Insomniac Nights and an Aesthetics of Passivity: On Tsai Ming-liang’s Walker Series

Abstract

Abstract:Through Tsai Ming-liang's postretirement Walker series (2012–18), I consider Tsai’s ever-further alienation of cinematic conventions and expectations and a continued pursuit of an “aesthetics of passivity” within the illusory form of the moving image. Guided by Levinasian themes of passivity, fatigue, and insomnia, I read the ethicopolitical possibility of on-screen passivity and passive spectatorship through scenes in the series and the 2016 No No Sleep exhibition at the MoNTUE in Taipei. In a pandemic time when self-isolating is a passive action and form of responsibility for the other, waiting together becomes a temporal practice of the will that has collective, political potential.