【新世纪】7月放映丨杨福东·曹斐·陈轴

这个世界会好吗？

当代中国的魔幻现实、异托邦和精神家园

NCAF当代影像放映月

2019.7.3 - 7.31

周二-周六12：00-17：00

2019.7.3-7.11    

杨福东《竹林七贤》（四）

2019.7.12-7.20   

曹斐《霾》

2019.7.23-7.31   

陈轴《模仿生活》

? 放映地点：新世纪当代艺术基金会 北京朝阳区798艺术区797东街A05

我们从新世纪当代艺术基金会联合创始人王兵和薛冰各自的收藏中，挑选出三部影像长片进行放映，分别是杨福东的《竹林七贤之四》（2006）、曹斐的《霾》（2013）和陈轴的《模仿生活》（2017），它们共同描绘了当代中国人（尤其是都市中的年轻人）的命运、处境及折射出的精神状态。三部影像作品分别拍摄于过去十多年的不同时期，几乎是为一个群体——那些生活在中国大城市（以北京和上海为代表）的人尤其是年轻人——从时间维度上刻画了他们生命轨迹的肖像。无论从现实意义还是影像语言的层面，这三部作品都形成了有趣而深刻的对话关系。

杨福东《竹林七贤 之四》

2006

单屏电影

35毫米黑白电影胶片转DVD

70 分钟

“竹林七贤”的故事成为一个很好的隐喻。魏晋时期在黑暗动荡中的文人，在山林中以饮酒作诗的方式保持他们的人格与精神。杨福东以此为创作母题，于2003-2007年拍摄了他最重要的作品系列《竹林七贤》（共五部），讲述的是一群生活在现代都市上海中的年轻人寻找理想和自由的“故事”。拍摄《竹林七贤》时的上海或者说彼时中国的大城市，正开始经历加速的建设浪潮，这股浪潮一直持续到今天。在浪潮中，传统的文化精神与现实中猛烈而粗糙的质感形成了巨大的断裂。杨福东让影像中的年轻人从城市中出走，来到山林、田野和荒岛，在读书耕种、织网捕鱼的生活中寻找乌托邦生活。年轻人最终还是要回到城市，他们在工厂劳动，在废墟上打桌球，在豪华会所跳交谊舞。影像中没有语言，只有身体、动作、眼神的交织，从中传递出落寞、淡然而又交错复杂的情绪。本次放映活动将播放《竹林七贤》第四部，年轻人来到与世隔绝的大海边，尝试着乌托邦式的生活。

曹斐《霾》

2013，影像，彩色，有声

46分30秒

如果说《竹林七贤》中的虚无感仍然带给我们一丝诗意和乡愁的话，曹斐的《霾》将这最后的温情和诗意都几乎抹杀干净。人们生活在空气污秽的北京和似牢笼的巨大建筑群里，而精神上的“霾”使他们成为“僵尸”。“人们不知道往哪里去，没有更伟大的精神引导你，没有更耀眼的智慧，没有“好”的艺术…… 霾里面有灰和尘土，它像某种无孔不入的腐败，腐烂着种种，原来腐烂的变得更腐烂，原来冰清玉洁的也今非昔比。人们找不到出路，低头看手机，在社交网络和电子商务之间跳跃，比以往更沉溺封闭空间，喜欢室内大型商场，因为那里总有一间咖啡厅会有免费wi-fi，比以往更喜欢美食，而且要抢在品尝美味之前拍照，好把这番仅存的“自由” 与“存在感”以前所未有的“虚空”散布开来。（霾之地——曹斐访谈《艺术世界》）在影片中，曹斐将现实世界中人的异化状态（麻木，残忍，矛盾与冲突，失序与断裂）通过想象推进到极致，而通过结尾的音乐与歌曲似乎仍想为这个世界保留一些珍贵的东西。

陈轴《模仿生活》

2017，影像，彩色，有声

82分37秒

故事来到2016年的上海。十年前在《竹林七贤》中描绘的上海年轻人还没有生活在科技带来的虚拟时代，而十年后出现在陈轴《模仿生活》中的年轻人要面对的问题是“如何在这个迅猛发展的大都市中表演自己的角色，如何处理自身与无处不在的屏幕、新科技、媒介的关系，如何与他人交流，如何处理孤独，如何处理被时代和自己搭建起来的时空建构。虚拟空间、梦境空间、日常空间、城市空间、身体空间、手机空间、人际空间......这些空间相交错，这些年轻人迷失其中，又或者平行存在在这每层空间里。”（影评人郭如冰对作品的评论）屏幕和虚拟世界看似将人与人、人与事的距离拉得很近，但造成了实质上更深的隔离，在《竹林七贤》中我们看到的人与人之间直接的身体和眼神的交流，但在虚拟时代，所有的关系中都横亘了各式各样的屏幕和应用软件。

