictive models; sundial to atomic clocks. These devices may diverge across eons and cultural contexts, but ultimately converge because they are powered from the same source ― the desire for connectivity.

The films encompass a myriad of body techniques ranging from kung fu and ninjutsu to telekinesis and transfiguration. The use of martial arts in the wuxia and xianxia genre is referred to as a technology of the self, which was used as a strategy to build national character and magnify self worth in post WW2 China. Not just used for tactical means, the mystical impulse of an inexplicable desire to connect to a source origin uncloaks how characters in the films are at heart, energetic bodies and activated vectors searching for release, retrieval, or revenge. While not all titles in Fatal & Fallen are taxonomically viewed as xianxia or wuxia under the cinema canon, the concept of xiuzhen (immortality cultivation) ― underpins the program's intent of alchemizing a macrocosm that zaps varying iterations of body techniks with an animistic charge. Calling forth the words of religious literary scholar Zhange Ni, xiuzhen "does not escape but engages with the dazzling reality of digital technology, neoliberal governance and global capitalism. In this fantastic world, the divide of magic and science breaks down; religion, defined not by faith but embodied practice."

Fatal & Fallen beckons the mystical impulse to engage in various somatic rituals and cybernetic communions. Across network cables and legendary blades, characters in the films mold and transmute energy, shaping it at their will, or at times, to their horror. The Thrilling Sword' s sorceress summons dark magic with hand seals to impale chaos for control, a band of women fighters in The Challenge of the Lady Ninja sparks revenge warfare. In other vignettes, the serpent sisters of Green Snake and the teenage diver in August in the Water tap into energetic potholes to open up new spaces of potentiality, thwarting psychogeographies of the mortal world. Mariko Mori's channeling of deities in Kumano and Prayer of the Priestess reverberates prayers of harmony, bending balance back to the Anthropocene. Bodies turn into energetic circuits in I Love Maria and The Cave of the Silken Web, where corporeal vessels become ephemeral beacons of electricity striking from the heavens. In the surreal universe of Pistol Opera, female assassins take on bodies of bullets, cutting through delusions with steel-like precision. Sisters are bequeathed god-like status with a surveillance network in So Close, while I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK exalts a yearning for a cyborgian existence. Re:Mazu: Iterations of Devotion halts idolatry in its tracks, reprogramming sea goddess Mazu towards radical queerness.

Across the titles in Fatal & Fallen, the body becomes a channeling totem, a porous vessel and conduit of entropy and creation. The program addresses how the female body ― across various environments and emergencies ― becomes a site of discipline, enchantment, titillation and retrieval to manifest agendas from the cosmic to hyper-real. In ritual and protocol, ceremony and computation, Fatal & Fallen summons the netherworld of technological sublime, traversing celestial data streams where gadgets and incantations alike are used as weapons against obliteration.

Curated by

Jade Barget

Jade Barget is a curator based in Paris and Berlin investigating atmospheric and ecosystemic imaginaries after nature. She recently curated performative events at Espace Niemeyer, Paris; soft power, Berlin; exhibition programs at Frac Île-de-France; and was part of the curatorial team of transmediale, Berlin, for the last three editions of the festival.

Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee

Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee is an interdisciplinary practitioner who works between visual art, cultural research and education. Her work encounters themes of soft histories, sensuous and sacred ecologies, salvage fiction and mechanics of control. She is a Lecturer in Creative Direction at London College of Fashion.

XING is a research and curatorial platform championing visual art practices from East Asia, Southeast Asia and its diaspora.

Acknowledgement: Fatal & Fallen was first presented at Singapore's Asian Film Archive in the context of their Re:frame series from September – October 2021. Its second iteration was presented at bi'bak's Sinema Transtopia program between May – June 2022.

Special Thanks to Asian Film Archive