Video Screening & Artist Talk
Cao Shu 曹澍 & Yi Lian 易连
Atelier Suterena, Esteplatz 8
(Eingang Geusaugasse) 1030 Wien
Nov 29, 2023 | 5pm | Cao Shu 曹澍
Nov 30, 2023 | 7pm | Yi Lian 易连
Two artist heroes from BMCA are visiting Vienna! Both multimedia artists who are based in Hangzhou became part of the collection with a body of several works in the year 2014 and 2015.
During completing his project from Goethe Institute in Munich Cao Shu is coming to visit the BMCA family for the projection of four of his video works and an artist talk. His oeuvre is usually evolving
multimedia installations, objects manifesting different ways of seeing, or through videos stimulating rooms where real footage and virtual spaces are difficult to distinguish. His video works take us to a new point of view, opening our conscience and giving us an idea of the world „behind the big wall“.
Yi Lian is spending a longer time period in Vienna. While working on a new project he is eager to introduce some of his recent
works. While three large-scale photographic works were shown in his exhibition at Loft 8 Galerie in May 2023, the audience can experience a video which is illustrating the same „impossible“ focus on local spots during the night. Yi Lian is virtuosely serving himself with a wide variety of techniques. Recently we can observe a fantastic series of Ipad Drawings on his Instagram account. As a very convenient way of working, Yi Lian is using his tablet especially during times of travelling. During a studio visit in 2022, the 1987 born artist showed glass objects next to ceramique works to curator Alexandra Grimmer.
Both artists are joining us for the next editions of our storage conversations celebrating the presence of our Chinese guests who are visiting Vienna.
尧山当代艺术 BMCA 有幸邀请到国内重要的媒体艺术家易连和曹澍来到维也纳参与本次影片放映活动。本次放映包含BMCA分别于2014年和2015年收藏的影像作品，同时增添放映他们近年来的新作。
曹澍于近期参加了慕尼黑Muffatwerk与歌德学院合作的驻地项目。本周，他将来到维也纳，进行放映和对谈活动。他的作品常以多种媒介并置的形式呈现，在展厅中形成具有感性关联的作品关系，包含电子游戏、文本、录像、装置以及表演等。其作品视频中的房间混合了真实拍摄和虚拟空间的变换，带来荒诞与寂寞并存的情绪张力。他的录像作品为我们打开一种新的视角，以窥探“城墙”背后的世界。
易连将在维也纳驻留一段时间，他带来了许多新的作品并将在这里展开新的项目。今年5月，我们曾于维也纳Loft 8画廊为易连举办展览，包含3件大型摄影作品。易连娴熟地掌握多项技能，例如在他的Instagram媒体账号上，可以看到他一系列精彩的手绘。在旅行中，易连也常常在平板电脑上办公。此外，他还在去年策展人亚历山大·格里梅 (Alexandra Grimmer) 拜访工作室时展示了自己陶瓷作品和玻璃制品。
两位艺术家此行中都会接受尧山当代艺术 BMCA的Artist Talk系列专访。
Phantom Sugar 妖糖 (preview 节选), Cao Shu 曹澍
3D rendermoving image， 4k, 15＇10＂, 2023
The work revolves around the Shunde sugar factory in Guangdong, China. Based on this sugar factory, the work uses images created through a combination of actual filming and game engine rendering. The old sugar factory, equipped with Czech industrial assembly lines, once experienced the glory of China's industrialization but has now become a ruin in today's era of globalized high-frequency trading. The cultivation and industrialization of sugar, along with global futures trading, are referred to as "Phantom
Sugar" in the futures field due to the unpredictability of its value. The value of sugar itself is also a killer of the "ecosystem" of sugar factories.
The work explores topics such as swarm algorithms, future agriculture, Laplace's demon, and humanity's obsession with predicting and controlling behavior. In ancient China, including records in Sima Qian's "Records of the Grand Historian," there are numerous accounts of using sugar to guide the walking patterns of ant colonies to predict the future and alter history. Classic ant colony algorithms are also
present in AI neural networks, used to simulate blueprints for the future.
Laplace's demon, perhaps taking the form of a mosquito swarm, is a super-individual life form persistently attempting to simulate blueprints in the era of quantum mechanics. As the grand blueprint of dataism unfolds, there is a recursive misalignment with the unpredictable elements of daily life.
