5

2012 - Film & Video (Film & Video)

37:25 minutes

Jiang Zhi

location: Beijing
location: Shenzhen, China
year born: 1971
gender: male
nationality: Chinese
home town: Yuanjiang, China

5 is a three channel video about the dualities of death and resurrection, reminiscence and fantasy, chronological and retrospective narration. The main video features two dancers intertwining, caressing in trancelike movements, with intimacy eventually leading to scarring and bleeding. Towards the end, the trace of bodily movements and fluids crescendo in an image of a skull in a synthesis of performance, painting and theater. To the artist, the skull of smeared fluid can be considered an allegory to Zygmunt Mauman’s concept of “liquid love,” where the loosening up of traditional bonds becomes possible due to increased social mobility. Modernity forces one to make provisional bonds that are more fluid and liquid in nature as many are torn between freedom and security. Thus, stricken by a liquid love, the amorous protagonists of the piece, enraptured in a fluxus of pain and eros, unable to transcend duality, leaves only an image of passion and death in the final tableau.


Jiang Zhi represents a generation of artists whose practice developed against the backdrop of experimental art in China in the 1990s, during which a series of social and cultural transformation occurred in the country. His work actively deals with issues such as body, gender, identity, consumerism, conflict, fear, power, and temporality, and often involves recent social events. Jiang attended the China Academy of Art and has long been engaged with writing and video art. From 1995 to 2005, Jiang was also an active journalist, which had him on the frontlines of his country’s the social transformation, and all of his experiences have deeply influenced the language and context of his practice. Constantly positioning himself at the intersection between brutal reality and poetic imagination, Jiang’s works presents a complex trajectory of the artist’s everyday life and society at large.


Colors:



Related works featuring themes of: » China, » Color Photography, » Contemporary Conceptualism, » Contemporary Fact Versus Fiction, » Chinese

Sexy
© » KADIST

Yan Xing

2011

Sexy shows Yan Xing unsuccessfully trying to reach orgasm in freezing temperatures among the falling rocks and howling winds of a precarious canyon...

Two videos, three photographs, several related masterpieces, and American Art
© » KADIST

Yan Xing

2013

The title of this series – Two videos, three photographs, several related masterpieces and American art – is paradoxical, suggesting the work is conceived in relation to its medium and a situation in art history and the region of the world in which it was made...

I Want to be Gentleman
© » KADIST

Lu Chunsheng

2000

Lu has developed an oeuvre that consists of characters in bizarre situations...

Lift with care
© » KADIST

Hu Yun

2013

This research-based artwork acts as a memorial to early twentieth century European exploration of China...

603 Football Field
© » KADIST

Qing Zhang

2006

603 Football Field presents a soccer game played inside a small student apartment in Shanghai...

The Result of 1000 Pieces
© » KADIST

Lin Yilin

1994

All his artworks utilize the use of body – the artist’s own body and that of others...

Stanley "Tom" Durrell, Tinsmith
© » KADIST

Sharon Lockhart

2008

Lockhart’s film Lunch Break investigates the present state of American labor, through a close look at the everyday life of the workers at the Bath Iron Works shipyard—a private sector of the U...

Diversionist
© » KADIST

Cao Fei

2004

Diversionist is part of the Cosplayers Series from 2004...

The Tower of Babel: Destruction
© » KADIST

Du Zhenjun

2010

The Tower of Babel is an installation of large-format photographs that forces the audience to occupy a central position through its monumental scale...

Placebo VIII
© » KADIST

Agnieszka Kurant

2018

Agnieszka Kurant’s Placebo VIII brings together a series of imaginary pharmaceuticals invented within the fictional narratives of literature and film...

Vanishing Point
© » KADIST

Xiaoyun Chen

2014

The central point of Vanishing Point is the most direct physiological reaction of the body to the environment...

Mythological Time
© » KADIST

Sun Xun

2016

Sun Xun’s lushly illustrated, dynamic short film Mythological Time is a dreamy chronicle of rapacious industrial development, the mythical qualities of state propaganda, and the constancy of change, as experienced by an unnamed coal mining town...

Collective Memories: Beijing Hotel
© » KADIST

Chen Shaoxiong

2007

After engaging primarily with video and photography for more than a decade, Chen turned to painting to explore the issue of urban change and memories—both personal and collective...

RMB City: A Second Life City Planning 04
© » KADIST

Cao Fei

2007

Since 2007, Cao Fei has radically focused her work on Second Life, an online space that virtually mimics “the real world” and includes everything from the expression of ideas to economic investment...

A Flags-Raising-Lowering Ceremony at my home’s clothes drying rack
© » KADIST

Kwan Sheung Chi

2007

A Flags-Raising-Lowering Ceremony at my home’s cloths drying rack (2007) was realized in the year of the 10th anniversary of the establishment of The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China...

Island
© » KADIST

Kan Xuan

2006

In Kan Xuan’s four-channel video Island , a series of objects like nail clippers, hairbrush, toothpaste, and house decorations are shot in close-ups...

ONE MILLION (Japanese Yen)
© » KADIST

Kwan Sheung Chi

2012

Kwan Sheung Chi’s work One Million is a video work depicting the counting of bills...

A Gust of Wind
© » KADIST

Zhang Peili

2008

In the video installation A Gust of Wind , Zhang continues to explore notions of perspective and melds them seamlessly with a veiled but incisive social critique...

Sentimentite (COVID-19 Global Lockdowns 53/100, from Chapter 6: The Pandemic)
© » KADIST

Agnieszka Kurant

2022

For Sentimentite Agnieszka Kurant collaborated with Justin Lane, CEO and Co-Founder of CulturePulse, to gather global sentiment data that has been harvested from millions of Twitter and Reddit posts related to 100 seismic events in recent history...

La Town
© » KADIST

Cao Fei

2014

Cao Fei’s video La Town, 2014 depicts a mythical metropolis that has been destroyed by unknown forces...