Mythological Time

2016 - Film & Video (Film & Video)

12:44 minutes

Sun Xun

location: Hangzhou, China
year born: 1980
gender: male
nationality: Chinese
home town: Fuxin, Liaoning Provence, China

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. While it is not named in the film itself, the town at the center of Mythological Time is a re-imagined incarnation of Sun’s hometown of Fuxin, in the northern Chinese province of Liaoning. Sandwiched between North Korea and Inner Mongolia, Fuxin is a poor coal-mining region that used to contain one of China’s largest open-pit mines and has historically been the site of significant conflict, thanks to its rich mineral resources. In preparation to make the film, Sun, who is well known for his labor-intensive animation techniques and close attention to detail, spent over two weeks revisiting his hometown. Fuxin is cratered with sinkholes and blighted with cone-shaped spoil tips, much like the Fuxin depicted in Mythological Time. Unlike the real-life Fuxin, however, the Fuxin of the film is home to pheasants with human ears, bounding kirins, dragons that transform into trees, flying lumps of coal, and other chimerical beings; pangolins and fossils appear to be frozen in cubes of ice while old-fashioned cinemas project blank images onto nuclear power plants. The narrative of the film unfolds across two widescreen video images using a panoramic, scroll-like format, referencing the collapsed perspectives and flat narrative structure of Chinese landscape painting as mythological creatures both flee from and act as central characters within an alchemized, fantastical re-telling of a small town’s brutal path to modern industrialization. Borrowing frequently from the language of folklore as well as the visual strategies utilized by the Chinese Communist Party during Mao’s cult of personality, Sun’s work offers a palimpsest of official and oral histories to fill in the gaps carved out by state-administered amnesia. In Sun Xun’s world, time is a relentlessly transforming and transformable being, and the chronicle of human history is infinitely malleable. Human toil and industry exist in the realm of not just the mundane, but also the celestial.


Sun Xun creates videos and animation films from his meticulous, highly detailed, and often monochromatic, hand drawings executed in ink, oil, and crayon. Drawing on the ideas of thinkers like Karl Marx, Theodor Adorno, and Max Horkheimer, Sun investigates revolution, existence, mythologies of society, the notion of time, and the construction and narration of history. Often in a style of magical realism, Sun’s works are full of metaphors and indirect visual associations that beg to be deciphered.


Colors:



Related works featuring themes of: » Animals, » Animation, » China, » Collective History, » Chinese

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...

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...

5
© » KADIST

Jiang Zhi

2012

5 is a three channel video about the dualities of death and resurrection, reminiscence and fantasy, chronological and retrospective narration...

A Slap in Wuhan
© » KADIST

Li Liao

2010

A Slap in Wuhan documents Li Liao’s performance in Wuhan, China on January 8, 2011...

603 Football Field
© » KADIST

Qing Zhang

2006

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

New York Public Library Projects (NYPLP)
© » KADIST

Pak Sheung Chuen

2008

Pak created New York Public Library Projects (NYPLP) (2008) during a residency in New York, using public libraries as exhibition spaces and the books they house as raw materials...

Unregistered City series #1 #2 #7
© » KADIST

Jiang Pengyi

2008

Unregistered City is a series of eight photographs depicting different scenes of a vacant, apparently post-apocalyptic city: Some are covered by dust and others are submerged by water...

The Tower of Babel: Independence of the country
© » 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...

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...

The Tower of Babel: The Carnaval
© » 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...

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...

SpringValle_ber_girls
© » KADIST

Petra Cortright

2012

In the flash animation SpringValle_ber_girls , Petra Cortright collages together surreal scenes out of unnaturally idyllic desktop screensavers with equally unreal computer-generated women that pop in and out of the landscape...

History of Chemistry I
© » KADIST

Lu Chunsheng

2004

A mesmerizing experience of a vaguely familiar yet remote world, History of Chemistry I follows a group of men as they wander from somewhere beyond the edge of the sea through a vast landscape to an abandoned steel factory...

La Town
© » KADIST

Cao Fei

2014

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

Beyond Geography
© » KADIST

Li Ran

2012

In his video work Beyond Geography , Li dramatizes the role of the artist-as-imitator to the point of sheer parody...

Empire's Borders II-Passage
© » KADIST

Chen Chieh-Jen

2010

Empire’s Borders II – Passage and Empire’s Borders II – Workers are from the three-channel film installation Empire’s Borders II – Western Enterprise, Inc...

Man and Pet
© » KADIST

Jeffry Mitchell

2012

In Man and Pet (2012), two benign ceramic figures smile sweetly upward...

Portrait: Cover and Clean
© » KADIST

Qiu Anxiong

2011

A Portrait: Covering and Cleaning is an installation of six black-and-white video projections...