Yang Fudong

Yang Fudong
Seven Intellectuals In Bamboo Forest, Part I, 2003
35mm black and white film
29 minutes



This five screen film by Yang Fudong (Shanghai) was interspersed throughout the Arsenale exhibition at Venice last year. It was one of my favourite things from the Biennale and I think is a great exampe of a productively confounding narritive. Hopefully It or other work by the artist will make its way here at some point.

Each part was screened inside its own viewing room meaning that the viewer could enter and exit at any point. Time seemed stretched and nothing is rushed. The activities of the characters are soundless which compounds the sense of a sense of waiting. The series of black-and-white films were originally shot on 35mm film, but projected from DVD.

Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest comes from a traditional theme in Chinese art about a group of seven Taoist sages taking respite in the forest as they pursue anti-Confucian ideals such as individualism and personal liberty. Yang substitutes the word 'intellectuals' for the traditional terms 'sages' and 'worthies,' perhaps a comment on the evolution of the idea of wisdom in China in the 20th century.




Links:
http://www.renaissancesociety.org/site/Exhibitions/Essay.Yang-Fudong-5-Films.10.html
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_1_42/ai_108691799
http://www.themoorespace.org/oldmoorespace/YangFudong/Texts.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2006/apr/25/1