“这个世界会好吗？”这是一个极富有儒家精神的问题。梁漱溟的父亲梁济带着对这个问题的绝望的回答投身积水潭；而梁漱溟带着这个问题不卑不亢地思考和实践了一生。福柯提出的“异托邦”大致意思是像照镜子一样，我虽然不在那里，但我看到了自己在那里。艺术家用影像的独特语言为我们打开现实与感知的层层褶皱，继而又在我们的感知和思维层面叠加出细腻而丰富的对自我和世界的反思。

 文/常旭阳

杨福东《竹林七贤》之四

2006

单屏电影

35毫米黑白电影胶片转DVD

70 分钟

“竹林七贤”共有五部，拍摄从2003年开始至2007年结束。杨福东尝试着讲述一群不甘于世俗束缚的年轻人的史诗般的故事。片名来自于魏晋时代的民间故事，一群贤士和诗人为了避世而来到一片竹林，抒发他们对现实世界的不满，借以披露当代中国年轻人身上新、旧生活方式不可避免的內在冲突。他们无视正常的社会行为，不拘礼法、袒胸露肚、肆意狂放。该片的五个部分描述了七个表情迷茫的都市青年男女进入山野，回到城市，去到乡村，远致海岛，又重回城市的故事。《竹林七贤》第四部讲述了年轻人来到遥远的海岛，在海边过着织网捕鱼的乌托邦式的生活。这几个年轻人象征了双重身份，他们既是从城市里来到大海边追逐理想的人们；亦是描述了传统中靠海为生的渔民的日常生活。

曹斐《霾》

2013，影像，彩色，有声

46分30秒

当所有大都市都成为了“魔都”，它同时具备着魔鬼的恐怖与魔幻的奇异，在这部作品里，探讨的不是“魔”的正与邪，恐与惧，善与恶，英雄主义，或者末日危难中的人性，而是生活在此时的人们，他们集体潜意识如何从一个看似乏味的日常情境中浮现出来，在可见和不可见的临界点，用自身的冲突创造出生活的魔幻现实。

北京，作为最大版图的超现实主义政治中心，重度污染的空气让城市仿佛堕入网络游戏“迷雾”，它看来正好适合被最符合荒蛮与残暴的视觉消费与最好莱坞式的流行想象进行清洗。艺术家想象一些人形异物出现在北京郊外的一片野树林里。从一些在树林里莫名被袭击的时间开始，我们开始进入一个和中国的现实正在发生重叠的魔幻情景剧。

陈轴《模仿生活》

2017，影像，彩色，有声

82分37秒

通过游戏、聊天室和情色短信这类媒介，结合科技、通讯和性别议题，展现了一个富有未来感的虚拟的暗黑新世界。电影巧妙地综合了表现中国年轻人生活的现实镜头和手机屏幕，以及代表美国生活的血腥暴力游戏“侠盗 猎车手”，来关注年轻女性对于个体身份的探索，以及如何在真实和虚拟世界突破身份的边界。电影的人物投入到虚拟世界中来躲避的乏味日常生活，但是在这种虚拟世界里仍得不到满足。他们盯着自己的手机，似乎在期待着某种从天而降的启示来改变生活，但是手机里并没有新鲜事。《模仿生活》风格诡谲又让人欲罢不能，创造了一种近乎“后人类”的身份：人的生存无法脱离数字化系统，同时也无法通过数字化满足人类渴望的肢体接触和情感交流。

