Distorting Words
2019 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
24:38 minutes
Wang Tuo
Distorting Words is the second chapter of The Northeast Tetralogy , a film project that Wang Tuo began in 2017. The project is a unique regional research of Northeastern China that addresses the region’s geopolitical contentions. Drawing on significant moments from China’s modern history, Wang’s visual storytelling sets up and displaces a series of socio-historical situations through multiple narrative structures. Wang’s tetralogy examines the fractures in the modernization of China’s Northeast region. He surfaces overlooked incidents of violence in Chinese society, and characteristic narratives drawn from the past century of the history of greater Northeast Asia, beginning with the May 4th Movement and continuing on to the Chinese Civil War, the Jeju Uprising, and the contemporary plight of migrant workers. The locality of the film series demonstrates an alternative perspective of the region through local culture, spirituality, and historical facts. In 2018, Wang began researching shamanic culture and rituals in Northeast China; this project explores how his idea of “pan-shamanism” can evoke personal and collective experiences through time and space. Wang’s neologism reorients and transforms the idea of shamanism; it does not subscribe to its ancient religious, healing, or divination meanings. Instead, pan-shamanism is a catalyst for a collective belief or power, and for the possibilities of connecting and perceiving diverse experiences, histories, and time. This project is a critical endeavor in exploring the histories, deconstructing the past, and imagining the near future of China’s Northeast. In Distorting Words Wang teases out the story of Zhang Koukou’s revenge, alongside an examination of the Chinese city Harbin. Exploring historical reincarnation, or, what the artist refers to as “pan-shamanization”, the three-channel film reveals that everyone experiences the power of Shamanism through different dimensions of time and space. Wang invents a new dimension to shamanism that suggests how people might transform and connect shamanic power into various mediums and moments from history to the present. The parallel narrative in this chapter collapses time and space by focusing on two events: in 1919, Peking University student Guo Qingguang dies during the May Fourth Movement protest and in 2019, Zhang Koukou is executed. Through these storylines the fates and encounters of protagonists intersect in a complex and disjointed narrative structure. The night before Zhang Koukou’s revenge, he watches a performance by a local band in a bar; while the audience is captivated by the music in the bar (evocative of a shamanic ritual), the student Guo Qingguang hangs himself; a young man gains shamanic power and heals a girl. Accompanying this is multiple soundtracks: a voice-over in a Southern Chinese dialect, rock music, and shamanic folk songs, which capture the emotional and spiritual conditions of the protagonists.
Through film, performance, painting, and drawing, artist Wang Tuo interweaves disparate realities through archives, modern history, myth, and literature. The artist’s work is a powerful examination of modern Chinese history that untangles collective unconsciousness and historical trauma through glimpses into his protagonists’ troubled psyches. Wang’s speculative films excavate and revive archives as contexts in which to reproduce and evoke modern Chinese history and social reality. Intertwining multiple texts and contemporary narratives, Wang’s work ruminates on the universal connotations and historical complicity rooted in our subconscious and dramatic, absurd, yet powerless realities.
Colors:
Related works sharing similar palette
© » SLASH PARIS
Météo des forêts — La MABA — Exhibition — Slash Paris Login Newsletter Twitter Facebook Météo des forêts — La MABA — Exhibition — Slash Paris English Français Home Events Artists Venues Magazine Videos Back Météo des forêts Exhibition Film, installation, mixed media Upcoming Julien Prévieux et Virginie Yassef, L’Arbre, 2009 — Image : Élie Godard Film Super 8 transféré sur DVD — 7 min 18 — Ed 4 + 2 Courtesy des artistes Météo des forêts In about 1 month: January 18 → April 7, 2024 La MABA présente, du 18 janvier au 7 avril 2024, Météo des forêts : une exposition collective réunissant des travaux d’artistes de diverses générations travaillant différents médiums (dessin, photographie, vidéo, sculpture, installation…)...
© » ARTS EQUATOR
Weekly Picks: Malaysia (29 Oct – 4 Nov 2018) | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Weekly To Do October 29, 2018 Man Bai , at No Black Tie, 30 Oct, 9pm The award-winning singer songwriter Man Bai is best known for his hit single and karaoke staple, Kau Ilhamku ...
© » KADIST
L’exigence de la saudade Curated by Zasha Colah and Sumesh Sharma, Clark House Initiative, Bombay With: Padmini Chettur, Prajakta Potnis and Zamthingla Ruivah And the participation of: Nalini Malani, Krishna Reddy, Jean Bhownagary, Maarten Visser Intervention in the public space by: Justin Ponmany, Prabhakar Pachpute The exhibition brings together three artists from distant geographies within India – Padmini Chettur, a contemporary dancer, Prajakta Potnis, a visual artist, and Zamthingla Ruivah, a master weaver, whose works are conceptually engaged with remnant cultural forms, not as endangered traditions, rather to reinvent them in the present...
© » KADIST
Futurefarmers
2012In 2011-12 the San Francisco-based collective Futurefarmers staged a 10-part series of conversations and collaborations with scientists, theorist, and philosophers inspired by Charles and Ray Eames’s film, Powers of Ten (1977)...
© » ARTS EQUATOR
Weekly Picks: Indonesia (28 January - 3 February 2019) | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Weekly To Do January 28, 2019 Top Picks of Indonesia art events in Jakarta, Bandung and Surabaya from 28 January – 3 February 2019 Baron Basuning Studio, together with Galeri National Indonesia, invites you to NOOR, a solo exhibition of Baron Basuning’s works...
© » KADIST
Michael Armitage
2015In “And so it is” shows the image of a faceless man before a microphone, ready to deliver an important message...
© » SLASH PARIS
Françoise Pétrovitch — Dans mes mains — Semiose Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris Login Newsletter Twitter Facebook Françoise Pétrovitch — Dans mes mains — Semiose Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris English Français Home Events Artists Venues Magazine Videos Back Françoise Pétrovitch — Dans mes mains Exhibition Drawing, painting Upcoming Françoise Pétrovitch Courtesy de l’artiste & Semiose, Paris Françoise Pétrovitch Dans mes mains In about 1 month: January 13 → March 9, 2024 Françoise Pétrovitch’s upcoming exhibition at Semiose is centered around an imposing bronze sculpture entitled Dans mes mains (In My Hands)...
© » HYPERALLERGIC
Nani Chacon Finds the Essence of Home Skip to content Nani Chacon, "I Miss You…" (2023), graphite and acrylic on polytab, 102 x 140 inches (all photos by ofstudio, courtesy Timothy Hawkinson Gallery) LOS ANGELES — “[Nani Chacon] addresses how a secure home is essential.” This the phrase, from the press release for Chacon’s exhibition + Home+ at Timothy Hawkinson Gallery, forced me to pause...
© » KADIST
Kelly Sinnapah Mary
2021Notebook 10 , l ‘enfance de sanbras (The Childhood of Sanbras) series by Kelly Sinnapah Mary is a sequel to an earlier series by the artist titled Cahier d’un non retour au pays natal (2015)...
