Painting the City
12’06”
Video
2006
I observe the city. I made a film in 2004
which is related to underpasses in the city. I took a lot of photograph as
well.
A city is where people congregate; its
changes reflect the characteristics of modern civilization. I grew up in an old
style street in Beijing, so I’ve witnessed how this city changes from old to new.
When a familiar is constantly changing, it becomes strange again. A big city
attracts many settlers and observers. Many of the big city around the world
show the same characteristic; big avenues, high-rises, thriving transport and
communication systems. They are almost as precise as a computer motherboard. The
faster the pace of modernization, the more anonymous a city becomes by losing
its original uniqueness. Then there’s the attempt to create a new uniqueness,
like all those strange-looking high-rises that sprout up everywhere. When that happen,
the modernized city becomes an advertisement to attract people, who become its
slaves. Most of the people in the modernized city are like laborers on a
production line.
In this work I try to ask the question “what
is the real world?”. People can use their camera catch a photo from the “real world”,
but maybe the “real” is just disappear.So I want to use art way to present this
process : there always has a parallel between the sense we can see and the
being we involves in .