杨福东

1971 年生于北京。毕业于中国美术学院油画系，被誉为目前中国最成功和最有影响力的艺术家之一。2004年入选纽约古根海姆当代艺术奖，成为继蔡国强、黄永砯之后第三位获此殊荣的华人艺术家。现工作生活于上海。杨福东凭借其极具个人风格的电影及录像装置作品在全球多家美术馆以及重要艺术机构举行多场展览，1989年之后的艺术与中国：世界的舞台”，古根海姆博物馆，纽约，美国（2017）；“本土——激流与嬗变下的中国艺术”，路易威登基金会，巴黎，法国（2016）；第12届里昂双年展，里昂，法国（2013）；沙迦双年展11，沙迦艺术基金会，沙迦，阿拉伯联合酋长国（2013）；2010 第十七届悉尼双年展，“距离之美：动荡时期的生存赞歌”，悉尼当代美术馆，悉尼，澳大利亚（2010）；第52届威尼斯国际艺术双年展，“感性思维-理性感觉”，威尼斯，意大利（2007）；第五届亚太当代艺术三年展，昆士兰当代美术馆，昆士兰，澳大利亚（2006）；利物浦双年展2004，利物浦，英国（2004）；第50届威尼斯国际艺术双年展，“梦想与冲突-观者的权利”，威尼斯，意大利（2003）；第11届卡塞尔文献展，卡塞尔，德国（2002）；第四届上海双年展，都市营造，上海美术馆，上海（2002）；横滨2001：国际当代艺术三年展，横滨，日本（2001）；第7届伊斯坦布尔双年展，伊斯坦布尔，土耳其（2001）；有效期 上海（2000）；超巿展 上海（1999）；后感性，北京（1999）等。

曹斐

1978年出生于广州，现工作、生活于北京，是活跃于国际舞台的具有代表性的新一代中国青年艺术家。曹斐的作品融合了社会评论、流行美学、超现实主义的影响和纪实的惯例，反映出当代中国社会急速不安的变化。近期部分个展:“Cao Fei”，K21当代美术馆（北威州艺术品收藏馆），杜塞多夫，2018年；“在过满的世界挖一个洞”，大馆当代美术馆，香港，2018年；“Cao Fei”，纽约现代艺术博物馆当代艺术中心，纽约，2016年；近期部分群展：“监狱建筑师”，第69届柏林国际电影节，柏林，2019年；“单手拍掌”, 所罗门·R·古根海姆博物馆, 纽约，2018年；“虚实莫测：抵抗真实的真实时代”，OCAT上海馆，上海，2018年。

陈轴

1987年出生于中国，现生活、工作于上海。他的首部长篇电影《模仿生活》（2017）获得哥本哈根纪录片电影节新视野奖，韩国DMZ电影节亚洲视点奖，并入围61届伦敦电影节。作为艺术家他入选了 Art Review Future Greats 2018。他的个人项目《蓝洞》于2018年在白立方香港展出。近期部分个展：“考夫曼”，艾可画廊，上海，2014年；“I’m not not not Chen Zhou”，魔金石空间，北京，2013年。近期部分群展：“Emerald City”，K11艺术中心，香港，2018年；“寒夜”，尤伦斯当代艺术中心，北京，2017年；“第二届亚洲录像艺术与电影论坛”，国立当代美术馆，2017年；“我们之后”，K11艺术中心，上海，2017年。

Will the world become a better place?

-Magical realism, dystopia and spiritual homeland in contemporary China

NCAF Screening of Contemporary moving-images

Schedule： 

7.3-7.11  

Yang Fudong 

Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest, Part V

7.12-7.20  

Cao Fei 

Haze and Fog

7.23-7.31  

Chen Zhou 

Life Limitation

Tue-Sat 12：00-17：00，Closed on Sunday & Monday   

Out of Wang Bing and Xue Bing’s personal collections, the founders of New Century Art Foundation, we have selected three short films for this edition of film screening, which includes Yang Fudong’s Seven Intellectuals in the Bamboo Forest (2003-2007), Cao Fei’s Haze and Fog (2013) and Chen Zhou’s Imitation of Life (2017). Together, these three works portray the fate and circumstances of the contemporary Chinese (especially young urban dwellers) and project their spiritual state. Either with regards to the real significance or the linguistic features of these moving images, the three works have formed an interesting and in-depth dialogue. Each, capturing a specific moment from the past decade, focuses on a specific group of people – the young people living in the Chinese metropolis (centered in Beijing and Shanghai), and paints the portrait of their life journeys within a temporal parameter.

"Seven Intellectuals of the Bamboo Forest" is an excellent allegory. Those intellectuals, who have lost their voices under stringent power of the Wei and Jin Dynasties, drank and cited poetry in the forest to preserve their dignity and spirit. Yang Fudong adopted this subject matter, to tell the stories of a group of youth living in the modern city of Shanghai about their nihilistic wanderings between reality and aspirations. The time when Seven Intellectuals in the Bamboo Forest was shot, was when this Chinese metropolis began to undergo accelerated construction and this wave of development that has continued to the present. In which, a tremendous rift emerged between the spirit of traditional culture with the unsophisticated textures of reality. Yang Fudong allows the wonderous and confused youth to walk out of the city, to go to the forest, field and deserted islands, to return to a bucolic lifestyle. People eventually had to return to the city, to work in factories, play table tennis in ruins, and do social dance at luxurious clubs. Without any spoken language, this moving-image was woven together with body contacts, actions, and gazes in conveying the desolate, distraught yet complex moods of its protagonists.  

