The Orbit
2019 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
22:04 minutes
Bo Wang
The Orbit by Bo Wang is based on the story of Hu Na, a former professional tennis player who was known for defecting from the People’s Republic of China. While on tour in California for the 1982 Federation Cup with the China Federation Cup team, Hu Na fled her hotel room and sought refuge at a friend’s home on her second day in the United States. In April 1983, she requested political asylum on the basis that she had a well-founded fear of persecution because of repeatedly refusing to join the Communist Party of China’s tennis team. Comprising two video works, The Orbit is a two-channel video of repetitive orbital bodily actions of a tennis player, its repetition at once abstract and mesmerizing. The other screen shows a film based on the life of Hu Na–a speculative film of the night she defected and reflection of her life story pieced together out of found footage related to contemporary tennis player Li Na. Li Na, probably the most famous Chinese tennis player today, is known for winning the French Open in 2011 as well as her similar relationship with the state sports system. Li Na is almost twenty years Hu Na’s junior, and while they share similar experiences of a separation from the state sports system, the film also highlights their disparate destinies. Through the lives of two high-profile Chinese athletes, The Orbit explores historical narratives that examine a period of continued collectivism as a result of socialist ideologies in China in the late 1970s. The body and bodily expressions of the athletes become a symbol of the relationship between the individual and the community, and highlights the practical limitations and complexities of identity politics through the body and performativity. The Orbit further examines how collective consciousness and individuality have come to permeate the everyday lives of the people in contemporary China, and how performativity and its significance in the real world are constantly redefined.
Through new media, installation, and video and film, Bo Wang’s practice embodies sociopolitical and cultural subjects in contemporary China and beyond. His early documentary work examines the power structures, economy, ideology and the ways in which the Chinese state retains its authoritarian rule while simultaneously pursuing capitalism. Working with critical and contemporary materials, Wang’s recent essay-films, as they interface with capitalism and globalization, provide rich potential for critical self-reflection. So too, they engage the complexity between individualism and nationalism, the bizarreness of reality and the structured knowledge system, and authenticity and authority. Wang’s work depicts these provocative portraits of China by presenting contradictions in its cultural identity, transformation of physical spaces, power structures, perception of time and history, as well as production and consumption of images. These subjects are related with each other, especially in the aspects of how we understand the experience of modernity. His art practice is based on research, often on archival materials, myth and historical narratives, as well as accounts of personal experiences.
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