An interactive film installation exploring the home as a site of personal and national identity, and as a metaphor for the subconscious.

World premiere at SXSW 2025

Proof As If Proof Were Needed invites gallery visitors to move from room to room of a Taiwanese house and explore the history of the couple who lived there.

Proof As If Proof Were Needed is an interactive single screen video work for the gallery. The floor plan of a comfortable suburban Taiwanese house is marked on the gallery floor with tape. On the wall is a large video projection of the house.

As a visitor to the gallery steps onto the floor plan, you see that room on the projection. By moving from room to room you can explore the house and the lives of the two people who once lived there. They have returned to their deserted home to collect their belongings and to tidy up the secrets they hold from each other.

The work is both a closed loop that repeats every 20 minutes and a story that unfolds progressively. The order in which the rooms are explored suggests different interpretations of what has happened between the couple.

Artists’ Statement

We originate from the home. It provides us with shelter and it is our refuge from the public realm. It is an expression of how we live but the home shapes us too. And the traces we leave there can be unconscious. We leave grooves and tracks as we move through the home each day.

The home is our most private space, one where we are free to behave as we wish; but it is also a trap. Filmmakers have constantly delved into the home to show us the secret lives of those who live within. Lost Highway (1997) by David Lynch and Hidden (2005) by Michael Haneke both explore the intrusion of the past and of the outsider into our space of safety. They develop a cinematic language that expresses the uncanny psychic presence of our domestic spaces.

The home is replete with the language of dreams and metaphor. It is an expression of the mind or the self.

It is a place we explore in our dreams: we move through spaces that are at once deeply familiar and at the same time physically impossible. We return to our current home or to previous ones and we find them unfamiliar or loaded with uncanny and disconcerting presences.

Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped to the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back.
Philip Larkin

The archetypal quality of our homes is captured in the phenomenon of memory palaces. These mnemonic devices are used to recall complex sets of information by moving through imaginary physical locations. Originating in classical Greece, this method of loci shows the innate human power to embed ourselves in physical spaces physically and imaginatively. Our domestic spaces are inscribed in the recesses of our imaginations.

The home is also a site of national identity borne out of tradition, climate, geography, geology and political decisions. The artists are conscious that the economy of post-boom Taiwan, and austerity in the UK, have each left their traces on our domestic spaces.

Proof As If Proof Were Needed takes these varied ideas about the home and threads them into a vivid cinematic work that follows the logic of dreams.


Proof As If Proof Were Needed is a collaboration by Ting-Tong Chang and Blast Theory

Proof As If Proof Were Needed is part of the Future Art and Culture programme at SXSW produced by British Underground and Arts Council England with partnership support from the British Council. With additional support via British Council, BFI Travel Grants and the Taiwanese National Culture and Art Foundation’s (NCAF) Rainbow Initiative. 


About Ting-Tong Chang

Ting-Tong Chang is an artist who lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan and Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Chang’s satirical gaze leaves no aspect of society untouched. Revelling in the absurd and illogical, he makes a mockery of socio-political subjects ranging from the social and ecological effects of consumerism to the functioning of the art world itself. Working across the distinct practices of immersive installation, video and theatre, his transgressive practice co-opts science, technology and history to dissect the world around him.

After receiving his MFA at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2011, Chang has exhibited internationally. He held solo exhibitions at the Museum of NTUE and Taipei Fine Arts Museum and has participated in group shows and commissioned projects in Jeju Biennial, Anyang Public Art Project, Guangzhou Triennial, Taipei Biennial, Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media, Compton Verney Art Gallery and Wellcome Trust. Chang’s major awards include the Taishin Arts Award (TW), Taipei Art Award (TW), Art Central RISE Award (HK), VIA Arts Prize (UK), Gilbert Bayes Award (UK) and Lumen Prize (UK). His works can be found in the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Art Bank, Hong Foundation, Aura Contemporary Art Foundation and private collections in Europe and Asia.

About Future Art and Culture 

Future Art and Culture is a major international showcasing initiative held annually at SXSW. The project focuses on art and technology from the UK through exhibitions, panel discussions, partnerships and networking events. Future Art and Culture is produced by British Underground and Arts Council England with partnership support from the British Council.

About NCAF’s Rainbow Initiative 

NCAF’s Rainbow Initiative encourages local legal entities and art groups to create new works in collaboration with international cultural institutions. The grant supports pioneering, multi-faceted cultural productions that deepen regional networks, disseminate art across borders, connect professional resources, and establish long term partnerships.

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