If the Seven Intellectuals of the Bamboo Forest still brought us the poetic and nostalgic sentiments, then Cao Fei’s Haze and Fog has fully effaced these last warmth and lyricism. Those living in the city Beijing under heavy air pollution and caged in a constellation of buildings, the "smog" on their spirits had turned them into "zombies”. “People don’t know where to go without the guidance of a greater spirit, illuminating wisdom, ‘good’ art… there is only gray and dust under the smog, like the kind of insidious corruption, eroding all kinds of things. What was once rotten has decayed, what was pure and noble has also become bygones. People could not find an exit, their obsessions with their mobile phones, on which they jump from social network to e-commerce further incarcerated them to seclusion. They prefer indoor shopping malls because there would be at least one café that provides them with free Wi-Fi. They have become foodies, for the sake of snapping pictures even before tasting the food, so they could publish their last sense of “freedom” and their unprecedented “nihilistic sense of existence”. (“Land of Smog – An Interview with Cao Fei”, Art World) In this short film, Cao Fei has magnified people's alienations in the real world through her imaginations (their numbness, cruelty, contradictions and conflicts, disorder and disconnect), yet her song at the end of the film still made the attempt to preserve something precious for this world.   

The story takes place in 2016, Shanghai. The youth in Seven Intellectuals in the Bamboo Forest have yet to live in a time of virtual reality with the advent of technology a decade ago, but ten years later, in Chen Zhou’s Imitation of Life, young people have to address the issues of "how to play the roles of one's life in this rapidly developing metropolis, how to negotiate one's relationship with the ubiquity of screens, new technology and media, how to communicate with others, to manage one's loneliness, and how to build the framework of one’s own from this time. As the spaces of the virtual, oneiric, quotidian, urban, bodily, on mobile devices, and interpersonal overlap… these youth are lost among them or exist in parallel in all of them. (Film critic Guo Rubing’s comment of this work)” It seems the screen and the virtual world have brought the distance between people and things closer, when in fact they have created irreconcilable separations. In Seven Intellectuals in the Bamboo Forest, we are shown the direct contact between physical bodies and the gazes between people, while in the virtual time all relationships are mediated by various types of screens and apps.

 “Will the world become a better place?”  is a somewhat Confucian question. Liang Shuming’s father, Liang Ji dived into Jishuitan with the hopeless answer to this question; while Liang Shuming deliberated and explored its answers with great resilience his entire life. Michel Foucault proposed the notion of "dystopia", to a large extent offered a mirror, in which we see ourselves being part of it without actually existing in it. These artists have unfolded the layers of reality and perceptions through the unique language of the moving image, where they've provided us with subtle and rich reflections on the self and the world in our perception and thinking.

Text/Chang Xuyang

Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest, Part IV (zhu lin qi xian)

2006

Single-channel film

35mm b&w film transfered to DVD

70 minutes

Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest (2003-2007), a series intended to expand to ？ve sequels in total, is Yang Fudong’s attempt to develop a grand worldview in the form of an epic tale of a group of individuals defying the times in which they live. The title is borrowed from a popular legend of seven intellectuals who sought refuge from the chaos of the Warring States Period in a bamboo forest, where they indulged in serious talk unsullied by worldly matters. It is used as a metaphor for the resistance of the young Chinese who feel unable to keep up with the pace of change in China and, as a result, experience a kind of identity crisis. Showing no regard for normal social behavior, these intellectuals drank to excess, romped around naked, and composed re？ned verses that expressed their feelings of resentment towards the age in which they lived. The five-part series focuses on seven young men and women in different settings, beginning with a mysterious mountain popular among Taoists, then proceeding to an urban setting, a rural setting with ？elds and paddies, and an island, before moving back to the city.

Haze and Fog

2013, Video, colour, sound

46'30''

Cities, when morphed into magical metropolises, are possessed by both the magic’s fanciful illusion and its devilish terror. This film will not explore the good and the evil of the magic, nor the heroics and the human drama in that apocalyptic world. The film will explore how the collective consciousness of people living in the time of magical metropolises emerges from seemingly tedious, mundane, day-to-day life where the magic reality is created through struggles at the tipping point between the visible and the invisible.

