Ho Tzu Nyen's Supercut Videos Probe Irrecoverable History

In an essay for Afterall Journal 51, Jaimie Baron analyzes Ho Tzu Nyen's 2015 video pair The Nameless and The Name through the lens of supercut logic. The supercut, a term coined by blogger Andy Baio in 2008, describes compilations of found footage revealing discursive patterns. Baron links Ho's works to precursors like Joseph Cornell's Rose Hobart (1936) and Christian Marclay's Telephones (1995). The Nameless compiles images of actor Tony Leung Chiu-Wai from sixteen films, paired with a voice-over narrating the life of Lai Teck (1901–47), a shadowy Malayan Communist Party leader and alleged spy. The Name, akin to Marclay's expansive approach, suggests that fiction films can yield insights into actual historical pasts. Baron argues that Ho's videos subvert the supercut's typical focus on discourse by engaging with material history, posing questions about the sparse and contentious record left by figures like Lai Teck.