作品围绕广东顺德糖厂展开，是基于这座制糖工厂的，使用实拍结合游戏引擎渲染的影像写作。拥有捷克工业流水线的老糖厂，经历了新中国工业的辉煌之后，在全球化高频交易的今天已变为一片废墟。糖的种植和工业化，以及全球期货交易，因其不可预测性，被期货圈称为“妖糖”，其自身也是工业制糖厂这种“生态系统”的杀手。作品关于蚁群算法，未来农业，也关于拉普拉斯妖，关于人类对于预测与控制行为的执念。中国古代，包括司马迁的史记在内，有大量关于用糖引导蚁群的行走规律来预测未来，改变历史的记载；AI神经网络中也有经典的蚁群算法，用于模拟未来的蓝图。拉普拉斯妖或许是蚊群的形状，一种超个体生命，在量子力学的时代，徒劳而努力的坚持着对蓝图的模拟。当数据主义的宏大蓝图徐徐展开，不可预测的柴米油盐与之产生了错位的递归.
Infinity and Infinity Plus One 无限和无限加一 (preview 节选), Cao Shu 曹澍
Installation, 8 channel 3D rendering image combined with 4K real image, 13'12" , 2020
In the visual installation "Infinity and Infinity Plus One" within the "8" shaped installation, the main screen images are created through a combination of 3D rendering and live footage. The content of the work revolves around a seaside fable narrated by a Chinese official contemplating a mathematical problem. The film refers Hilbert's mathematical problems. Faced with infinite rooms on a solitary island,
what choices will the suddenly visiting guest make in this guesthouse that was once filled with Chinese officials? Scenes in the film include a silent conference table in ruins, teacups engaged in mechanical repetition for dialogue, and scenes reminiscent of the display of power discourse. In a certain infinitely extended time, infinity and infinity plus one are considered equal. Perhaps this is
the enormous gap between the world of ideas and the real world, and also the reason why reality is continuously led towards tragedy by the world of ideas. In the film, the author starts with a specific location and expands into an expression of the issue of time—how time is shaped into a specific system by some form of will through different visual forms. Through roaming shots, the film alternates between
live scenes and 3D modeling-rendered spaces, leading to the meeting room at the end of the corridor. In the other seven channels outside the main screen, different positions are played in a loop through surveillance, revealing everything happening in this guesthouse. The presentation of multiple perspectives in the spatial installation breaks the synchronicity created by the continuous shot of the main screen. The voiceover in the film is narrated in the local dialect by a local resident.
在8通道的影像装置无限和无限加一中，主屏幕影像以3D渲染和实拍结合的方式制作，内容关于一则海边寓言故事，由一个思考数学问题的官员讲述。影片置换了希尔伯特的数学问题，面对孤岛上无限房间，且住满了官员的招待所，这个突然的造访者将做何选择？影片里，无人废墟中静默的会议桌，以机械复读姿态进行对话的茶杯，仿佛权力话语进行展示的场景。
在某种无限延宕的时间里，无限和无限加一是相等的，或许这正是理念世界和现实世界的巨大鸿沟，也是现实被理念世界不断引导至悲剧的原因。影片延续了作者由具体地点展开，从而引申出的对时间问题的表达——时间如何被某种意志，借由不同视觉形态，被塑造成了某种具体的制度。漫游式的镜头里，实拍场景和3D建模渲染的空间反复切换，通向走廊尽头的会议室。主屏幕外的其他7个通道中，循环播放着不同位置的监控下，这座招待所里发生的一切。空间装置中多视角的呈现，将主屏幕一镜到底的形式所营造出的共时感再度打破。影片的旁白也是由当地人以方言口述。
Meet-ing 相遇, Cao Shu 曹澍
1080p HD Double Channel Video, 10'16'', 2015
For this double screen hd video, the artist set up the camera in the streets of Hangzhou, focusing on people passing by: workers, students, young office workers, the boss of a restaurant or elderly people sitting near-by. Once his subjects became aware of the camera, the moving image freezes to a picture and another encounter process starts. There is a feeling of longing for more and an instant rhythm of fast pace of life. The moment when their eyes meet with the lens (which might be a collision for them) is the moment of meeting the audience. The emphasis is that it is at the moment that the work and the audience really meet.
这是一部双屏高清影像作品, 艺术家在杭州街头架起摄像机, 在几米甚至十几米之外将镜头对准一个个遇到的路人, 有老人、工人、学生模样的少年、上班族青年、餐馆的老板等等, 一旦路人看到摄像机, 镜头便嘎然而止, 迅速切换到一个画面里, 开始另一个相遇过程,有种欲说还休的意犹未尽和快速生活下的即时节奏。
Secondhand Rhythem 二手的节奏, Cao Shu 曹澍
1080p HD Video Installation, 2009
On a busy road during rush hour, two people stand on each side of the road playing Ping-Pong, trying
to make it by hitting the ball to the other side. The movement of the two players seems to have “nothing
to do with” the cars on the road, whereas they maintain a subtle yet restrictive relationship.