Enveloped in heavily polluted air, Beijing, the largest surrealistic city, seems to have fallen into a Dense Fog of online video games and is ready for the most barbaric and savage visual consumption and Hollywood-style ablution. The artist imagines some humanoids appearing in a wild forest located in the outskirts of Beijing. Beginning with a few inexplicable attacks, we enter a magic realism drama that superposes the current reality in China.

Life Imitation

2017, Video, colour, sound

82'37''

A virtual futuristic vison of a dark new world mediated through gaming, chatrooms and sexting, which exposes the conjunctions of technology, communication and gender. Structured through a dexterous mix of verité footage of young life in China, mobile phone screens and the ultra-violence of Grand Theft Auto that represents American life, Life Imitation focuses on young women exploring their identities and pushing their boundaries in the real and the virtual worlds. These characters occupy liminal spaces alienated from mundane daily life, but unfulfilled in the on-line world. They stare at their phones as if in expectation of a lifechanging revelation from beyond, but all that comes is what has come before. Strange and compelling, the film creates an almost post-human identity, one that cannot exist outside the digital, but that strives unsuccessfully to fulfil the very human desires of bodily contact and emotional exchange.

Yang Fudong was born in Beijing in 1971. He graduated from the China Academy of Fine Arts, Oil Painting Department in Hangzhou. He is among the most successful and influential Chinese artists today. He was one of finalists shortlisted for the Hugo Boss Prize in 2004 and received this honor as the third Chinese artist after Cai Guoqiang and Huang Yongping. Now he works and lives in Shanghai.

Yang Fudong has participated in prestigious international art events including Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, U.S.A. (2017); Bentu - Chinese Artists In A Time of Turbulence and Transformation, Foundation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France (2016); La Biennale de Lyon 2013, Lyon, France (2013); Sharjah Biennial 11, Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (2013); 17th Biennale of Sydney 2010, THE BEAUTY OF DISTANCE: Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age, Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia (2010); 52nd International Art Exhibition Venice Biennale, Think with the Senses-Feel with the Mind, Venice, Italy (2007); The 5th AsiaPacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT5), Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA), Queensland Art Gallery, Queensland, Australia (2006); FACT Liverpool (Liverpool Biennial 2004), Liverpool, U.K. (2004); 50th International Art Exhibition Venice Biennale, Dreams and Conflicts. The Dictatorship of the Viewer, Venice, Italy (2003); Documenta 11, Kassel, Germany (2002); 4th Shanghai Biennale, Urban Creation, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai (2002); Yokohama 2001: International Triennale of Contemporary Art, Yokohama, Japan (2001); 7th International Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey (2001); Useful Life, Temporary Space, Shanghai (2000); Art for Sale, Shanghai Plaza, Shanghai (1999); Post-Sense Sensibility, Alien Bodies and Delusion, Beijing (1999) etc.

Cao Fei

(b. 1978, Guangzhou, China), currently living and working in Beijing, is one of the most active representatives of Chinese young artists internationally. Cao Fei merges influences from social commentary, popular aesthetics and Surrealism with documentary conventions in her films and installations. Her works reflect the rapid and unstable changes in Chinese society today and explore perception and reality in places as diverse as a Chinese factory.

Selected Solo Exhibitions:

Cao Fei, K21 Kunstsammlung, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf, 2018

A hollow in a world too full, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong, 2018

Cao Fei, MoMA PS1, New York, 2016

Selected Group Exhibitions:

Prison Architect at Forum Expanded, 69TH BERLINALE, Berlin, 2019

One Hand Clapping, Solomon R.Guggenheim Museum,New York,  2018

On Struggling to Remain Present When You Want to Disappear, Kadist, OCAT Shanghai, Shanghai, 2018

Chen Zhou 

(b. 1987, China) currently lives and works in Shanghai. His first feature, Life Imitation (2017), received the New: Vision Award at the CPH: DOX Film Festival, Asian Perspective Award at DMZ film festival, and was nominated in the Official Selection of 61st BFI London Film Festival. He is also selected as the artist of Art Review Future Greats 2018. His latest project, Blue Hole was exhibited at White Cube Hong Kong in 2018.

Selected Solo Exhibitions:

Kaufman, AIKE, Shanghai, 2014

I’m not not not Chen Zhou, Magician Space, Beijing,2013

Selected Group Exhibitions:

Emerald City, chi K11 Art Foundation Pop-up Space, Hong Kong, 2018

Cold Nights, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, 2017

2nd Asian Film and Video Art Forum (AFVAF), National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, 2017

After Us, chi K11 Art Museum, Shanghai, 2017