Canton Novelty

2016 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
27:38 minutes

Canton Novelty by Fang Lu captures the adventure of a group of three girls, Ruohan, Lily and Zoe on a summer vacation in Guangzhou, China. Throughout the course of the trip, they film themselves with their cell phones singing in a karaoke room, shopping at a hardware store, sitting at a park, hanging out in a hotel room and exploring a neighborhood looking at vacant apartment ads. Although their days may seem uneventful, the girls seemingly discover the ability to perform impossible “miracles,” including cooking a full pot of rice from three grains, summoning objects to appear and disappear, and turning off street lamps on command. Drawing inspiration from daily life is the overarching theme found in Lu’s body of work. Here, instead of visiting historical landmarks and seeking out-of-the-ordinary amusements, the group creates extraordinary moments while simply walking down the street or eating at a restaurant table. Canton Novelty exemplifies the artist’s signature style of filmmaking that she has progressively developed in the past ten years. This includes transforming simple tasks and everyday actions into built up tensions between the choreographed and the unrehearsed, filming women in domestic spheres in such a way in which they become instruments of performativity (gender roles), and creating superficial environments, or “situated reality” that examine hidden truths from daily experience that are often dismissed.

Fang Lu uses intimacy as a place for self-expression in her videos and draws out mundane moments from everyday life as a strategy to heighten one’s awareness of existence from the rest of the world. Instead of using the camera as a tool to document or capture, she stages a superficial experience, or “situated reality,” that locates the self in relation to a relationship, environment, or idealistic notion. For example, examining behavioral patterns of being in love or being sequestered in an empty building with nothing but circulated online images. For Fang, there is no one reality and everyone creates her own reality. Thus, her practice is an ongoing exploration of self-awareness and seeking realization of truths within experience, and the content in and direction of her videos are directly influenced by her immediate and living environment.