在车来车往的一条公路上, 两个人分别站在马路的对面打乒乓球, 并且力图打到路对面去。两人的荒诞行动与公路上的车辆看似“无 关”却又保持着一种微妙的制约关系。
Up and Down 上下, Yi Lian 易连
Medium: single-channel digital video (colour, sound), 4K
Dimensions: variable, Duration: 9 min. Chinese/ No dialogue, 2022
The work was commissioned by the BY ART MATTERS, and the framing was taken in Hangzhou Tianmuli. The artist draws inspiration from the perspective of a security guard (a rural migrant worker in the city), the daily maintenance worker of the building. Inspired by the security guard's collective effort to repair a leak after a heavy rainstorm, the artist photographed a security guard carrying an iron bucket
and an umbrella roaming around in different spaces, making use of spatial changes to explore and present the complexities of urban and rural, present and past, memories and experiences during the period of rapid development of China's urbanization (from 1978 to present).
艺术家借由保安（农村进城务工人员）这个建筑的日常维护者的视角，从保安所经历的一次下暴雨后集体抢修堵漏的事件中获得灵感，拍摄了一位拎着铁桶拿着雨伞的保安在不同的空间中游走的经历，利用空间变化，探索并呈现中国城市化快速发展期间（1978年至今）的城市与乡村、当下与过去、记忆与体验的复杂性。
Superfluous Light 多余的光, Yi Lian 易连
Medium: single-channel digital video, (colour, sound), 4K ｜Dimensions: variable
Duration: 4 min. 18 sec.
Chinese/ No dialogue, 2020
A lighthouse built by the British in 1870 to guide ships has been shining 360° in the East China Sea in the Pacific Ocean for 150 years, and half of the time the lights have been thrown inefficiently towards the mountains behind the lighthouse. The artist pondered what was illuminated by the light that kept appearing and fading into the mountains and forests all night for 150 years. More than 4,000 image sequences were taken with different shutter speeds and frequencies throughout the night, connecting the moments when the mountains were illuminated into continuous time streams, forming a unique light show of the mountains at night by the sea, while also responding to the night and light in the past 150 years.
由英国人建于1870年，用于指引船只方向的一座灯塔，其灯光在太平洋的中国东海360°旋转照放了150年，其中，有一半时间的灯光被无效地投向灯塔背后的山林。艺术家思考这150年整夜不停出现又消逝在山林中的亮光照亮了什么？并用一整晚的时间，采用不同快门速度和频率拍摄了四千多张图片序列，将山被照亮的瞬间连成连绵的时间流，形成了海边黑夜山林的独特灯光秀，同时也在回应150年过去的黑夜与光明。
Cinema Paradiso 天堂电影院, Yi Lian 易连
Medium: digital video projection, (colour, sound), HD; CRT projector, DVD, audio transmitter, iron arms,
sandDimensions: 360×200×70cm, Duration: 23 min. 08 sec. Audio: Chinese/ No dialogue. 2017-2018.
The background of the work comes from a friend of the artist, whose family operated a video hall in Yangjiang, Guangdong for more than ten years. In the 1980s and 1990s, such video halls were very popular in many small and medium-sized cities in China, becoming the first choice for locals and migrant workers to spend their leisure time. With the development of technology and economy, large cinemas
were established and small video halls gradually disappeared. The artist visited the families that used to run video halls, and used an old three-gun projector imported from Italy as the body of a gigantic crab installation, projecting images of memories related to video halls, linking up a piece of family memories, and attempting to reconstruct the phantom of a bygone era.
作品的创作背景来源于艺术家的一位朋友，朋友家在广东阳江经营了十余年录像厅。在上世纪80到90年代，此类录像厅曾在中国很多中小城市非常流行，成为当地人及外来务工人员消遣时间第一选择。而随着科技和经济发展，大型影院纷纷建立，小录像厅则逐渐消失。艺术家回访了曾经经营录像厅的家庭及其成员，并以一台保存至今的意大利进口老式三枪投影仪作为一只巨大螃蟹装置的身体，投射出与录像厅相关的回忆画面，串联起一段家族记忆，并试图重构过去的时代幻影。
Myth Practice 神话练习,Yi Lian 易连
Medium: single-channel digital video, (colour, sound), 4K, Dimensions: variable, Duration: 10 min. 36 sec. Audio: Chinese/ No dialogue, Date: 2019
Taking into account the characteristics of the park and its historical background, the artist invited Umi, the manager of the resident organization S-AIR, to take part in the exercise of pushing a rock up a hill in imitation of Sisyphus, and truthfully recorded the many "failure" experiences of the participant and the "failure" of pushing a snowball up the hill, exploring the individual's life experience of daily and eternal, meaning and absurdity.
艺术家结合公园特性及历史背景，邀请了驻留机构S-AIR的管理者Umi来参与完成模仿西西弗斯的推石上山练习，平实记录了参与者的多“失败”经历和推雪球上山的“失败”，探索关于个体对日常与永恒、意义与荒谬的生命体验。
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