Freedom Farming

2014 - Film & Video (Film & Video)

Li Binyuan

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Freedom Farming presents how, after being given the right of farming, Li Binyuan began to re-dig his land. He attempted to physically open a space for conversation with the generation of his parents. On the second day, villagers that were gathering in the field, including his mother, started to watch a strange event: Li Binyuan’ s 2-hour long jumping and falling in his land until he finally stopped, exhausted. He jumped up to escape from the earth (his hometown), but being unable to overcome the gravity (his birth), heavily fell back onto the ground. This repetitive attempt to leave, and the invariant result of falling back every time, somehow gave him a kind of cardiac injury. And he suffered a physically heart-aching pain for some time. At this juncture, only by acting directly and painfully, he had finally accomplished his process of mourning of his father death, his hometown, and his farming situation.

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Li Binyuan explores physicality, chance, play and social values through actions, film works and performances that intervene in the social fabric of everyday Chinese society. His experiments occupy urban spaces, from the very public arena of the street, to remote post-industrial sites. Using his body as a sculptural material to enact creative investigation, he uses ruptures and repetition to manifest how sculpture and performance can intertwine. Rearticulating social conduct while interrogating our experiences of the everyday, Li is sometimes running naked through the streets, crashing into trees and using hammers to destroy other hammers.These interventions disrupt existing societal conventions, interrupting both the spatial and social dynamics of contemporary life.

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Colors:

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• ineluctable.s.01
• death.n.01
• gravity.n.01
• birth.n.01
• catharsis.n.01
• farming.n.02